ciency do, by truths calculated to call forth holy affections and purposes, but by any truths or facts, (or falsehoods, so far as I can see,) that will induce them to resolve? For the resolution which causes the goodness is not good; for then a thing would be the cause of itself: and yet the resolution, however induced, can, when formed, change the heart. If I believed that a resolution persisted in for a little season, was the almighty sanctifier, though itself unholy, I see not how I could avoid going out of the ordinary way to ransack the world for all sorts of means, good, bad, and indifferent, that could by any chance work upon the human constitution and set in motion the self-determining power. At least I should fearlessly address the selfish passions, for in them I should expect to find my most powerful auxiliaries: and any thing to make the man resolve, and hold him to his resolution. No matter how wicked that resolution is: it cannot be holy, for it is only the cause of holiness: it must be supremely selfish, for the heart is not yet transferred to God: it must be full of enmity against God, for it is not subject to his law. But no matter what it is, or by what impure motives it is raised: if I believed the doctrine, I see not how I could avoid searching the world for motives of every description that could work upon the human frame, and that could induce a bad man to form an unholy resolution to change the affections of his heart. Thus we have found three distinct reasons which may be supposed to stimulate the advocates of these doctrines to inundate the world with motives of all possible sorts and forms, and to besiege sinners, (as fully competent to convert themselves,) with the most vehement and unyielding importunity to consent to fall in with the motives and to resolve to give their hearts to God. Under the urgency of these reasons most preachers, instead of limiting themselves to the direct pressure of divine truth upon the conscience, will be carried away into humanly invented means, to multiply motives not known to divine truth: motives, for instance, growing out of a public call to take the anxious seats," out of a call to rise up to request public prayers, out of public meetings, or prayers with individuals, continued till a late hour of the night, out of protracted meetings too often repeated or too long continued, out of hasty admissions to the church, out of new and strange forms of speech and of prayer, out of public prayers for neighbourhoods and individuals expressly named as wicked above others, and in some instances, out of actual disorders of various kinds. Motives of these sorts, except so far as they incidentally aid in conveying truth to the mind, are not addressed to reason, but to imagination, to the selfish and animal passions, and are fitted only to promote unseemly extravagancies and fatal delusions. The imagination and animal feelings were doubtless implanted in our nature to subserve the purposes of religion, as well as to promote the union and happiness of society but when they assume dominion, they distort religion into the wild workings of unsanctified nature, which fatally delude the subjects, and drive many others into doubt if not into infidelity. In pumerous instances, where the delusion is fed by the sacred elements, it may last till death; in many others it dissolves, after a few months, into a spirit more wicked than the first, and perhaps into judicial blindness which seals their doom. I have seen, since these new operations began, instances of delusion enough to break the heart, and have had solemn fears that the Spirit of God may be grieved from our churches. There is immense danger in making onsets upon the passions with but sparsely scattered rays of divine truth. This danger would be revealed to all by a close study of the human constitution. Would to God that this study and this view of danger may become universal. Under the most judicious conduct of revivals, and with the most cautious modes of address, there is always danger that the supposed subjects will mistake natural feelings for spiritual affections. This is the grand besetting danger to a race whose "heart is deceit. ful above all things." The remedy is, the clearest possible exhibition of divine truth, with no other excitement of passion than naturally follows from the unmixed truths of the Gospel offered in their most affecting attitudes and relations. But where little truth is presented and much done by other means to move the passions, the danger of fatal delusions is incalculably increased. And if by these measures you introduce an unsanctified soul into the church, you almost ensure its eternal destruction. How few, how very few, give evidence of being converted after they join the church, though multitudes in the church give evidence of being without religion. The evils of this course are infinite. Your example may excite a thousand others to do the same, and they a million; until the evil is cured by the boundless disasters thrown upon the eyes of all men. To pursue a course so calculated to delude immortal beings and to bring contempt on the religion of Christ, involves a more widely extended injury and a more awful responsibility than any other. God forbid that I should speak against earnestness of address. Let the truths of heaven, in their own unmixed glory and pungency, be urged upon the conscience as though your own life was at stake, and with all the pleadings of a bended knee: but while you feel your absolute dependance on God, you will deliver your message, not with the violence of one storming a castle, but with all the humble and corrected earnestness of a servant who deeply feels the truths he delivers, whose heart is dissolved in love for dying men and the glory of God, but who realizes that he is as incompetent to raise the dead as Ezekiel was over the valley of the slain. That prophet went forth to preach exactly the preaching which God bid him. He delivered his message without the change of a word; without any discouragement from the deadness and exceeding dryness of the bones; with his eyes fixed on the heavens and his hope in God alone. And when he had finished, at the bidding of God he silently retired to prophesy to the wind, or as it would be expressed in Gospel language, to pray for the Spirit. All was ineffable desire, conscious nothingness, absolute dependance, and agonizing prayer. I knew a man once, who, in a very large and crowded school house, when the whole assembly were dissolved by the sudden descent of the Holy Spirit, and he himself, under an overpowering sense of Gospel truth, felt as if he had always been an infidel before, seldom raised his voice the whole evening above the ordinary tone in a private room. on the audience was a crushing impression of truth withThe effect up. out passion. When the meeting was dismissed the whole assembly stood. After a while the preacher arose and uttered a few words and sat down. The assembly still remained immoveable. They were then desired to retire. Not a person left the house. The preacher, after sitting some time, began to speak in a low voice to two or three near him. Instantly the distant members ascended the seats. When the meeting broke up many followed him home. A large portion of the assembly from that evening became anxious inquirers, and in the end hopeful converts. And yet during the evening every thing was as still as a funeral. The converts of that day were weighed down with a deep sense of eternal truth, and were strongly marked with humility and self-distrust; differing in these respects, I fear, from the mass who are brought forward under present measures. They were more disposed to hide themselves in a secret corner, than to make their voice to be heard on high; to retire for prayer and self-examination, than to lead in the first public meeting; to acquire the rudiments of Christian knowledge, than to turn public teachers at once. These new measures, among their other tendencies, serve to discourage the friends of the old revivals from going forward, lest they should excite action which they disapprove and dread. In some circumstances it requires a strong desire, with some distinct encouragement that God is present, to rise above this tremendous apprehension. How far our brethren who have not gone into the doctrines, will feel warranted to hold back from the bolder measures for the sake of united action, is for them to determine. I would give up no man for mere measures. But when the doctrines and the stronger measures are united, they place men within the pale of another denomination, and leave the same space between us and them as intervenes between Presbyterians and Methodists. I am, My Dear Sir, truly and affectionately yours. E. D. GRIFFIN. |