When the thirty-five-year-old Anglican priest John Wesley, six months or so after having felt his heart “strangely warmed”, “began more narrowly to inquire into . . . the doctrine of the Church of England”, he turned to the Edwardian Book of homilies, and, before the year was out, had published a twelve-page condensation of three of them entitled The doctrine of salvation, faith, and good works (1738). This “went through [twenty] editions in his lifetime and was a staple . . . [of] Methodist instruction” (Outler, John Wesley (1964), 121, as updated by Maddox). The First book of homilies appeared in 1537. Cranmer contributed a number of them, indeed all three of those later so treasured by Wesley. But to others, including even (in the event) a staunch Romanist or two, he assigned the rest. A Second was published under Queen Elizabeth I in 1571, and both were enshrined in the Thirty-Nine Articles of 1571 (1563). The Restoration-era copy owned by Seattle Pacific antedates by seven years the Bridwell copy that some have supposed was owned by Wesley. Published in 1676, it hails from a period by which the two Books of homilies, though still formative of the clergy, had long since begun to lose their dogmatic or at least pragmatic hold on the Church at large. (Indeed, “It was [later none other than] John Wesley who gave the homilies, themselves almost extinct, forgotten, and misunderstood, a new lease on life” (Bond, Certain sermons, 15).) Though we don’t know much about its subsequent history, the re-binding effected by “Hunter, Rose & Co. Toronto” between 1871 and 1895 seems an indication that it may have been owned by the Rev. Edmund John Senkler (1802-1872), an Anglican priest and natural philosopher who studied at Caius College, Cambridge, emigrated to Quebec in 1843, and died near Toronto in 1872. Remnants of the Senkler library can be found elsewhere as well, but most especially in the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library at the University of Toronto.
Samuel Wesley (1690/1691-1739) was the eldest child of Samuel (1662-1735), the father of brothers John and Charles; the uncle of composer and organist Samuel (1766-1837), son of Charles; and therefore the great-uncle of composer and organist Samuel Sebastian (1810-1876). He took orders, but—firm in a career-threatening loyalty to his patron, the exiled Jacobite Bishop of Rochester Francis Atterbury, and having (like John himself somewhat later) refused to assume the cure of Epworth itself in 1733—never served a parish, becoming headmaster of Tiverton grammar school in Devon instead. Supportive of the Oglethorpe expedition to Georgia (but not Charles’ determination to go), “He clashed repeatedly with John’s conduct and beliefs after the latter’s conversion,” and with his mother for supporting him. “[O]nly a very minor poet” (Oxford dictionary of national biography), he wrote “several hymns of great beauty; five of them . . . included in . . . the Wesleyan hymn-book” of 1875 (Dictionary of national biography). One of them, at least, “The Lord of Sabbath let us praise” (p. 318), was still being sung in the third quarter of the 20th century. Another, “The morning flow’rs display their sweets” (p. 41), survived the editorial work of W. T. Hogue (cf. item no. 20 on this list, in which it is hymn no. 812) to become hymn no. 598 in the Free Methodist hymnal of 1910. This edition of the Poems, a gift of Dr. Stanley D. Walters, was published posthumously, but the first appeared in 1736, three years before Samuel died.
Unlike so many of his contemporaries (just for example Newton), Wesley did not have to undergo a profound conversion when it came to slavery. “Ever since I heard of it first,” said Wesley, looking back in 1787, “I felt a perfect detestation of the horrid slave trade” (Letter to Granville Sharp dated 11 October 1787). Though “Oglethorpe . . . and the other [Georgian] Trustees were not opposed to the enslavement of Africans as a matter of principle” (New Georgia encyclopedia), “Wesley was strongly in favor of . . . [the] original [Georgian] ban” of 1735, showed great concern for the slaves he met in South Carolina in 1736, and gave vent to a “‘perfect detestation’ of the slave trade” in the Explanatory notes upon the New Testament he published in 1755 (Baker, MH 22 (1984): 75-76). In this he seems to have been in advance of the antislavery “sentiment” through which the majority of evangelicals were moving between the First Great Awakening and the galvanizing impact of the American Revolution (Yoon, CH 81 (2012), passim). Over time, however, emancipation (as distinguished from charity, common decency, and evangelization) became increasingly the emphasis. The spark, though, was the encounter with the writings of the American Quaker abolitionist Anthony Benezet (1713-1784), who was channeling also the British abolitionist Granville Sharp (1735-1813). Thus, “when Wesley set to work upon his own Thoughts upon Slavery in 1773, it was Benezet’s [Some historical account of] Guinea [(1772)] which formed the basis of . . . thirty [to fifty] per cent of his own publication, though a Guinea abridged, paraphrased, re-ordered, and augmented from [at least] four other sources, as well as from Wesley’s own experience and meditation” (Baker, 77-79). Thoughts upon slavery (London: Robert Hawes, 1774) was “‘one of the most effective pieces of anti-slavery literature [ever] produced’” (Wellman Warner; Phipps, QR 1 (1981), 30). It was often reprinted, very widely distributed, and had an enduring impact, not least upon Wesley himself, who had thus committed himself in a public way irrevocably, and whose last letter, written a few days before he died, was a letter to Wilberforce, a letter the latter abstracted with the words “John Wesley, his last words. Slave trade” (Baker, 86). Not everyone agreed, of course. Phipps (26) has claimed that its arguments were directed at Whitefield, and pressures in the United States were such that the church discipline it had helped to inspire was soon set aside. Nonetheless, its legacy continued in the northern branch of the main body and in breakaway “abolitionist” traditions like the Wesleyan Methodist Connection and Free Methodism. The Dublin copy in the Emmanuel Room, purchased by University Librarian Michael Paulus in 2012, is a lovely specimen of “THE FOURTH EDITION,” the one listed seventh in the second (1991) edition of Baker’s Union catalogue (#298). It was once owned by a W[illia]m Hawkins.
