Changes in Forty Years.
By W. W. Crane
[BRO. WHITE: The following article with the above heading is clipped from the American Wesleyan. It shows that some have an eye to the way the Christian world is drifting. Oh, that many might see the sinking condition of popular religion, and get on board the life boat, before the ship goes down.* How can any hope for the conversion of the world! and if they should be converted to the fallen standard of modern, self-styled Christianity, what would be the advantage? THE love-feast was spiritual. Devout men and women arose in rapid succession and spoke earnestly of faith and love. For a short time with my eyes shut I was back in my fancy forty-one years, in a love feast in the old Meeting House, at Victor, N. Y., with Goodwin Stoddard presiding. Cyrus Story and Andrew Prindle sat by him, with grave looks, in homespun of brown and gray. Their white hats, with low crowns and broadbrims were on the altar table, where father Calkins sat with his long raven locks covering his shoulders, and there arose and spake as a patriarch. As I looked over the assembly, all bonnets were alike in form and color; how plain and simple, and yet beautiful; so natural and useful; nothing about them gay, and nothing needless. How clear and earnest the singing, mingled with shouting and weeping. Opening my eyes dispels the vision. I find myself not in Victor, N. Y., in 1823, but in Jackson, Michigan, in 1864. Father Stoddard, Story, Prindle and Calkins are all dead, and that humble, holy, and devout assembly have passed away. With them all peculiarities of dress have passed99away, and I can distinguish no one as a Methodist by hat or bonnet, by coat or shawl; and as all distinction has ceased, the door stands open, and all go in alike. I however hear nearly the same expressions of faith, zeal, and love, as I heard forty years ago. Now the Presiding Elder gives his text. I am all attention, for he is a very eloquent man. The pastor has just prayed that the sermon might come direct from the mouth of God, and from my heart I said amen; but what was my disappointment, to find that it was not even to come direct from the mouth of man, as every word lay written on the desk. The theme was "The witness of the Spirit," and my soul panted for the outgushing of the speaker's soul, from holy union with the Lord. Instead of that, he read a sermon, good as Wesley's, but no better; and I felt that I might as well be at home with a volume of Wesley in my hand. The sermon was able, and the reading perfect, yet on every side through the large assembly, dullness became apparent; several fell asleep and others seemed absorbed in thoughts of anything but the Witness of the Spirit; and I felt to exclaim, Reading sermons will never convert the world.—W. W. Crane.