USA > North Carolina > Sketches of North Carolina, historical and biographical : illustrative of the principles of a portion of her early settlers > Part 40
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" Another extraordinary case occurred at the very moment of departure. Two men disputing, one for, the other against the work, referred their contest to a clergyman of respectability, who happened to be passing that way. He immediately took hold of the hand of the unbeliever, and thus addressed him : " If you were in your heart's desire to wait on the means of grace, God would show you the truth. You may expect mercy to visit you ; but re- member, my hand for it, it will cost you something ; a stroke would not now come at a successless hour.' Scarcely had the words drop- ped from his lips, when the man was on the ground, pleading for an interest in the kingdom of heaven, and begging pardon of God for his dishonoring him and the cause of religion, through unbelief. I understood the man to be a pious man, and his hesitations of a religious and conscientious kind. The other men who had been in the crowd, where many were lying under the operations of the work, attempted to run off. One, leaving his hat in his haste, ran about twenty or thirty paces and fell on his face. His shrieks de- clared the terrors and anguish under which he labored. The other ran a different course about fifty yards, and fell.
" The number of those who were stricken could not be ascer- tained, but I believe it to be much greater than any one would con- ceive. On Sabbath night, about twelve or one o'clock, I stood alone on a spot whence I could hear and see all over the camp ; and found that the work was not confined to one, two or three pla- ces, but overspread the whole field ; and in some large crowds the ground appeared almost covered. In the course of one single prayer, of duration about ten minutes, twelve persons fell to the ground : the majority of whom declared, in terms audible and expli- cit, that they never prayed before.
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" There attended on this occasion thirteen Presbyterian preach- ers, viz. : Messrs. Simpson, Cummins, Davis, Cunningham, Wilson, Waddel, Williamson, Brown, Kennedy, Gilleland, sen'r., M'Elhen- ney, Dixon and Gilleland, junior; and an unknown number of Methodists and Baptists.
" The multitude on this occasion far exceeded anything which had come under my observation. There were various conjectures of the numbers present ; some allowed three, some four, some five, some six, some seven, and some eight thousand. I had not been in the habit of seeing such multitudes together, and therefore do not look upon myself capable of reckoning anyways accurately on the sub- ject. But I do candidly believe five thousand would not be a vague conjecture. The district of Spartanburgh, where the meeting was held, contains no less than twelve thousand souls. Men of informa- tion who reside therein, said, to one who might be travelling, the country would appear almost depopulated, and hesitated not in the least to say two thirds of the inhabitants were present. Now sup- posing only one third to have attended, from that district itself, there would have been four thousand. Besides, there were multi- tudes from the districts of Union, York, Laurens and Greenville ; Numbers from Pendleton, Abbeville, Chester and Newbury, and some from Green, Jackson, Elbert and Franklin counties, of the State of Georgia. Of carriages, the number was about two hundred, including wagons and all other carriages.
" In a thinking mind, an approach to the spot engendered awful and yet pleasing reflection. The ideas which necessarily struck the mind were, thousands in motion to a point, where to meet, tell, hear, see and feel the mighty power of God. Believe me, sir, no composition can exaggerate the spirit of one of these occasions, although facts may be misrepresented. For a lively miniature, I refer you to an extract of a letter, contained in a book lately pub- lished and entitled, ' Surprising Accounts ;' where this expression is used, ' The slain of the Lord were scattered over the fields.'
" I cannot omit mentioning an idea expressed by Mr. Williamson. After taking, a view of the general prevalency of dissipation and slothful neglect in religious affairs, he concluded, saying, 'These works appear like the last efforts of the Deity to preserve his church, and promote the cause of religion on this earth.' To see the bril- liancy and sublimity of this idea, we need only recur to the state of society for a few years back; especially in the southern States of United America, when and where, Satan with all his influence ap- peared to be let loose and was going about like a roaring lion
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seeking whom he might devour. This extraordinary work carries in itself, demonstratively, the truth of the Christian religion. Men who fall, and many there are who have paid no attention to the holy scriptures, yea, even infidels of the deepest dye, cry out ' their sinful state by nature,' ' their alienation from God,' ' and man's incapacity to satisfy the justice of the law under which he stands condemned,' ' and of course the absolute necessity of a Redeemer.' When re- ceiving comfort from this last consideration, I heard none crying for Mahomed, Bramma, Grand Lama or Hamed; none but Christ was their healing balm, in him alone was all reliance fixed, on him alone was all dependence placed.
