"There have been spurious revivals in my day, and the means of promoting them are the index of their character. In such seasons of excitement, great dependence is placed on the way and means of getting them up, and little of the impression [sic] that not a soul will be converted unless it be accomplished by the power of God. Whatever the words of the leaders may profess, their conduct proclaims, 'Mine own arm hath done this!' There is a familiarity, a boldness, an irreverence in their prayers, which ill becomes worms of the dust in approaching him before whom angels veil their faces. A pious and poor woman, in coming out from a religious service thus conducted, once said, 'I cannot think what it is that makes our ministers swear so in their prayers.' They count their converts, and when they survey their work, there is a triumph, a self-reliant exultation over it, which looks like the triumph of the pagan monarch, when he exclaimed, 'Is not this great Babylon which I have built!' And hence it is that so many of the subjects of such a work, after the excitement is over, find that their own hearts have deceived them, that they are no longer affected by solemn preaching and solemn prayers, that their past emotions were nothing more than the operations of nature, and that when these natural causes have exhausted their power there is no religion left."--Vol. i., p. 219.
Dr. Spring gives a curious illustration of the length to which excitement sometimes carries the poor victims of the revivalists, in the case of a Mrs. Pierson, "around whose lifeless body her husband assembled a company of believers, with the assurance that if they prayed in faith, she would be restored to life. Their feelings were greatly excited, their impressions of their success peculiar and strong. They prayed and prayed again, and prayed in faith, but they were disappointed," vol. i., p. 229.
He is rather free sometimes in his criticisms upon his brother ministers. He listens to a sermon from the Rev. Mr. Finney, a noted revivalist, and says that there was nothing exceptionable in it "except a vulgarity that indicated a want of culture, and a coarseness unbecoming the Christian pulpit." He hears a Mr. Broadway preach at sea, and thus records his impressions: "I must say he is a John Bull of a preacher. What a pity that men who need to be taught what are the first principles of the oracles of God, should undertake to teach others!" We dare say Dr. Spring's judgment of both these gentlemen was sound; but we see no propriety in printing it.
He made several voyages to Europe, and travelled through France, Germany, and Great Britain. Respecting the state of Protestantism in France, he makes some significant admissions:
"Protestantism in France is not what I have been in the habit of considering it. [{134}] I knew it was in a measure corrupt, but not to the extent in which I actually find it. I do not think that the Romanists, as a body, have much confidence in the Roman religion. But the mischief is that when thinking men throw off the bonds of Romanism, they relapse into infidelity. . . . . True religion in France finds its most bitter and unwearied enemies in Protestants themselves. The Protestants of this country are high Arians, if not absolute Socinians. There are now [1835] three hundred and fifty-eight Protestant pastors in France, beside their few vacant churches. But there are comparatively few among them all who love and obey the truth."--Vol, ii., pp. 260, 361.
The pages devoted to his European tours are remarkable exemplifications of the truth of the old adage, that coelum, non animum, mutant qui trans mare currunt. Wherever he goes, his breadth of vision seems bounded by his own pulpit. The venerable cathedrals of Europe, rich with the noblest memories, and the great historic places haunted by the grandest associations of the past, fill him with no thoughts more elevated than those awakened by the Brick church. He sees everything distorted through the medium of his own inveterate prejudices. If he visits a religious shrine, he can think of nothing but the abominations of the scarlet woman of Babylon. If he sees a convent, he tells us a cock-and-bull story about subterranean passages paved with the bones of infants. If he witnesses some grand and imposing ceremonial, he throws up his eyes, rushes out of the church, and, while he shakes the dust off his feet, groans over the wickedness of the Romish priests and their blasphemous mummeries, farcical shows, and hypocritical disguises. One Sunday, while at Paris, he went with the well-known missionary. Dr. Jonas King, and some other American friends, to visit a hill called Mont Calvaire, near the city, to which numbers of pilgrims were then resorting. They filled their pockets with tracts, which they distributed, right and left, among the thousands that were going up and down the mountain. They even interrupted kneeling worshippers at their prayers to give them tracts. These valuable gifts were received with avidity, for, as the narrator elsewhere explains, our respectable parsons were mistaken for Catholic missionaries. A few days afterward they made another excursion of the same sort to Mont Calvaire. We give the conclusion of the adventure in the words of Dr. King, from whose journal Dr. Spring copies it:
