THE FACTS IN THE CASE.

Methodism in this country, was at that time in what Dr. Stevens, then editor of the Christian Advocate and Journal, called " its transition state." It still retained much of the vital religion, fervor, simplicity and 'plainness, which at the first, constituted its only apology for an existence as a distinct denomination. Generally, in going into their houses of worship, in time of service, one could tell at a glance that it was a Methodist congregation.

But a change had already. commenced. It was accelerated when the census of the United States disclosed the fact that the M. E. Church was the largest, Protestant denomination in this country, and had the greatest amount of church property. This gratifying intelligence was 'often dwelt upon in the church periodicals, and in addresses at Conferences, and at other large gatherings. The effect was soon visible. The Discipline still read, in answer to the question:

"Is any thing advisable in regard to building churches?"

" Let all our churches be built plain and decent, and with free seats; but not more expensive than is absolutely unavoidable; otherwise the necessity of raising money will make rich men necessary to us. But if so, we must be dependent on them, yea, and governed by them. And then, farewell to Methodist discipline if not doctrine too."

The directions concerning dress were positive.

" Question: Should we insist on the rules concerning dress?

Answer. By all means. This is no time to give encouragement to superfluity of apparel. Therefore, receive none into the Church till they have left off superfluous ornaments." In visiting the classes be very mild, but very strict." " Allow of no exempt case: better one suffer than many."

So reads the Discipline of 1846. But conformity to the world increased rapidly in these respects. Still there were many, both among the ministers and the members, who did not take readily to the new order of things that was being introduced. The Bible stood in their way. They had been taught that it meant what it said; and if it did, and their rules were, as they believed, in accordance with it, they thought their rules should be enforced, and not repealed. They had not learned to explain away the plain precepts of the Word of God. These, too, held to the doctrine of holiness as taught by Wesley that entire sanctification was to be sought by faith, subsequently to pardon. Others opposed making holiness a distinct issue, and were content with preaching it only in a general way, and carried the idea that it was to be obtained gradually. One old preacher said he had been seeking holiness twenty years, and when questioned closely, admitted he was no nearer it, as he could see, than when he began.

At this period slavery was the all-absorbing question in the M. E. Church, as in the nation. The M. E. Church had been divided on the slavery issue, but it was on the question of the right of ministers to hold slaves. The right of members to hold slaves was granted. There was then, on the slavery question as there is now in some Conferences on the 'tobacco question, one standard of morality for the preachers and another for the laymen. Up to the day that slavery was abolished by the sword, there were thousands of slave-holders in good standing in the M: E. Church. The M. E. Discipline tolerated slavery to the last.

But many of the preachers and members at the North were zealously and honestly engaged in the effort to banish, by proper enactments, all slave holding from the M. E. Church. In the Genesee Conference, as elsewhere, there were two classes one decidedly, and at all times, openly and avowedly opposed to slavery; others claimed to be opposed to slavery but objected to the measures proposed to get rid of it. Those in the Genesee Conference who were asking for " the old paths" were abolitionists of the most pronounced type.

The Rev. F. G. Hibbard had, by the pro-slavery men of the General Conference been elected editor of the Northern Christian Advocate over the old editor, Rev. William Hosmer, who was very emphatically the choice of the patronizing Conferences. The anti-slavery men of these Conferences would not tamely submit to this usurpation of the slave power. So they started the Northern Independent, and made Hosmer editor, This paper had a wide circulation and a powerful influence. In intellect and courage, Hosmer was the John Knox of his day. His anti-slaveryism was not of that sentimental kind which opposed slavery at the South and defended tyranny at home. With true nobility of soul he hated injustice and oppression every where, and condemned them just as strongly when found in the North as in the South, in his own church as in the world. He not only opened his columns for those whom the dominant party of the Genesee Conference proscribed, but spoke out editorially in vigorous condemnation of the oppressive acts of the majority of the Conference.