" It would be exceedingly difficult to draw an intelligible repre- sentation of the effects of this work upon the human body. Some are more easily and gently wrought than others; some appear wholly wrapped in solitude; while others cannot refrain from pour- ing out their whole souls in exhortations to those standing round ; different stages, from mild swoons to convulsive spasms, may be seen ; the nerves are not unfrequently severely cramped; the sub- jects generally exhibit appearances as though their very hearts would burst out of their mouths : the lungs are violently agitated, and all accompanied with an exhalation; they universally declare that they feel no bodily pain at the moment of exercise, although some complain of a sore breast and the effects of a cramping, after the work is over; the pulse of all whom I observed beat quick and regular, the extremities of the body are sometimes perceptibly cold. In short, no art or desire would imitate the exercise. No mimic would be able to do justice to the exhibition. This demonstrates the error of the foolish supposition of its being feigned. I will conclude, my dear Sir, acknowledging that all I have here written is incompetent to give you any complete idea of the work. There- fore to you and all who wish to be informed, I say, come, hear, see, and feel.
I am your's, respectfully,
" EBENEZER H. CUMMINS."
As the attention to religion spread wider, and became more general, the variety and degree of the bodily exercises greatly in- creased in the Carolinas, and renewedly called the attention of the considerate and judicious. The extravagances of some parts of the West never found their way east of the Alleghanies, such as running back and forth, barking like a dog, and uttering
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inhuman sounds, like nothing imaginable. Some individuals, that had been affected with these extravagances, visited their friends east of the great mountains, and, during the meetings they attend- ed, gave some specimens, apparently involuntary, of the manner of these peculiarities : happily the example was not contagious. Loss of strength, swoons, outcries, sobs, and groans, and violent spasmodic jerkings of the body, became in a degree common through the Carolinas.
A venerable clergyman now living (1846) was affected by the jerks a few times, and the account he gives will probably help to a right understanding of those singular affections. He was licensed in the spring of 1801, and went soon after to preach statedly at Bethany, in Caswell county, or Rattlesnake, as it was often called -(the congregation is not now known by either name, having been divided into Gilead and Yanceyville)-and with it associated Greers or Upper Hico. The interest on the subject of religion had been felt through Granville and Caswell. The bodily exercises were common, but had not gone to great excess or extravagance. He had attended a communion season at Bethany on a certain occasion with much enjoyment, and, on his way home to his residence, tarried a night at the house of Mr. James Greer. As the hour of evening worship approached, he felt deeply impressed with a sense of the presence of Almighty God in his holiness and majesty. God's purity and grace appeared wonderful. This sense increased upon him during worship. After worship, the sense of the presence of a pure and holy God overawed him : it seemed to him he should sink under it. He felt astonished that God, such a God, should be so good to such an unworthy creature. He walked out to get by himself, and started to go across a little piece of corn to a small retired valley. Before he could reach the retirement he was seized in a most surprising manner. Suddenly he began leaping about, first forward, then sideways, and sometimes, standing still, would swing backward and forward " see-saw fashion." This motion of his body was both involuntary and irresistible at the commence- ment ; afterwards, there was scarcely a disposition to resist, and in itself the motion was neither painful nor unpleasant. The people in the house heard the noise, and came running to his relief, and carried him in their arms back to the dwelling. The fit lasted about an hour, during which time, if the attendants let go their hold, he would jerk about the room as he had done in the field. Gra- dually it passed away and he retired to rest, humbled at the exhi- bition he had made.