John Wesley’s Arminian magazine (1778 ff.) needs no introduction. SPU has this volume only, a gift of Dr. Stanley D. Walters. It lies open to “A prayer for holiness.” “A prayer for holiness” is no. XXVI in the manuscript “Hymns for love,” which constitutes part two of the Rylands Charles Wesley notebook numbered MA 1977/578. The web-based Maddox & Maddox Duke transcription of MA 1977/578 makes it easy to note the modifications made at point of publication in stanzas 5 and 6 especially.
Setting aside all of the ink that has been spilled on the relation of “the infilling of the Spirit associated with the day of Pentecost” (Collins, WTJ 44 (2009), 29; cf. Dayton, WTJ 9 (1974), Faupel in the Wood Festschrift (2011), Maddox, WTJ 34 (1999), Smith, WTJ 15 (1980), Wood, and much else) to the doctrine of Christian perfection in Wesley and Fletcher (and therefore Wesleyan Methodism, the Holiness Movement, and Pentecostalism), I simply open this copy of the first edition of Wesley’s A short account of the life and death of the Rev. John Fletcher to one of the many points at which he renders testimony to the holiness of his “designated successor”.
This copy was a gift of Messiah College.
The letters of John Newton (1725-1807) owned by Seattle Pacific were purchased by Director of Learning Resources Margaret Bursell on a tip from Dr. Donald Demaray (whose 1952 Edinburgh dissertation was later published as The innovation of John Newton), but lay uncataloged and unsung until re-discovered on a top shelf in the Emmanuel Room in early June of 2012. This one, like most of the others, is addressed to Congregational minister and Africa missions activist John Campbell (1766-1840), who published it as “LETTER XI” in his Letters and conversational remarks (1808). Though Newton was not a Methodist, I place it beside the 1775 Dublin edition of Wesley’s Thoughts (above) because it contains this paragraph:
But I am better off in point of ordinances, & Christian conference than you were when on the Banks of the Tweed. The preaching of the Gospel is indeed a great privilege, which cannot be safely neglected when in our power, and will not so long as we possess our spiritual senses. But if Sickness, or clear Providential calls of absence, detain us from it, we are not so absolutely dependant upon it, but that we may do well without it. Perhaps none of Davids Psalms, breathe a more sublime & spiritual strain of Devotion than those which he wrote in the Wilderness. Such were the 42. 63 & perhaps the 84. The occasion of his writing the 51st happened at Jerusalem, when he was at the fountain head of public means. And I think my heart was never more warm & fixed than during my 2 last voyages to Africa, tho I was in engaged in a Traffic, which I now see was unlawful & abominable.
LETTERS IX, XXIV, XLVII, and XLIX SPU possesses in autograph as well, along with holographs of a few others. Display courtesy of Adrienne Meier of the SPU Archives.
A 48-page response to the pamphlet Strictures on Christian perfection (1816), by William Moore of Bethesda Chapel, Truro, itself a response to the Sermon on Christian perfection published by Richard Treffry Sr. (1771-1842) earlier in that same year. In the Strictures, Mr. Moore—whose father had been an advocate of the doctrine—had “renounce[d] all hope of possessing such a maturity of grace as destroys every opposing principle”, so the Remarks is of course a defense. The only other copy of the pamphlet in WorldCat is owned by the University of Manchester. Custom-bound with a number of others ranging in date-of-publication from 1831 to 1850 (but heavily weighted towards 1849/1850), this volume was a gift of Dr. Stanley D. Walters.
