office; and we rejoice in being able to state, that the cause of general education, in its various branches, from the Sabbath and common schools up through the academic to the collegiate course, has been, and is now, gradually demanding more and more of our attention; and hence we hope that our ministry, though none of them has been established for their exclusive benefit, will reap a proportionate share in the results of these Institutions of learning. We have availed ourselves of this early period of our session to return to you our Christian salutations, and to bear testimony to the prudent and conciliatory manner in which your Delegate has thus far discharged the trust confided to him, that we might not miss the favourable opportunity of employing the agency of our highly respected and beloved brother, the Rev. Dr. Fisk, who enjoys our confidence, to present to you in person these expressions of our affection and esteem. We have therefore requested him to convey to you an assurance of our undiminished attachment to the Wesleyan-Methodist Connexion; and to ask that, at our next General Conference, we may be favoured with a Representative from your body, whose visit, should it take place, will, we doubt not, be reciprocated with the same feelings of brotherly affection by which this intercourse has heretofore been charac

terized.

Earnestly praying that He "whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting," may guide, sanctify, and ever be with both you and us, we subscribe ourselves, in behalf of the General Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, your brethren and servants in our common Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. R. R. ROBERTS, JOSHUA SOULE,

ELIJAH HEDDING,

JAMES D. ANDREW,

Bishops of the Methodist
Episcopal Church.

THOMAS L. DOUGLASS, Secretary.

Cincinnati, Ohio, May 5th, 1836.

THE ANSWER OF THE BRITISH CONFERENCE TO THE ADDRESS FROM THE AMERICAN GENERAL CONFERENCE.

To the Bishopsd Members of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States of America.

DEARLY BELOVED BRETHREN,

THE primitive and truly Christian practice of an exchange of fraternal salutations between the British and American Conferences, is always to us an occasion of satisfaction and delight.

It has afforded us the highest gratification to welcome the Rev. Dr. Fisk as your Representative, and our "brother beloved." We knew indeed that his praise was in all your churches; and we were therefore prepared to form a grateful estimate of his high character, talents, and usefulness; but as the accredited Representative of a body of Ministers and Christians, so successfully employed by God in the extension of the common salvation in the Western World, we cannot but regard him with additional esteem and honour. We have heard with interest his own communications, as well as those of our esteemed Representative, the Rev. William Lord, who has recently visited you, and who, as we rejoice to find by your letter, has commended himself to your favourable regard by that prudence and piety which induced us to appoint him to the office which he sustained.

Allow us, dear brethren, to express our unfeigned condolence with you on the death of two of your highly venerated Bishops. We also have had, within a short period, to mourn the loss of some of our most gifted, pious, and useful Ministers. Such bereavements not only teach us lessons of humility and diligence, but impressively remind us of our dependence upon God, who alone can repair the wastes of mortality, and continue to the church a succession of able and faithful Ministers of the New Testament. No people have been blessed with brighter examples of ministerial fidelity and zeal than our own churches. Our fathers "laboured, and we have entered into their labours." May He "with whom is the residue of the Spirit" be graciously pleased to provide labourers who shall diligently cultivate the inheritance they left us, and fully carry out the noble objects they contemplated.

We deeply sympathize with you in the loss sustained by the burning of your Book-Room in New-York. The effects of this calamity upon the financial resources of your Connexion must be seriously felt by you: but this is a small evil compared with even the partial suspension of an agency, by which evangelical truth was so extensively diffused among your widely-scattered and increasing population, and the cause of religion and morality so powerfully aided.

Your letter communicates intelligence of an unusual event; namely, that your societies during the last year have suffered a diminution of numbers. To a Church which has for so long a period annually counted its converts by thousands, this circumstance must be a severe exercise of faith. But allow us, beloved brethren, to remind you, that the church has to win all its triumphs in a world full of ignorance, rebellion, and sin, and over evils deeply rooted in our common nature, and more or less mingling with all the institutions of society. It cannot therefore surprise

us, that its course should be occasionally interrupted. In the seasons, however, of temporary decay, or violent agitation, the church, like the individual Christian, may retire upon first principles; draw, by renewed exercises of prayer and faith, on her unfailing resources; and, concentrating her energies, go forth with fresh vigour to accomplish the work of the Lord. Our own Connexion, sixteen years ago, was in similar painful circumstances. The lovers of our Zion deeply felt the affliction. We were led to review our principles and conduct; and with confessions of our unprofitableness, renewed determinations, and fervent supplications to God for a large effusion of His Spirit, our Ministers devoted themselves afresh to their important duties. God was pleased to crown these exertions with remarkable success; and for several years the result was a gradual, and, in many instances, a large and rapid increase. We doubt not, beloved brethren, that the evangelical doctrines which you preach, the scriptural discipline which you administer, the union and fellowship of your societies, and the indefatigable labours of your extended itinerancy, will, by the blessing of God, and the effusions of his Holy Spirit, soon produce a revival of the work, and that you will again be cheered by large additions to your ranks of such as shall be saved.

