“Do not Methodists, in violation of God’s Word and their own discipline, dress as extravagantly and as fashionably as any other class?  Do not the ladies, and even the wives and daughters of the ministry, put on ’gold and pearls and costly array’?  Would not the plain dress insisted upon by John Wesley and Bishop Asbury, and worn by Hester Ann Rodgers, Lady Huntington, and many others equally distinguished, be now regarded in Methodist circles as fanaticism?  Can any one going into the Methodist church in any of our chief cities distinguish the attire of the communicants from that of the theater and ball-goers?  Is not worldliness seen in the music?  Elaborately dressed and ornamented choirs, who in many cases make no profession of religion and are often sneering skeptics, go through a cold artistic or operatic performance, which is as much in harmony with spiritual worship as an opera or theater.  Under such worldly performances spirituality is frozen to death.

“Formerly every Methodist attended class and gave testimony of experimental religion.  Now the class-meeting is attended by very few, and in many churches abandoned.  Seldom the stewards, trustees and elders of the church attend class.  Formerly nearly every Methodist prayed, testified or exhorted in prayer-meeting.  Now but very few are heard.  Formerly shouts and praises were heard; now such demostrations of holy enthusiasm and joy are regarded as fanaticism.

“Worldly socials, and fairs, festivals, concerts and such like have taken the place of religious gatherings, revival meetings, class and prayer meetings of earlier days.  How true that the Methodist discipline is a dead letter!  Its rules forbid the wearing of gold or pearls or costly array; yet no one ever thinks of disciplining its members for violating them.  They forbid the reading of such books and the taking of such diversions as do not minister to godliness, yet the church itself goes to frolics and festivals and fairs, which destroy the spiritual life of the young, as well as the old.  The extent to which this is now carried on is appalling.  The spiritual death it carries in its train will only be known when the millions it has swept into hell shall stand before the judgment.

“The early Methodist ministers went forth to sacrifice and to suffer for Christ.  They sought not places of ease and affluence, but of privation and suffering.  They gloried not in their big salaries, fine parsonages, and refined congregations, but in the souls that had been won for Jesus.  Oh, how changed! A hireling ministry will be a feeble, a timid, a truckling, a timeserving ministry, without faith, endurance, and holy power.  Methodism formerly dealt in the great central truth.  Now the pulpits deal largely in the generalities and in popular lectures.  The glorious doctrine of entire sanctification is rarely heard and seldom witnessed in the pulpits.”

This lengthy quotation shows clearly the spiritual condition of Methodism, and certainly she is no worse than the rest.  God is calling his people out of “all the places where they have been scattered in the cloudy and dark day.”  Ezek. 34:12.  Those who refuse to walk in the light will go into darkness.  God help people to “flee out of the midst of Babylon, and deliver every man his soul.”