“In 1778, Mr. Wesley commenced the publication of The Arminian Magazine in London [(above)], for the purpose of more clearly expounding the doctrines and usages of Wesleyan Methodism, and to serve as a bond of union among his widely-scattered societies. . . . Copying his example, the General Conference of 1796 directed the publication of The Methodist Magazine in Philadelphia, to be patterned chiefly after the style of Mr. Wesley’s magazine. It appeared in 1797 and 1798, but Mr. Dickins having fallen a victim to the yellow fever, and the publication having been somewhat embarrassed financially, it was discontinued. In 1816 the General Conference authorized the publication of a magazine, to be entitled The Methodist Missionary Magazine. This was commenced in 1818, but for some unknown reason the word missionary was omitted from its title. It was . . . the only organ published by the church until the establishment of The Christian Advocate, in 1826. It was published monthly until 1828” (Cyclopædia of Methodism), after which point (which is to say in 1830) it transitioned to a quarterly and was given the title The Methodist magazine and quarterly review. According to Norwood, this “marked the emergence of a true theological review”, though “Not until the era of George Peck [(1840-1848)] . . . did the magazine,” now called The Methodist quarterly review, “assume mature status as a serious journal” (Encyclopedia of world Methodism). The “Sermon on Christian perfection” by R[ichard] Treffry Sr. (1771-1842; Jr. didn’t enter the ministry until 1824) would be an example of the British (i.e. Arminian->Methodist magazine) materials on which the American publication tended to subsist in its early years.
The Garrett Digest is held by a total of nine libraries in WorldCat, among them (if A digest of the Methodist conferences—also Halifax: T. Walker, 1827—be counted) Drew, Duke, Emory, and Manchester. It was compiled by Philip Garrett (1769-1843), from 1799 an itinerant in England and Scotland (Methodist Archives Biographical Index) and the author of at least two pamphlets. Gift of Robert C. Corson.
Neither Phoebe Palmer (1807-1874) nor her “shorter” Way of holiness (first published in 1843) needs any introduction. This copy of the “4th Edition” stands open to the first reference in that book to the importance of “laying all upon the altar” of sacrifice (p. 34).
This tiny hymnal (which measures 3 7/16" x 2 3/8" x 1") has been opened to one of the Samuel Wesley hymns mentioned under Poems on several occasions (1743), above, namely no. 1097, “The morning flowers display their sweets”. It was given to Seattle Pacific University by the Rev. Glen V. Wiberg (of New Brighton, MN) in 2011. The front cover is embossed “Mary E. Sanders”.
The first of a series of “Laymen’s Conventions” convoked in response to the expulsion of B. T. Roberts and others from the Genesee Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church had, on 1-2 December 1858, discussed “the propriety of establishing in the city of Buffalo a periodical devoted to the advocacy of ‘Earnest Christianity.’” Just over two years later, B. T. Roberts himself, though possibly not actually present in Albion, brought out the first—i.e. 1 January 1860—issue of a 32-page monthly entitled the The earnest Christian, directing it at “those . . . in earnest to gain Heaven, and anxious to know the conditions upon which eternal happiness can be secured” (Mt 7:14). Animating the new periodical was thus an “Experimental Religion” committed to “conversion”, “Christian Holiness”, and “The claims of the neglected poor”. Among “the neglected poor” with which, it was assumed, a converted and sanctified Christian—indeed “slaveholder”—would concern himself were, of course, those subject to the intolerable evils of slavery, and looking back in December of 1880, Roberts could say with pride that “The leading [periodical] advocate of holiness, when The Earnest Christian was started [(Phoebe Palmer’s Guide to holiness)], had nothing to say against slaveholding as inconsistent with holiness.” In January of 1862 The earnest Christian merged with The golden rule, and by mid-1868 had attained to a circulation of about 7,000. Though many of its Free Methodist subscribers followed Roberts to the official denominational organ when he was appointed editor of The Free Methodist, too, in October of 1886, The earnest Christian lasted through December of 1909 (Snyder, Populist saints, 464, 539-571).
A month in which we have been reminded that the papacy, at least (if not, as in Methodism, the episcopacy), is an office, not an order, seems a good month to remember “Elder” Leonidas L. Hamline, important for many reasons other than his precedent-setting resignation, not least his articulation of the principle that General Conference had the constitutional authority to suspend a bishop for slaveholding, the contribution he made to the foundation of Hamline University, and the support he gave to the Holiness revival led by Phoebe Worrall Palmer (1807-1874). This copy of the 1866 Life by Phoebe’s husband Walter (1804-1883) was given to the father of German-American Methodism, William Nast (1807-1899), by Leonidas P. Hamline, a son of the former bishop. It was given to Seattle Pacific by Dr. William Kostlevy.
