His Religious Experience. Tries to be a Methodist. Hopes to become a
Preacher. Boy Preaching. Attends a Sunday-school. "Chaws" Tobacco. Goes
to Love Feast. Mourners' Bench Experience. Is Puzzled and Disgusted.
My parents were Methodists, as were their ancestors on both sides. My
mother was uniformly religious, but not fussy about it. I have seen her
intensely happy, but never heard her shout. Her religion was a deep,
smooth, current without fluctuation. My father was religious more by
spells, but still he never went to extremes, and could never "get
religion" at the altar, in the Methodist fashion. This lifelong failure
of his discouraged him, causing him at times to become somewhat
skeptical and indifferent. But he died, rejoicing in the faith of
Christ as held by the Methodist Church.
When about ten years of age I joined the Methodist Episcopal Church,
South. A great revival was in progress at La Grange, and over one
hundred persons united with the church. I enjoyed the services, and
continued to do so for a number of years. Often in those early times I
rode to meeting at surrounding churches and private dwellings on
horseback behind my mother. I still remember, as vividly as if it were
but yesterday, the texts and treatment of many of the sermons I heard.
In later years I have frequently thought of the fallacies the preachers
imposed upon us, and, I charitably believe, upon themselves, in these
sermons, but which neither we nor they could detect for want of correct
scriptural knowledge. The thought that I should one day become a
preacher impressed me, and it clung to me for years. When afterwards I
grew wild and wicked, this impression possessed me, and many a time,
when my good wife would rebuke me for my wickedness, I would say,
"Never mind, dear; I'll be a preacher yet." I had a high regard for
preachers, and from early life was fond of their company; and since I
have become one myself, the society of good, faithful men of God brings
me as near heaven as I shall ever be in the flesh.
It was a common thing with me, when I came home from meeting, to get up
one of my own by gathering the children together and preaching to them
the sermons I had heard; and while these were not verbally correct,
there was in them the substance of what the preachers had delivered. I
would sing and pray, and go through the whole performance. I improvised
a little pulpit, and had a church after my own notion; I was a great
plagiarist, and in this, too, I copied after some others.
I attended the first Sunday-school I ever heard of; it was conducted by
Floyd Wellman, a gentleman who afterwards became a prominent and
honored citizen of Louisville. Sunday-schools were then poor things, as
I fear many of them are yet. Little question-books, with the answers
supplied, and reading-books, mostly about angelic boys and girls who
died of early piety, furnished the staple of our reading, while but
little of the Scriptures was taught, or thought about.
To chew tobacco seemed to me to be manly; so to let the people see I
was thus far developed, I prepared me a rough twist of "long green;"
this I stuck in my pantaloons pocket, for the occasion, and when
everything was propitious in the Sunday-school, I drew out the twist
and bit off a "chaw." It raised quite a laugh, in which the
superintendent himself joined; and this ended for life my chewing
tobacco to be seen of men.
I often went with my parents to "love feast." At the first of these
which I attended I had an experience of my own. The light-bread was cut
into slips about two inches long and a half an inch wide and thick.
Some of these were then divided into small pieces. On the plate which
was passed around were two long pieces, and I concluded that if there
was any virtue in the thing it would be enhanced by my taking a long
one; but when I discovered that all the rest had taken but a bite my
philosophy failed, and I hid the remainder where Rachel hid the gods of
her father Laban.
When about fifteen years of age the Methodists had a big revival at
Mount Tabor, a neighboring country church. In this meeting a great many
of my friends and companions were "getting religion" at the altar of
prayer. I became intensely desirous of the same blessing, and in great
anxiety and hopefulness I went to the altar. Day after day did I go,
but only to be disappointed. Every time some would "get through," and
there would be great rejoicing, till only one young man and myself were
left. The whole power of the church was then concentrated on us, but to
no purpose. In this extremity I began to reason about it as I had not
done before. I had been taught that "God was no respecter of persons;
but that in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh
righteousness, is accepted with him." My soul ever recoiled from the
idea of His decreeing some men to salvation and others to damnation,
irrespective of their own will and conduct. Here, now, I was as
helpless as a stone till God should do this work of grace for me. Why
would he send down the Holy Spirit and convert one on my right, another
on my left, till the "bench" was vacant, and not convert me? The
preachers were praying for Him to do it; my father and mother were
praying earnestly for it; the whole church were pleading with Him, and
yet He would not do it. I knew I was a sinner; that I wanted salvation;
that I was sincere, earnest as the others could be: but all this
availed nothing. The preachers tried to explain the failure on the
ground that I was still clinging to the world and my own righteousness;
that I had not given my heart wholly to God, etc. This I knew to be
false. I concluded that if a poor, penitent, agonizing sinner with all
his prayers and pleadings, with the whole church earnestly coöperating,
could not induce God to save him, he might just as well be decreed to
damnation from all eternity. With these reflections I left the
mourners' bench in disgust, and ever since I have had for it an
inexpressible contempt. Time and observation have confirmed me in this
feeling; and while I cherish a sincere respect for those who in
ignorance think it is a divine arrangement, and that in resorting to it
they are obeying a command of God, I have none for those who, knowing
better, still use it as a means of conversion. As often employed by
professional evangelists, there is so much of clap-trap that it must
bring the whole subject of religion into contempt with sensible people.
It is amazing to me that, in view of its entire lack of Scripture
precept or example, the light and knowledge of this day, and its
frequent failures, it, and the whole system of which it is an essential
part, are not laid aside.
Having been taught that Methodism and Christianity were identical, and
having completely lost faith in the former, it was natural enough that
I should become skeptical as to the latter. Only a lingering suspicion
that after all they might be different, saved me from hopeless
infidelity; and had I not in after years learned such to be the case, I
should have lived and died in rebellion against God.