Read Ebook: Twenty-five years in the West by Manford E Erasmus

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Ebook has 758 lines and 118210 words, and 16 pages

"You have been very unfortunate in the company you have kept. There are coarse people in all countries, and a man can eat and sleep with them all his lifetime if he chooses. But that there are more coarse people in this country than in England, I am sure is an error. But what do you mean by coarseness?"

"I abhor such a democratic notion. Only see how rudely your people talk about the President of the United States. He is called Mr. Jackson, Old Jackson, Old Hickory. In Europe, we call the king, His Majesty. Don't you see the difference?"

In the cars near Baltimore, I had some conversation with a lawyer, concerning slavery.

"Are you going South?" he inquired.

"To Maryland. Am from the East, and was never as far south or west before."

"As you are going into a slave-holding state, I should like to know your views of slavery."

"In principle I think it is wrong; but I know little of its practical effects. I shall be better able to judge of it practically at some future time."

"Morally I regard it wrong; nearly all the Southern people so view it. But that slavery is a benefit to the blacks, there can be no doubt. As an evidence of this, contrast the condition of the negroes in Africa with their condition in the Southern states. In this country they are far better off than their brethren are in Africa."

"Decidedly a beneficial effect. There is more refinement and high-toned character in the slave states than in the free states. The people in the South have leisure to cultivate the better sentiments of their nature."

"I repeat, you must be mistaken. If slavery is a upas tree--is an evil as you admit--it cannot produce such heavenly fruit. It is not true that the Southern people are more intelligent, moral and refined than the Eastern people. Statistics, from which there can be no appeal, show that there are more school houses, academies, colleges and meeting houses in the East, than in the South, in proportion to the population. There are more persons in Virginia, the best of the slave states, who cannot read or write, than there are in six of the most Eastern states. Facts are against you."

"The doctrine of endless punishment is taught in the Old Testament."

"That is your opinion, but some of the wisest and most learned men of your school differ from you. I will read some extracts from their writings on this subject. Your Bishop Warburton, in his Divine Legation of Moses, says:--'In the Jewish Republic, both the rewards and punishments promised by heaven were temporal only. Such as health, long life, peace, plenty, and dominion, etc. Disease, premature death, war, famine, want, subjections, and captivity, etc. And in no one place in the Mosaic Institutes is there the least mention, or any intelligible hint, of the rewards and punishments of another life.'

"Milman, in his History of the Jews, testifies thus:--'The sanction on which the Hebrew Law was founded is extraordinary. The lawgiver maintains a profound silence on that fundamental article, if not of political, at least of religious legislation--rewards and punishments in another life. He substituted temporal chastisements and temporal blessings. On the violation of the constitution followed inevitably blighted harvests, famine, pestilence, defeat, captivity; on its maintenance, abundance, health, fruitfulness, victory, independence. How wonderfully the event verified the prediction of the inspired legislator! how invariably apostasy led to adversity--repentance and reformation to prosperity!'

"Jahn, the best of authority says:--'We have not authority, therefore, decidedly to say, that any other motives were held out to the ancient Hebrews to pursue good and avoid evil, than those which were derived from the rewards and punishments of this life.'

"This is the testimony of able and learned men who have made the Bible their life-study. Notwithstanding they believed in eternal woe, they candidly admit that it is not taught by the great Lawgiver, Moses, or the prophets."

"They do seem to think that doctrine is not taught in the Old Testament, and I admit their judgment is entitled to much respect. I will look into the subject."

I returned to Baltimore in December, 1836. Encountered a terrific storm on the Bay, which came near sending the vessel and all on board to the bottom. It raged during a bitter cold night, the wind was directly ahead, and most every wave swept the deck fore and aft. The owner was on board, the steersman was his negro slave, and he stood to his post like a man the whole of that boisterous and cold night. In the morning we anchored in a sheltered situation, and during the day reached Baltimore. Spent several weeks traveling and preaching in the vicinity of the city, and from thence went to Hagerstown, Md., which I made my home for six months. Samuel A. Davis had labored in the vicinity some time previous, as a missionary, but receiving little encouragement, had moved to Pittsburg, Pa. I preached in Hagerstown, Woodville, Frederick, Sharpsburg, and many other places, in many of which I was the first to proclaim our beautiful faith, and encountered all sorts of opposition. Our ministers who have always labored where our cause is well established, have no idea of the mean and contemptible opposition a laborer encounters in a new field, where hardly any one knows any thing of our faith or its history. At the close of a sermon I delivered in Frederick, a clergyman of the place, arose and poured forth the vials of his wrath. He said Universalism was the lowest grade of infidelity, that the blasphemies of Tom Paine were purity itself compared to it; and that Universalists were the scum of society, that the grog-shops, gambling dens, jails and penitentiaries were full of them. Hosea Ballou and Walter Balfour died drunkards, and they were the best men the sect ever had. The fellow overshot the mark, and disgusted the people with himself; and the mild remarks I made after he got through, turned the tide in my favor. Ever after, I had large congregations in Frederick.

"I do."

"Yes."

"I do, for the passage says so."

"I am not bound to answer that question."

"But you promised to answer my questions."

Several voices--"You must answer"--"You are getting into a tight place."

"Well, if I must answer it, I will say, Yes."

