“Passion riots; reason then contends,
And on the conquest every bliss depends.”
There are two different periods in the history of the race; in the history
of a nation; in the history of the church; in the history of moral
institutions, and in the history of families. In one the intellect
predominates, governs; in the other the emotional nature, or passion,
rules. The fatal day in the history of a nation is the day in which,
through party strife or otherwise, a nation of people becomes a seething
mass of heated passion. Such a nation is like a vessel tossed upon the
waves above the falls of some mighty river, liable to be buried in the
whirlpool of destruction. Men who are governed by their emotional nature
are most liable to disappointments, to troubles, and difficulties of every
kind. Select all the miserable families in your community, tell me where
they are, and I will show you every family in which passion reigns.
Troubles are generally legitimate children of passion. Who has not heard
some one say, repentingly, “If I had taken a second, sober thought I would
not have done it.” Intellect belongs to our higher nature, and emotion
belongs to our lower. Intelligence is always at a discount where the
emotional nature governs—it is subordinated to passion. When the intellect
governs, the emotional is subjected to thought; when either one
predominates, the other is brought under and enslaved. These are the two
conflicting elements in man’s nature which are generally at war with each
other, leading to different and antagonistic results. During the dark
ages, which were ushered in through the repudiation of intelligence and
the predominance of passion, the emotional reigned, and men were governed
by their passions in religious as well as state affairs. The shadows of
those ages still linger with some communities, and with many persons in
almost all communities. Our fathers had a long and hard struggle in
getting away from an emotional to an intellectual state, both in civil as
well as religious affairs. To-day, if we consider this matter in
connection with our people as a nation, we may safely say that we are in
an intellectual period—mind predominates. This is an age of investigation.
The time was, in the history of our fathers, when a man was fined fifty
pounds of tobacco if he refused to have his innocent child christened.
_See the_ “_old Blue Laws._” The time was when innocent persons were
tried, condemned, and put to death for being, in the estimation of men,
clothed with disgraceful ignorance, _witches_. Who has not heard of the
“Salem witchcraft?”
The emotional nature of man, as a ruling sovereign, is losing its
“legal-tender value” daily. The time was when it brought a premium in the
most of the churches in our country. An aged father, who is now “across
the river,” once said to me, “I was bewildered, and mentally lost for
thirty years of my life.” I asked him for the facts. He, answering, said:
“During all that period of time I was a church member, and, like some
others, I was a quiet, still kind of a soul; I paid my honest debts; told
the truth about my neighbors, and lived a moral life to the very best of
my abilities. There were others of the same character. The preachers
frequently called us Quakers—the Quakers were a very still people in those
days. There were others who were reckless; would not always tell the
truth, and would not always pay their honest debts, but they were,
nevertheless, very noisy in the church, and the preacher always made most
of those noisy fellows. Now,” said the aged father, “I never could
understand that.” The old man lived to learn the secret, and changed his
religious relations and began a new life in religion.
The scenes of the “Cane Ridge revival,” down in Kentucky, have not been
repeated in all our country for more than twenty years, and it is probable
that they never will be. There are many things in the past history of
religion in our country that will never be repeated. Did you ever witness
a panic in a large congregation of people? If you have, you may go with me
to “Cane Ridge.” Before we start I wish to remind you of the fact that
some of the most fearful panics known to men took place where, and when,
there was no reason for them outside of existing ignorance. Fright or
fear, coupled with ignorance, produced them. Now let us go to “Cane
Ridge.” There we find the people in the emotional period in the history of
religion. They are laboring under the conviction that Jehovah has
concentrated all the powers of His Spirit at Cane Ridge—it is the common
conviction. The people all over the country believe that God is there. The
excitement runs high, and yet higher; it becomes contagious—a religious
epidemic—the ruling element being the thought of the presence of the
Divine Majesty, and the emotional nature of man the field of its
operations. All the ignorance of a genuine panic is there. There were no
well-informed unbelievers there to tear off the veil, nor better-informed
Christians to remove it, not even so much as a Wesley to exonerate God by
saying, “I am constrained to believe that it is the devil tearing them as
they are coming to Christ.” No! There is one conviction at Cane Ridge—it
is this: _Jehovah is here._ It was a wonderful panic—a wonderful time.
