Transcriber's Note: Obvious printer errors have been corrected. Hyphenation has been rationalised. The text is divided into fifty eight Chapters, which are grouped into nine Parts. The Chapters are not identified in the Contents pages: they mostly coincide with the topics noted there, though not with their numbering. The numbering of pages is occasionally out of sequence, generally when a topic is discussed more than once. Both the Index and the Contents Pages use expressions that identify the page number and section/subsection to which they relate. These expressions are explained in the Note immediately before the Index. A number of words and phrases are bolded in the original. These are identified in this text by =equal signs=. Where the original treatment is unclear a guess has been necessary. Passages in smaller font in Part IX (The Ritual), that describe actions to be taken by a minister or the congregation, are identified by +plus signs+. THE DOCTRINES AND DISCIPLINE OF THE COLORED METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH REVISED EDITION 1918 COPYRIGHTED 1918, By The AGENT and Publishers of the COLORED M. E. CHURCH =Episcopal Address= To the Members of the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church: We esteem it our duty and privilege most earnestly to recommend to you, as members of our Church, our form of Discipline, which has been founded on the experience of a long series of years. We wish to see this publication in the house of every member of the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church; and the more so, as it contains the Articles of Religion maintained more or less, in part or in whole, by every reformed Church in the world. Far from wishing you to be ignorant of any of our doctrines, or any part of our Discipline, we desire you to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the whole. You ought, next to the Word of God, to procure the Articles and Canons of the Church to which you belong. We deem it proper, in this place, to give you a brief account of the organization of our Connection: From the introduction of Methodism on this continent, we have ever constituted a part of the great Methodist family—first, as members of the Methodist Episcopal Church in America, and also after the change took place by which we were known as the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United States; and when the division took place, in 1844, which we regard as a legal and constitutional division of the Church, we formed a part of that division called the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, which relation we continued to sustain until the organization of our Church took place at the General Conference held at Jackson, Tenn., which began its session December 15, 1870. The day was spent in prayer and supplication to the Almighty that his blessings might rest upon us; and on the following day the regular business of the session began, Bishop Robert Paine, D. D., of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in the chair.