METHODIST GENERAL CONFERENCE.
THE Methodist General Conference has just closed at Chicago, after a session lasting nearly four weeks. About 700 delegates were present. Among the many actions taken we note the following:— 1. Admission of lay delegates to full participation and vote in the general conference. This provides for equal legal rights for lay members and ministers in this body. 2. Adoption of a new constitution, one article of which permits the election of women as lay delegates to annual and general conferences. 3. Placing the Northern Christian Advocate (Syracuse, N. Y.) in the hands of a commission appointed from its patronizing conferences, who guarantee its conduct without loss. During the past quadrennium this paper has lost over $15,000, and has been enabled to continue only by reason of a subsidy from the profits of the Book Concern. In like manner, other editions of the Advocate have been aided during the same time to the amount of over $90,000. 4. Removal of the Central Christian Advocate from St. Louis to Kansas City, Mo., and combining with it the Omaha edition. 5. Stopping subsidy to the Rocky Mountain Advocate. 6. Placing the California Christian Advocate and the book depository in San Francisco under the control of a local commission, with a subsidy, if needed, of $7,500. 7. Election of two additional bishops to the general episcopal body. These are Dr. J. W. Hamilton, of Boston, and Dr. David H. Moore, of Cincinnati, the latter for many years editor of the Western Christian Advocate. The rules were amended so as to require a two-thirds instead of majority vote for election of bishops. 8. Election of two missionary bishops for Southern Asia. 9. Abolishing of the time limit. For the past twelve years the time of service for ministers in any one place has been five years. Before 1888, lengths of service varied from one to three years at different times. The time-limit plan has not been satisfactory to many, and sufficient reasons were advanced to induce the general body to make the change noted. 10. Fixing of Episcopal residences. 11. Refusal to alter the discipline relating to amusements. This was the adoption of the minority committee report, the majority report favoring the placing of decisions on amusements in the hands of pastors. 12. Reaffirming temperance resolutions of the past, but tabling the majority report of the temperance committee, censuring President McKinley, Attorney-General Griggs, and the administration. 13. The conference, by a unanimous rising vote, passed a resolution protesting against the United States Government reopening the question of granting national support to sectarian Indian education, and sectarian charities in the District of Columbia, alleging that such an arrangement is virtually a union of the Church and the State, which is, of course, true. Similar actions were taken in 1892 and 1896, at which times the general government had not cut off such appropriations. 14. A "demand" was also made that "civil and religious liberty shall be guaranteed to the people wherever the flag of the republic floats over our most distant new insular possessions." It was directed that copies of these actions be forwarded to the President of the United States, to the presiding officers of the Senate and the House of Representatives, and to the Secretary of the Interior. 15. A memorial was also ordered sent to the President and to Congress urging the speedy adoption of the proposed amendment to the Constitution forever prohibiting polygamy within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction. 16. In the election of editors, Dr. J. M. Buckley was re-elected editor of the Christian Advocate (N. Y.), the leading journal of Methodism; Dr. Levi Gilbert, Western Christian Advocate; Dr. C. B. Spencer, Central Christian Advocate. The Methodist Church will enter upon the new century with many problems to face, chiefly within herself, in view of changed conditions.