Levington, who was born to poor Scotch Presbyterians near Stewartstown, Ireland, in 1813, converted to Methodism in early youth, and emigrated to Michigan in 1849. Largely self-educated, he served pulpits in the Michigan and then later Detroit Conferences of the Methodist Episcopal Church, but his preoccupations (“the evils of intemperance,” the influence of the secret societies (e.g. Masonry), “and the false doctrines of Adventism and baptism”) seemed to have earned him mostly “Starvation circuits” (Minutes of the fifty-first annual session of the Michigan Conference of the Wesleyan Methodist Connection (1893), 32-35). In 1872 he was placed on trial and “compelled to retire” “‘with his appropriate claim on the funds of the Conference.’” Trials in 1873 and 1874 went against him, too. Indeed, in 1873 he was adjudged “‘not fully responsible for his course.’” The forced retirement of 1873 he appealed in 1879, and was once again unsuccessful. “No other Methodist organization in Michigan ever had quite so irksome and long enduring a case as that of John Levington was to the Detroit Annual Conference” (Macmillan, Methodist Church in Michigan, vol. 1, 266-267, 292-293). At some point, though, he finally left the MEC for the more sympathetic Michigan Conference of the Wesleyan Methodist Connection, and—claiming to have survived “repeated attempts on the part of Masonry to take his life” (Minutes, 32-35)—died in the service of that body on 15 August 1893, from injuries suffered in “a carriage accident” (McLeister & Nicholson, Conscience and commitment, 4th ed. (1976), 107). He wrote at least eight books, including four on “the masonic conspiracy”, but this one catches the eye for its interest in “the secret of Christian power.” This copy, one of approximately 18 in WorldCat, was a gift from Dr. William Kostlevy.
Based on “lectures developed . . . six to eight years earlier”, and published after some hesitation by Phoebe and Walter Palmer, The baptism of the Holy Ghost marks a watershed in the shift towards the “Pentecostal” understanding of the doctrine of Christian perfection that paved the way for the emergence of what we today would think of as Pentecostalism proper. Originally a Presbyterian and then later a Congregationalist, but from 1836, in any case, a convinced perfectionist of the Oberlin variety, Asa Mahan (1799-1889) “moved closer to Wesleyan theology as he grew older”. From 1859 the President of the Wesleyan->Methodist institution Adrian College, he joined the Wesleyan Methodist Connection of America in 1871, before moving to England in 1872. “In his commitment to abolitionism, women’s rights, temperance, the peace . . . and other reform movements, [he] illustrates the close conjunction of revivalism and social reform during this period” (Dayton, WJT 9 (1974): 61 and passim). Only the latest (and not the last) in a long line of influential books, The baptism of the Holy Spirit was published also in New York. It has been opened to the (?) page mentioned by Jennie Smith in Valley of Baca, below.
Francis W. Conable (1814-1890) was licensed to preach in 1838, “joined the Genesee Annual Conference on trial” in 1839, “in due time was received into connection and ordained deacon and elder” (Official journal and minutes of the eighty-first session of the Genesee Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church ([1890]), 150-151), and crossed paths with B. T. Roberts (who was about nine years younger). Indeed, in 1854 he was appointed to Clarkson, only two miles from Brockport, which is where Roberts had been posted in the Autumn of 1853, and therefore “would have known [him] personally” (Snyder, Populist saints, 287n129). The History he published in 1876, and expanded in 1885, tells the story of the Conference from which Roberts and others were ejected in 1858, an ejection that led eventually to the foundation of the Free Methodist Church in 1860. The pages he devotes to “‘Nazaritism’” begin on p. 628, but here on p. 646 he reproduces the “bill of charges” leveled against Roberts by the Rev. David Nichols on 11 October 11, 1858. For an early Free Methodist critique of this book, see Wilson T. Hogue, History of the Free Methodist Church of North America, vol. 2 (Chicago: The Free Methodist Publishing House, 1915), pp. 369 ff. (Appendix A: Review of the Rev. F. W. Conable's History of the Genesee Conference of the Methodist Church (from "Why Another Sect?" [(1879), pp. 306 ff.]).
This volume was a gift from Dr. William C. Kostlevy, who sums up her life as follows: “The daughter of an Ohio dry goods merchant, [Jennie] Smith suffered chronic health problems and was unable to walk from 1862 to 1878. Shortly after reading Asa Mahon’s Baptism of the Holy Spirit, she experienced entire sanctification in 1871. Although still unable to walk, she began an itinerant evangelistic ministry in the early 1870s. In 1874, she was a founding member of the Ohio Women’s Crusade, which eventually became the WCTU. . . . In 1878, following the prayers of Charles Cullis and her many friends and with the aid of prominent homeopathic physician John C. Morgan, she regained the use of her legs. Becoming a full-time WCTU evangelist, Smith served as national superintendent of the Railroad Department of the WCTU (1880s-1924). Although remembered for her ministry to newsboys, firefighters, and police, Smith was rightly remembered as the ‘railroad evangelist’” (Kostlevy, in his Historical dictionary of the Holiness Movement).
The bound copy stands open to the Education Committee report that dominates the “Minutes of the Seventh Annual Session” of the Oregon and Washington Conference, “held at Seattle, Washington, June 18-20, 1891.” On the previous page appears the sentence, “Steps were taken for the establishing of a school in the conference, and sufficient subscribed to make it probable that the work of building will begin very soon.” At the "Sixth Annual Session" in 1890, held in Weston, Oregon, this same Committee had “Resolved, That this conference appoint a committee to confer with the committee in the California conference and invest them with the power to locate such [a] school [in our midst] and to proceed as far as practicable to establish the same.” At the "Fifth Annual Session" in 1889, held in Sunnyside, Oregon, it had said simply, “In view of the increasing demand . . . for such schools, we hope and pray that the time is not far distant when one or more shall be established on this coast.” 1888 (Seattle) is the first year in which the existence of an Education Committee is noted. Before that, the few bodies available—a grand total of 150 Conference-wide in 1888—were assigned to committees like the Committee “To Raise Funds to Publish the Minutes”. A year before the "First Annual Session of the Oregon & Washington Ter'y Conference" was "held at Beaverton, Oregon" on June 10-13, 1885, the Education Committee of the California Conference, at that Conference's Second Annual Session, had noted that
We are thankful to God that he is stirring up our people in the east to establish salvation schools, such as the seminaries now in successful operation at North Chili, New York; Spring Arbor, Michigan; Evansville, Wisconsin; and Orleans, Nebraska; and while we may be, at present, too weak financially to render them any material aid, and too far distant to send our children to them, we hereby express our hearty sympathy with them, and shall continue to pray for their abundant prosperity.
It is also our earnest desire that such a school may soon be established within the bounds of this conference. For this worthy object we pledge ourselves, as a conference, to labor and pray.
This copy of the Hymn book of the Free Methodist Church appears to be the working copy Bishop W. T. Hogue (1852-1920) marked up in preparation for the Free Methodist hymnal commissioned by the 1907 General Conference and published in 1910. Bishop Hogue was, after B. T. Roberts, “the outstanding character of Free Methodism” (Encyclopedia of world Methodism) and the founder and first president of Greenville College. It was “in the tower of Hogue Hall” at Greenville that this editorial copy was found, as Dr. Stanley D. Walters told the story in the Free Methodist Historical Society newsletter last year (12, no. 2 (Winter 2012): 4):
When I was teaching [church history] at Greenville, some of the students knew there were old papers in the tower of Hogue Hall, and soon showed up with them in class.
One of the items was a copy of the 1883 FM hymnbook. It had W. T. Hogue’s name in it. There were notes throughout the hymnal. Some of them named tunes for this or that hymn. Beside some hymns I found the word, ‘Out.’ Eventually I concluded that it was Hogue’s own copy in which he had written notes to guide the revision.
[Since the Greenville College library did not want the volume,] I kept it [as] part of my collection of Free Methodistica and holiness literature. I [eventually] gave that collection to Seattle Pacific University, along with my father’s collection of Methodistica. There is a fascinating study waiting to be made on the basis of that copy!
Though there are hymns in the Hymnal of 1910 that have been assigned the tunes indicated in this copy of the Hymn book of 1883 (e.g. nos. 14 and 5 respectively, both of them assigned John Hatton's DUKE STREET; or nos. 496 and 475, both of them assigned Aaron Chapin's GOLDEN HILL), this is not true in every case. For example, the Charles Wesley hymn “Come, O my god, the promise seal” gets an 8.6.8.6. CHELMSFORD (there are many CHELMSFORDs, including at least seven 8.6.8.6.s) in the former (where it is no. 473), but Joseph P. Holbrook's REMSEN (also an 8.6.8.6) in the latter (where it is no. 349), though the Wesley hymn “God of eternal truth and grace” (no. 474 on that same page in the Hymn book of 1883) is indeed missing from the Hymnal of 1910. No. 22 in the former is annotated "add 4th sta[nza] | Gladly the toys of earth" (this would have been the 3rd stanza on p. 188 in the original edition published in 1739, so the fact that a "+" sign has been penciled in across from the second rather than the third stanza in the left margin makes some sense), though the text (still no. 22) remained unchanged in the Free Methodist hymnal of 1910. And "Le[s]t We Forget" (on p. 504) was not "Insert[ed]" in 1910. (No. 580, by contrast, is clearly an example of a change suggested in pencil that was actually made in 1910: "Though waves and storms go o'er my head" does indeed "Follow 394" ("Now have I found the ground wherein") as no. 270 (following no. 269) in the Hymnal of 1910.)
