The Call of the Centenary Year

Transcription of Article published in the Primitive Methodist Magazine by John Welford – Vice President of Conference

With the advent of the year 1910 we enter upon the actual Centenary year of our existence as a church. The mere statement of the fact should quicken the pulse and fire the imagination of every true Primitive Methodist. A century is not a long period in the history of nations or in the life of ideas and institutions, but to us as individuals, whose limit is threescore years and ten, and occasionally — by reason of strength fourscore years, it is long enough to test the quality and stability of our work. And in this matter we have no need to be ashamed. The work has stood all the tests by which truth is

usually demonstrated—the test of time, of persecution, of criticism, of ridicule, of obloquy, of prosperity and adversity. It has never won recognition from the high-placed and cultured classes, because we have never studied the art of self-advertisement and pushfulness, but now and again words of praise have been spoken in our behalf, and the work has survived even that test. We should be utterly lacking in the sentiment of loyalty did not our hearts kindle at the thought of those hundred years that have been given to us.

What wonderful years they have been! How crowded with strenuous service! What a record of struggle and sacrifice, of growth and development in every department of Church life, of high achievement and almost continuous success ! Their history is full of the romance of reality, of the fact that is stranger than fiction. There is no need to re-tell the story. It is told with almost exhaustless wealth of detail in the history of the Connexion, with the glow of a cultured imagination in the “Romance of Primitive Methodism,” and with singular verve and picturesqueness of seeing in “Northern Primitive Methodism.” They are real facts and real men of which we read, and the story is at once an inspiration and education.

It is a story pre-eminently of sacrifice and success, and of success because of the sacrifice. The two things are closely inter-related. The condition of ail success is sacrifice. “Verily, Verily, I say unto you, except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die it bringeth forth much fruit.” The price our founders paid was excision from the Church that had been their spiritual home; like the great father of the faithful they went out, not knowing whither they went. All that they knew was that they could not otherwise be true men. They must “follow the gleam“ whithersoever it led them. In toil and sacrifice they laid broad and deep the foundations.

Other men entered into their labours, and in toil and sacrifice built upon the foundations, not a structure of wood and hay and stubble, but of gold and silver and precious stones, things costly and enduring. They paid the price, and the work grew, and when they laid down their burden they bequeathed to us a goodly inheritance. In the process of the years it has passed through many phases; its outward form and expression to-day are vastly different from its earlier characteristics; it has shed a number of things that were not essential to its vitality and power; but the condition of success is the same, and there is demanded of us the same spirit of sacrifice, the same unflinching loyalty to Christian truth at all cost.

Necessarily, of course, the sacrifice, with us, will take on another form than it did with our fathers. The conditions of Christian service are not the same. To be a Primitive Methodist is no longer to be sneered at, despised, ridiculed, socially ostracised, and shunned as a leper. We are not content with toleration. We resent patronage. We refuse to be treated as the “poor” sister or half-sister of the family. By service and success we have was a recognised place in the great sisterhood of Churches. The conditions under which we serve God are pleasant and easy in comparison with the lot of our fathers. Where then does the element of sacrifice come in in our experience? It comes in in our refusal to be at “ease in Zion” or to rest content with our inheritance as it comes to us, in the determination to hand it on to our successors enriched and enlarged, in holy and devoted service in some sphere of Christian activity, and in supporting by adequate gifts the various institutions and projects designed to increase the Church’s usefulness and to meet the world’s need.

It is to this last form of sacrifice that the coming of the Centenary year specially calls us. We are committed to the task of raising the sum of £250,000, and we are now within six months of the time when the Centenary celebrations should close. Can we say that the goal is yet in sight? Has every station and every member come into line? Has the whole Connexion responded to the appeal? Is the Connexional part of the fund especially being adequately supported? It is difficult to state the exact amount promised to the central fund, but the actual money received is just over £23,000. This shows how much remains to be done, and how necessary it is to press for instalments of the promises made. Can the goal be reached within the allotted time? Are we equal to the amount required? There are still thirty-four stations that have made no promise. These stations contain 5,342 members. There are others where the only promise is that of the minister. Some of these stations are no doubt poor and already at their utmost stretch to meet their present needs. But surely no station is so poor as not to do something, and in the very poorest there must be some members who have a little to spare.

But some of them are not ranked as poor. What is it, then, that keeps them from taking their part in this historic movement? Is it want of Connexional loyalty, lack of imagination, doubt of the worthiness of the object, or failure to comprehend the real greatness and uniqueness of the occasion? My brothers, these are great days that are passing over us. To some of us they glow and burn with the splendour of a great past. They come to us laden with memories of men and deeds that stir one’s very blood. We feel that we are the sons of heroes. But they are not less radiant with hope and pregnant with infinite possibilities of good. The best is yet to be.

But this depends upon the degree in which we respond to the special call of the Centenary year. Are we willing to make the necessary sacrifice? Or rather let us substitute for the word sacrifice the word debt. The sacrifice we are called to make is really the payment of a debt. Are we not all debtors to the Church that has so largely made us what we are, that cradled and nurtured us and has given us of its very best, and in which we have found our spiritual home?

References

Primitive Methodist Magazine 1910/32