nature are submitted to a meeting of the whole community, consisting either of all male members of age, or of an intermediate body elected by them.

Public meetings are held every evening in the week. Some of these are devoted to the reading of portions of scripture, others to the communications of accounts from the missionary stations, and others to the singing of hymns or selected verses. On Sunday mornings, the church litany is publicly read, and sermons are delivered to the congregation, which, in many places, is the case likewise in the afternoon. In the evening, discourses are delivered, in which the texts for that day are explained and brought home to the particular circumstances of the community. Besides these regular means of edification, the festival days of the Christian church, such as Easter, Pentecost, Christmas, &c., are commemorated in a special manner, as well as some days of peculiar interest in the history of the society. A solemn church music constitutes a prominent feature of their means of edification, music in general being a favourite employment of the leisure of many. On particular occasions, and before the congregation meets to partake of the Lord's Supper, they assemble expressly to listen to instrumental and vocal music interspersed with hymns, in which the whole congregation joins, while they partake together of a cup of coffee, tea, or chocolate, and light cakes, in token of fellowship and brotherly union. This solemnity is called a Love Feast, and is in imitation of the custom of the Agape in the primitive Christian churches. The Lord's Supper is celebrated at stated intervals, generally by all communicant members together, under very solemn but simple rites. Easter morning is devoted to a solemnity of a peculiar kind. At sunrise, the congregation assembles in the grave-yard; a service, accompanied by music, is celebrated, expressive of the joyful hopes of immortality and resurrection, and a solemn commemoration is made of all who have, in the course of the last year, departed this life from among them, and "gone home to the Lord"—an expression they often use to designate death. Considering the termination of the present life no evil, but the entrance upon an eternal state of bliss to the sincere disciples of Christ, they desire to divest this event of all its terrors. The decease of every individual is announced to the community by solemn music from a band of instruments. Outward appearances of mourning are discountenanced. The whole congregation follows the bier to the grave-yard (which is commonly laid out as a garden), accompanied by a band, playing the tunes of wellknown verses, which express the hopes of eternal life and resurrection, and the corpse is deposited in the simple grave during the fune

ral service. The preservation of the purity of the community is entrusted to the Board of Elders and its different members, who are to give instruction and admonition to those under their care, and make a discreet use of the established church discipline. In cases of immoral conduct, or flagrant disregard of the regulations of the society, the following discipline is resorted to. If expostulations are not successful, offenders are for a time restrained from participating in the holy communion, or called before the committee. For pertinacious bad conduct, or flagrant excesses, the culpable individual is dismissed from the society.

The ecclesiastical church officers, generally speaking, are the bishops, through whom the regular succession of ordination, transmitted to the United Brethren through the ancient Church of the Bohemian and Moravian Brethren, is preserved, and who alone are authorized to ordain ministers, but possess no authority in the government of the church, except such as they derive from some other office, being most frequently the presidents of some board of elders; the presbyters, or ordained stated ministers of the communities, and the deacons. The degree of deacon is the first bestowed upon young ministers and missionaries, by which they are authorized to administer the sacraments.

Females, although elders among their own sex, are never ordained; nor have they a vote in the deliberations of the Board of Elders, which they attend for the sake of information only.

It now remains to give some account of the number and extension of this society, which are often strangely exaggerated. On the continent of Europe, together with Great Britain, the number of persons living in their different communities, or formed into societies closely connected with the Unity, does not exceed thirteen or fourteen thousand, including children. Their number in the United States falls somewhat short of six thousand souls. Besides these there are about three times this number of persons dispersed through Germany, Livonia, &c., who are occasionally visited by brethren, and strengthened in their religious convictions, while they have no external connexion with the Unity. These cannot be considered members of the society, though they may maintain a spiritual connexion with it. The numbers of converts from heathen nations, are regularly reported, and do not now exceed 40,000 souls, comprehending all those who are in any way under the care of the missionaries. Indeed it never was the object of the society to attempt the Christianization of whole nations or tribes, as such must be a mere nominal conversion. They profess to admit those only to the rite of baptism who give evidence

of their faith by the change wrought in their life and conduct. On this account, they have every where introduced among their heathen converts a discipline similar to their own, as far as circumstances permit. It would be preposterous to conceive that the peculiar views, and the regulations of a society such as that of the United Brethren, could ever be adopted by any large body of men. They are exclusively calculated for small communities. Any one desirous of separating from the society meets with no hinderance.

