Religion and Emotionalism
By L. A. S.
CHRISTIANITY is not emotionalism. The true religion is not disconnected from feeling, indeed, but feeling plays a wholly minor and subordinate part in Christian experience. The essential thing in Christianity is not feeling, but faith. The true Christian will show faith always; he may or may not show feeling. Feeling is not always under the control of the will. Faith holds the soul to the right in the hour when feeling would drive it into darkness and despair. The devil is not opposed to a religion of feeling; he is strongly opposed to a religion of faith. Counterfeits of the true religion are based upon something else than faith, and often emotionalism is the foremost thing displayed. A description in Leslie's Weekly of a recent “holiness” camp-meeting in the West, says:— The wildest frenzy was rampant in the camp at all times. Shrieks born of religious enthusiasm, mingled with peals of laughter and appeals for mercy, were uttered by the workers as they sought purity by their strange and uncanny actions. . . . Women and children jumped from their seats, and with arms outstretched or waving wildly in the air, glided down the aisles to the center of the building, where they knelt in supplication, crying, shouting, and waving their bodies backward and forward while they sought satisfaction from on high. . . . Around the prostrate forms other worshippers gathered, and lent assistance by shouting. If such actions were a manifestation of the influence of the Spirit of God, heaven would be a vast pandemonium. “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father,” says the apostle James, “is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.” Charity, says Paul, “doth not behave itself unseemly;” and the same apostle exhorts: “Let all things be done decently and in order.” A religion that is known chiefly for its emotionalism is under suspicion. The religion of Christ was to go about doing good, healing the sick and teaching the people, speaking to them the words of eternal life. We can not do better to-day than to imitate the example of Christ.