A History of Nebraska Methodism

   AS WE have watched this great organization of Nebraska Methodism grow, it has seemed more like an organism with its principle of spiritual life building itself up into maturity and completeness, power and influence, very much after the law of development of the individual, with the periods of infancy and youth, when little is required or expected except growth. But growth brings ever-increasing power and larger range of action. It has been developing its organs, increasing their functions, and ever-broadening the range of its activity and the extent of its relations.
   At the beginning it must receive help rather than give help. Hence for a number of years there were but few benevolent collections taken, while the amount of missionary money received was relatively greater, as we have seen, than at subsequent periods when the need was even more urgent.
   The only subordinate organizations were the class and Sunday-school, and the class-meeting and prayer-meeting, and the preaching service had regard more for the maintenance of the life of the infant Church than for any activities looking to helping outside of itself.
   But a religious organism, with as vigorous a type of spiritual life as that possessed by Methodism could not help but grow into conditions of greater strength and increasing responsibility, and ever-broadening range of ac-

tivity. She will be expected to increase the range of her own inner activities, looking to the care of her young people, by improved methods in Sunday-school work, and the organization of the young people into societies specially adapted to their development along the line of spiritual life, moral restraint, and more efficient service for the Master.
   She will be expected to take a more intelligent view of the needs of the great world outside of the narrow circle of her own existence, and to come in touch with the great movements in our own country, such as the Church Extension, Freedmen's Aid, in its efforts to help up a race; the Woman's Home Missionary Society, with its varied benevolent enterprises, like our Mothers' jewels Home, and the hospital, and deaconess movement. Then she must keep in touch with the great world movements, as represented by our Missionary Society, and the sister organization, the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society.
   She will be expected to lend a helping hand in moral reforms, and especially see that her great influence be unmistakably on the side of temperance and against the saloon.
   As we enter upon this fourth and final period we are inspired, both by the achievements of the past and the prospects of the future. The quarter of a century just past, from 1854 to 1880, has been an eventful one. Most of it has been characterized by storms in the political world and disasters in the industrial world. There has been an almost constant struggle against great difficulties of various kinds. The periods of peace and prosperity and other favorable conditions have been brief and few and far between. The strength of the Church is to be

measured as much by the obstacles overcome as the achievements wrought; judged by either standard, she has stood the test. If there have been battles, there have also been victories. If there have been difficulties, they have been met and overcome. If there have been hardships, they have been patiently borne. If the work has demanded sacrifices, they have not been withheld.
   Though the obstacles at times have seemed almost insurmountable, there has been no period during which some progress has not been made, and at some periods great progress.
   As we look back from the summit of the year 1880, and view the twenty-five years over which the Church has passed in her work of planting Christianity in Nebraska, it may be said that, with the exception of "bleeding Kansas," no section of the Lord's vineyard, and no quarter of a century of time, have presented greater difficulties, involved more hardships, or called for more real heroism, in all the history of the frontier work of the Church, than did Nebraska during this period.
   The fourth period, on which we are entering, will present some marked contrasts with the preceding ones. The prevailing conditions will be far more favorable, the opportunities in some directions greater and the responsibilities correspondingly increased. Methodism will again be tested. She has shown that she can meet adversity and triumph in spite of it. How will she stand prosperity; will she come to trust in her own acquired strength, and cease to keep close to God, and trust only in Him? It has often occurred in the history of the Church that when the life and power of Christianity has built up a great institution, with machinery complete for

the further carrying out of the purpose of this living principle, the institution has ceased to be the means through which the life and power is to accomplish its purposes in saving souls and building them up into high-grade men and women, and has itself become the end to the maintenance of which the energies of the Church are directed. Will history repeat itself? We shall see.
The keynote in this period, as in the one just preceding, is still expansion, but it is largely expansion of another kind. Before, the expansion has been territorial, with some traces of the beginnings of the expansion of the range of the Church activities along new lines. As early as 1869, the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society had been organized and auxiliaries were formed in some of the Churches in the sixties. But there was still a lingering doubt as to the need of this new society, and the zealous women found scanty welcome by not a few pastors. Even some of the officials of the parent Missionary Society looked askance at the interloper, fearing it would cut in on receipts. True, to prevent this, the women were prohibited taking any public collection. Notwithstanding this handicap, they sometimes reported more for the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society than the pastor did for the parent society.
There were not many auxiliaries formed until late in the seventies, when the sainted Mary Ninde visited the State and organized some societies. Mrs. Angie F. Newman was also active during these years in promoting the interests of this society, and was very successful in extending the range of its influence and its hold upon the people, so that in 1879, when Mrs. M. J. Shelley, of Tecumseh, was elected secretary for the Nebraska Con-

ference, the young society had demonstrated its vitality and vindicated its right to be by effective work in raising money and supporting missionaries in the foreign field. And it was found that instead of curtailing the receipts of the parent society, it was materially aiding it by disseminating missionary information and stimulating the Church to unselfish giving.
   Mrs. Shelley entered upon her work with enthusiasm and prosecuted it with vigor, going not only to the places accessible by railroad, but traveling many hundreds of miles in her own private conveyance, thus reaching many points away from the railroads. In 1883 the society had become so well established throughout the Western States that the Topeka Branch was organized, and Mrs. Shelley was elected to the responsible place of branch treasurer, a promotion she had well earned.
   For sixteen years Miss Matilda Watson, of Lincoln, Nebraska, the daughter of a Methodist preacher, has been the efficient corresponding secretary of the Topeka Branch, which includes the States of Nebraska, Kansas, Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming, Mrs. Ida Aloe, of Fremont, Nebraska, the daughter of F. H. Rogers, has been for many years the Conference secretary for North Nebraska Conference, rendering valuable service.
   This is the only society in our Church, the work of which lies wholly in the foreign field, and may therefore be said to be the one whose work represents disinterested benevolence more nearly than any other.
   That its great work in the foreign field is coming to be highly appreciated is evident from the words of unstinted praise by Bishop Moore, in China, and all oar bishops that have visited China and India. Perhaps