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On the next day he felt more ashamed of the matter, as he had fully believed that, at the first outset at least, the jerks could be resisted. As he rode away, he felt mortified, and wished he had charged the people where he lodged to make no mention of the matter, believing that it would make against him, and that he could and would resist them for the future. But, on that very day, while visiting a neighbor, without any special excitement, talking about the meeting, he was suddenly seized again, and jerked across the room, and continued under the influence of the exercise for about fifteen minutes. He went home very much confounded.
He once afterwards had a return of the exercise in the pulpit at Hawfields. Mr. Hodge, who had once been the preacher there, and had been so prominent in the revival in the West, was visiting the congregation. After the services of public worship were con- cluded, sitting with him in the pulpit, he began to inquire of his old friend about the revival in the West. Suddenly the exercises came on, but soon passed away. He did not then believe them, nor has he since considered them, as being of the nature of true religion, or as having any necessary connection with it ; but, judg- ing from his own experience, and what he saw in others, he con- cluded there was no capability of resisting them, as they came on, nor any disposition to do so, after they had begun.
By degrees the bodily exercises lost their hold upon the public mind as being a part of religious experience ; persons who had no sense of religion were seized by them both at places of public worship and while about their ordinary business, and sometimes were left as unconcerned as ever, and at other times appeared to be greatly irritated by them ; and the preachers generally not only discountenanced them, but openly opposed ; and long before the attention to religion ceased, these exercises were confined to a few neighborhoods in North Carolina, and became connected with ir- regularities that required the censure of the church, which in a few cases was inflicted, as appears from the records of the Synod of the Carolinas for the years 1809 and 1810.
As a specimen of the extent to which the exercises were carried in the West about the time the Presbyterian ministers set them- selves in opposition, the following narrative or extract from a diary is presented, taken from the Virginia Religious Magazine for 1807, published in Lexington, Virginia. The narrative was drawn up by Rev. John Lyle, then living in Kentucky.
" Saturday, Nov. 6th, 1805 .- I went to the Beach meeting- house, where a meeting was appointed by the Presbyterians and
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Methodists, called in the country, the Union Meeting. There I heard a sermon delivered by a Mr. N-, who has lately been licensed by the Cumberland Presbytery, and is said to be a man of learning. There was nothing remarkable in his sermon except his pressing exhortations to the people to pray out, shout, dance, &c., in time of divine worship. He told them to shout, to pray aloud, or do whatever duty they felt an impression to do. Said he, 'I believe it will not offend God, and I am sure it will not offend me.' The people, though prior to this seemingly careless and in- attentive, were roused to action,-shouted, prayed aloud, exhorted, and jerked till near the setting of the sun.
" I am well aware that it is impossible to describe an assembly thus agitated, so as to give those who have never seen the like, a just and adequate idea of it ; I would just observe that though I had been accustomed to seeing strong and indescribable bodily agitations in the upper counties of Kentucky, and had frequently seen the jerks, yet all this observation and experience did not pre- pare my mind to behold without trepidation and horror the awful scenes now exhibited before me. The jerks were by far the most violent and shocking I had ever seen. The heads of the jerking patients flew with wonderous quickness from side to side in va- rious directions, and their necks doubled like a flail in the hands of a thresher. Their faces were distorted and black, as if they were strangling, and their eyes seemed to flash horror and distraction. Numbers of them roared out in sounds the most terrific. The people camped in wagons and tents round the stand. I returned to the Rev. William McGee's."
The like scenes were expected the next day. Mr. Stone, the leader of the New Lights, was there, but was not permitted to preach. Such scenes as these brought the bodily exercise into entire disrepute with the sober and sedate, and the Presbyterian Church generally ; and the work of revival went on without these where they were vigorously opposed.
Such scenes never prevailed in North Carolina; the nearest approach was in one neighborhood in Lincoln County, to which sufficient reference is made in the minutes of the Synod. These things are recorded, both as matters of historical fact, and as warn- ing against yielding to irregularities, however specious their ap- pearance.
The revival in North Carolina, separated from all these objec- tionable things, was extensive and most salutary in its effects in reforming the life and elevating religious and moral principle, and promoting the domestic and civil welfare.