The following is a succinct view of the principal establishments of the society. In the United States, they have separate communities, at Bethlehem, Nazareth, and Litiz, in Pennsylvania, and at Salem, in North Carolina. Bethlehem is, next to the mother community at Herrnhut, in Germany, their largest establishment. Besides these, there are congregations at Newport, in Rhode Island, at New York, at Philadelphia, Lancaster and York; at Graceham in Maryland; and several country congregations scattered through Pennsylvania, the members of which chiefly dwell on their plantations, but have a common place of worship. There are four .of this description in North Carolina, in the vicinity of Salem. The whole number of congregations is twenty-two; of these there are ten village congregations, four city, and eight country congregations. The number of pastors and assistant pastors is twenty-four; two bishops, two administrators, four wardens, and four principals of schools. The total number of members, at present, in the United States, is about six thousand.

In England, their chief settlements are Fulnec in Yorkshire, Fairfield in Lancashire, Ockbrook in Derbyshire. Congregations exist likewise in London, Bedford, Bristol, Bath, Plymouth, Haverfordwest, together with a number of country congregations in divers villages. In Ireland, they have a considerable congregation at Gracehill, in the county of Antrim, and small congregations at Dublin, Gracefield, and Ballinderry. On the continent of Europe, Herrnhut, Niesky, and Kleinwelke, in Upper Lusatia; Gnadenfrey, Gnadenberg, Gnadenfeld and Neusaltz, in Silesia; Ebensdorf, near Lobenstein; Neudictendorf, in the duchy of Gosna; Konigsfeld, in that of Baden; Neuwied on the Rhine; Christianfeld, in Holstein; Zeyst, near Utrecht, in Holland; and Sarepta, on the confines of Asiatic Russia, are the names of their separate communities; besides which are organized societies at Berlin, Rixdorf, Potsdam, Königsberg, Norden in Friesland, Copenhagen, Altona, Stockholm, Gottenburg, St. Petersburg, and Moscow.

Their principal missions among the heathens at this time are the

following: among the negro slaves in the three Danish West India islands; in Jamaica, St. Kitts, Antigua, Barbadoes, Tobago, and in Surinam, among the same description of persons; in Greenland, among the natives of that desolate region; in Labrador, among the Esquimaux; at the Cape of Good Hope, among the Hottentots and Caffres; and in North America, among the Delaware Indians in Upper Canada and in the Indian Territory, and among the Cherokees in Arkansas. It is a general principle of the society, that their social organization is in no case to interfere with their duties as citizens or subjects of governments under which they live, and wherever they are settled. They have always supported a good reputation, and been generally considered valuable members of the community, on account of the moral and industrious habits successfully inculcated by their system.

THE METHODIST SOCIETY.

BY THE REV. W. M. STILWELL,

NEW YORK.

THIS Society was first composed of a number of members seceding from the Methodist Episcopal Church in the city of New York, in the year 1820, together with several of the trustees. It had its origin from the circumstance of the ruling preacher, so called, insisting on receiving the money collected in the different churches under his charge, through stewards of his own appointment, instead of by the trustees appointed according to law, and in accordance with the practice of the church in all time previous, together with certain resolutions passed by the New York Annual Conference of Ministers, to petition the legislature for a law recognising the peculiarities of the church discipline, by which the whole properties of the church would have been placed under the supervision and control of the body of ministers, who according to their discipline, from the bishop, downwards, are to take charge of the temporal and spiritual business of the church. A church was erected, and about 300 members organized, under one preacher, the Rev. William M. Stilwell, who withdrew from the travelling connexion, and assumed the pastoral charge of them, which he retains until this present year, (1843.) In the course of the three years following, they had erected two other places of worship, and formed a discipline, in which the general principles, as taught by the Methodists, were recognised; but in the government of the church there was a difference: 1. No bishop was allowed, but a president of each annual conference was chosen yearly, by ballot of the members thereof. 2. All ordained ministers, whether travelling or not, were allowed a seat in the annual conferences. 3. Two lay delegates from each quarterly conference could sit in the annual conference, with the ministers. 4. No rules or regulations for the church could be made unless a majority present were lay members. 5. A preacher could remain with a congregation as long as they agreed. 6. Class meetings, love feasts, &c., were to be attended;