The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1892-09-24

lHliS ISE'oit tSo vi Ao'e'ii iNiiS, WIN
dell Phillips or Bob Ingersoll, and
Immediately after it came descript-
ION of hell by another revivalist
which set dozen women to scream
ing as if in mortal agony.
Hargrave was long cotemporary
of Cartwright, and like him was con-
verted in boyhood and preached all
the rest cf his life, but outlived the
other several years. Partly contem-
porary with them, was Aaron
Wood, D. D., who was licensed to
exhort at eighteen and served in the
regular ministry fifty five years He
was a scholar and writer as we'll as a
preac her, and such to some extent
was Richard Hargrave. These two
we're the prominent figures at camp
meetings of my boyhood days.
1t is idle to argue the merits Of
the old time camp meeting OF the
west and south-it was necessity.
If the pioneer preacher, rude and
untaught as he often was, had not
followed up the pioneer settlers of
Indiana, kentucky and adjacent
states; if he had not reused their
hopes and fears with his rude elo
quence-meta phorically shaking
them right over the white hot cavern
OF hell" as the phrase then vas
there would have been widespr, ad
moral chaos. 1t did not lack much
of it as it was, and if the Cartwrights,
the Hargraves and their sort h2d
not believed every word of their
fiery theology they could have done
nothing. Such men as Professor
Briggs and DIR. Patton would have
put the pioneers to sleep. In the
expressive slang of the west, they
''might as well have sung psalms to
dead horse"
But the camp meeting preachers
of 1S2o-55 believed every word of
the New Testament in its literal
sense, and it was like fire in their
bones. Ii was not cold, intellectual
reasoning; it was robust believing,
and like an electual bolt it went from
the preachers heart to the hearers.
And all the sur1 ounding were calcu
lated to excite the emotions. Even
now | can shut my eyes and see the
old camp grounds of 4S51-2-the
square inclosed by the log tents, the
tall trees and overshadowing canopy
formed by tire dense forage Of
August, the rude log pulpit in front
of it the open space around the
altar" and then the long rows of
seats under the trees, on which the
numerous candles in tin brackets
tiared and sputtered, casting
funeral glare upon the intense faces
below.
There was song, then prayer,
then another and always more in
spring song. Then Richard Har-
grave took the stand and for an
hour poured forth all the intensity
OF his soul. His high, white and
smooth forehead became crimson, his
ordinarily soft eye lighted with a
sort OF seraphic glare, his white
hair seemed to vibrate and snap
with sort of magnetic energy, and
when he closed every eye in the
audience was fixed, every mind
opened to emotional influences.
Then from the women's side of the
square rose in quavering stains
some suggestive hymn, probably
these lines of truly awful import to
the believer:
A charge to keep l haYe,
A Gcd to gloriiy,
never dying soul to save
And fit it for the sky.
We looked up through the leafy
canopy and still night air, seeing
single star here and there among
the leaves, and God seemed very,
very great and severe; we looked
next at the powerful exhorter who
always followed Hargrave, and hell
seemed very, very near. | dare
not repeat the lurid descriptions |
heard, through can remember
some of them word for word.
Nearly all readers would laugh at
the idea that a boy could remember
such things the rest would say such
things were revei uttered. Yet
know what | know. Another song,
then loud cries, mingled with exhor
tation, songs and prayers of such
energy that it would seem they
might assault the skies and prevail
even upon the Interchangeable majesty
OF heaven.
"The word of God nightly grew
ard prevailed" And no wonder.
Now, suppose some coldly cautious
scholar had tol those people that
there was a question as to the
authenticity Of the EpiStles to the
Hebrews; that commentators were
in doubt whether Moses or Ezra
wrote the PcGtateuch, and whether
Isaac was a monograph or a COM
pilation; that lhe serpent in Eden
WAS an ali, gerry; that the devil is not
mentioned in the Old Testament