"The story of my life"

by Egerton Ryerson

This request was denied, so that Dr. Ryerson published the documents in a pamphlet himself. In doing so he said:—

A more vitally important and deeply affecting subject can scarcely be laid before the Wesleyan community; but in order to present it to the pious judgment of that body at large, I have had no other alternative than to assume the position I now sustain—otherwise being compelled to observe, as in past years, a strict silence beyond the walls of the Conference room. But from what I have witnessed and heard in that room, I appeal to the calm consideration of the intelligent and devout members of the Wesleyan Church, either in their closets with their Bible before them, or at their firesides with their children around them. Whether I have or have not overrated the importance of the question, I leave everyone to decide after reading the following correspondence. It will be seen that the question is not one of a personal nature—is not one which ought to excite any unkind feeling between persons who may take different views of it. The question is as to whether, on the Wesleyan Conference assuming the position and functions of a distinct and independent Church, a condition of membership has not been imposed which is a departure from the principles of Mr. Wesley and the doctrine and practice of the Apostolic and Primitive Church—a condition which ignores the church relation, rights and privileges of the baptized children of the Wesleyan body, and excludes thousands from its membership upon unscriptural and un-Wesleyan grounds. It will be seen by an extract on page 20, that Mr. Wesley's disciplinary object in giving quarterly tickets was, "to separate the precious from the vile," "to remove any disorderly member;" but in vain have I sought for an instance of Mr. Wesley ever excluding, even from his private societies in a Church, an upright and orderly member for mere non-attendance at class-meeting. That, however, he might have consistently done in a society in a Church, if he had thought it expedient to do so, as it would not have affected the membership of any parties in the Church to which they belonged. The three paragraphs of our Discipline, containing three sentences against which I protest, had no place in the Minutes of Conference finally revised and printed by Mr. Wesley in the year of his death; nor do they exist in the Minutes of the British Conference to this day. From what is therefore modern and unauthorized by Scripture, by the practice of the Primitive Church, or by Mr. Wesley, I go back to first principles, and say, as did Mr. Wesley to Dr. Coke and Mr. Asbury, when he sent them to organize the Societies in America into a Church, let us "simply follow the Scriptures and the Primitive Church."

It is often said that "nobody objects to attending class-meeting except those who have no religion." Persons who thus judge of others show more of the Pharisaical, than of the Christian, spirit, and evince but little of the "wisdom that cometh from above" in thus "measuring others by themselves." The following correspondence shows that I am second to none in my appreciation of the value and usefulness of class meetings; but I have had too much experience not to know that the best talkers in a class-meeting are not always the best livers in the world; and I attach less importance to what a person may say of himself in a class-meeting, than to uprightness in his dealings, integrity in his word, meekness in his temper, charity in his spirit, liberality in his contributions, blamelessness in his life. Doings, rather than sayings, are the rule of Divine judgment....

It may not be improper for me to observe, that there are ministers who loudly advocate attendance at class-meeting as a Church-law, and yet do not observe that law themselves perhaps once a year, much less habitually, as they insist in respect to private members; and the most strenuous of such advocates pay no heed to the equally positive prohibitions and requirements of the discipline in several other respects, especially in regard to band-meetings, which were designed, as the Discipline expressly states, "to obey that command of God, 'confess your faults one to another, and pray for one another, that ye may be healed.'" I am far from intimating, or believing, that there are many advocates of class-meeting tests of this description. But history shows, from our Lord to the present time, that the most vehement advocates for the "mint, annise and cummin" of particular tests and forms, are not proportionably zealous for the "weightier matters of the law." It is easier for men to impose and enforce law upon others than to observe it themselves. But when a man's words and actions contradict each other, the argument of his actions is the more forcible, as well as the more honest and sincere.

It has likewise been alleged, that if attendance at class-meeting be not made a church-law, and the capital punishment of expulsion be not attached to its violation, class-meetings will fall into disuse. I answer, this is beside the question. The question is, whether there is such a law in the Bible? Has our Lord or His Apostles given authority to any conclave or conference to make such a law? Our Lord and the Apostles knew better than their followers what was essential to membership in the Christian Church, as well as what was essential to its existence and prosperity. I may also observe, that if the existence of class-meetings cannot be maintained except by the terror of the scorpion-whip, or rather executioner's sword, of expulsion from the church, it says little for them as a privilege, or place of delightful and joyous resort. My own conviction is, that if class-meetings, like love-feasts, were maintained and recommended as a privilege and useful means of religious edification, and not as a law, the observance of which is necessary to membership in the visible Church of Christ, but made voluntary, like joining the Missionary Society, class-meetings would be more efficient and useful than they are now, and attendance at them would be more cordial and profitable, if not as, or even more, general. But what might be or not be in any supposed case, is foreign to a question as to what is enjoined in the law and testimony of the Holy Scriptures as essential to discipleship with Christ.

