In the course of one of his arguments, he says: "There are many, flitting in pleasure at an imagined rather than a real distance, who may be saved from entering the place of the wretched dying, and of the horrid dead. Here I wish to take my stand. I wish to tell the mode in which men become abandoned. In the language of a far better moralist and reprover than I am (Dr. Lyman Beecher), I wish to lay down a chart of this way to destruction, and to rear a monument of warning upon every spot where a wayfaring man has been ensnared and destroyed.
"I commence with the position that no man probably ever became designedly a drunkard. I mean that no man ever sat down coolly and looked at the redness of eyes, the haggardness of aspect, the weakness of limbs, the nausea of stomach, the profaneness and obscenity and babbling of a drunkard and deliberately desired all these. I shall be slow to believe that it is in human nature to wish to plunge into all this wretchedness. Why is it then that men become drunkards? I answer it is because the vice steals on them silently. It fastens on them unawares, and they find themselves wallowing in all this corruption, before they think of danger."
The power and beauty of Mr. Barnes' most celebrated sermon on "The Way of Salvation", impresses the reader, from page to page. Towards the close, he says:
FROM "THE PLAN OF SALVATION."
"The scheme of salvation, I regard, as offered to the world, as free as the light of heaven, or the rains that burst on the mountains, or the full swelling of broad rivers and streams, or the heavings of the deep. And though millions do not receive it—though in regard to them the benefits of the plan are lost, and to them, in a certain sense, the plan may be said to be in vain, yet I see in this the hand of the same God that pours the rays of noonday on barren sands and genial showers on desert rocks, and gives life, bubbling springs and flowers, where no man is in our eyes, yet not to His, in vain. So is the offer of eternal life, to every man here, to every man everywhere, sincere and full—an offer that though it may produce no emotions in the sinner's bosom here, would send a thrill of joy through all the panting bosoms of the suffering damned."
Rev. Samuel Whelpley.
Rev. Mr. Whelpley became Principal of the Morristown Academy in 1797 and remained until 1805. He came from New England and was originally a Baptist, but in Morristown he gave up the plan which he had cherished of becoming a Baptist minister and united with the Presbyterian church. In 1803, he gave his reasons for this change of views, publicly, in a "Discourse delivered in the First Church" and published. His "Historical Compend" is one of his important works. It contains, "A brief survey of the great line of history from the earliest time to the present day, together with a general view of the world with respect to Civilization, Religion and Government, and a brief dissertation on the importance of historical knowledge." This was issued in two volumes "By Samuel Whelpley, A. M., Principal of Morris Academy" and was printed by Henry P. Russell and dedicated to Rev. Samuel Miller, D. D.
This author was not, by-the-way, the father of Chief Justice Whelpley, of Morristown, who also is noticed in this book, but was the cousin of his father, Dr. William A. Whelpley, a practicing physician here.
"Lectures on Ancient History, together with an allegory of Genius and Taste" was another of Mr. Whelpley's books. Among his works, perhaps the most celebrated was, and is, "The Triangle", a theological work which is "A Series of numbers upon Three Theological Points, enforced from Various Pulpits in the City of New York." This was published in 1817, and a new edition in 1832. In this work, says Hon. Edmund D. Halsey, the leaders and views of what was long afterward known as the Old School Theology were keenly criticised and ridiculed. The book caused a great sensation in its day and did not a little toward hastening the division in the Presbyterian Church into Old and New School. This book was published without his name, by "Investigator". In it the author says: