The Jackson standard. [volume] (Jackson C.H., Ohio) 1847-1888, 1879-07-31
IN. Y. Tribune.I
Camp Meetings.

i
! Camp Meetings have become in this
country marked feature Of the year.
On last Tuesday the annual season
opened with the organization of a
camp at Chester Heights, Penn. An
other began yesterday at Sewickley, in
the same State. A Temperance Woods
| Meeting opens next Tuesday at Island
Heights, n. J. Then follow the huge
lake and seaside convocations, at two
or three of which from 5000 to $1,000
people can be seen worshiping at
once on the beach. During the next
three weeks twenty-nine of these great
out-Of-doors conventions, held either
for temperance, Sunday-school or
strictly devotional purposes, will be in
progress in this State, Pennsylvania
and New Jersey. In the South the
Camp Meeting is again becoming pop
ular. Before the war each Southern
State had one or two lonely districts
set apart for these yearly meetings,
with some permanent buildings. There
the orthodox, church-going planters
and their wives met to listen devoutly
to sermons, and talk over their crops
or stud horses, while their negroes
cooked and their daughters slyly at
tended to love-making, and their sons
to cards and whisky under the shadow
of the trees. In isolated communities
the yearly camp meeting and the races
were really the only chances for match
making or social display, and with the
middle classes became sort OF Sara
toga, for which dresses and equipages
were prepared weeks beforehand. Even
in the Middle States camp meetings is
now quite as much social as relig-
ious event.
If Whitefeld, who hundred and
fifty years ago began this preaching in
the open air, could see the wholesale
preparations going on to-day, of meats
and jams by the housewives, and of
fnery by their daughters, how would
he cry out for the declension of his
people! Whitefeld had a message to
speak; it tore his soul and would not
be quiet. When church was denied
him, he went to the fields. MY
Lord" he cried, 'had the mountains
for his pulpit and the heavens for his
sounding-board; he sent his servants
into the highways and hedges" He
was surrounded by thousands; peeres-
ses in their coaches, old scholars from
the seclusion of the colleges; 1.-The
poor colliers came out of their coal
pits in swarms, the tears making white
cutters down their black faces" The
sound of their voices praising God was
heard afar off like the thunder of the
sea. In those days, as on that of Pen
tecost, thousands were converted unto
God. There were no preparations for
gluttonous feeling in that crowd; no
cards, no inery, no whisky. Why
do we see nothing like this scene in
our modern camp meeting? There are
souls crying oYt TO be saved in New
Jersey as there were in Spitalfelds.-
Life is as awful in its import, death
as near, and the Helper, the only Help
er, as ready 20 stretch out His hand.
What is wanting? We have no
Whitefeld, plead the leaders of our
meetings nowadays.
1t does not seem to us, outside secu-
lar observers, that it is a Whitefeld,
but Whitefeld's spirit that is lacking.
Secular observers and secular newspa-
pers aye entitled to speak in this mat
ter When any movement IS made
which offers to lift us all into a higher
fife, those whom it offers to help have
the right to Judge it, and to decide
whether it does its work or not. If |
camp meetings are held merely as an
innocent social pleasure, means OF
enabling good Christian folks to hold
agreeable intercourse in kind of pro-
longed picnic, their object is a worthy
one, so far as it goes, and they have
accomplished it. But if they profess
to 90 further, and to make Christ and
His gospel more honorable in the
world, we warn them that they need
Whitefeld's spirit. Whitefeld was a
man possessed with his message. The
we'll ordered services of our friends at
|Chautauqua and Ocean Grove, the
carefully studied sermons, the choirs, |
the orderly eating arrangements, the
gigantic schemes for Sunday-school
land mission work, are all well enough
lin their way But the voice of one
man thoroug ghly on fire with love for
Ibis Master would pass through this
conventional machinery like an cleo
tric shock through lifeless matter
Christians who set going this mechan-
! |ical enginery may be mistaken as to
the reality of their own zeal; but the
world is never mistaken. 1t does not
F find Christianity in the hackneyed
| hymns sung and sermons preached
from sense of duty, or in the irrev-
erent familiarity with sacred things
common on most camp grounds, any
more than in the nervous hysterical
frenzy which ignorant women there
mistake for religious rapture.
The world cries no longer, "Lo, here
is Christi" or, ''Lo, He is there" 1t
begins to doubt if He is anywhere. To
such of our readers as mean to attempt
Ito show Him this month in these out
door meetings, we urge that they
make ready not by writing fine ser
mon or preparing cold meats, but by
|betaking themselves to their knees
humbly to find out whether they them
selves know Him. Afterward, unless
He has given them a message to the
world, let them keep silent. Let us
have no sermons and prayers in these
camp meetings that come not from
The heart. We can talk politics or
king Pinafore with the brain and
mouth; but it is only when the soul
Itself speaks that we should try to
leach God to others.
A little daughter of a Connecticut
clergyman was left to tend door,
and, obeying the summons of the bell,