About this time began the revival of Masonry in this country. In the excitement which followed the abduction and murder of Morgan, the lodges had generally disbanded. But Odd Fellowship had paved the way for their reorganization. In the Genesee Conference several of the leading preachers became connected with one or both of these secs et societies. Collisions had taken place between these preachers and some of the older and more conscientious members of the churches which they were appointed to serve. Men of God, in whose minds the remembrance of the Morgan tragedy was fresh, felt that they could not, in conscience,. support preachers who took upon them oaths which required them to commit similar crimes should occasion demand it. Such men were often put out of the church. But this action brought about dissatisfaction and division.

In this view of the case we are confirmed by the Rev. C. D. Burlingham, who, in a pamphlet which he wrote and published in 1860 entitled " An Outline History of the Genesee Conference Difficulties," said:

Some sixteen or eighteen years since a disturbing, element was introduced into the Genesee Conference.

Our church, as well as the community in general, had for a number of years been much agitated by the Masonic question, and the anti-Masonic excitement consequent upon the abduction and murder of William Morgan, of Batavia, in 1826. As the tumultuous waves were gradually subsiding into a calm, this new element of discord began to introduce itself in, our church, professedly as a mutual insurance company against temporal want, and a newly discovered and remarkably successful Gospel appliance for bringing the world, reformed and saved, into the church. But our people very naturally looked upon it with suspicion, dreading its power as a secret agency acting through affiliated societies, and doubting its utility as a financial scheme, they feared that it would drag the church debased and corrupted—into the world.

Under the influence of its friends in the Conference—several active and aspiring young men— Odd fellowship became a fixture in the Conference; not however as a formal organization among the Fellow " preachers, probably not, but virtually such; as the " Fellows" were members of the " Order" they were a unit in policy, and prepared to act as an associated body in Conference and elsewhere."

The preachers who belonged to these secret societies, and the time-serving and the timid. naturally came together.

There were many in the Conference who resisted strongly the encroachments which the world was thus making upon the church, and sought to check the growing tendency to worldly conformity. They had joined the Methodist Church because they honestly believed its doctrines; and, considering their ordination vows as binding upon them, they faithfully endeavored to bring themselves and their members, both in experience and life, to the Discipline which they had promised to enforce. These men, calm, trustful, and ignorant of the tactics of the lodge, received their appointment, as from the Lord, not knowing that there. was a power at work, secretly, to fill the chief places of the Conference with those who, at least were not opposed to the workings of the lodge.

There is nothing that brings heart to heart like a similarity of religious experiences, especially when suffering persecution for. Christ's sake.

Thus there was an issue in the Conference which gradually became more and more clearly defined, on Scriptural holiness, slavery, and secret societies.

Matters were brought to a crisis, and the two parties took shape and form at the Buffalo Conference held in 1848. This was the session at which I joined the Conference on probation. At one of its sittings, Rev. Eleazer Thomas gave to each preacher in his seat, a copy of a pamphlet written by Rev. C. D. Burlingham showing the infidel character of Masonry and Odd. Fellowship.

With prophetic foresight the author pointed out the evils that would result from preachers uniting with these societies.

"It is believed that the direct tendency of Odd Fellowism is the formation of parties in the Conference, in the Church, and in. Civil Society; parties injurious to the cause of God and dangerous to the .State. As all the operations and movements of the order are arranged in secret conclave, all persons, except the initiated, are supposed to be ignorant of its nightly transactions. It must be well known, that a small party, acting in perfect, concert and in secret, bound together by strong partisan feeling, and under the influence of an obligation imposed upon its members, deemed by them as sacred, perhaps as an oath, is able to control, in almost any given case, a multitude of unsuspecting men, who are not under the influence of such affinities. And may we not justly fear, when a score or two of the members of our Conference, embracing the various intellectual grades in the Ministry, shall combine under such influences as above named, that a favoritism (if nothing more) will be practiced, on account of attachment to the Order, which will create envyings and jealousies in the Ministry, and very much injure all the interests in the church?"