"Mr. and Mrs. Wilder, and Miss Bertau, and Mr. Storrow's children, had gone to Mount Calvary to distribute tracts and Testaments. Dr. Spring and myself, having filled our pockets, and hats, and hands, with tracts and Testaments, set off with the hope to find them. Just as we began to ascend the mountain, we met them coming at a distance. On meeting them, they informed us that they had been stopped by the Commissary of the Police, and that a gendarme, by order of the missionaries (Rom. C. M.), had taken away their tracts and Testaments, and prohibited them in the name of the law to distribute any more on Mount Calvary. Mr. W. advised us not to proceed with the intention of distributing those which we had. We however, went, giving to every one we met, till we came in sight of the gendarmes, when we ceased giving, but occasionally let some fall from our pockets, which the wind, which was very high, scattered in all directions, and were gathered up by the crowd. At length we arrived at the top of the mountain, took our stand on the highest elevation near the cross, and there, in our own language, offered up, each of us, a prayer to the God of heaven for direction, and to have mercy on those tens of thousands that we saw around us, bowing before graven images. I then felt in some degree strengthened to go on, and, taking a tract from my pocket, presented it to a lady who stood near me, and who appeared to be a lady of some distinction. She received it with thanks, and I was not noticed by the gendarmes. Dr. S. let some fall from his pocket, and we made our way down to one of the stations. There he laid some on the charity-box, while I stood before him, to hide what he did. We then went to another station, and I gave ten or twelve to a lady, whom I charged to distribute them."
The heroism of these Presbyterian missionaries, who go up and down hill, dropping divine truth from their coat-tails, reminds us of a crazy old lady [{135}]so in New York, whose will was lately contested before our courts. She had peculiar ideas of her own on the subject of politics and the war, and used to inscribe her thoughts on great paper kites, and give them to little boys to fly in the Central Park, in the belief that the words would somehow or another be disseminated through the city. Imagine St. Francis Xavier setting sail for the Indies with his hat, and pockets, and hands full of tracts, scattering them broad-cast along the inhospitable shores, or trusting them to the breezes, like those charitable Buddhists Father Huc tells of, who go up a high mountain on windy days, and throw into the air little paper horses, which being blown away are, as they believe, miraculously changed into real horses for the benefit of belated travellers. Suppose Father Matthew, instead of preaching a crusade against drunkenness, had contented himself with sneaking into shibeens and taverns, and, behind the friendly shelter of a companion's back, had deposited little bundles of temperance tracts on the top of every barrel of whiskey, as if he expected them to explode like a torpedo, and fill the air with virtue. Or what would Dr. Spring think if some Sunday, in the midst of his prayer, two or three Catholic priests should march into the Brick church and distribute Challoner's Catechisms up and down the aisles, making the "solemn" Presbyterians get up from their knees to receive them? It would not be a bit more outrageous than the doctor's behavior during the mission on Mont Calvaire.
American travellers in Europe, especially of the fanatical sort, are but too apt to disgrace themselves and their country by their conduct in sacred places. Here is another extract from Dr. Spring's book which no respectable American can read without blushing. The incident occurred in the famous cathedral of Rouen, built by William the Conqueror, and reckoned the finest specimen of Gothic architecture in France:
"A little circumstance occurred here that was somewhat amusing. [!] Mr. Van Rensallear, in order to procure some little relic of the place, instead of gathering some flowers, broke off the nose of one of the marble saints! He hoped to escape the detection of the guide, but unfortunately, on leaving the cathedral, we had to pass the mutilated statue, and were charged with the sacrilege. It was a lady saint whose sanctity our gallantry had thus violated, and we had to meet the most terrific volleys of abuse. A few glittering coins, however, obtained absolution for us, but neither entreaty nor cash could obtain the nose. "