Evening times-Republican. [volume] (Marshalltown, Iowa) 1890-1923, 1907-04-04
TERAis:
SOM PAST TYPES.


sar, address as had been offered that
i evening would have been impossiple
and to his own mind half compromise
with the devil even had he been capa-
BILE OF its production. Where is the ola
time preacher gone and has the Ola
i time church member followed him!
~ TO the man who went to church
boy and youth, forty years ago, the
comparison between that day and this
Z is striking. To some Of them yet
remain memories OF the old circuit
q riders, and distinct recollection of the
settled preachers who followed them
1 and held s'protracted meetings" where
we hold REVEALS and where their pre-
decessors depended on the annual
camp meeting. This old time minister
is vanished type. He has gone with
the prairies and the forests and the
sloughs he penetrated, crossed ana
Waded in his trips over his charge
that n1ayhap consisted Of half dozen
struggling. but fervent congregations.
He was severe and just, this old time
preacher. Somewhat OF the inexorable
and pitiless logic of Edwards and the
earlier Calvinists he invariably re-
I tanned. But If he leaned toward as
ceticism and sometimes forgot mercy
4 he was always just. He preached hell.
I hot and lurid with the flame that dieth
not, but he offered the certain highway,
strait but essential to escape. 1t was
fearsome thing to be an imaginative
Child and sit on the front seat beneath
The illumination of the old time preach
er when he warmed to the saving of
4 souls. He was seldom an orator, but
he. inarshalled his evidence OF unim-
peachab bile truth from the Bible that
few men in that day dared deny, and
Numbered the curses pronounced upon
the wicked az from Sinai. His eyes
burned with the, fire of conviction. The
~ boy on the front seat went home im-
pressed with the power of the Almighty
and filled with terror lest he share the
torment Of the condemned. He went to
bed white with apprehension and lay
trembling lest he should die that night
n his manifold sin. II there lives a
man past forty who has not known
the agony Of that boyish fear, he was
certainly not born Of parents descended
from covenanters or brought up in ths
shadow OF the Methodist meeting.
house, and '.protracted meetings"
To the older men and women who
crowded into the amen corner" the
heaven Of Revelations and the hell de-
sipicted in the old time prints and wood
cuts were very real. In the protracted
meeting we stood just outside the yes
Thule Of both where a wrong turning.
might open the brass hinged gates in
stead of those of pearl Those fathers
and mothers in Israel took hold on the
promise for their own and their.
neighbors' sons in all the deep convic
ton of simple faith. They agonized
aloud and made intercession with
groanings.' At times this earnestness
of purpose became intensely enbarass
ing to those for the intercessibn
was made. Those who attended a GER
tain tinted Brethren church, over in
northern Illinois, will remember a
kindly and Christian old man whose
family would have gladdened the
Roosevelt heart and who knew by name
every boy and girl In the community.
When he knelt to wrestle in prayer and
supplication for his own and his neigh
[ bors' children, he made his petition to
the throne specific by naming the one
for whom he prayed and the reasons
why conformation and forgiveness We're
most needed in each distinct and sep
afate case Many youth has covered
ilown In his seat while he listened to
the recital of his mu1tidinous short
comings given publicity in prayer; as
the long list grew and the prayer
flowed on. it seemed interminably, one
Wondered how the old man found out
SO much and remembered so well.
No one resented it. Everyone knew. he
was talking as he felt, face>to face with
, God and that his personal references
We're the best evidence of his loving
Kindness and desire to save. Perhaps
it did some good. At any rate the
youth of that neighborhood grew bet
ter or, slyer as their dispositions led
them.
Perhaps the religion OF these old men
and women to whom the intellectual
was so little and the spiritual SO much
was CONDITIONAL" At any rate it was
an excellent kind to live and die by.
In 1t was no shadow Of doubt or var
liability. 1t was actual. 1t was the
main thing in their lives and the
GROWING comfort OF death. Enoch
never walked closer to God than some
OF those old men and women we knew
in those old days. There was neither
argument nor conjecture They knew.
If they We're enemies of any Of man
kind they came nearest to deadly