It is well known that meeting in class, by a large portion of the members of the Wesleyan Church, is very irregular—that their absence from class-meeting is the general rule of their practice, and their attendance the exception. Yet such persons are not excluded, as it would involve the expulsion of the greater part of the members of the body, including several of its ministers. It is, therefore, so much the more objectionable, and so much the more wrong, to have a rule which ignores at one sweep the membership of all the baptized children of the body, which sends and keeps away the conscientious and straightforward, who would not think of joining a religious community without intending habitually to observe all its rules, and yet, after all, habitually disregarded by a large portion of both preachers and people, and is made, as far as my observation goes, an instrument of gratifying individual hostility, rather than a means of promoting the religious and moral ends of Christian discipline.

It is, however, the bearing of this question upon the relationship and destinies of the youth of the Wesleyan body that has most deeply impressed and affected my own mind, as may be inferred from the correspondence on the subject. It requires less scriptural zeal, and an inferior order of qualifications, and it is much more exciting and easy, to minister or attend at special meetings, and in the ordinary public services of the Church, than to pursue "in season and out of season" the less conspicuous and more detailed labour of teaching and training up children and youth in the knowledge and experience of the doctrines of Christ, and thus secure them to the Church, and to the Saviour, and secure to them the "godliness which has the promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come."[141]

And what is the result of the general adoption (with a few fine exceptions), of the former in preference to the latter—instead of the union of both? It is the humiliating and most painful fact that the great majority of Methodist youth are lost to the Church, if not lost to Christ and to heaven—that in a large proportion of instances, Methodism is not perpetuated to the second generation of the same family—that in the great majority of instances it is only so perpetuated very partially, and in very few instances to all the children of Methodist parents; while there is each year the conversion of only a few hundreds, or thousands, mostly from without. The return of prodigals, and the accession of strangers and aliens to the body, are indeed causes of thankfulness and rejoicing; but prevention is better than cure—piety from childhood is better than reformation in manhood. The judgment of the Apostle upon him "who neglects to provide for his own house," even in temporal matters, is well known; and must there not be a radical defect and wrong in any religious organization which loses the great majority of its own youth, and depends largely on infusions from without for the recruit of its numbers? Such an organization may do much good, and widely extend in many places for the time being, especially in a new and unsettled state of society; but the vital element of permanent strength and lasting prosperity is wanting, where, by its repulsion or neglect, the great majority of its baptized youth are alienated from, and lost to its communion. It is not in the promise of God, or in the genius of Scriptural Christianity, that "children trained up in the way they should go," will, in many instances, much less generally, depart from it in after years....

Impressed with the magnitude of the wrongs and evils above referred to, dreading personal collision in the Conference, anticipating but little success from it, and feeling uncertain as to how few were likely to be the days of my earthly career, and believing that a special duty was imposed upon me in this respect by Providential circumstances, I addressed to the President, the 2nd of January, ... as the most likely means, without collision with any person or body, to draw practical attention to the subject, on the part of both the ministry and the laity of the Church.... I have the satisfaction of knowing that, if the first efforts of my pen, after joining the Conference in 1825, were to advocate the right of the members of the Church to hold a bit of ground in which to bury their dead, and the right of its ministers to perform the marriage service for the members of their congregations, my last efforts in connection with the Conference have been directed to obtain the rights of Christian citizenship to the baptized children and exemplary adherents of the Church. While I maintain that each child in the land has a right to such an education as will fit him for his duties as a citizen of the state, and that the obligations of the state correspond to the rights of the child, so I maintain, upon still stronger and higher grounds, that each child baptized by the Church is thereby enfranchised with the rights and privileges of citizenship in it, until he forfeits them by personal misconduct and exclusion, and that the obligations of the Church correspond to the rights of the child. I also maintain that each member of Christ's visible Church, has a scriptural right to his membership in it as long as he keeps the "commandments and ordinances of God," whether he attends or does not attend a meeting which Mr. Wesley (who instituted it), declared to be "merely prudential, not essential, not of divine institution," and for not attending which he never excluded, or presumed to authorize excluding, a person from Church membership. It is a principle of St. Paul, in the 14th chapter of Romans, of all true Protestantism, as well as of the writings of Mr. Wesley, "in necessary things unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity."