The Missouri and Arkansas Conference, held in Louisiana, Mo., March 7, 1866, adopted the following:
“Resolved, That the preachers be urged to exercise personal supervision over such church property not yet secured to trustees, urge the churches to select trustees, and when this can not be done, to petition the County Court to appoint such officers.” (Pub. Minutes, p. 36.)
The Louisiana and Boonville Church property cases are in illustration.
All the Bishops and all the Conferences of the M. E. Church endorsed the work of Church Extension in the South, just as it was carried on by Mr. Miller, Mr. Drake, Mr. Pearne, Dr. Newman and their associates, and the plan was successful.
In the philosophy of some men the end justifies the means, and success satisfies all the demands of modern ethics. It will not do to question every wealthy man or wealthy Church too closely as to how their property was acquired during the war. It is enough for the curious to know that they have property, and to hope that they have consciences as well.
That the M. E. Church has property in the Southern States in churches, parsonages and literary institutions is an admitted fact. That nearly all, if not all, of this property has been acquired in a very few years, and years, too, of great poverty and destitution through the South, will not be denied. Now, take the following facts and figures:
The Tennessee Conference was organized Oct. 11, 1866, with thirteen churches valued at $59,100. At its second session it reported thirty houses of worship and one parsonage. The Georgia Conference, at its organization, Oct. 10, 1867, reported forty-nine churches. The Mississippi Conference was organized in 1866 with five churches, and at its session held in December, 1867, reported forty-seven churches, five parsonages and eight institutions of learning. In 1866 the South Carolina Conference reports no churches, but at its session in Charleston, February, 1868, reported forty-nine churches and six parsonages. The Holston Conference was organized by Bishop Clarke in 1865 with 100 churches, valued at $31,250. At its session in October, 1867, just two years after, it reported 203 churches and six parsonages. These five Conferences, with an average existence of two years, report 408 churches, eighteen parsonages and eight institutions of learning, at an estimated aggregate value of $446,659. The increase up to 1868 will reach largely over half a million.
Others may ask where and how they acquired so much property in so short a time, and amongst a people desolated and torn by war and impoverished even to beggary and want by the sword, the torch, the pestilence, the famine, the floods, the drouth, the Bureau and the reconstruction.
The policy of the Methodist Episcopal Church, as announced in their great official organ, the New York Christian Advocate, and carried out as far as could be by their emissaries in the South, was to “disintegrate and absorb the M. E. Church, South.”
Dr. Newman, editor of the New Orleans Advocate, said in the New York Methodist, of May 23, 1868: