USA > Mississippi > The pioneers, preachers and people of the Mississippi Valley > Part 19
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South of the Ohio, the earliest Christian denomina- tion to enter Kentucky as a field of labor, were the Baptists-a large and exceedingly influential sect in Virginia and North Carolina, from which States most of the carly settlers of Kentucky came. While there were few preachers who came with the single purpose of preaching the Word, there were a good many who were licensed to administer the sacra- ments, or whose object was to instruct the young, or
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like their secular companions, to take possession of the country, and to secure for themselves farms and estates. These were not long after followed by Presbyterian ministers and missionaries, who came here expressly for the purpose of preaching the Gos- pel. It is not my desire here to assume a sectional or denominational position. Nevertheless, it is neces- sary to call special attention to the characteristics, peculiarities, lives, manners, customs, names, and reputations of some of the preachers of my own church, the Methodist. I am not to detract in the slightest degree from either the Baptists or Presby- terians, the two other pioneer churches in the wil- derness. Their case has been presented in literature. But the Methodist church has had comparatively little advocacy before the people at large. But little is known, outside of its own limits, of its operations, movements, or men; or of their agency in the pro- motion of civilization and Christianity. And it is with these men that I am more familiarly acquainted, and as, for the major part of this lecture, I am to rely upon my own personal observation and acquaint- ance with living men, and with and of those who have passed away from the scene of action within the last twenty years, it is both natural and necessary that I should principally speak of them.
The Baptists did a noble and excellent work, as did also the Presbyterians, in the early times of the
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West. The Methodist church was a younger church than these-its first regular preachers having landed on this continent in 1770. Fourteen years after their first teacher, sent out by Wesley, set foot in America- seven years after the first Baptist minister in Ken- tucky-and three years after the first Presbyterian- they commenced penetrating the wilds of the Far West, and their pioneer missionaries, James Haw and Benjamin Ogden, crossed the Alleghanies and entered the boundless tracts of Kentucky. Others rapidly followed him. At first there was much an- tagonism-a sort of pugnacious rivalry or "free fight" between these various denominations out in the West-nor has this yet quite passed away. There is an active, rough, resolute courage, independence, and pluck about the western people, which inclines them to close scuffling and grappling, a sort of knock- down attitude visible through all the moods of their life ; and their clergy are not free from the same pe- culiarities. They were therefore great controversial- ists ; and there was an immense din about Baptism and Pedobaptism ; Free Grace and Predestination ; Falling from Grace and the Perseverance of the Saints, etc., etc. Brethren of different denominations often held what they called discussions or debates ; where one of one denomination challenged one of another. Meeting together before the people, occu- pying a temporary pulpit in a grove, they would
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thus treat-and maltreat-the doctrines and views of each other, to the eminent edification, and often- times the entertainment of the assembled multitude. The people, nevertheless, were somewhat insensible to the preached Word during the first twenty years of its dispensation. They were absorbed by Indian wars, and by the pressing demands upon their labor, necessary to maintain physical existence in a new country. Soon afterward came in French infidelity with French politics ; and deism and atheism were openly avowed on every hand. Many of the principal citizens of the West were not afraid or ashamed to own themselves skeptical or infidels in regard to the old system of Revelation. Thus the field which these pio- neer preachers were called to till was a hard and stony one; and they had much difficulty in pushing their way.
The Presbyterians and Methodists found it neces- sary, toward the close of the last century, to conjoin their efforts and unite for the furtherance of the com- mon cause. This was in the southern part of the State of Kentucky. They held " union meetings ;" sacramental meetings, where the two denominations worked together, kindly and efficient yoke-fellows. Under these efforts the people at length became much excited on the subject of religion, and there then broke out, in the spring of 1800, the most extraordinary re- vival of religion that ever happened on this conti- nent, or perhaps in the history the church since the
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Day of Pentecost. It was called the Cumberland Revival, or the Great Revival. It broke out at one of these sacramental occasions, when the Methodist and Presbyterian ministers were holding a two or three days' meeting, for the purpose of stimulating the attention of the people to the all-important sub- ject of personal holiness. At this, there were strange manifestations. The people were seized as by a sort of superhuman power ; their physical energy was lost; their senses refused to perform their functions ; all forms of manifesting consciousness were for the time annulled. Strong men fell upon the ground, utterly helpless; women were taken with a strange spasmodic motion, so that they were heaved to and fro, sometimes falling at lengthi upon the floor, their hair dishevelled, and throwing their heads about with a quickness and violence so great as to make their hair crack against the floor as if it were a team- ster's whip. Then they would rise up again under this strange power, fall on their faces, and the same violent movements and cracking noise would ensue. Such peculiarities characterized this first meeting.
The meetings went on, and at length there was a grand convocation at Cane Ridge, Kentneky, where the leading Presbyterian minister was Barton W. Stone, afterward renowned in the ecclesiastical annals of the West, as the father and head of those " New Lights " who became subsequently followers
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of Alexander Campbell, and a section of that body now called " Christian." Stone was then the Pres- byterian minister of Concord and Cane Ridge meet- ing-house. He appointed a sacramental meeting. The report of these peculiar doings spread so rapidly through Tennessee, Kentucky, Virginia, and what is now Indiana, that people came sixty, seventy, a hun- dred, even three hundred miles to attend this meet- ing, and it is said that on one night there were not less than thirty thousand people present at the Cane Ridge ground. There were present eight or ten preachers of different denominations, standing up on the stumps of trees, fallen logs, or temporary pul- pits, all of them holding forth in their loudest tone- and that was a very loud tone, for the lungs of the backwoods preachers were of the strongest. They roared like lions-their tones were absolutely like peals of thunder. The celebrated William Burke, who died in Cincinnati only a short time ago, was one of the principal orators on that occasion. He had not been treated, he thought, with courtesy by his Presbyterian brethren. He had arrived on the ground on Friday night, and was not asked to par- ticipate in any of the exercises on Saturday. Sunday morning came, and many friends crowded around him to know if he were going to preach. He said that if he were invited he would, but that he had not been invited. Brother Stone wanted
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him to get up, and make an exposé of his doctrines. " My doctrines," said Burke, " I preach every day," -this he said with a good deal of vim-" they are in the books-go and read. If I am to make an exposé of Methodist views, then you might be called upon for yours." Mr. Stone said he was satisfied; that that would do. Burke, however, was not satisfied, and as he was not asked to preach by the authorities of the ground, he took a stand on his own hook, a fallen log, and here, having rigged up an umbrella as a temporary shelter, a brother standing by to see that it performed its functions properly, he gave out a hymn, and by the time that he had mentioned his text, there were some ten thousand persons about him. Although his voice when he began was like a crash of thunder, after three-quarters of an hour or an hour, it was like an infant's.
It is said that all these people, the whole ten thou- sand of men and women standing about the preacher, were from time to time shaken as a forest by a tor- nado, and five hundred were at once prostrated to the earth, like the trees in a " windfall," by some invisible agency. Some were agitated by violent whirling motions, some by fearful contortions; and then came "the jerks." Scoffers, doubters, deniers, men who came to ridicule and sneer at the superna- tural agency, were taken up in the air, whirled over upon their heads, coiled up so as to spin about like
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cart-wheels, catching hold, meantime, of saplings, endeavoring to clasp the trunks of trees in their arms, but still going headlong and helplessly on. These motions were called the " jerks ;" a name which was current in the West for many a year after; and many an old preacher has described these things accurately to me. It was not the men who were already mem- bers of the church, but the scoffing, the blasphemous, the profane, who were taken in this way. Here is one example : A man rode into what was called the " Ring Circle," where five hundred people were standing in a ring, and another set inside. Those inside were on their knees, crying, shouting, praying, all mixed up in heterogeneous style. This man comes riding up at the top of his speed, yelling like a demon, cursing and blaspheming. On reaching the edge of the ring, he falls from his horse, seemingly lifeless, and lies in an apparently unconscious con- dition for thirty hours; his pulse at about forty, or less. When he opens his eyes and recovers his senses, he says he has retained his consciousness all the time-that he has been aware of what has been passing around-but was seized with some agency which he could not define. I fancy that neither physiology, nor pyschology, nor biology, nor any of the ologies or isms, have, thus far, given any satisfac- tory explanation of the singular manifestations that attended this great revival.
