That Committee reported as follows:

"Your Committee have pondered with care the gravity of this important proposal and of its possible consequences. We remember with gladness, in this year 1908, especially, our common origin, our common traditions, and our common faith. We desire also to reciprocate most cordially every manifestation of fraternity.

"We are, nevertheless, compelled in the presence of this overture to recall the earnest wish of our fathers that our Articles of Religion and our Standards of Doctrine should remain unchanged, and, having weighed the arguments in favor of it, we are not convinced of the necessity or the expediency of the proposed new statement of our doctrines.

"Accordingly, we unanimously recommend that this General Conference respectfully decline to take the action requested, at the same time renewing the expression of our fraternal love for the Methodist Episcopal Church, South."

This was the end of that move for a restatement of the doctrines of Methodism. However, it is to be observed that the proposition was not to change the standards but to prepare a "restatement." The practical result, no doubt, if the move had been successful, would have been to have made practically a new standard, and this practically, in common estimation, would have modified the old standards, even if the Articles were printed as before.

Plainly the Churches did not want any interference with existing standards, and the great need was not new standards, or restatements of doctrine in new

1" Journal Methodist Episcopal Gen. Conf.," 1908, p. 770.

language, so much as the old faith in and the earnest preaching of the old doctrines.

Bishop Hendrix, in the article to which reference already has been made, thus emphasizes the necessity of preaching Methodist doctrine to produce such results as have been described. Thus, he says:

"Not only was the power of primitive Methodism due to the clearness with which the early itinerants apprehended and preached its distinctive doctrines by the help of the Holy Spirit, but any departure from such strong doctrinal preaching has been marked by a loss of power.

"Methodist preachers of a century and a century and a half ago confined themselves largely to doctrinal preaching. They did not attempt many themes, but always the great themes.

"The strength of Methodism has ever been its positive beliefs and its fearless proclamation of them. Because we believe, therefore have we spoken. Whenever we have spoken clearly and strongly, we have had a hearing.

"An imperative need of our day is for more doctrinal preaching, not less. Men must believe strongly if they preach strongly."

Then, if the people will believe and the ministers will preach the old doctrines, it will not be necessary to make new standards, and the conclusion of the whole matter is that the Church does not need any new standards of doctrine, but does need to believe tremendously in those it has.

1Bishop E. R. Hendrix: Methodist Quarterly Review (South), April, 1907.

XXV

CHANGES SHOULD BE SCRUTINIZED

10 important are the doctrinal standards of a

S

Church that once they have been settled they should be strongly protected, and proposed changes in the standards, or the expressions of doctrine, should be most carefully scrutinized.

There should be the instant challenge, and there should ring out the command, Halt! no matter who makes the proposition to change, no matter whether it be made by friend or foe and whether it be a major or a minor change. There should be an imperative command that the harmlessness, the benefit, and the pressing necessity of the change shall be demonstrated before any action be taken.

Not only should proposed changes in doctrinal expressions, or in the doctrinal standards undergo a severe scrutiny, but modifications that have been made should be studied and restudied.

Mistakes may have been made and destructive ideas may have been introduced from which the Church may have suffered serious injury, or which, in course of time, may greatly damage the doctrinal teaching of the Church.

That an error has been committed or a wrong has been perpetrated does not necessarily make it eternal, but, once detected, it should be reconsidered and reversed, and the sooner that is done the better. In this it is never too late to mend, and it is never too soon to

begin the mending, for nothing is so destructive to a Church as wrong beliefs.

It may be not only proper, but necessary to ask: Have all the revisions of formularies containing doctrinal statements been constitutional ?

This is a question not only of historical interest, but also of great practical importance. For, if changes in doctrinal statements have been made without the constitutional process, then the Constitution has ceased to be a safeguard, and if a change has been made unconstitutionally in one instance, it may be followed as a precedent, and other changes may be brought about in the same unconstitutional way, though, strictly speaking, an illegal action is not a legal precedent for another illegal action, and, when the Constitution is found to be against the action, the action is null and void and cannot fairly be used as a justification of a repetition of the illegal proceeding.

Nevertheless, practically, laws may be broken down by a repetition of careless, or illegal actions, and, when laws are disregarded or overcome by illegal practices, the trend is toward anarchy.

It is, therefore, the duty of every one to insist that the Constitution and the statute law shall be duly respected by the makers of law and the legal executives, and the legislators and the executives themselves should rigidly observe the requirements of the Constitution and the laws made in accordance therewith.

And especially is this important as to doctrinal expressions, for in a Church the doctrines are of vast importance and even more important than matters of ordinary governmental polity.

It is to be noted that improper and illegal changes

may be made in doctrinal formularies in various ways. Thus they may be made intentionally or unintentionally. They may be made by design, or they may be made through carelessness or indifference.

The possibility of such changes grows out largely from the fact that in popular representative bodies, such as General Conferences or Conventions, there are apt to be many who are inexperienced and do not know the niceties of the law, and who do not always discern the methods which others are employing to further their purposes.

So, without intending it, they may permit a wrong thing to be done, or a right thing to be done, in an irregular and unconstitutional way, and the movers themselves may not realize the wrong that is being done.

However, no matter what may be the motive, a thing done illegally, or unconstitutionally, is a grievous wrong to the body itself, and, particularly, if it touches the definition or expression of religious doctrine.

It is, therefore, a most important question: Has the Church anywhere, or anyhow, at any time, changed or departed from the original and constitutional forms and made changes in the doctrinal expressions of the Church in an irregular or illegal way?

The General Conference, the highest delegated body in the Church, cannot change the Articles of Religion, and it cannot "establish any new standards or rules of doctrine contrary to our present existing and established standards of doctrine," that is to say, as they were in 1808, when the constitutional restriction was adopted.