“The wasting energies—the enfeebled, ruined health—the frequent premature deaths—the failing of ministers in the Presbyterian and Congregational connexions from these causes all over the country, almost as soon as they have begun to work—all which is too manifest not to be seen, which everybody feels that takes any interest in this subject, are principally, and with few exceptions, owing to the unnecessary exorbitant demands on their intellectual powers, their moral and physical energies. And the worst of it is, we not only have no indemnification for this amazing, immense sacrifice, by a real improvement of the state of religion, but the public mind is vitiated: an unnatural appetite for spurious excitements, all tending to fanaticism, and not a little of it the essence of fanaticism, is created and nourished. The interests of religion in the land are actually thrown backward. It is a fever, a disease which nothing but time, pains, and a change of system can cure. A great body of the most talented, best educated, most zealous, most pious, and purest Christian ministers in the country—not to disparage any others—a body which in all respects will bear an advantageous comparison with any of their class in the world, is threatened to be enervated, to become sickly, to have their minds wasted, and their lives sacrificed out of season, and with real loss to the public, by the very means which prostrates them, even though we should leave out of the reckoning the premature end to which they are brought. This spectacle, at this moment before the eyes of the wide community, is enough to fill the mind of an enlightened Christian with dismay. I have myself been thrown ten years out of the stated use of the ministry by this very course, and may, therefore, be entitled to feel and to speak on the subject. And when I see my brethren fallen and falling around me, like the slain in battle, the plains of our land literally covered with these unfortunate victims, I am constrained to express a most earnest desire, that some adequate remedy may be applied.”
It is no matter of surprise, then, that I heard the ministers at the camp meeting complain of the excess of their labours, and the difficulty of obtaining young men to enter the church; (The Rev. Mr Reid observes, speaking of the Congregationalists, “When I rose to support his resolution, as requested, all were generously attentive. At the close I alluded emphatically to one fact in the report, which was, That out of 4,500 churches there were 2,000 not only void of educated pastors, but void of pastors, and I insisted that, literally, they ought not to sleep on such a state of things.”—Reid and Matheson’s Tour) who, indeed, unless actuated by a holy zeal, would submit to such a life of degradation? what man of intellect and education could submit to be schooled by shoemakers and mechanics, to live poor, and at the mercy of tyrants, and drop down dead like the jaded and over laden beast from excess of fatigue and exertion? Let me again quote the same author:
“It is these excessive, multitudinous, and often long protracted religious occasions, together with the spirit that is in them, which have been for some years breaking up and breaking down the clergy of this land? It has been breaking them up. It is commonly observed, that a new era has lately come over the Christian congregations of our country in regard to the permanence of the pastoral relation. Times was, in the memory of those now living, when the settlement of a minister was considered of course a settlement for life. But now, as every body knows, this state of things is entirely broken up; and it is, perhaps, true that, on an average, the clergy of this country do not remain more than five years in the same place.” (“I was sorry to find that, in this part of the State, the ministers are so frequently changing the scene of their pastoral labours. The fault may sometimes be in themselves: but from conversations I have heard on the subject, I am inclined to believe that the people are fond of a change.”—Rev. Mr Reid) And it is impossible they should, in the present state of things. They could not stand it. So numerous are their engagements; so full of anxiety is their condition in a fevered state of the public mind acting upon them from all directions; so consuming are their labours in the study and in public, pressed and urged upon them by the demands of the time; and, withal, so fickle has the popular mind become under a system that is forever demanding some new and still more exciting measure—some new society—some new monthly or weekly meeting, which perhaps soon grows into a religious holiday—some special effort running through many days, sometimes lasting for weeks, calling for public labours of ministers, of the most exciting kind throughout each day, from the earliest hour of the morning to a late hour of night; for reasons and facts of this kind, so abundant, and now so obvious to the public, that they need only to be referred to, to be seen and appreciated, it is impossible that ministers should remain long in the same place. Their mental and physical energies become exhausted, and they are compelled to change; first, because it is not in the power of man to satisfy the appetite for novelties which is continually and from all quarters making its insatiate demands upon them; and next; that, if possible, they may purchase a breathing time and a transient relief from the overwhelming pressure of their cares and labours.
“But, alas! there is no relief: they are not only broken up, but they find themselves fast breaking down. Wherever they go, there is the same demand for the same scene to be acted over. There is—there can be—no stability in the pastoral relation, in such a state of the public mind: and, what is still more melancholy and affecting, the pastors themselves cannot endure it—they cannot live. They are not only constantly fluctuating—literally afloat on the wide surface of the community—but their health is undermined—their spirits are sinking—and they are fast treading upon each others’ heels to the grave, their only land of rest.
“Never since the days of the apostles, was a country blessed with so enlightened, pious, orthodox, faithful, willing clergy, as the United States of America at this moment; and never did a ministry, so worthy of trust, have so little independence to act according to their conscience and best discretion. They are literally the victims of a spiritual tyranny that has started up and burst upon the world in a new form—at least, with an extent of sway that has never been known. It is an influence which comes up from the lowest conditions of life, which is vested in the most ignorant minds, and, therefore, the more unbending and uncontrollable. It is an influence which has been fostered and blown into a wide-spread flame by a class of itinerating ministers, who have suddenly started up and overrun the land, decrying and denouncing all that have not yielded at once to their sway; by direct and open efforts shaking and destroying public confidence in the settled and more permanent ministry, leaving old paths and striking out new ones, demolishing old systems and substituting others, and disturbing and deranging the whole order of society as it had existed before. And it is to this new state of things, so harassing, so destructive to health and life, that the regular ministry of this country (the best qualified, most pious, most faithful, and in all respects the most worthy Christian ministry that the church has ever enjoyed in any age) are made the victims. They cannot resist it, they are overwhelmed by it.”
The fact is, that there is little or no healthy religion in their most numerous and influential churches; it is all excitement. Twenty or thirty years back, the Methodists were considered as extravagantly frantic, but the Congregationalists and Presbyterians in the United States have gone far ahead of them; and the Methodist church in America has become to a degree Episcopal, and softened down into, perhaps, the most pure, most mild, and most simple of all the creeds professed.
I have said that in these two churches the religious feeling was that of excitement: I believe it to be more or less the case in all religion in America; for the Americans are a people who are prone to excitement, not only from their climate, but constitutionally, and it is the caviare of their existence. If it were not so, why is it necessary that revivals should be so continually called forth—a species of stimulus, common, I believe, to almost every sect and creed, promoted and practised in all their colleges, and considered as most important and salutary in their results. Let it not be supposed that I am deprecating that which is to be understood by a revival, in the true sense of the word; not those revivals which were formerly held the benefit of all, and for the salvation of many: I am raising my voice against the modern system, which has been so universally substituted for the reality; such as has been so fully exposed by Bishop Hopkins, of Vermont, and, by Mr Colton, who says—
“Religious excitements, called revivals of religion, have been a prominent feature in the history of this country from its earliest periods, more particularly within a hundred years and the agency of man has always had more or less to do in their management, or in their origination, or in both. Formerly, in theory, (for man is naturally a philosopher, and will always have his theory for every event, and every fact,) they were regarded as Pentecostal seasons—as showers from heaven; with which this world below had nothing to do but to receive, and be refreshed by them as they came. A whole community, or the great majority of them, absorbed in serious thoughts about eternal things, inquiring the way to heaven, and seeming intent on the attainment of that high and glorious condition, presents a spectacle as solemn as it is interesting to contemplate. Such, doubtless, has been the condition of many communities in the early and later history of American revivals; and it is no less true that the fruits have been the turning of many to God and his ways.
“The revivals of the present day are of a very different nature.” (The American clergymen are supported in their opinion on the present revivals and their consequences by Doctors Reid and Matheson, who, otherwise favourable to them, observe, “These revival preachers have denounced pastors with whom they could not compare, as dumb dogs, hypocrites, and formalists, leading their people to hell. The consequences have been most disastrous. Churches have become the sport of derision, distraction, and disorder. Pastors have been made unhappy in their dearest connexions. So extensive has been this evil, that, in one presbytery of nineteen churches, there were only three who had settled pastors; and in one synod, in 1832, of a hundred and three churches, only fifty-two had pastors.”) “There are but two ways by which the mind of man can be brought to a proper sense of religion—one is by love, and the other by fear; and it is by the latter only that modern revivals become at all effective. Bishop Hopkins says, very truly—‘Have we any example in the preaching of Christ and his apostles, of the use of strong individual denunciation? Is there one sentence in the word of inspiration to justify the attempt to excite the feelings of a public assembly, until every restraint of order is forgotten, and confusion becomes identified with the word of God.” (“The Primitive Church Compared,” etcetera, by the Bishop of Vermont.) Yet such are the revivals of the present day, as practised in America. Mr Colton calls them—“Those startling and astounding shocks which are constantly invented, artfully and habitually applied, under all the power of sympathy, and of a studied and enthusiastic elocution, by a large class of preachers among us. To startle and to shock is their great secret—their power.”
The same author then proceeds: