Estimating the increase of British Methodism, we have to remember that the population has almost doubled in the sixty years, while British Wesleyan Methodism has not doubled; but the great losses occasioned by the agitations must be taken into account, and also the curious fact that the ratio of increase for Methodism at large, in the ten years between the two Oecumenical Conferences, was thirty per cent—­twice as great as the increase of population in the countries represented; the Methodist Church in Ireland actually increasing thirteen per cent, while the population of the country was diminishing and the other Protestant Churches reported loss.

If the increase in Great Britain be proportionally smaller, this need not cause surprise, in view of that vast development of energy in the Established Church which is really due to the reflex action of Methodism itself; that Church, with all the old advantages of wealth and prestige and connexion with the universities and grammar schools which she possessed in the days of her comparative supine-ness, with her clergy roll of 23,000, and her many voluntary workers, having in twenty-seven years almost doubled the number of her elementary schools, largely attended by Methodist children.  But the indirect influence of Methodism is such as cannot be represented in our returns; figures cannot show us the true spiritual status of a Church.  The total cost of the maintenance of our work in all its branches can be estimated; and so able an authority as the Rev. Dr. H. J. Pope stated it at from L1,500,000 to L1,750,000 pounds annually, a sum more than equal to a dividend on fifty millions of consols; but it is impossible to compute the profit to the human race from that expenditure and the work it maintains.  This may be said with certainty, that other Churches have been greatly enriched thereby.  We may just refer to that remarkable religious movement, the Salvation Army, of Methodist origin, though working on new lines; doing such work, social and evangelistic, as Methodism has chosen for its own, and absorbing into its ranks many of our own trained workers.  “The Salvationists, taught by Wesley,” said the late Bishop of Durham, “have learned and taught to the Church again the lost secret of the compulsion of human souls to the Saviour.”

“The Methodists themselves,” says John Richard Green, “are the least result of the Methodist revival”; the creation of “a large and powerful and active sect,” numbering many millions, extending over both hemispheres, was, says Lecky, but one consequence of that revival, which exercised “a large influence upon the Established Church, upon the amount and distribution of the moral forces of the nation, and even upon its political history”; an influence which continues, the sons of Methodism taking their due part in local and imperial government.  Eloquent tributes to the work of Wesley are frequent to-day, the Times, in an article on the centenary of his death, saying: