PROPOSAL TO REMOVE THE LIMITATION.

There are those among us who come forward with a plan which they claim will remove at once every disadvantage and secure to us all the advantages of an itineracy, and those also of a settled ministry. They affirm that the only thing that needs alteration to effect this result is to remove the limitation. Let all things remain as they are, let the appointments be made annually, but let pastors be reappointed for successive years as long as the Bishops think it best. This proposition has the merit of simplicity, and would require nothing but a vote of the General Conference to render it legal. There are no constitutional restrictions to prevent it. A majority of one can make it possible for any minister to spend his life where he is, providing that at the successive Annual Conferences the Bishops should re-appoint him.

In attacking the time-limit principles are advanced identical with those urged against the itineracy as a whole. But those who favor the proposition affirm that they love the itineracy, and hope that it will be maintained. One position taken strikes the writer as most singular, and implying a remarkable view of "Providence." "The present rule sets aside the indications of Providence, and substitutes an unbending iron rule of man's device. You may follow Providence within the limit of three years, but after that no call or demand of a providential character can be heeded."

But is not an annual appointment making a limit for Providence? Ten thousand men are appointed for a year. Nothing but immorality, insanity, heresy, voluntary withdrawal, or disease, or death, can remove them. There they must remain.

No man can vote till he is twenty-one years old, yet some are better qualified at sixteen than others at forty. Is not an heir born in this country "providentially" prevented from controlling his property till he is twenty-one, even if man devised the restriction? Judges are retired at seventy, and ineligible to reappointment. When a limit is a fact Providence takes cognizance of it. This limit of three years was made, as was supposed, in harmony with providential indications drawn. from the state of the whole Church. The thing to be done is to show that those indications have changed. A man may fol

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low the indications of Providence till they lead him to make a contract which he cannot, without immorality, violate.

The proposition to remove the limitation, simple and harmless as it seems, contains in it elements which woald render many of the advantages now guaranteed impossible, and in a short time put an end to the itineracy. It has been said by an advocate of the removal of the time restriction: "I realize that thousands of old men feel that the itineracy is bound up with this restriction. In the Church South, the restriction was repealed, (I believe in 1868,) but the majority were so moved by the tears of the fathers (who felt that Methodism had been stabbed to the heart) that they repealed their action before the session ended. I perceive and honor this feeling; but I know that it is only feeling. In a short life I have witnessed great changes of feeling in men and bodies of men."

The writer neither feels nor thinks that the itineracy is bound up with this restriction. But he believes that it is bound up with a restriction, a "time-limit" of some kind, contingent up to a certain point, but at that point invincible. And if he should prove to be "old" enough to attempt to substitute feeling or unsupported assertion for facts and reasoning, it will not be difficult to satisfy the Church of it. Indeed, no service can be rendered to a reform greater than a full statement of the views of its opponents. At the same time, to expose the fallacies in impracticable theories serves the cause of truth. The proposition we maintain is this: a limitation by law is essential to the successful working and permanency of the itineracy.

1. Under a limitation the appointinents are made in the discretion of the appointing power until the limit is reached. The will of the Bishop determines when the pastor shall go, whether he shall return once or twice. Loyalty requires him to go or stay. But, according to his appointment, when the constitutional limit is reached the Bishop becomes "weak as other men." It is now the whole Denomination which compels the incumbent to move, and he cannot resist. If the Bishop, the Minister, and the Church, should combine, it would avail nothing. Hence it is impossible for the man to stay, and though he may go with the tears of the people mingling with his own, there is no outcry against the Bishop. But let all limitation be removed, and the exercise of Episcopal discretion is the

sole "efficient cause "of the otherwise unnecessary removal of their beloved pastor, and the people are grieved and indignant, while he feels oppressed. And after a pastor should have been settled many years in a place, if the people desired him to remain, it would be impossible to remove him without his consent. It would be useless to talk to either about the good of the Denomination as long as both were satisfied.

