for outward display, and wholesale action is employed to discharge within a month the claims of a year. It is not asserted that a minister must be destitute of the qualifications that are required to make a regularly faithful and efficient pastor in order that he may be fitted to make himself conspicuous in this way; but most assuredly such may be the case. A man may be mighty in the use of new measures, preaching every day if need be for three weeks to crowded congregations, excited all the time; he may have the anxious bench filled at the close of each service and the whole house thrown into disorder; he may have groaning, shouting, clapping, screaming, a very bedlam of passion, all around the altar; and as the result of all, he may be able to report a hundred converts or more, translated by the process, according to his own account, from darkness into God’s marvelous light. He may be able to act the same part in similar scenes, at different places, in the course of a winter; and, for the time being, his name may be familiar to the lips of men as a revivalist, whose citizenship might be supposed to hold in the third heavens. All this may be where to an attentive observer it shall soon be painfully evident, at the same time that the true and proper strength of a man of God is wholly wanting. A man may so distinguish himself and yet have no power to study, think or teach. He may be crude, chaotic, without cultivation or discipline. He may be too lazy to read or write. There may be no power whatever in his ordinary walk or conversation to enforce the claims of religion. Meet him in common secular connections, and you will find him in a great measure unfelt in the stream of worldliness with which he is surrounded. Often he is covetous, often vain; often without a particle of humility or meekness. His zeal, too, seems to exhaust itself in each spasmodic “awakening” through which it is called to pass. The man who appeared to be all on fire for the salvation of souls, and ready to storm even the common proprieties of life for the sake of the gospel, shows himself now marvelously apathetic towards the whole interest. He has no heart to seize common opportunities, in the house or by the way, to say a word in favor of religion. It is well indeed if he be not found relaxing altogether his ministerial activity, both in the pulpit and from house to house. The truth is, he has no capacity, no inward sufficiency, for the ordinary processes of evangelical labor. Much is required to be a faithful minister of the New Testament, whilst small resources in comparison are needed for that semblance of power to which a man may attain by the successful use of the system now in view.
Here, then, is a strong temptation presented to ministers. They are in danger of being seduced by the appeals which this system makes to their selfishness and sloth. It offers to their view a “short method of doing God’s great work,” and a sort of “royal road,” at the same time, to ministerial reputation. How easy, in these circumstances, for even a good man to have his judgment warped and his practice disturbed. And how natural that weakness, under every form, should rejoice to take refuge in the shelter thus brought within its reach.
It should be considered a calamity in any community, or in any religious denomination, to have this system in fashionable and popular use. Let the idea prevail that those who employ new measures in the gospel work are the friends pre-eminently of serious heart religion, and of all evangelical interests; whilst such as frown upon them are to be regarded with suspicion, as at best but half awake in the service of Christ. Let it be counted enough to authenticate the power of a pastor’s ministrations that he shall be able to furnish, from winter to winter, a flaming report of some three weeks’ awakening in his charge, in the course of which scores of sinners have been drawn to the anxious bench, and immediately afterwards hurried to the Lord’s table. Let some religious paper, known as the organ of the Church, herald these reports, from week to week, without inquiry or discrimination, as “revival intelligence,” proclaiming them worthy of all confidence, and glorifying both the measures and the men concerned in the triumphs they record. Let those who are counted “pillars in the church” give their sanction to the same judgment, openly honoring the new system, or quietly conniving at what they may not entirely approve, so as by their very cautions and exceptions to forward the whole interest in fact. Let the sentiment be industriously cherished that with this interest is identified in truth the cause of revivals itself, and that lukewarmness, and dead orthodoxy, and indifference, if not absolute hostility, towards prayer-meetings, missionary efforts, and all good things, characterize as a matter of course all who refuse to do it homage. Let this state of things hold with respect to the subject, and it needs no great discernment to see that it is likely to work disastrously upon the character and fortunes of the Church so circumstanced. The attention of ministers will be turned away from more important, but less ostentatious methods of promoting religion. Preaching will become shallow. The catechism may be possibly still treated with professed respect, but practically it will be shorn of its honor and force. Education may be considered to some extent necessary for the work of the ministry, but in fact no great care will be felt to have it either thorough or complete. Ignorance, sciolism, and quackery will lift up the head on all sides and show themselves off as the “great power of God.” Novices will abound, “puffed up with pride,” each wiser in his own conceit than seven men that can render a reason. Young men, candidates for the sacred office, will be encouraged to try their hand at the new system before they have well commenced their studies, and finding that they have power to make themselves felt in this way, will yield their unfledged judgment captive to its charms, so as to make no account afterwards of any higher form of strength. Study and the retired cultivation of personal holiness will seem to their zeal an irksome restraint; and making their lazy, heartless course of preparation as short as possible, they will go out with the reputation of educated ministers, blind leaders of the blind, to bring the ministry into contempt, and fall themselves into the condemnation of the devil. Whatever arrangements may exist in favor of a sound and solid system of religion, their operation will be to a great extent frustrated and defeated by the predominant influence of a sentiment, practically adverse to the very object they are designed to reach.
Thus will the ministry be put, more or less, out of joint by the force of the wrong judgment involved in the system of New Measures, where it has come to be fashionable and popular. The Church must suffer corresponding harm, of course, in all her interests. The old landmarks grow dim. Latitudinarian views gain ground. Fanatical tendencies gather strength. The ecclesiastical body is swelled with heterogeneous elements loosely brought together and actuated by no common life, except sectarian bigotry may be entitled to such name. False views of religion abound. Conversion is everything, sanctification nothing. Religion is not regarded as the life of God in the soul that must be cultivated in order that it may grow, but rather as a transient excitement to be renewed from time to time by suitable stimulants presented to the imagination. A taste for noise and rant supersedes all desire for solid knowledge. The susceptibility of the people for religious instruction is lost on the one side, along with the capacity of the ministry to impart religious instruction on the other. The details of Christian duty are but little understood or regarded. Apart from its seasons of excitement, no particular church is expected to have much power. Family piety and the religious training of the young are apt to be neglected.
It is a calamity, then, in the general view of the case now taken, for a community to be drawn into the vortex of this system as a reigning fashion. The occasional use of it might be comparatively safe, in some hands, perhaps, without harm altogether. But let it be in credit and reputation for a short time on a given field, and its action will be found to be just as mischievous as has now been described. It will prove the refuge of weakness and the resort of quacks. It will be a “wide and effectual door” to let in fanaticism and error. It will be as a worm at the root of the ministry, silently consuming its strength; and as a mildew on the face of congregations and churches, beneath whose blighting presence no fruit can be brought to perfection.
135. It has been found convenient with some, it would seem, to misunderstand what is said of spiritual weakness and spiritual strength in this part of the tract. They affect to take it as having respect to intellect, learning, eloquence, &c.; as though it implied that men of ordinary or small abilities are entitled to no respect in the Church; and so we are referred to Paul’s “Not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty,” &c. 1 Cor i. 26–28, as a scriptural rebuke upon every such judgment. Thus also the editor of the Lutheran Observer, Jan. 5, 1844, lugs in by the neck a passage to the same purpose by President
