Manifestation of Fanaticism.
By R. F. Cottrell
The manifestations of the Spirit of God are always graceful and becoming in the eyes of intelligent beings. The Holy Spirit does not throw its subject or medium into indecent and repulsive postures of body and contortions of countenance. It may prostrate a person, taking away his strength; but it will not tumble him about the floor from point to point, cause him to crawl under benches and stand upon his head, as has been witnessed in our days among those who profess to be under the immediate influence and control of the Spirit of God. It seems that some in our time, professing dissatisfaction with the want, in the popular nominal churches, of the power of godliness, have undertaken to supply the deficiency; and have accordingly invoked and obtained the aid of a spirit or spirits, which have led them into all the extravagances above hinted, and much more of the same kind. I was informed by an eye-witness concerning a certain camp-meeting held in Western New York, a few years since, at which men and women pretended to baptize themselves by going into a pool of muddy water, where a large tree had been turned out by the roots, and after paddling in it awhile like ducks, began to take up the filthy water in their hands and lap it, in imitation of Gideon's little army of old, and insisted that some present, who did not see it their duty, should come down to it and lap water, pleading with, and weeping over them, for fear they would be lost in case they persisted in their refusal. I have recently seen some friends upon whose testimony I can rely, who told me of another camp-meeting which they had visited the last summer. A minister attempted to open a season of service with prayer. After praying a short time, he began to be in ecstasy, and to give vent to his feelings in loud laughing. A brother minister caught the contagion, and continued to laugh vociferously till his strength was exhausted and he fell. The brotherhood and the bystanders took up the laughing chorus till the woods rang again, and no stranger could distinguish among the laughers (189who could help laughing?) who were the believers and who the scoffers; for all seemed to vie with each other, who should laugh, and shout, Amen, the loudest I state these facts only as proofs that the spiritual exercises of those in our days who profess to be reformers—those who are restoring the days of the manifestation of the Spirit of God, and the life and power of godliness—are not from the Spirit of God, but from the vile spirit of fanaticism; and that it is a device of the great adversary of God and man, to cast reproach upon the true manifestation of the Holy Spirit. Thus while a greater portion of the professed church are dead in cold formality, another portion, aiming ostensibly at reformation, are being led captive by the Devil at his will. What a deplorable state of things! Still there are honest souls, scattered among different organizations, who are dissatisfied both with the formal and with the fanatical, and who are being prepared of God to receive and obey the present message of truth—a message which will complete the work of reformation, begun in the days of our forefathers, and prepare a people for translation at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. His coming, and that alone, will put an end to the working of the multitude of evil spirits that are rapping, tipping, writing, muttering, laughing and shouting, to the ruin of so many souls in these degenerate days. May the time soon come.