The wildest excitement followed the distribution of this pamphlet. The adherents of the lodge insisted that Messrs. Burlingham and Thomas had charged them with being infidels. Thomas Carlton said, with great emphasis, that if he was " compelled to leave either, he would leave the Church before he would the lodge." After a while matters quieted down and compromise measures were adopted. They were to the effect, that neither party should do anything calculated to keep up the agitation. This was construed by the secret society men to mean that they might still continue in the lodge, and get all the others to join that they could; and the others must say nothing against it, as that would tend to keep up the agitation. Their opposers construed it to mean that those who were in the lodge must get out as soon and as quickly as they could, and no others must join.

The breach thus begun was never healed. The secret society men were busy recruiting their forces, both in the ministry and in the membership. They used every inducement to persuade the young preachers to join, giving them to understand that their position in the Conference would depend upon the party with which they affiliated. As fast as they could, they took the Church into the lodge, and the lodge into the Church. In a few years the power of the lodge was exercised to control the affairs of the Church.

Rev. J. B. Alverson, one of the old, influential preachers, ' endeavored to dissuade Thomas Carlton from running for Book Agent, on the ground that he could not be elected; Carlton replied: " I can command sufficient secret society influence in the General Conference to secure my election."

The event showed that he had not misjudged. He was elected—reelected, and became a wealthy man.

Those opposed to this union of the Church and the world, went out to promote, as best they could, the life and power of religion. They endeavored to enforce the Discipline, and they preached plainly and clearly the doctrine of holiness.

Prominent among these were Asa Abell, Eleazer Thomas, and William C. Kendall. Asa Abell made a distinct profession of the blessing of entire sanctification at the Byron Camp-Meeting, in 1851. He preached it on his district, and secured at different times, the services of Fay H. Purdy, then in his early prime, a lawyer, who had received a mighty baptism of the Spirit, and whose efforts for the awakening of formal churches met with remarkable success. Deep and powerful revivals broke out in Parma, Kendall, and other places, and the district generally' was in a prosperous, spiritual condition.

Rev. Eleazer Thomas kept the Cattaraugus district, to which he was appointed, in a flame of revival. He said that, like Asbury, he felt divinely commissioned to preach holiness in every sermon. At a camp-meeting which he held in Collins, Erie Co., N. Y., at which Dr. and Mrs. Palmer were present, we received the blessing of holiness: and from that time our troubles in the Conference commenced. Brother Thomas introduced at each of his Quarterly Conferences and secured the passage of resolutions against choir singing and instrumental music in worship. His camp-meetings were seasons of great power. The lines were as closely drawn, and the truth as plainly preached as now among the Free Methodists.

Rev. William C. Kendall had extensive and powerful revivals on his charges; and, under his labors, many came out in the enjoyment and the profession of the blessing of holiness. Other preachers especially on the districts named, entered heartily into the work of soul-saving, and there was a steady increase, both in the number of members and their spirituality, in many of the charges.

Meanwhile, the secret society men and their adherents were busy, seeking to build up the church in external splendor. They read fine sermons sometimes without being particular as to the source where they were obtained.

" Was not that an eloquent sermon which our preacher delivered yesterday?" said one of the stewards to John A, Latta, one Monday morning.

Perhaps you enjoyed it so much you would like to hear it again," replied Mr. Latta. He then took down a book and read him the identical sermon, word for word.

Thus. matters went on without any open collision for several years. But it was clearly apparent that the salvation party was making headway the faster. They had also this advantage: while, generally, appointments which men of the secret society party had filled for several years welcomed a change, those appointments which the salvation preachers had filled, would, with the utmost reluctance, receive one of the other party. Thus the secret society men felt that important appointments in the Conference were being gradually closed against them. Something must be done or they would be left in a hopeless, powerless minority.