But it may be said, If both are satisfied, why separate them at all? The answer is manifold. It is not always a proof that the Church is prospering because the minister and the people are pleased with each other. A course of reciprocal flattery renders delight in each other, and spiritual, and sometimes temporal decline, compatible. If the Society is really prosperous, it can endure a change, while there may be another Church which that very minister might, if honorably removed to it, at once develop into a great power. But great changes would surely be introduced in Methodist usages, doctrine, and discipline. One minister believing in the annihilation of the wicked, another preaching hope for all, a third winking at dancing, cardplaying, theater-going, a fourth indifferent to class-meetings, these could all, and easily, stamp their peculiarities on their congregations, and great dissimilarities in usages, doctrine, and discipline, would soon appear. If the germs of these things are planted "in the green tree, what would they do in the dry?" Then, when these evils should have become obvious, and it would seem necessary to remove the man to save the Church, the cry of persecution would be raised, those whom he had infected would gather around him, and he would remain or divide the Church. This result would be the more sure because, under a ministry likely to be permanent, those who sympathize with a peculiar style gather around its embodiment, and those who dislike it (unless they remain as a turbulent element) depart.

2. As men supposed by themselves and their people to be succeeding would not move, the work of the appointing power would be to find places for those who left under the stigma of failure. Its action would thus be regarded with disfavor in advance, and would be much more vigorously resisted than in similar instances at present, because laymen would feel, that if they received the appointee, he might stay for an indefinite FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XXXII.-10

period. The work of the Bishops would be greatly complicated by the fact of there being no certain and foreknown vacancy, and no certain and foreseen removal. For example: in other Churches A. resigns and departs; a vacancy is thus made, and B. is called. B. is not called until there is a vacancy. At present, under our system, it is always known that at the end of three years there must be a vacancy, and that the pastor who has completed that period must be removed and appointed to fill another vacancy. . But if all limitations of time were removed from the rule, and the appointments were made annually, there could be no vacancy until the meeting of the Conference, and no necessary vacancy then. And where a minister might remain, and yet it is understood during the year that he must leave, the results in most instances would be injurious. The Bishops could not foreknow what places they would have to fill, nor what ministers they would be obliged to station. For the mere rumor in other denominations that a pastor must go, often makes it certain that he cannot go without a great disturbance.

3. This appears more clearly from the fact that the membership of the Church, instead of, as now, having every motive to seek peace, would, in cases where, justly or unjustly, the preacher is disliked, have every motive to oppose him. Because they would perceive the possibility of his being re-appointed for an indefinite period, and unless there was decided opposition they would consider such successive re-appointments probable. To oppose him would be the only means of securing his removal.

It must be conceded that some now remain three years who should be transferred at the end of one or two. And this is an evil. But it is much less than the damage which would be caused by the disturbances resulting from the agitation and opposition which would then arise. Many of the best men do not make a very favorable impression at first. The people are somewhat disappointed. He is a stranger; they have not learned his ways, nor he theirs; he cannot seem as cordial and near to them, on arriving, as his predecessor, if beloved, did on departing. But if left to do his work in his own way, as the middle of the second year approaches his consistent deportment, ministrations in the pulpit, the sick-room, at the house of mourning, or his faithful pastoral visiting, have made a deep and general impression.

A genuine revival of religion crowns his labors with success, and at the end of the second year there is a unanimous desire for his return. But this class of men, before their qualities could be displayed, would be so opposed by those who were not pleased with them, or positively disliked them, that success would be made impossible. Some very singular things have been published on this subject, of which the following is an illustration:

I regard a first year's pastorate as necessarily experimental. There are few cases in which fitness can be determined before trial. The first year ought always, I think, to be experimental; and it ought not to be a hardship for any man or any Church to try again, to try several times. If we could get rid of triennialism, there would doubtless be more changes than now, because there would be more one-year terms. I have heard an old minister say, that out of twenty charges he had filled in forty-eight years of service, only two had been perfect fits.

On this suggestive passage two or three remarks may be made. It is clear that those who advocate the removal of the limitation perceive that its natural tendency would be to increase greatly the number of removals at the end of the first year; and it is certain that very many who, if they could be allowed to pursue their work quietly, would succeed finely in two or three years, would be removed at the end of the first under the suspicion, if not the brand, of failure. Many preachers, knowing that the Church had no longer the same motive to bear with them, would be tempted to concentrate their efforts wholly on securing that kind of popularity which would enable them to return. Perhaps the "old minister" who had but "two perfect fits" in his own judgment, and eighteen "misfits," was not the most competent judge. Some close observers might have classed the two with the eighteen, or called many of the latter "fits." Certain it is that Certain it is that many a faithful minister has done his best work where both he and the people for some time thought the appointment a "misfit." There are other considerations bearing on this point which cannot properly be omitted from the estimate. The opportunities for merited promotion would be much less than they now are. If a pastor were succeeding finely in a small place it would be indelicate for him to ask to be removed to a larger field, and if he did it secretly, while seeming to be pleased, it would involve