We regret that the allusion in our epistle of last year to the subject of slavery, should have occasioned you either pain or embarrassment. We claimed no right to suggest any thing to you on this confessedly difficult question, beyond what our fraternal relationship would warrant; a privilege of friendship which we should as freely concede to you as exercise ourselves; and we utterly disclaim all responsibility for any other kind of foreign interference with your views and feelings, which may have been exerted from any other quarter. We were aware, dear brethren, of the peculiar trials to which the evils of slavery have subjected you; and our sympathy with you was most sincere. But being called upon to address you at a time when the blessings of emancipation had been secured to our own slave-population, and when the question, as we knew, occupied much public attention in America, especially amongst religious men, we considered it our duty to give our moral weight in support of those views which were held by our great Founder; which have repeatedly been professed by the British Conference; and which, indeed, have been for many years avowed in your own Book of Discipline and other public documents, and are, we believe, in strict accordance with our merciful and righteous Christianity.* Into the details of any

The following is an extract from the American "Book of Discipline:""Q. What shall be done for the extirpation of the evil of slavery? "A. 1. We declare that we are as much as ever convinced of the great evil

measures of emancipation we did not enter, but, in conformity with our well-known sentiments, intended to affirm the principle, that slavery is a system of oppressive evil, and is in direct opposition to the spirit of our divine religion; and we hoped that the time had arrived, when our beloved sister-Connexion in America would be prepared to act on these sentiments, and receive our suffrages with approving cordiality. Slavery, in itself, is so obviously opposed to the immutable principles of justice, to the inalienable rights of man of whatever colour or condition, to the social and civil improvement and happiness of the human family, to the principles and precepts of Christianity, and to the full accomplishment of the merciful designs of the Gospel, that we cannot but consider it the duty of the Christian church to bear an unequivocal testimony against a system which involves so much sin against God, and so much oppression and wrong, inflicted on an unoffending race of our fellow-men.

In common with others, the Wesleyan Conference, and generally the people of their charge, took this course during the discussion of the question of emancipation in our own beloved country. The force of Christian principle, peaceably but firmly maintained, and legitimately urged, has overcome every difficulty. The black and coloured population of our own colonies have entered into a state of freedom; and the inestimable advantages of religious liberty have been secured on the basis of an equal toleration. The Conference has the means of knowing that the blessing of God has been graciously vouchsafed to this act of national justice, in the extension of the Gospel, in the conversion of great numbers of the Negroes, and in the improved state of society in the colonies.

As it must always be the duty of Christian Ministers and churches, not only to embody the principles of their holy religion in their formularies of doctrine and codes of discipline, but also to act upon them, the Wesleyan Conference of this country trust that their American brethren may be enabled, by the constant avowal of the great principle of emancipation, to direct and urge forward their people to unite in the truly Christian enterprise of

of slavery: therefore no slave-holder shall be eligible to any official station in our Church hereafter, where the laws of the State in which he lives will admit of emancipation, and permit the liberated slave to enjoy freedom.

"2. When any Travelling Preacher becomes an owner of a slave or slaves, by any means, he shall forfeit his ministerial character in our Church, unless he execute, if it be practicable, a legal emancipation of such slaves, conformably to the laws of the State in which he lives.

"3. All our Preachers shall prudently enforce upon our members the necessity of teaching their slaves to read the word of God; and to allow them time to attend upon the public worship of God on our regular days of divine service."

conferring on the slave-population of the United States the inestimable benefits of civil and religious freedom.

In assuming the right of mildly, but firmly, pressing such sentiments on public attention, the Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church in America cannot, any more than ourselves, be chargeable with an inconsistent zeal. Whilst the Methodist Connexion in England zealously concurred in adopting measures to secure the emancipation of the slaves in the West Indies, they at the same time supported one of the most extended and expensive Missions of modern times, in order to prepare them for the boon. We are aware that our brethren in America have, in like manner, by their Itinerant and Missionary labours, done much in conferring the blessings of religious instruction on the slave-population of their country; and surely the men who have thus laid the foundation for a peaceful state of society, founded on freedom, cannot but have the right to recommend and support all proper and lawful measures for the consummation of their own great work.

But in addition to these inferior considerations, the Conference cannot but avow its conviction that in all cases it is most safe, and in the end most advantageous, that Christian churches should act on the principle of religious obligation and duty. And although it deeply deplores that the Methodists of the United States should be exposed to inconvenience, obloquy, or danger, by the assertion of right sentiments on this subject; yet, as the evil of slavery does exist there, as they are brought into immediate contact with it,— as they are called, in the order of divine Providence, to maintain their long-published and scriptural testimony against it, even in the midst of this state of things, and as the progress of events renders it impossible, even if it were lawful, that they should be neutral,—the British Conference trusts that it will not be considered as in any way exceeding the privileges of the fraternal relation existing between the two parties, when it expresses its anxious and earnest hope that our American brethren will feel it their duty, in union with other Christians, to adopt such measures as may lead to the safe and speedy emancipation of the whole slave-population of their great and interesting country.

We turn now with unfeigned pleasure to other topics, on which no difference of sentiment can arise. We refer to the Missionary department of your work; and greatly rejoice to be informed that your exertions have been crowned with so much success. It is to us a cause of thankfulness, that, in addition to the aborigines of your own country, and the descendants of your emancipated Negropopulation now settled in Liberia, you have turned your attention to South America, which presents so promising a field for Missionary zeal and enterprise. We feel assured that it will afford