Under a specious pretext, Rev. Eleazer Thomas, the acknowledged leader of the salvation party, was sent to California, and, as is well known, was afterwards killed by the Modocs. The venerable Dr. Samuel Luckey was appointed to the Genesee district. Though great efforts had been made to stigmatize the work as fanatical, this veteran preacher recognized it at once as the work of God; and with all his great ability helped it on. The Bergen Camp Meetings had become famous for their remarkable manifestations of saving power. The religious interest did not decline under his administration. He encouraged what was called the fanaticism of the district, and was not reappointed Presiding Elder. He was succeeded by the Rev. Loren Stiles. Mr. Stiles was a young man, a graduate of the Methodist Theological Seminary at Concord, N. H. He had already become celebrated in Western New York as a pulpit orator. Amiable in his disposition, pleasing in his manners, and a thorough gentleman in all his bearing, it was taken for granted that he would instinctively recoil from what was branded as the " coarse fanaticism" prevalent in the district. It was supposed that he would win the hearts of the people, and gradually turn them, without friction, back to the respectable quiet of spiritual death. But never were men more grievously disappointed. His prejudices were based solely upon the reports• which he had heard and read. Thoroughly sincere, he recognized as soon as he came on the district the marks of the work of God. He saw that many had a spiritual power which he, as yet had never received. He sought it at once; and he who was sent to put down the work of holiness, helped it on with all the influence he possessed. His Quarterly Meetings were thronged, and many of the people consecrated themselves Wholly' to God.

On the Niagara district a similar disappointment was experienced. The Rev. Isaac C. Kingsley, the Presiding Elder, was a graduate of an Ohio college. He had been brought up a Presbyterian, and still retained many of his Presbyterian ways. He sometimes read his sermons, and was rather stiff in his manners, and precise in his way of doing things.. He was intellectually a strong man, examined things for himself, and when he came to a conclusion had the honesty and the courage to avow it, though he might differ from others. After a careful survey of the work he decided that what was branded as " fanaticism," was only the vital godliness which he had expected to find when he joined the Methodist church. So, instead of opposing it he gave it his cordial support.

The Rev. Charles D. Burlingham was pushing on the work of God on the Olean District with a hearty zeal and abundant success. The interest on the subject of holiness was kept up, and the Quarterly meetings were lively and interesting.

The secret society men, stirred up by this state of things, began to publish unfavorable criticisms upon those prominent in the holiness movement, and to throw out insinuations against them. Their accredited organ was the Buffalo Advocate.

One of the first direct attacks made by the Buffalo Advocate was in an. editorial reflecting upon Ex-Bishop Hamline. It was as follows:

" An article is going the rounds of the papers which states that Bishop Hamline has donated $25,000 to a Western College. We don't believe a word of it. He who was once Bishop, is, if we are correctly informed, as snug and keen in the management of his finances as any other property-famed man. He may have given something nevertheless." The Advocate, April 12th, 1855.

After several efforts from the friends of the Bishop to have the above corrected, the editor finally admitted he stood corrected, that the Bishop had given the above sum, and added the sneer:

" Noble man ! he shall have all our praise, if it will do him any good."

Other articles reflecting still more severely upon the Bishop were published from time to time in The Advocate. Why all this?

Bishop Hamline was eminent for the advocacy of the doctrine of holiness.

The first public declaration that there was a " Nazarite Association " was made in an editorial in the. Buffalo Advocate, of July 19th, 1855, in the following language:

" We have learned from a reliable source, and have had sufficient evidence placed in our hands to prove that there exists, among the ministers of a certain Protestant sect of Western New York, a secret, religious organization, where one would be least suspected. ' The purpose of this Jesuitical order we will not at this time attempt to explain; but the consequences of it, unless its progress shall be arrested, and its existence blotted out, it takes no prophet's eye to foresee, incurable, ministerial factions and ruined churches must otherwise be the inevitable result. This order has been designated by various appellations; but the authorized cognomen is, ' THE NAZARITE BAND.' It is to be hoped that those who have assumed this solemn and suggestive title have weighed well what they are doing, and what the solemn imposition of the name upon themselves implies. To us it appears like impious mockery, and if "'any good can come out of THIS Nazareth," then can a clean thing thing come forth from an unclean. We know well the men who are the originators of this singular movement, and have been watching their down-sittings and up-risings for a long time. Our editorial, secret drawer contains the secret of many curious facts relating to the ministerial career of some of these eminent and most notable characters.