My own tentative proposal is therefore that Walters is right about corrections and the negative
(“Out” (next to no. 384—no. 452 in the Hymn book of 1910—Hogue wrote both “Out” and “d[elete]”, but finally “In”); "That our Redeemer’s given" "By our Redeemer given", "For him who’s done did so much for me", and "I ought should his cross with pleasure bear" in no. 68, all corrected in no. 84 of the Free Methodist hymnal of 1910; the addition of "Joseph A." to "Alexander" in no. 171 (no. 608 in the Hymnal of 1910); "Out" and "d[elete]" next to no. 227 ("Come, thou everlasting Spirit"), despite the addition of "Charles Wesley" in red ink; "omit" next to stanzas 3 and 6 of no. 653 (marked "Restored", this became no. 630 in the Hymnal of 1910)),
but not always right about the positive (additions and the specification of tunes); and that (since Hogue clearly changed his mind as he went along), this was (as I've said) no more than a working copy. Hogue may even have taken a copy of the Hymn book of 1883 that he had long since marked up for use in worship (by the indication of tunes and in other ways), and simply marked “Out” the texts that were to be excluded from the Hymnal of 1910. A confirmation of the latter theory may be the numbers that get both a tune and an “Out” or a “d[elete]”, as, for example, the Charles Wesley hymn “Jesus, thou sovereign Lord of all” (no. 494), H. J. Gauntlett's "Captain of our salvation, take" (no. 275: "use in Baptismal list, if at all"), and no. 418 ("substitute 'Blessed Assurance'"). That Hogue sometimes changed his mind (or had it changed for him by the Committee) is clear from the fact that several of the "Hymns to be added" that Hogue listed after the Index beginning on p. 582 were not added, for example "√ The Comforter is come", "For all the saints", "√ I need thee ev'ry hour", "More about Jesus", "I can hear my Savior calling", and "√ God of our fathers". That a priority was, nevertheless, the assignation of tunes and the provision of musical notation (entirely absent from the Hymn book of 1883) is clear from the fact that even one of "Wesley's [two] last hymns" (p. 533), no. 827 ("In age and feebleness extreme"), though marked "Inserted without music", was in fact assigned a tune—possibly one composed for the occasion, given that CHESBRO is attributed to Thoro Harris (no. 597, p. 378), "doctor of music" and "musical editor" (p. v)—and the notation to go with it. Cf. no. 721 ("Have music composed for this").
Through all of this Hogue was clearly keeping an eye on the hymnals of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
Walters is right. “There is [indeed] a fascinating study waiting to be made”!
Under the 1966 book by Jessie Yardy, no. 29 below, I reference Free Methodist missionary to India Celia Ferries. Here I open the Missionary tidings (a monthly) to one of the many articles Ferries contributed.
Reality was a short-lived (1897-1901) inter-denominational effort in service of the Holiness Movement, missions, and revivalism in Southern California and beyond (it appears to have had East Coast and even British subscribers) at the turn of the last century. “Edited by [Adventist?] Eld[er] W[illiam (?)] Kellaway” (possibly born 1848 in Weymouth, England; married Clara Augusta Kerkup 1889 in Providence, Rhode Island; died and buried 1927 in Hollywood, California), the son of a W[illiam] T[homas] A[therton] (?) Kellaway of London (of whom there is a photograph on p. 270 of vol. 3), and located according to the first issue of vol. 2 and at the time of its dissolution at "120 North Spring Street" in Los Angeles, it enlisted columns from a range of contributors, including (just for example) Miss Beryl B. Bishop (later the Rev. Beryl Boswell Bishop Collett?), the “Evangelist and Missionary of the Free Methodist Church” who served as Reality’s “Northern California Agent”, and seems likely to have been a daughter (?) of the W. D. Bishop mentioned often in the Minutes of the Annual Conferences of the Free Methodist Church for California (not Southern California) throughout this period; as well as reprinting material derived from similar publications elsewhere. References to events associated with other churches, just for example Baptist churches, the Christian and Missionary Alliance, the Church of the Nazarene, and the Free Methodist Church abound. Vols. 2-4 of Reality came to Seattle Pacific via the Seattle Bible Training School of the Philadelphia Church and, before that, Wm. C. Stevens, himself a frequent contributor, and “superintendent of the Christian Alliance work on the Pacific Coast”. They appear to constitute the only extant run of the publication in WorldCat apart from that at the Huntington Library in San Marino, which, unlike Seattle Pacific, owns also vol. 1. Reality's "obligation to subscribers end[ed] with this [(the July 1901)] issue", due to "over-exertion and an empty pocket". Mr. Kellaway (who had threatened to shut the magazine down after the completion of vol. 3 (no. 11 (June 1900): 252)) stood "ready to serve—after a brief respite, which we must have to relieve eyes and brain; and . . . [was] equally ready to retire or go at other work, as pleases God", which it apparently did not (vol. 4, no. 12 (July 1901): 274). Kellaway himself contributed a lot of poetry, among other things. Of some professional interest may be "Setting Up Type for Jesus" (vol. 4, no. 7 (February 1901): 155).
Three weeks before the opening of the first Genesee Annual Conference of the Free Methodist Church on 8 November 1860, the Northern independent announced that “a new paper designed” for its use “exclusively” was under contemplation. But at the Conference it was decided that the time was not yet ripe, so five weeks later A. A. Phelps, an editor of Phoebe Palmer’s Guide to holiness and the man who had floated the prospectus, wrote to encourage “all our friends [to] take The Earnest Christian, edited by B. T. Roberts,” and the Northern independent itself in the meanwhile. So “For some time thereafter, the Northern Independent served . . . as the denominational organ of Free Methodism, carrying its official notices and appointments.” At the second Genesee Annual “a committee was appointed to work with a committee of the Illinois Conference in planning a denominational paper”, but “Nothing came of this and other attempts until in the General Conference of 1866 Rev. Levi Wood was commissioned to raise five thousand dollars with which to launch a paper under his editorship.” Unsuccessful in this, he “assumed the project as a [Church-related] private venture”, and brought the first issue of The Free Methodist out on 9 January 1868. Unfortunately, the strain proved too great, and first the Genesee Conference in 1870, and then very quickly a series of individuals located in New York City, and Aurora, Sycamore, and Chicago, IL, assumed leadership. Only in 1886, which is when it was purchased by the General Conference and assigned to B. T. Roberts, did it really settle into its role as the official organ of the denomination (Marston, From age to age, 265-266, 472-473; Snyder, Populist saints, 565-566). It remained a weekly through 1961, and was renamed Light and life (a semimonthly) in 1970. SPU owns vol. 27 (1894) and vols. 36 (1903)-103 no. 12 =no. 4738 (June 30, 1970). Vol. 39 stands open at an editorial devoted to “The tongues excitement” dated 6 November 1906, just under seven months after Edward Lee had broken out into tongues at his home in Los Angeles on 9 April. There are other such references in this volume (for example earlier in that same issue and in the one dated 3 July), but this one refers to Los Angeles and William Seymour specifically.
Elmer Ellsworth Shelhamer (1869-1947), “Editor [of] ‘The Repairer’ and Author and Publisher of Many Clean Cut Books and Pamphlets”, was converted at the age of 16, and called to preach. While a student at the Wheaton Academy he joined the Free Methodist Church, to which he made numerous contributions over the years. Sanctified under the ministry of Free Methodist evangelist Vivian A. Dake (1854-1892), he became one of the most prominent revivalists in the Pentecostal Bands movement, but stuck with the Church (and sought ordination) when the Pentecostal Bands broke away three years after Dake’s death in 1892 (Snyder in the Historical dictionary of the Holiness Movement). There are six copies of this pamphlet in WorldCat, though only Asbury and Azusa own copies of it under the title under which it first appeared. The “True Light” series was “a clean cut salvation” spinoff of The repairer, “a clean-cut holiness paper”. Gift of Dr. Stanley D. Walters.
See note on the Hymn book of the Free Methodist Church (1896 [1883]), no. 20 above.
The twenty-first annual catalogue of the Seattle Seminary (now Seattle Pacific University) appears to be the earliest edition in WorldCat (though not the University Archives). Opened to a description of the Seminary, and outlining a curriculum stretching from the first grade through the first two years of college (it was during this second year of its venture into higher education, the academic year 1912/13, that Principal Alexander Beers began to push for an addition of years three and four), it has this to say on the subject of Bible study: “The purpose and method of Bible study is primarily educational. The material of the Bible enters so largely into modern literature and life, and its ethics have become the standard of conduct to such an extent, that familiarity with it is essential to any real education. It is hoped, also, that such a study of it as one makes in the Seminary will lead to a larger appreciation of the worth of the Book as a guide to life and cultivate a desire for a deeper insight into its truths.” At the high school (?) level, Bible study seems to have amounted to “one recitation per week”, “Four credits” total (p. 20).
“For nearly thirty years, Emma [Smith] Ray [(1859-1930)], who was born into slavery and raised in poverty in Missouri, ministered to the poor and homeless in Seattle slums along with her husband, L.P. They came to Seattle following the 1889 fire in order for L.P. to find work as a stonemason. Shortly after, they were converted in the African Methodist Episcopal Church. Emma helped to found the Frances Harper Colored Unit of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union with fifteen women from the AME Church, and she served as its president. With her WCTU Unit, Emma visited the jail, holding religious services on Sunday afternoons. On Wednesday afternoons, she and ‘Mother’ Ryther, who ran an orphanage in Seattle, visited prostitutes and held services in the brothels. From 1900-1902, Emma and L.P. ran a mission in Kansas City, Missouri, for children living in poverty, providing clothes, meals, a warm place to gather in the winter, trips to the park in the summer, and weekly Sunday School. The Ray’s joined The Free Methodist Church and were licensed as Conference Evangelists. Under the auspices of the Free Methodists, they preached revival meetings in churches throughout the state of Washington” (Priscilla Pope-Levison).
Once dubbed “the Mother of Holiness in the West”, Mary Lee (Wasson Harris) Cagle was born to a Cumberland Presbyterian father and a Southern Methodist mother on a farm near Moulton, Alabama on 21 September 1864, and converted at the age of fifteen. A call to preach was suppressed by what she called “the manfearing spirit” (as then and there socio-culturally imposed), so she became a school teacher instead. At 27 she married the formerly Free but at that point Southern Methodist revivalist Robert Lee Harris, under whom she had been “reclaimed” in or about 1884, and began to find ways to support his work. But “in the critical summer of 1894, women from St. Louis’ Vanguard Mission came to Milan [TN] to help Harris launch a new church movement there” (the New Testament Church of Christ), and “shared the preaching duties with Harris”, thus giving Mary her first exposure to women in the pulpit. At that point “the health of Brother Harris began to fail rapidly” (p. 23), and in response to a desperate vow Mary heard the Lord say, “‘Whether I heal your husband or not, will you [preach]?” (p. 24). The “Yes” she gave the Lord her husband then affirmed from his deathbed, having, Eli-like, long since foreseen and rejoiced in it. After his death, she teamed up with fellow widow Fannie McDowell Hunter, the author of Women preachers (1905), and the rest (as they say) was history. “In [August of] 1900, she married Henry Cagle, a Texas cowhand who had been converted, sanctified, and called to preach under her ministry”, and in 1908 the New Testament Church of Christ, having co-constituted the Holiness Church of Christ in 1904, merged with the newly formed Pentecostal Church of the Nazarene. Thus Cagle died in 1955 a beloved elder and district evangelist in the Church of the Nazarene, having “held evangelistic meetings and organized [at least 28] churches ” “from Tennessee to Arizona and from El Paso north to Cheyenne, Wyoming” (Stan Ingersoll in Grace and Peace Magazine 17 (February 15, 2011); WTJ 28 (1993): 176-198; Historical dictionary of the Holiness movement; Encyclopedia of Alabama).
In 1891, Celia Ferries (later Mrs. V. G. McMurray), “the first missionary appointed under the newly formed Missionary Board of the Free Methodist Church of North America” (Yardy, Living water, 73) arrived in Bombay (Mumbai)—to superintend a work begun by the Rev. and Mrs. Ernest F. and Phebe Cox Ward in 1880 (Patil, History of the Free Methodist Church in India). Also in 1891, Seattle Seminary (now Seattle Pacific University) was founded, in part to interest students in the work of home and foreign missions. Much later, Jessie M. Fry Yardy (BA, Christian and Elementary Education, Seattle Pacific College, 1944) and her husband Dr. Paul W. Yardy (B.S., 1945) joined the many alumni who had already caught this vision, arrived in Umri on 3 July 1951 after a year of language study in Poona (Pune) and Mahableshwar (Mahabaleshwar), and spent 14 years there. As Jessie tells the story, Dr. Yardy was “the Lord’s answer to . . . years of prayer for a [permanent] medical doctor”, prayers on offer even before the completion of the Umri hospital back in 1923. In 1964 he published her Rearing a distinctive Christian family (Umri, India), and two years later this appeared also in Hindi. SPU owns the only copy represented in WorldCat, though the fact that the book exists elsewhere in Thai may be an indication that various forms of it are held more widely in South Asia.
