The daily exchange. [volume] (Baltimore, Md.) 1858-1861, 1858-10-19
AN ENGLISH VIEW OF ENGLISH AND
AMERICAN PREACHERS

In a review of the autobiography of Peter Cart
wright, the backwoods preacher, the London Times
remarks follows the difference of preachers in
! England and America
America is the Promised Land of cccentricities:
! there they flourish and become strong; YOU search
| for them in vain within the sound of Bow bells The
modern Englishman has not the gift of wonder; be
| is astonished and touched by nothing. We are all
so much alike, one knows not lord from his tailor;
! and ont of livery "Jeames' sometimes looks pro
/ perer than his master. Every and then a
man is born who claims to think, and act, and speak
| for himself, but society yells him down, and
/ he Vanishcs; or if he be worth his money society
| buys him up, and makes of him a useful official
/ a mighty red -tapiSt, judge, or a bishop. Who
shall say that society is wrong? Society asks uni
formity. Where religion is concerned-where the
interests not of time, but of eternity, involved
| where the message processes to be not human but
divine, we have right to expect freer spirit and
! a language less shackledby common modes of utter
/ ance and of thought Is it so?
On any Sunday you like enter average metro
/ pOlitan church-how demure is the preacher, how
! faultesS the discourse, with what good taste are
the devotional parts of the service performed, with
what exquisite pathos do father and son-mother
! and mad-confcss themselves to be miserable sin
| ners Alas all is here but the thing which
| can make a simple man eloquent-the inspiration
| which made the Hebrew fishermen and tentmakers
| more than match for the rhetorick and philoso-
! ply of Greece and Rome. Look at the popular
parson the idol of the women. the envy of the men;
can that scented, curled, palefaced, white-handed,
Clemnate man-milliner arrest the sinner, the
agony of the wounded conscience, sound the depths
! OF the human heart? "Canst thou draw out levia-
/ than with hook ?" With a penny whistle can
YOU wake the echoes of the universe? In the Amer
lean backwOods, at any rate we shall find sturder
figures. Manly physical power at least; the preach
er in that district must have In his way he is a
Of thunder. He may lack much grace and
cutus, but he is in earnest He prays till he sweas
! he breaches till he is hoarse. To compete with
| him a man must have the bodily strength of an OK
or prize fighter. Multitudes come out in the des
ert to him, and hundreds own his power; they yell,
| they scream, they fall on the ground, they tear
their hair and their garments. They sit in sack
cloth and ashes and are saved, as they tell us, from
the wrath to come.
Uncultivated human nature always gets CONVEX
! ted in this violent way. 1t was so with our Wes-
ley and Whitfield. 1t was in the days OF the
commonwealth, when the saints welded the sword
| of the Lord and Gideon. 1t so, we believe,
when the Meso-Gothc version of the Bible by
! JlphllaS was composed. with the omission of the
Jewish wars lest its warlike readers should find
fresh sanction for their cruelties. And in
| day, amongst the Ranters and Primitive Methodists
something of the same sort exists. We may laugh
at and despse it, but the fact is reality. Inward
! terror and alarm operate on the body. Where men
are not taught restraint-where they have room to
! turn, as it were-where mans feelings does
not interfere with another-where there is no Eng
! lish dread of q sccne-we may expect preaching to
! produce an effect outwardy which you may in vain
look for here. Add to this that the audiences thus
collected rare; that preaching is event, not
! an everyday Occurrences; that whist among our
selves the excitement of the drama, of literature, of
music, and Of oratory, rivals that OF the pulpit
| there the preacher stands alone.
Very rough and ready is our Backwoods Preach
! or, with very little faith in human learning, and
! with great confidence in a loud voice and a strong
! hand. We admire his zeal, his traight-forward-
ness, his common sense. There is nonsense with
him. If he cannot vanquish the sinner with words
| he has no objection to quieting him with blow
With irascble females he has a very summary mode
of taking them by the shoulders and bundling them
out of course he is very sectarian and looks upon
a man who leaves the Methodist church as little
4 better than one of the wicked.
| INTERESTING FROM MExICo.-I Information has been
| received at Washington, that General Casanova
| commanding the forces at Guadaaxara, had been
defeated in the vicinity of that city by Degollado.
Casanova lost out of one thousand men, eight humid
! red in killed, wounded and disbanded, besides his
| artillery and ammunition. Blanche and ROcha
! Generals under Degolado, had taken the cities of
| Leon, Celaya, Salamanca, and some towns near
! GuanaxuatO. Cuiacan the capitol of the State Of
! Sinaoa, had pronounced in favor of the conStitu
tionasts, and Coronado, chief of the constitutional
| forces there, was marching on MaZatlan. Three
companies of Echeagaray's forces, at .alapa, had
gone over to the consttutionalists, who were post
! ed, under Llave, five leagues from that city Three
! other companies to follow this example next
| day. There is general movement, from the cir
cumterence to the CENTRE to the City of Mexico and
Puebla, on the part of the constitutionast forces
and it is believed Zuloaga fall is imminent. Garzas
conduct in making the forced loan foreigners is
disapprOyed of by the liberal leaders.
correspondent of the New York Tribune, wri-
! ting from the Connecticut State Agricultural Ex-
| change, says:
The desideratum so long wished for by New
| England farmers has been achieved, and a compact
strong, light easy-working one-horse mower has
been contrived by "Knox, the machinist" of Nourse
| Mason & Co., of Worcester. The one exhibited
here appears to be all that could be desired and it
weighs only ~ cwt., and will cost the farmer only
| SIS for enc cutting swarth 80 feet wide. 1t is
certified to by some of the best men of Massachu-
| sets, who have it work, as doing what it
promised without fault.
new principle has been established in the work
ing of this machine; that is, in giving the knives
much shorter motion, by shortening the crank, so
that it will not clog in fine or tangled grass and it
can be started without backing away from the
grass to be cut to leave the knives free at the
start
Boston correspondent of the New York Tri
buRe says:
| Prof Joel Parker of Cambridge received twen.
| ty-fIve or thirty votes in the Convention which
dominated Mr.. Burlingame. The Professor showed
taste or talent for politics in 1856, and as he
about to resign his professorship, it is not unlikely
That he means to enter political life He is alread'
talked OF for the State Senate, where he would b.
useful next winter in explaining the Revised Code
| OF which he has been one of the trainers, an
which will come before the Legislature of 1858 70
| adoption.