We learn that the society is constituted by three degrees or " divisions." Into the third or highest, are admitted only the leading spirits of the order, or those whom it is supposed will heartily favor the purpose of the order. The first degree, it would appear, is so indefinitely constituted, that one may get into it, and not be himself aware of the fact. It is only required of the candidate that he express his approbation of certain men and measures, and forsooth he straightway becomes a Nazarite, and that before he knows it. He is, after this, carefully approached, and his opinions drawn out with respect to certain other measures, and if he can be trusted," is advanced! There are many considerations which give this new organization a novel, not to say ludicrous aspect. One is, that its originators have heretofore made themselves somewhat notorious, by their blazing hostility to secret societies. They have published and spoken great and hard things. They have for years been bent on giving both lay and clerical Odd Fellows and Masons particular Jesse." Indeed, it is a main purpose of this Nazarite Band to oppose the influence which, it is alleged, secular, secret societies are seeking to exert in religious affairs. Another beautiful feature of this new order is the peculiarly lovely, personal and religious characteristics of those by whom it was conceived and brought forth. Their character is a strange compound of sanctity and slander, of pompous humility and humble pride, of peccability and perfection. Their preaching of the Gospel of peace is always attended or followed by jealousies, heart-burnings, and fanatical dissensions. Peevish and fretful tyrants at home, they have a very ardent charity for the dear sisters " abroad, soiree of whom " they lead about." Without any remarkable " sanctity of manners undefiled," their professions reach to heaven, and clothe them with the most spotless garment of assumed purity. As a specimen of this class, we would refer the reader to a certain individual living in Orleans County, called, according to the Nazarite nomenclature, BANI, who is, we are informed, the high priest of this new profession."

Such was the accusation. But the " sufficient evidence " was never given. It appears from the next week's issue of The Advocate, that a prompt denial was made, by the only person competent to. make either a denial, or a confirmation of the charge. He had, of his own accord, written the letters to which we have referred, and he manfully came forward and took the responsibility for what he alone had written.

How was his denial treated? Another extract from the same paper will show.

" We learn that ' Bani' denies that the NAZARITES are an organized band, as we asserted them to be in our last week's issue. We would remind this very conscientious and notable individual of the importance of keeping truth on his side, as far as circumstances will permit; and not by gratuitous and voluntary denials of facts, place himself in a very embarrassing position, and one in which honest men seldom find themselves. Bani, it is not right, it is decidedly wrong to make statements which you know to be false, and you must not do so any more."

These extracts are favorable specimens of the articles which appeared in that paper from time to time. Compare them in tone and spirit with the one which we wrote entitled " New School Methodism," and then remember that the editor who wrote the above extracts was afterwards admitted to the Conference and made Presiding Elder, while we were visited, for writing that article, with the heaviest anathemas of the church I

This then is all there ever was to the " Nazarite Union."

Rev. Joseph McCreery wrote several letters to different preachers, proposing than they work in harmony in their efforts to persuade the people to return to the old paths of Methodism. There, in all probability, the matter would have rested; but some of these letters were shown to the editor of the Buffalo Advocate, who made the most of them, and stirred up some excitement. Anticipating that the subject would be brought up at Conference, the Rev. J. McCreery prepared a statement of the whole affair, including copies of the letters he had written. This he read to the Conference at Olean in 1855. This " Document" or " Roll," as it was called, was greatly misrepresented. To correct these misrepresentations it was published by Rev. Wm. C. Kendall. This is all there was to this affair as far as the preachers belonging to the Conference were concerned. After the FREE METHODIST CHURCH was organized, some who opposed its organization, held meetings by themselves, and called themselves " Nazarites." Some of these still retained their membership in the M. E. Church, and some did not; but all arrayed themselves against the FREE METHODIST CHURCH.

They have always been its unrelenting opponents. They insist that a great mistake was made in leaving the M. E. Church, or in not, when thrust out, uniting with it again, and keeping up the agitation within its pale.