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These meetings taking place in open woods, and attracting such immense multitudes, no provision could possibly be made for them by the surrounding neighborhood. People came in their carriages, in wagons, in ox-carts, on horses, and, themselves accus- tomed to pioneer habits and lives, they brought their own food, commonly jerked meat and corn dodgers, and pitched their tents upon the ground.
Such was the origin of camp-meetings. The first camp-meeting ever seen, after the Feast of Taber- nacles, was that upon the Cane Ridge, where the people came without the design of encamping, but where necessity required it. These meetings pro- ceeded for two or three years, and great was the overthrow which resulted to all forms of infidelity. Of course there also ensued great divisions and heart-burnings among the different denominations. The Baptist, as well as the Presbyterian and Method- ist churches largely participated ; and all these churches were split up more or less after the abate- ment of the first great excitement. A good many of the people converted in these meetings became Shakers. A body of Shakers who came from Phila- delphia and settled in Kentucky, received large recruits. One man, who had gathered abont him what he call the twelve apostles, set off in search of the IIoly Land, and died miserably of starvation on an island in the Mississippi. And various were the
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other fancies. One said he held converse with the angels and spirits, not after the modern use of rap- ping on tables, but orally and immediately; and that physical food was not absolutely indispensable to sustain his life. He also starved to death; and then his church broke up. As I say, there were various opinions as to these fruits and consequences ; but I have been told by old men who have watched the current of affairs since then, for these fifty-five years, that the good results of that meeting were not to be calculated.
I now come to a more particular consideration of some of the men concerned in this movement. The ministry of the Methodist church of the wilderness assumed the position and the responsibility of their calling, under the confident belief that each man of them was specially called, designated, and sent forth by the Holy Spirit of peace and power as an ambassa- dor for Christ. The churches decided upon the gifts and graces of the men ; settled, according to their best belief and convietion, whether the call be a real call. If their opinion coincided with his, he was then set apart for the sacred office of the ministry, and sent forth. At the time of which I speak, he was sent forth to an office which was no sinecure. Ilis field of labor was the world. The allowance, the limit of the salary which the discipline of the church allowed him to receive, was sixty-four dollars
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per annum, and that was to include all presents he might receive of yarn stockings, woollen vests, and homespun coats, together with wedding-fecs. What- ever he might receive, from whatsoever quarter, was to be counted up in this allowance of four-and-sixty dollars, and if the amount exceeded this, the sur- plus must be handed over to the church authorities for the use of the poorer brethren. Out of these sixty-four dollars, he must provide a horse, saddle, wearing apparel, and books. West of the mountains sixty-four dollars was a sum hardly to be expected, either in silver coin of the realm, or in presents of any description. Nothing more was allowed a man with a wife than without a wife, for it was under- stood among the ministers of the old church, that a preacher had no business with a wife, and that he was a deal better without one. The practice in that respect has sadly changed. Mr. Wesley had such an experience of his own in the wife line, that he discou- raged marrying among the brethren; and Francis Asbury, who was the master-spirit of Methodism on this continent, was so absorbed in his work, so en- grossed by it, that he discountenanced matrimony. Ile said, nevertheless, that it was the business of every living man, to support a living woman. He therefore gave one-half or two-thirds of his entire income, which was very small, to the support of an old woman, a distant cousin in England ; and when
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she died, he appropriated the sum to the support of some other woman. Further than that, in the direc- tion of matrimony, he never went. When one of the young brethren was so unfortunate or so absurd as to link himself in matrimonial bonds, it was understood that he had better "locate," in the language of the church, still retaining authority to preach, but pursu- ing some other calling as a means of support, and deriving none from the church. He retired from regular itinerant work, and became a local preacher. Thus did brother Asbury set the example to the younger brethren. McKendree, who was his succes- sor in the episcopate, in the same way discounte- nanced all interesting relations with the sisterhood.
