PRIMITIVE METHODISM

Gisborne Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2092, 29 May 1907, Page 2

PRIMITIVE METHODISM

CENTENARY CELEBRATION

United Press Association—Copyright

LONDON, May 27

Sixty thousand Primitive Methodists assembled on Sunday at the top of Mowcop, a lonely mountain on the borders of Cheshire and Staffordshire, to celebrate the centenary of the sect.

HISTORY OF THE SECT.

Sunday last was a red letter day with Primitive Methodism through-

out the world, marking as it did the inception of their centenary celebrations. The first camp meeting—from which tho connection really sprang — was held on May 31, 1807, though the denomination was not formally organised till several years later. Hugh Bourne and AA r illiam Clowes were the two men who were chiefly instrumental in the founding of this aggressive and successful religious body. Bourne though a working man came of stock that dated their advent into England from the time of AVilliam the Conqueror. Though largely selftaught, he was a man of considerable

attainments in science and languages. Ho possessed initiative and the organising gift to a remarkable degree. Reading of the great success of the camp meetings of America, he

determined to try if similar gatherings might not prove useful in England. Clowes, his coadjutor, was a man of winning personality and magnetic preaching power. Both men alike were actuated by an ardent desire to promote the highest interests of their fellow men. Around these two gathered others of like heroic and earnest spirit. The various meetings held for the promotion of religion awakened much interest-, and converts, won from the worldly and the vicious, whose lives under the Gospel became transformed, rapidly multiplied. The founding of a denomination was furthest from the thought of Bourne and Clowes when they commenced their work. Unfortunately, however, the older denomination to which these men belonged, failing to recognise the sagacity and devotion which were being displayed, placed their ban upon the open-air gatherings. It now appeared a question of obeying God rather than man, and no hesitation was shown. The open-air work went on with increased vigor. The numerous converts demanded that they should be forinod into a society in which they would be able to extend the benefits of *a movement to which they themselves owed so much. So the work went forward, spreading with great rapidity throughout most of the counties of England. Their gatherings in the open-air continued to have a large place in their ministrations, and there can be no doubt that in this they were in accord with the spirit of the founder of Methodism, for it ; s recorded of John Wesley that on on© occasion he said, “Fellow laborers, wherever there is an open door enter in and preach the Gospel; if it be to two or throe, under a hedge' or a tree; preach the Gospel—go out •quickly into the street and lanes of the city, and bring in hither the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind.”

Enthusiasm for evangelism, the powerful preaching of the Gospel, and the self-denying and unceasing labors for the improvement of the spiritual, moral, educational, and social conditions of the masses, were the outstanding features of the work of early Primitive Methodism. The labors of the early preachers were prodigious, and the persecutions some of them endured would not be out of place in a “Book of Miartyrs.” The burst of happy song, however, which marks every fervent evangelical movement, was by no means absent. In the course of time the Church extended to the United States, Canada, the Australasian colonies and several parts of Africa. One of the-spheres of work in Africa has for its centre Aliwal North, a town which figured prominently in the recent South African war. In this mission there are 1100 members, chiefly natives. The denomination was established in New Zealand by the late Rev. R. Ward, who landed in New Plymouth in 1844. Though for many years its increase in this colony was slow, more recently its progress has 'been very rapid indeed. In 1596 the religious census showed an increase of 34 per cent; in 1901 an increase of 44 per cent; and the census returns of last year- give the phenomenal increase of 114 per cent.