The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, May, 1880

by Various

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.