LATTER-DAY REVIVALS by Jos. Clarke

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 9, 1876

LATTER-DAY REVIVALS.

By Jos. Clarke

Late modes of keeping up the numbers of professed Christians are so strikingly at variance with the spirit of the gospel and vital Christianity that the secular press are commenting upon the fact in the most decided terms.

The tone of revival preaching is so depressed by little and little (semitones) that the ear is pained by the discord, and even worldly men whose age and memory extend back two or three decades are disgusted and astonished at the facts.

The remarks below are clipped from the New York Sun of Dec. 15, 1875, and although there is a want of Christian dignity in the style, yet there is so much good sense and correct reasoning in the article, that it might well be reproduced in any Christian journal as another evidence of the literal fulfillment of Rev. 14:8.

“CHEAP JOHN RELIGION.

“Here’s your cheap religion!” cries Cheap John. It costs you nothing; it gives you no trouble; it amounts to nothing; nobody will ever find out you’ve got it; take it along with you. It’s so thin you can see through it; it is so soft you can’t feel of it; it’s so light you can fool with it. Going, going, gone—free, gratis, for nothing; and, when you think you’ve got it, see if you’ve got what you think.

“So cries Cheap John, as he goes to and fro, with his gospel wares in his hand, and a glib tongue in his mouth. Before him are the gaping multitudes, and behind him are his shipwrecked victims.”

“There is any quantity of this cheap, easy, and worthless religion in the world. It is the devil’s counterfeit. It is the bogus currency with which he defrauds countless dupes. He knows that men and women want some sort of religion, and that it is not possible to cheat them out of religion, unless he offers them something that looks like it. He therefore gets up all sorts of devices, and suits them to every taste, whether the taste be for gilded sham or solid humbug. He would doubtless be happy if he could upset all religion, and turn the whole human race into pirates, blasphemers, felons, and debauched monsters; but he has learned by experience that it is useless to attempt such a job; and so he takes on the airs of respectability, while he draws weak-minded people into his arms by the seductions of a cheap, easy, and false religion. He smiles to them, sings to them, and points them to Heaven, even while he is leading them in the way which goes to what Thomas Carlyle so emphatically calls the ‘other place.’ Thus he gets hold of tens of thousands who are not properly instructed as to the arts of counterfeiting, and the true nature of genuine religion.”

JOS. CLARKE.