The Northwestern College and Biblical In stitute is located at Naperville, Ill., Schuylkill Seminary at Fredericksburg, Pa., and there are also schools in Reuttingen, Germany. and in 1 okio, Japan. All are doing splendid service.
The church has property valued at $6,000.000, and reports annually about 12,000 conversions. It also has a young people's society known as the Young People's Alliance, with 34,00o members.
4. Polity. In polity the Evangelical Associa tion is thoroughly American or democratic. There are three conferences: (a) A General Conference, meeting quadrennially. It is the su preme legislative, judicial and administrative as sembly. (h) The Annual Conferences, of which there are twenty-seven ; twenty-two in the United States, one in Canada, three in Europe (Ger many and Switzerland), and one in Japan. The Annual Conferences are purely administrative in their powers and have limited territorial juris diction. (c) The Quarterly Conference on each charge, a purely local body, but possessing initial power in the licensing of preachers. All offices, whether lay or clerical, are elective. The appoint ing power does not exist. The bishops are itiner ant superintendents, elected by the General Con ference for a term of four years only, though they are always eligible for re-election.
5. Doctrine. doctrine the Evangelical As sociation is strictly Arminian, and follows closely the Wesleyan standards as to the specific doc trines of grace. She holds that God is triune, that Jesus Christ is divine and that the Holy Spirit is a divine Person. She believes in the depravity of human nature and emphasizes the need of the new birth. She teaches the all-sufficiency and universality of the atonement effected through the death of Jesus; the freedom of the will and the determinative power of individual choice un der the grace of God; repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ as the only condition of salvation; baptism as the appointed outward sign of an inward grace, and the mode non-essential ; the Lord's Supper as the perpetual sacrament of discipleship, and that these two are the only sacraments of the Christian Church.
The baptism of infants is practiced and God's people are admitted to the Lord's Supper. Special emphasis is laid on the doctrine of entire sancti fication, as an experience in the grace of God to be attained, after conversion, "in this life, and long before we die." By sanctification, however, they do not mean sinless perfection in any phar isaical sense, but a state of grace in which we are delivered from all sinful affections and desires. cleansed from all unrighteousness of heart by the blood of Jesus through faith, and in which we have the love of God shed abroad in our hearts in such a measure that we have daily and con tinuous victory over all sin, inwardly and out wardly; a state in which we are kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation, and preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, being filled with all the ful ness of God.
6. Worship. In worship this Church is non ritualistic, adhering to a simple form, giving liberty in the Spirit, but insisting that all things he done decently and in order. In short, her ideals are; Sound conversion, holiness of heart and life, spiritual worship and evangelistic aggres siveness. S. P. S.