American Methodism in all its branches,
white and coloured, returns a membership of 5,573,118, while the
united Methodism of Canada shows 272,392, and the foreign missions of
British Wesleyan Methodism 52,058 members. These figures, giving a
total of 6,978,404 members, exclusive of the ministers, estimated at
43,368, are sufficiently gratifying; yet they do not represent the
real strength of the Church at large, and give only a faint idea of
its influence.
The Oecumenical Report gave the number of Methodist "adherents" as
24,899,421, intending, by the term _adherents_, those whose religious
home is the Methodist chapel, though their visits to it be irregular.
For the British Wesleyans the two millions of sittings were supposed
to represent the number of adherents (yet should all the occasional
worshippers wish to attend at once, it may be doubted if they could
be accommodated); for the other branches of Methodism in the United
Kingdom, four additional persons were reckoned to each member
reported. The statistics for Ireland and Canada were checked by the
census returns. Probably in the case of missions the adherents would
be more than four times the membership.
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