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We have no written account of the progress of the revival in the lower part of the State, drawn up by the hand of one of the actors. In default of this account, which would have been highly prized, we are guided by the accounts from other sources, and particularly by the statements of Dr. Hall, the author of the pamphlet, which makes a part of this chapter. He visited the bounds of Fayetteville Presbytery, and made report to Synod in the year 1810. From these sources it appears that the revival spread rapidly and most extensively through the Scotch settlements ; that the bodily exercises prevailed to some degree for a time, but never reached the objectionable height they did in some places in the West, and were probably more circumscribed than in the upper country. The ministers that were living in that section of the State at that time, were Samuel Stanford, who is reported in the records of Synod for 1799, as preaching on Black River, and Brown, Marsh, Angus, M'Diarmid, at Barbacue Bluff and McCoy's ; John Gillespie, at Centre, Laurel Hill and Raft Swamp ; Robert Tate, South Washington and Rockfish. Murdoch McMillan and Malcolm M'Nair were licensed in 1801, and reported as ordained in 1803. Nearly all of these were young men; and Mr. Hall testifies that they were active, laborious and successful in their Master's work. The existing churches were greatly enlarged, and new ones formed, so that previous to 1812, the ministers and churches of the Scotch settlements, and those between them and the Ocean, were sufficiently numerous to form a Presbytery. Some eminently useful ministers in this work had but compara- tively a short race, as M'Nair ; others are living to this day, as the venerable Robert Tate.
As the fruits of the revival, many ministers of the gospel were raised up ; two men in the middle age left their occupations and prepared for the ministry, and became eminently useful. One of them, Mr. Peacock, died in the year 1830; the other, Mr. McIn- tyre, who commenced his preparations for the ministry in his forty- fifth year, still lives, and is able occasionally to preach, having continued his most active ministerial life till within a few years. This is noticed by Mr. Hall in an honorable manner.
Throughout Carolina, wherever the revival prevailed, the com- munity received unspeakable blessings, and the church, in suc- ceeding ages, can but remember with thankfulness, the mercy of God, and bear in her heart and preserve in her records the names of men whom God honored as the instruments of so many blessings to their fellow-men.
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CHAPTER XXVIII.
REV. HUMPHREY HUNTER AND THE CHURCHES OF STEELE CREEK, GOSHEN, AND UNITY.
HUMPHREY HUNTER Was one of those men, who, having suffered and fought bravely in the war of American Independence, gave the strength of their manhood and the ripened experience of their age, to proclaiming the gospel of everlasting deliverance from sin and misery by the Lord Jesus Christ. Drawn by the excitement of the occasion, he mingled with the crowd that in May, 1775, listened to the Declaration of Independence in Charlotte, and carefully preserved a copy of that memorable document, the pio- neer of Declarations of Independence, for the benefit of his children and of posterity. He joined in the shout of approval when Col. Polk read the paper from the court-house steps, and was among the foremost to redeem the pledge so solemnly given, " of life, and fortune, and most sacred honor," by taking arms in the defence of liberty, and suffering captivity and wounds in the sacred cause. All his matured years were given to preaching the gospel of our Lord. His first services were rendered in South Carolina. From thence he removed to Lincoln county, in North Carolina, and took charge of the congregations of Goshen and Unity, and some time after extended his services to Steele Creek, one of the oldest congregations in the State, bordering on Sugar Creek (which embraced Charlotte) on the southwest. Goshen became a preaching-place anterior to Unity, and Steele Creek long before either.
From the fact that in 1776 a call was brought into the Synod of New York and Philadelphia from Steele Greek and Providence, it is probable that the church on Steele Creek was organized by Messrs. Elihu Spencer and Alexander McWhorter, who were sent by the Synod in 1764 to the back part of North Carolina, to aid the people in organizing churches, settling their boundaries, and taking proper steps to obtain regular pastoral services. In 1765, the Synod appointed Rev. Messrs. Kerr, Duffield, Ramsay, David Caldwell, Latta, and McWhorter, to spend each half a
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year in the vacant congregations of Carolina. In the next year the call for the services of Mr. Kerr is sent to Synod.