"One more question. Could you be happy in heaven if you should see all the dear ones you now love, roasting in hell? Will you answer?"

"To be candid, I do not see how I could be happy."

The next day my meeting was in a grove, for no house, that could be obtained, would hold half of the people who came out. My youth, the novelty of my faith, and the controversy, drew an immense concourse. The people listened with attention and respect, and the meeting was not disturbed by any opposition. I went to the village a stranger to all, but when I left, which was the next day, I had many friends.

I often preached in Harpers Ferry, and generally had large congregations. The town site, and its surroundings, are well known to be remarkably picturesque. The Shenandoah and Potomac, rapid streams, here unite, and roar and plunge through the chasm they have made through the Blue Ridge. The rocks on both sides are several hundred feet high, and nearly perpendicular. Thomas Jefferson said it was worth a voyage across the Atlantic to see this wonderful work of nature.

One evening, I accompanied a friend to a Methodist meeting; the congregation was large, and a "revival" was raging in its midst. The first speaker spoke well and sensibly, but his words fell on dull ears and cold hearts. The second speaker was a regular son of thunder, and he did thunder, and storm, and quake, and he made some of his hearers do the same. When he got through with his "exhortation," he kneeled and said, "Let us pray." He prayed, and half of the assembly prayed with him. He raised his voice, and they raised theirs; he screamed like a maniac, and they did the same; he jumped up and down, and they jumped up and down. I looked on with utter amazement, having never witnessed such a scene before. As soon as he had finished this part of the performance, he told all to rise to their feet, who wanted to go to heaven. I was the only one who did not stand up. "Rise to your feet," said he, "or you will be damned." I kept my seat, and though strongly tempted to rebuke him, I said nothing.

Near Charleston, Va., I attended, for the first time, a Methodist camp-meeting, and have not since been anxious to renew my acquaintance with such gatherings. It was held in a beautiful grove, and there were present some two thousand people, black and white. During the services, the whites were seated in front of the speaker's stand, and the negroes in its rear. The speakers would talk awhile to their white brethren, and then turn on their heels and give the black brethren a broadside, and the latter always responded to the condescension of the preachers with a hearty shout. The night was the hour of promise; then they were almost sure of being blessed with copious showers of "grace." Sunlight, it seems, is not favorable to its descent; it comes more plentifully with moonshine. The night I was on the ground, there were all sorts of manifestations of the "spirit." Some laughed, others cried, groaned, and threw themselves on the ground. I noticed one poor fellow trying to climb a tree, and I asked him where he was going. "To heaven," said he, and he kept scratching the tree with his finger and toe nails, for he was bare-footed. The preachers and the hearers generally, seemed to think all that hopping, jumping, shouting and screaming, was the work of God in converting the souls of the people. Every good thing can be abused, and thus become an evil. Religious excitement, when kept within due bounds, is productive of much good, but when it overleaps all bounds, and becomes temporary insanity, as it did on this occasion, it is prostituted to a very bad purpose. I spent a short time in the "preacher's tent" where the following conversation ensued:

"John Wesley was opposed to such excitement as you have here."

"You are mistaken," replied the Presiding Elder; "that man of God was in favor of it, for he knew it was the work of the spirit of God, and I warn you to flee from the wrath to come, before it shall be eternally too late."

"Do not get excited, my friend. Let us see what Wesley says about what you call the work of the Holy Spirit. In one of his volumes he speaks of the doings of Satan thus:--'Satan strives to push many of them to extravagance. This appears in several instances:

"'1. Frequently three or four, yea, ten or twelve, pray aloud together.

"'2. Some of them, perhaps, may scream altogether, as loud as they can.

"'3. Some of them use improper, yea, indecent expression in prayer.

"'Several drop down as dead, and are as stiff as a corpse; but in a while they start up and cry, "glory, glory!" perhaps twenty times together. Just so do the French prophets, and very lately the Jumpers in Wales, bringing the real work into contempt.

"'Scream no more at the peril of your soul. God now warns you by me. I never scream, I never strain myself; I dare not, I know it would be a sin against God and my own soul!

"'Some very unstill sisters, who always took care to stand near me, and tried who could cry loudest, since I have had them removed out of my sight, they have been as quiet as lambs. The first night I preached here, one half of my words were lost through the noise of their outcries; last night, before I began, I gave public notice that whosoever cried as to drown my voice, should, without man's hurting or judging them, be gently carried to the farthest corner of the room, but my porters had no employment the whole night.

"'There is a fervor which has passed for devotion, but it is not true, not scriptural devotion. It is loud shouting, horrid, unnatural screaming, repeating the same words twenty or thirty times, jumping two or three feet high, throwing about the arms and legs, both men and women, in a manner shocking not only to religion, but to common decency.

"'I dislike,

"'1. Speaking or praying of several at once.

"'2. Praying to the Son of God only, or more than to the Father.

"'3. The use of improper expressions in prayer.

"'4. The using poor, flat, bald hymns.

"'5. Those never kneeling in prayer.

"'6. Your using postures or gestures highly indecent.

"'7. Your screaming, so as to make the words unintelligible.

"'8. Your affirming people will be justified or sanctified just now.

"'9. The affirming they are where they are not.

"'10. The bidding them, "I believe."

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