The Struggle.
“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 [pg 189] 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 [pg 190] 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. [pg 191] 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 [pg 192] 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 [pg 193] 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 [pg 194] 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 [pg 195] 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!