Religious Declension of these Days.
THE FACT ACKNOWLEDGED AND DEPLORED.
We promised last week to give the testimony of some who have borne witness to the fact that the churches of the present day are becoming sadly degenerate in religious things. We file these testimonies in evidence that the message of Rev. 14:8, is fulfilled in our day. We quote them in no spirit of banter. It is a subject to neither side of which a feeling of animosity is befitting. If the statements are not true, they can easily be nullified by an array of opposing facts. If they are true, the matter will rather be aggravated than helped by a refusal to look at the facts, or an attempt to deny or repel the charges. In either case, the statements, coming as they do from religious teachers and religious papers of acknowledged position and influence, demand thoughtful consideration at the hands of every one who has the cause of true religion at heart. It is well known that when the message announcing the hour of God's Judgment come, had been generally rejected by the churches,85this fact was everywhere held forth by those engaged in the message, as an evidence of the fallen condition of those bodies. On this point we present the following testimony from Eld. J. V. Himes, dated McConnellsville, O., Aug. 27, 1844, and published in the Advent Herald shortly after that date:— “When we commenced the work of giving the ‘midnight cry’ with Bro. Miller in 1840, he had been lecturing nine years. During that time, he stood almost alone. But his labors had been incessant and effectual in awakening professors of religion to the true hope of God’s people, and the necessary preparation for the advent of the Lord; as also the awakening of all classes of the unconverted to a sense of their lost condition, and the duty of immediate repentance and conversion to God, as a preparation to meet the Bridegroom in peace at his coming. These were the great objects of his labor. He made no attempt to convert men to a sect or party in religion. Hence he labored among all parties and sects, without interfering with their organization or discipline: believing that the members of the different communities could retain their standing, and at the same time prepare for the advent of their King, and labor for the salvation of men in these relations until the consummation of their hope. “When we were persuaded of the truth of the advent at hand, and embraced the doctrine publicly, we entertained the same views and pursued the same course among the different sects, where we were called in the providence of God to labor. We told the ministers and churches that it was no part of our business to break them up, or to divide and distract them. We had one distinct object, and that was to give the ‘cry,’ the warning of the ‘Judgment at the door,’ and to persuade our fellow-men to get ready for the event. Most of the ministers and churches that opened their doors to us, and our brethren who were proclaiming the advent doctrine, co-operated with us till the last year. The ministry and membership, who availed themselves of our labors, but had not sincerely embraced the doctrine, saw that they must either go with the doctrine, and preach and maintain it, or in the crisis which was right upon them, they would have difficulty with the decided and determined believers. They therefore decided against the doctrine, and determined, some by one policy, and some by another, to suppress the subject. “This placed our brethren and sisters among them in a most trying position. Most of them loved their churches, and could not think of leaving. But when they were ridiculed, oppressed, and in various ways cut off from their former privileges and enjoyments, and when the ‘meat in due season’ was withheld from them, and the siren song of ‘peace and safety’ was resounded in their ears from Sabbath to Sabbath, they were soon weaned from their party predilections, and arose in the majesty of their strength, shook off the yoke, and raised the cry, ‘Come out of her, my people.’” “This state of things placed us in a trying position. 1. Because we were near the end of our prophetic time, in which we expected the Lord would gather all his people in one. 2. We had always preached a different doctrine, and now that the circumstances had changed, it would be regarded as dishonest in us, if we should unite in the cry of separation and breaking up of churches that had received us and our message. We therefore hesitated, and continued to act on our first position until the church and ministry carried the matter so far that we were obliged, in the fear of God, to take a position in defense of the truth and the down-trodden children of God.” It is also a well-known fact that the churches about the same time, in 1844, acknowledged in mournful strains the great religious declension that had come over them. The Christian Palladium, of May 15, 1844, spoke on this point as follows:— “In every direction we hear the dolorous sound, wafting upon every breeze of heaven, chilling as the blasts from the icebergs of the north—settling like an incubus on the breasts of the timid, and drinking up the energies of the weak; that lukewarmness, division, anarchy, and desolation, are distressing the borders of Zion.” The Religious Telescope, in the same year, made use of the following language:— “We have never witnessed such a general declension of religion as at the present. Truly the church should awake and search into the cause of this affliction; for an affliction every one that loves Zion must view it. When we call to mind how ‘few and far between’ cases of true conversion are, and the almost unparalleled impenitence and hardness of sinners, we almost involuntarily