Persons going on to the ground immediately fell down like dead men; got up
with the jerks; barked like dogs. Women went backwards and forwards,
making singular gestures; their heads were bobbing with the jerks, and
their long hair cracking like whips. The scene was beyond description. The
whole country flocked to the place, and all were confounded with amazement
and astonishment.
If such operations were religion, our country has been without it for a
long time. Then our old-fashioned camp-meetings—where are they? They are
things of the past. I recollect leaving a camp-ground at a late hour of
the night, just as the congregation divided up into groups, and the groups
went out into the woods in different directions to engage in secret
prayer. We heard them when we were three miles away—_strange secret
prayer_! Do you know anything of that kind of secret prayer at the present
time?
The common pulpit teaching of those times was wonderful(?), but it was the
best they had. It was common for preachers to make war upon education.
They often boasted of their ignorance. They claimed that education was not
necessary to qualify a man for the pulpit. The best school teachers in our
country received twelve and fifteen dollars per month for teaching, and
boarded themselves. Teachers who now pay five dollars per week for board,
can’t see how those old teachers got along upon such wages. In those times
it was very common for teachers to get their board for seventy-five cents
per week. The farmers claimed that it was unnecessary to educate their
daughters, and only necessary to educate their sons sufficiently well to
enable them to keep their accounts. Beyond this it was often claimed that
an education was of no value—that it only made rascals. I recollect a very
zealous old man who preached for the German Baptists; he is now “across
the waves.” Once, in my presence, he disposed of a grammatical argument
that was put against him, by saying, “It is the wisdom of the world, and
it is sensual and devilish.” It was common forty years ago for preachers
to say, “I don’t know what I shall say, but just as the Lord gives it to
me I will hand it to you.” As a general thing those men knew no better,
and the masses of the people knew no better. The people were living in an
Emotional period, with the exception of a few brave thinkers, and they
were governed by their emotions.
Prosperity grew with the growth of our country, and the standard of
education was elevated. The free-school system took the place of the
old-fashioned subscription schools, which were worth twelve dollars per
month to the whole community, and the brave thinkers continued stirring up
thought in religion, and giving the fathers and mothers trouble about this
thing of confounding religion with passion, and our country is now fairly
at sea in an Intellectual period. Religion is now a thing to be learned
and lived—_to be done_. Those brave men who advocated an intelligent
religion forty years ago, were denounced, from almost every pulpit in our
country, as a set of “whitewashed infidels,” having no religion, and
“without God in the world.”
But that day is past, and we are in a period in which mind generally
predominates. The language of the emotional is seldom heard. In that
period it was common to hear men ask: “How did you get religion?” “where
did you get religion?” “where did you get religion?” “describe it;” “O I
can’t, it is better felt than expressed.” Such language was in keeping
with a very common idea which was held sacred in those days. It was this,
the Lord made general provision for the salvation of men, but He makes a
special application to the sinner. Of course, all to whom salvation was
not especially applied, were, in the estimation of those people, _lost_.
There are a few communities yet that are away back in the emotional
period. There are men and women in every community who are yet governed by
their emotional nature in matters of religion. Those persons have no use
for an intelligent, argumentative preacher. They want a preacher who will
say smoothe things; and there is now and then a preacher who has no
strength outside of the emotional.
We have an emotional nature. I am glad that we have. I would not be an
intellectual wooden-man if I could. But if you say, the Almighty Father
intended that we should be intellectually subordinated to our emotional
nature, and therefore governed by our passions, or feelings, I shall deny
it. He never intended that we should be governed by our passions. To-day
there are strong intellects in unbelief flooding our country with their
literature. How shall they be met? Mr. Moody says, “Show them that you are
full of Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost.” Very well. Can you do that
without the truth? can you do that without word or wisdom? can you do it
without “contending earnestly for the faith once delivered unto the
saints?” In the days of Christ and His apostles the men who were full of
the Holy Spirit had a mouth and wisdom which none of their adversaries
were able to resist or gainsay. The antichrists of our day can not be met
successfully without reason, without argument, without meeting the
intellectual demands of the times.
