Truth. [volume] (Salt Lake City, Utah) 1901-1908, 1906-02-24
PEET ON RELIGIOUS REVEALS.

methods that were employed InerS
carries one back to the direful, soul
sitting, Wandering, child-scaring, fool
making religious "awakenings" that
were held every winter in nearly
every community in the eastern
states. The old-time reyivalist found
and studied the weak spots of his
hearers and on these spots he poured
the hell fire vitrol till he had them
writhing and calling for mercy. The
methods of the street-corner fakir,
and most of the religious revivalists
are similar. The former will hold up
little bunch of tin tubes with pieces
of window glass in them, and tell OF
their wonderful magnifying qualities
till his hearers fall over each other
to buy them, believing they are get
ting a Lick or Yerkes telescope for
the 25 cents they invest; or he will
hold up a small, hard substance,
mixture of axle grease, rosin and vel
low ochre, and by his eloquence, fiat
terry and trained knowledge of human
weakness make the crowd believe 1t
is a real cake of Cashmere Bouquet
soap The religious fakir or revival
list will first give his audience a re-
pressing, subduing dose of weird
songs and grim, CHASTITY prayers.
Then he will hold up a harp and
crown and heavenly mansion and If
that bait does not bring them to the
altar he will get behind them with the
DEVILS pitchfork of eternal and ever
lasting suffering and woe, and If they
do not move up he will pitch them all,
the old, the young and the nursing
babe, into lake of hell fire and brim-
stone, where they will sizzle and
roast and groan forever and forever.
This last threat usually relieves them
of what little sense they have, and up
they go.
/ met an old friend of mine here
the other day and he told me of his
experience and the effect a religious
revival had on him back in the six
ties, when he was a little six-year-old
boy in Bradford county, Pennsylvania.
l am going to tell it just as he told it
to me. He said: my father and
mother and six children lived on a
farm in an old-fashioned red house
that faced the north. My LITTLE sister,
who was one and a half years older
than myself, had never heard any
terrifying ghost stories and we
| huSW VI Tie DuSdDOD.
We were not afraid when the shades
of night gathered over the land and
we enjoyed going out in the dark
after kndling wood and going to bed
without the candle was a real plea
sure. The bat and the owl were not
birds of evil omen, and we enjoyed
the song of the whippoorwih at night
as well as we did that of
the bobolink and the meadow
lark in the daytime. On clear
evenings in the summer time
we would spend our time TN the front
steps of the house watching the north
ern lights. We thought they were so
beautiful and that they must rise
from an enchanted city just over the
north hill. We thought that there
could be no cold, damp evening dew
in such a bright place; that the flow.
ers were in bloom all the time; that
the birds sang the sweetest where
little children could play in the fields,
wade in the brooks and watch the
bees and butterflies all night. We
asked our father If he would not hitch
up old Doll, the family horse, and take
us over to the bright city of the north
ern lights some evening. He told us
he would see about it.
The north star we could locate and
called it OLE steady, for we could al