exclaim, ‘Has God forgotten to be gracious? or is the door of mercy closed?’” About that time seasons of fasting and prayer were appointed through many of the religious papers, and very generally observed. Even the Philadelphia Sun, of Nov. 11, 1844, contained the following:— “The undersigned ministers and members of various denominations in Philadelphia and vicinity solemnly believing that the present signs of the times—the spiritual dearth in our churches generally, and the extreme evils in the world around us—seem to call loudly on all Christians for a special season of prayer, do therefore hereby agree by divine permission to unite in a week of special prayer to Almighty God, for the outpouring of his Holy Spirit on our city, our country, and the world.” Prof. Finney, of Oberlin, O., editor, in 1844, of the Oberlin Evangelist, in February of that year, said:— “We have had the fact before our minds, that in general, the Protestant churches of our country, as such, were either apathetic or hostile to nearly all the moral reforms of the age. There are partial exceptions, yet not enough to render the fact otherwise than general. We have also another corroborated fact: the almost universal absence of revival influence in the churches. The spiritual apathy is almost all-pervading, and is fearfully deep; so the religious press of the whole land testifies. Very extensively church members are becoming devotees of fashion—joining hands with the ungodly in parties of pleasure, in dancing, in festivities, &c. But we need not expand this painful subject. Suffice it that the evidence thickens and rolls heavily upon us to show that the churches generally are becoming sadly degenerate. They have gone very far from the Lord, and he has withdrawn himself from them.” It may be said that our views of the moral fall or spiritual declension of the churches are shown to be incorrect by the great revivals that occurred in 1858. Several things are here to be taken into consideration. Wherever and whenever the fruits of a genuine work of grace can be presented, we will rejoice in them. But the Bible speaks of a form of godliness without the power; and so there may perhaps be that which appears from outward indications to be a real revival work, which after all lacks solidity and heart. Time in these cases must test the matter; and the genuineness of the work can be shown only by the nature and permanency of its fruits. In reference to the revivals of 1858, we will let the leading Congregational and Baptist papers of Boston, Mass., speak. The Congregationalist, of Nov. 19, 1858, said:— “The revival piety of our churches is not such that one can confidently infer, from its mere existence, its legitimate, practical fruits. It ought, for example, to be as certain, after such a shower of grace, that the treasuries of our benevolent societies would be filled, as it is after a plentiful rain, that the streams will swell in their channels. But the managers of our societies are bewailing the feebleness of the sympathy and aid of the churches. “There is another and sadder illustration of the same general truth. The Watchman and Reflector recently stated that there had never been among the Baptists so lamentable a spread of church dissensions as prevails at present. And the sad fact is mentioned that this sin infects the very churches which shared most largely in the late revival. And the still more melancholy fact is added, that these alienations date back their origin, in most cases, to the very midst of that scene of awakening. Even a glance at the weekly journals of our own denomination will evince that the evil is by no means confined to the Baptists. Our own columns have, perhaps, never borne so humiliating a record of contentions and ecclesiastical litigations as during the last few months.” A Presbyterian pastor, in Belfast, Ireland, wrote in 1858 respecting the revivals that took place in this country in that year. His language was published in the N. Y. Independent, in December, 1859, as follows:— “The determination to crush all ministers who say a word against their national sin [slavery], the determination to suffocate and suppress the plain teachings of Scripture, can be persisted in and carried out at the very time these New York Christians are expecting the religious world to hail their revivals. Until the wretchedly-degraded churches of America do the work of God in their own land, they have no spiritual vitality to communicate to others; their revivals are in the religious world what their flaunted cries of liberty intermingled with the groans of the slaves, are in the political.” The General Assembly of the Presbyterian church of Ireland held its session in Belfast, at the time of the great Irish revival of 1859. The Belfast News-Letter, dated Sept. 30, of that year, spoke of the doings of that Assembly as follows:— “Here in this venerable body of ministers and elders, we find two ministers openly giving each other the lie, and the whole General Assembly turned into a scene of confusion bordering upon a riot.” These facts need no comment. A revival that did not fill up the languishing coffers of the church, a revival that allowed, and in some instances created and fostered, widespread church dissensions, contentions, and litigations, a revival that would not allow of prayers for the enslaved, and a revival that was not deep and earnest enough to save a General Assembly of divines from “a scene of confusion bordering upon riot,” certainly was not of a kind which would fit a person to stand in the rude conflict which the Christian has to meet in this life, with the world, the flesh, and the devil, nor such as would abide the test of the coming Judgment.