THE Not: CLASS-LEADER'S MANUAL: Or, an Essay on THE DUTIES, DIFFICULTIES, QUALIFICATIONS, MOTIVES, TO WHICH IS PREFIXED AN INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER ON THE HISTORY AND BY REV. CHARLES C. KEYS, OF THE NEW-YORK ANNUAL CONFERENCE. NEW YORK: NELSON & PHILLIPS. CINCINNATI: HITCHCOCK & WALDEN. PUBLIC LIBRARY ASTOR, LENOX AND Enter ording to Act of Congress, in the year 1851, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New-York. PREFACE. CLASS-MEETINGS, although somewhat peculiar as a means of grace, have, from a very early period in the history of Methodism, been considered as essential to her prosperity. As a denomination, we are pretty well agreed in placing a high estimate on this means of grace. Our success, as a people, and the rapid enlargement of our Zion, may be attributed, in no small degree, to this and other peculiar appliances, which have been employed among us. But as classes consist of those "smaller companies," into which "each society is divided," and "one of whom is styled the leader," it is evident that they cannot be maintained without this officer. We accordingly find, that wherever a Methodist Church is, there are to be found not only classes, but class-leaders. They are introduced with the itinerancy wherever this form of Christianity prevails, and become an important instrumentality in "spreading" and maintaining that "Scriptural holiness," the promotion of which is its great design. But it is to be feared that there is a DUP. EXCH. 2growing indifference to this JAN 1903 DREW THEOL SEM LIB |