There was thus small encouragement, indeed, in the way of pecuniary support, which these men had to look forward to. They were coming to the wilder- ness to face perils, want, weariness, unkindness, cold, and hunger; to hear the crack of the Indian rifle from some neighboring thicket, to feel the ball cut- ting the air as it whizzed past their ear, and perhaps to fall from the unerring shot of some skillful redskin. And if their lives were spared, by the guardianship of a good Providence, or the interposi- tion of his special care in their behalf, the bare earth in winter and summer was three-fourths of the time to be their bed, their saddle their pillow, and the sky their coverlet. They labored without pecuniary
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compensation or support, preaching the Gospel often at their own cost and charges ; and when applying for victuals or a shelter, often and often were they sternly or rudely denied it by a brother of some other deno- mination, so bitter were the prevailing feelings of party denominationalism. Thus they worked on, with no provision for their advancing years except the guardianship of the Master who had called them -with no prospective sunshine of affluence to cheer their downward path to the grave-with none of the comforts of this world, save the approval of their own consciences and the indwelling testimony of God's Spirit. Surely such an office was not a sine- cure ; and men who could make a respectable living in the craft of blacksmithing, farming, carpentry, or masonry, could hardly have gone into this work, if they had not felt the irresistible impulse of a spe- cial call. They were not, as a general thing, men of what we now call education. Book knowledge was very scant with them. They were thorough students of their Bibles; and their Bibles they generally read upon their knees. It was a common habit with them to read the Good Book in the shelter of a thicket, or out upon the lonely prairie. When the snow was on the ground, the travelling preacher, awaking from his night's slumber as the first rays of daylight were breaking through the eastern sky, giving just enough light to see the page of the Sacred Book, would sel-
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dom saddle and mount his horse till he had per- formed his private devotions, kneeling there in the midst of the snow and ice where he had been sleep- ing ; would seldom proceed upon his journey till he had committed his way and commended his soul to God, and had studied, at least three or four chapters of his constant companion and manual. They were diligent students of the holy Scriptures, and they
were learned in hymns. They studied the hymn- book nearly as devoutly and constantly as the Bible ; and with these two, they had an arsenal from which they could bring forth weapons adapted to every emergency. There was another supplement to their Scriptures. This third volume, one which they con- stantly, carefully, devoutly perused, profoundly stu- died, was the ever-open volume of Human Nature. They were well acquainted with men; they read their eyes, their countenances, their hearts, their con- sciences.
From this analysis, you will readily conclude what was their style of preaching. They were earnest and forcible speakers. They felt that great issues were at stake, standing, as they so often did, before a con- gregation of three or four thousand. They felt that all this great company of men and women in a little time must be dead; that perhaps this was the last time they should ever have the opportunity of speak- ing to them. The weight of souls was on them;
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they felt that the blood of these people might rest on their own souls, unless their full and immediate duty was done to them ; therefore, most earnestly, and even passionately to warn, to counsel, to entreat, to admonish, to reprove, to win them by the love of Christ to be reconciled to God-this was the burden of their preaching. They were men of quick, intense, and profound emotions, of lively fancy, and vivid imaginations ; and before their inward eye was ever clearly pictured their expected final haven of repose and joy, the antithesis to this their present painful life of weariness and labor. And, upon the other hand, the dark and unfathomable abyss of perdition was open to them.
