The Indiana State sentinel. [volume] (Indianapolis) 1868-1895, 1886-03-31
REV. MR.. JONES AND OLD FASHIONED
THEOLOGY.

A little controversy has sprung up ia this
city over the alleged indecency of some of
Rev. Sam Jones outgivings, particularly an
extract quoted by correspondent of one of
the morning papers. There was nothing in
that extract to deserve the savage censure it
got. 1t was quite as decorous as became the
subject, and the subject was an eminently
proper one to discuss in the pulpit-that is,
the demoralizing influence of fashionable
dressing, or undressing, and dancing. A
thousand papers have treated this same mat
ter in much the same way, quite as frankly
and a good deal more pithily. without
breath of their indecency from anybody.
Why Mr.. Jones less effective and equally
decorous denunciation of the indecorous ex-
posures and equivocal situations of fashion
able ladies at fancy balls should provoke
condemnation, is not visible to ordinary
moral perspicacity. We have no admiration
very good things in a very effective way,
but nothing better or in better form than
can be heard in thousand pulpits every
Sunday. The collections of his sayings
that the papers make can be matched from
the sermons of enough preachers to make a
handsome addition to the census of the New
Jerusalem. If he had not attained notoriety
by other means, these utterances would never
lift him to it. He does good, no doubt; not
by the occasional snap and smartness of his
sayings" for a witticism never converted
anybody, but by his earnestness, his direct
ness, and his coarseness. We quote his
coarseness among his effective agencies for
good, as Byron quoted wrath and par
TALLY" among the good qualities of Mil
ford's History of Greece, because they made
him write with earnestness and energy"
Mr.. Jones coarseness hits squarely the
lasts of slarge class who are
as inaccessible to the grades of
rhetoric as the grace of the gospel. He fires
too low for people of education and refine
ment, and covers them with dirt, like a
bullet that strikes the ground half way to
the man it is shot at. But he shoots over
nobody's head. His shot goes straight to the
mark of many Glow down" listener, who
would leave Beecher or Talmage for mig
ger song" in a minute. The coarseness is
just their style. 1t pleases them and they
stay to hear it. Like the scepticle hearers of
Goldsmith's old preacher who "Came to
scott and remain to pray" these 'lewd fell
lows of the baser Sort come to be tickled
with style of talk that is odd and funny in
the pulpit and soak in with it little and a
little more wholesome suggestion OF living
we'll and dying decentlv. He returns too,
to the old fashioned theology of the camp
meeting of forty years ago, the Peter Cart
wright and Old Jimmy Ravens style, the
fire and birthstone hell and ever
lasting roasting of impenitent sin
ners which in this generation has
fallen in a most decided ''innoculous de-
suetude." 1t is novel doctrine now.
Origen's Eschatology or the Herisy Of
Tatian, who taught the eternal punishment
of Adam and Eve and the sinfulness of a
meal diet, is hardly more so. And this
novelty draws hearers, too, men of the
coarseness of intellectual fibre that relishes
such rough diet, as the rail-mauler relishes
fat pork and cabbage, or Sam Coryel 'bacon
and green's" We don't mean that there are
no others affected by the same style of APP
peal or exhortation, for there is abundant
assurance that men of the best culture and
brains have been wholesomely touched by
the Georgia Evangelist, but that there is q
very large class of men who can be best
reached by Mr.. Jones' processes, and to that
class he is doing service that very proba-
| bly, better man. with better style, could
not do.