CLERICAL GYMNASTICS

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 27, 1881

CLERICAL GYMNASTICS.

REV. (?) MR. HARRISON, the "Boy preacher," is at present, "showing off" in San Francisco. His actions are reported as those of a clown or an escaped lunatic. In no sense of the word is he a preacher. Incoherent sentences, frantic contortions, and wild shouts, with which he works on the nerves of the excitable, are his stock in trade. Prof. Swing, in the Chicago Alliance, thus explains why at twenty-seven years of age he is still called the "Boy preacher:"—

"It is probable that he (Harrison) gained his title from the fact, that having been once a 'boy' he fossilized in that condition and did not, like the common run of urchins, pass on to manhood. Like certain juices of grapes or apples, he was arrested in the boyish state of fermentation, and bottled for use in future years. . . . He has that playfulness of style, and that peculiarity of speech and logic, and that free and easy relation with the great personages of the Bible, that indicate the influence of some seven or eight summers in the world. . . . All the facts, so far as known, justify the appellation, 'Boy Preacher,' and the same facts justify the hope that he is in the last of the series."

No one expects any good to come from his gymnastic performances; and it is certain that the cause of religion cannot be injured by anything so ridiculous. Sensible people know too much to call it religion, and those who are carried away by his frenzy, are beyond the possibility of injury.