They were thorough students of other books than the Bible, when they had opportunity; and these were frequently, and even generally, of an imagina- tive description. Young and Milton were singularly intimate companions of these old wayfarers. Mil- tonic descriptions of perdition abounded in their preaching; and the Judgment, with all the solemn array of the last Assize, was vividly delineated before them. And while to our sober, cold, and calculating criticism, it might seem that their descriptions of the the good and bad world savored too much of a topo- graphical character-as if they had been travelling through certain countries, and were now giving a vivid detail of all they had experienced-while it
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might seem so to us, it did not to the people who listened to them. They were rude and ignorant like them ; unversed in books. They were stern in their denunciation of what they did not believe ; and rose- water sentimentalism, agreeable metaphysical disqui- sitions, a profoundly elaborate exegesis upon particu- lar passages of Scripture, would have gone but little way in influencing those congregations of back- woodsmen. I have read of a certain bishop who, on a text concerning the miracles at the Pool of Bethesda, said : "My beloved hearers, I shall in the first place speak to you of the things which you know, and I do not know; second, of what I know, and you do not know; third, of the things that neither of us know." There was another eminent prelate, who, upon reading his text, said : "I shall first speak of the chronology of the subject, then its topography, and then its psychology." Neither of these styles of preaching would have gone far with the backwoods people. Their earnest life, filled with necessities, and arduous struggles to supply them, must have appropriate religious food; and these simple-hearted, firmly-believing preachers were just the ones to give it to them. And give it they did, with right hearty good will.
There was an immense deal of vim and stamina in their method. They spoke loudly and with their whole body ; their feet and hands were put in requi-
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sition as well as their tongues and eyes. It was a very fierce, cutting, and demonstrative style of preaching, as you may faney. With little opportu- nities to get up splendid discourses-for they had no studies but the woods, and no libraries but those of which I have told you-they had to make their ser- mons as they were travelling along the way-and a hard and rugged way it often was.
Such a man was Bishop Asbury, to my mind one of the most important, if not the most important per- sonage in the ecclesiastical history of this continent. With all respect to Jonathan Edwards, Dr. Dwight, Dr. Channing, and all the other eminent and pre- eminent men of New England-I have read them, and knew some of them-I think that Francis As- bury, that first superintendent and bishop of our Methodist church, was the most renowned and re- doubtable soldier of the cross that ever advanced the standard of the Lord upon this continent. Yet you will not find his name in a single history of the United States that I know of; and it is a burning shame that it is so. He travelled for fifty years, on horseback, from Maine to Georgia, and from Massa- chusetts to the Far West, as population extended ; journeying in that time, as was computed, about three hundred thousand miles. He had the care of all the churches; was preaching instant in season and out of season; was laboring indefatigably with
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the young men to inspire and stimulate them ; winning back the lost and bringing amorphous elements into harmony, in a church which, when he began with it, in 1771, numbered probably not fifty members ; and which, when he was an old man-he died in 1816- numbered, white and black, from Maine to California, and from far northwestern Oregon to sunny southern Florida, nearly a million of members. So vast a church did Francis Asbury build, almost solely by his own profound wisdom, untiring effort, and cease- less devotion ; and he did as much for building school- houses and colleges, erecting churches, establishing sound views of morality, and lofty purity in the forms of life ; for gathering and establishing in doctrine and discipline this immense body of Christians, now the most numerous in the country, having more by one-third of stated ministers, and more colleges; than any other two denominations in the land. That one who has done this should not have had his name even so much as named in a single school history in the United States, I say is a shame.
This man was surrounded by men much akin to him ; for he seemed to infuse his spirit into all with whom he came in contact. One of his associates and friends, one of the young men whom he raised up, was afterward a famous preacher of eastern Ten- nessee-James Axley, a very renowned man in his day; and another was James Craven. Many of
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