Long previous to that time there was occasional preaching on Steele Creek, by missionaries and travelling preachers, as McAden, while those who were willing to ride the distance of from six to sixteen miles, could attend on the preaching at Sugar Creek. In the early settlements, fifteen and sixteen miles were often passed over to attend the sanctuary on a Sabbath morning ; and as many more in the evening, to return to the secluded forest homes of the scattered inhabitants that ultimately formed Steele Creek and Providence churches, whose nearest regular preaching was at Sugar Creek. The settlement of all these congregations commenced about the same time, Sugar Creek and Rocky River taking the precedence somewhat in point of time, and very par- ticularly in obtaining the services of a settled pastor.
In 1767, the Rev. Robert Henry, the first settled pastor on Cub Creek, Charlotte county, Virginia, having left his charge in Vir- ginia, accepted a call from Steele Creek and Providence ; in the mysterious Providence of God, he closed his life that year.
The Rev. Dr. McRee, so long pastor of Centre, spent some twenty years of his life in Steele Creek, taking his residence there in 1778 and leaving it in 1797. A more particular account of him will be given under the head of Centre congregation. Between his service and the time of Mr. Henry, the congregation does not appear to have had a settled minister, unless Mr. Reese was occu- pied a few years with Steele Creek and Providence. He was preaching in Mecklenburg about the commencement of the Revo- lution, and used his pen for his country.
You may find Steele Creek church on the road from Camden, South Carolina, through Lincoln to Tennessee, some ten miles southwest from Charlotte, and some five or six south of Tucka- sege ford. As you go up from Camden, you will pass the spacious church on the left hand ; but whichever way you may be passing you will not mistake the low wooden house, the second upon the same site, with the old grave-yard, a few steps to the east, filled with monuments, and the new yard on the west across the great road, with a few graves, the chosen resting-place of a large con- gregation.
Would you see the records of Steele Creek ? She has no his- tory. None of her females conversant with events of thrilling interest, when Steele Creek was the track of armies in the Revolu- tionary struggle, has, like the old lady of Poplar Tent, committed
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to writing the circumstances peculiar to the congregation, whose recital shall warm the heart of every one who traces his line of de- scent from the actors in these stirring and often bloody scenes. Had some one called their attention, like the Pastor of Poplar Tent, to the difference between traditionary story growing more and more faint and uncertain with passing years, and the written record that may remain to all time, in all probability some of the ladies of the past generation would have prevented our saying Steele Creek has no history.
But she has records. Not written with pen and ink, but graven in the enduring rock, records brief, concise, numerous, and cha- racteristic. With the ever to be commended practice of gathering the remains of the dead to the sepulchres of their fathers, in the enclosure near the place of worship, securely walled in, sacred as the place of graves, unexposed to the plough of the stranger or the cold-hearted descendant, this congregation has gone farther and excelled their neighbors, in erecting those monumental stones, that shall tell what people and families have once been active in the business of life on the surrounding plantations, have mingled in social intercourse, and in the worship of God, in that decaying house, have tasted of the sweets and bitterness of life, then given place to others, soon to vanish away before the infants of to- day. Wave after wave passes on, and those brief records and enduring stones tell where they brake on the shore of eternity.
Were these that worshipped here more reverential of the dead ? or more affectionate in attachments unsevered by the grave ? or more abundant in resources to procure what gentle-hearted poverty might sigh for in vain, a monument, or tablet, or grave-stone ; a monument of the dead ? or was it simply that their habitations were many miles of " weary hauling" nearer the market and the workshop ?
Will you walk among these tombs ? Perhaps pride and vanity shall be humbled, worldliness may get a death-blow ; and the heart go away chastened from the perusal of these monumental stones pointing faith to the skies, and cheerful under the provi- dence of God that has not yet consigned us to the silent abodes. Let us enter by this gate, in the west wall, near the church, and advancing a few paces northeastwardly, read the brief and only record of one that shed his blood in the battle of Camden :-
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Sacred to the Memory of JOHN MCDOWELL, who departed this life July 30th, 1795. Aged 52 years. An unexceptionable character, in whose death his family, his neighborhood, the State, and the Church, sustained a loss.
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