There are intellectual men and women in almost every community throughout
our country—men and women with whom intelligence governs—who want the whys
and wherefores upon every subject. This class is on the increase at a
rapid rate. It does no good to set ourselves against reason, and oppose
the current of thought with our emotional nature. In that way we may
succeed with those who are governed by their emotional nature, but the
work, when it is done, is a work upon the passions, and will soon pass
away, unless the intellect was at the same time enlisted. The men who stir
the world with thought, and give intellectual cast to the age in which we
live, are to be met with thought, met with reason, met with truths tried
in the crucible.
Christianity has nothing to fear in the great struggle that is being
carried on for the truth’s sake. But it has lost much for want of
investigation. Our free school and Sunday-school systems are making the
rising generation better acquainted with both science and the Bible, and a
thorough acquaintance with both is the one thing most needed in order to a
better future in religion, as well as in every other human interest. The
time is come when men will no longer be content to listen to grave errors
and keep silence. Every truth is being put to the test of logic, as well
as fact. It is natural to abhor a contradiction, and it is right. All
truth is harmonious. I am glad that harmony is demanded in religious
teaching; I often think of pulpit teaching away back thirty and forty
years ago. It used to be very popular in some parts to tell people that
they could do nothing to better their condition in a future state, and, at
the same time, exhort them to do better.
I heard of three brothers, George, William and James. George and William
were “Hard-shell Baptist” preachers; James made no profession. His wife
was a member of George’s congregation. She was a great “scold.” One day
James failed to do just as she wished him, and, as a matter of course, he
received quite a lecture; finally the woman told him that it was a great
pity that he could not be a good man, like his brother George or brother
William, and fell to exhorting him to do better. He finally became
impatient and said, “Yes! George and William were too lazy to work, and I
called them to preach. They both stood it until the third call, and then
put on their hats and went. You belong to George’s church, and I go there
with you to hear him preach. He tells me that I can do nothing, and you
tell me that I can do nothing; and, now, what in the h—l do you want me to
do?” Such inconsistent teaching was always repugnant to common sense and
natural reason. There are many persons yet teaching the old falsehood that
man is passive in his conversion, notwithstanding the fact that men are
imperatively commanded to convert—turn, that their sins may be blotted
out. Men are yet found in some Protestant pulpits who spend a great deal
of their time praying the Lord to convert sinners. It is often the case,
in their own estimation, that the Lord gives no heed to their prayers; but
this has happened so frequently that it does not seem to trouble them. It
has been a very short time since I heard a minister advocating what he was
pleased to call “miraculous conversion.” I thought, if you are right in
that matter, why did the Heavenly Father command his love, commended in
the Savior’s death, preached to every creature, and still refuse to
convert every creature? What difference does it make to me whether the
Lord passed me by before He made Adam, or passed me by on yesterday? And
if He refuses to send His spirit and convert me until the last, and I die
in my sins and am lost, who is to blame? What is the difference between
His neglect to convert me and the old Calvinistic idea that Christ did not
die for me? What is the difference between the spirit of God being partial
to communities—going into one and converting a great many persons and
passing others by—and God Himself being partial? And why does the Spirit
not convert all the unwilling sinners in the community where it does
convert sinners? These are questions that have been asked in a great many
hearts before they yielded themselves up to skepticism and infidelity.
In the present stage of critical investigation it is well for all
preachers to remember that there is but one question involving this whole
matter of conversion and pardon, and that is the question coupled with the
Judgment; it is not, How much did the Heavenly Father love me? He loved
all men. It is not, How much did Jesus do for _me_? He tasted death for
every man. It is not, How much has the Spirit done for me? It gave the
gospel to all nations, as the power of God unto salvation to every man
that believeth. The one, and only, question in the Judgment is, What have
I done for myself? What are the deeds done in my body? the deeds which _I
have done_.
Christianity is right thinking and doing; all that is to be attained in
the religion of Christ is enjoyed in an upright life. Every theory that
conflicts with this grand sentiment is smoked with the darkness of the
dark ages. The Father of Spirits made us with the power of choice—gave us
the liberty to choose—and we all may have, in the future, just such a
state as we will. The Father loved all; the Son died for all; and the
Spirit says to all, COME!
The great struggle that is now going on between Christianity and unbelief
is accomplishing two good things: First, it is making it hard for
professors of religion to hold their errors, or cover up hypocrisy; and
second, it is making it hard for infidels and skeptics to hold on to their
flimsy objections to the Christian religion. Let the struggle go on!