The Wit and Humor of America Volume VII Part 7

At every grand outcry a simultaneous rush would, however, take place from all parts of the camp, proper and improper, towards the pulpit, altar, and pen; till the crowding, by increasing the suffocation and the fainting, would increase the tumult and the uproar; but this, in the estimation of many devotees, only rendered the meeting more lively and interesting.

By considering what was done at this central station one may approximate the amount of spiritual labor done in a day, and then a week in the whole camp:

1. About day-break on Sabbath a horn _blasted_ us up for public prayer and exhortation, the exercises continuing nearly two hours.

2. Before breakfast, another blast for family and private prayer; and then every tent became, in camp language, "a bethel of struggling Jacobs and prevailing Israels," every tree "an altar;" and every grove "a secret closet;" till the air all became religious words and phrases, and vocal with "Amens."

3. After a proper interval came a horn for the forenoon service; then was delivered the sermon, and that followed by an appendix of some half dozen exhortations let off right and left, and even _behind_ the pulpit, that all might have a portion in due season.

4. We had private and secret prayer again before dinner;--some clambering into thick trees to be hid, but forgetting in their simplicity, that they were heard and betrayed. But religious devotion excuses all errors and mistakes.

5. The afternoon sermon with its bob-tail string of exhortations.

6. Private and family prayer about tea time.

7. But lastly, we had what was termed "a precious season," in the third regular service at the _principia_ of the camp. This season began not long after tea and was kept up long after I left the ground; which was about midnight. And now sermon after sermon and exhortation after exhortation followed like shallow, foaming, roaring waters; till the speakers were exhausted and the a.s.sembly became an uneasy and billowy ma.s.s, now hus.h.i.+ng to a sobbing quiescence, and now rousing by the groans of sinners and the triumphant cries of folks that had "jist got religion"; and then again subsiding to a buzzy state, occasioned by the whimpering and whining voices of persons giving spiritual advice and comfort! How like a volcanic crater after the evomition of its lava in a fit of burning cholic, and striving to resettle its angry and tumultuating stomach!

It is time, however, to speak of the three grand services and their concomitants, and to introduce several master spirits of the camp.

Our first character, is the Reverend Elder Sprightly. This gentleman was of good natural parts; and in a better school of intellectual discipline and more fortunate circ.u.mstances, he must have become a worthy minister of some more tasteful, literary and evangelical sect. As it was, he had only become what he never got beyond--"a very smart man;" and his aim had become one--to enlarge his own people. And in this work, so great was his success, that, to use his own modest boastfulness in his sermon to-day,--"although folks said when he came to the Purchase that a single corn-crib would hold his people, yet, bless the Lord, they had kept spreading and spreading till all the corn-cribs in Egypt weren't big enough to hold them!"

He was very happy at repartee, as Robert Dale Owen well knows; and not "slow" (inexpert) in the arts of "taking off"--and--"giving them their own." This trait we shall ill.u.s.trate by an instance.

Mr. Sprightly was, by accident, once present where a Campbellite Baptist, that had recently taken out a right for administering six doses of lobelia, red pepper and steam to men's bodies, and a plunge into cold water for the good of their souls, was holding forth against all Doctors, secular and sacred, and very fiercely against Sprightly's brotherhood. Doctor Lobelia's text was found somewhere in Pope Campbell's _New_ Testament; as it suited the following discourse introduced with the usual inspired preface:

DOCTOR LOBELIA'S SERMON

"Well, I never rub'd my back agin a collige, nor git no sheepskin, and allow the Apostuls didn't nither. Did anybody ever hear of Peter and Poll a-goin' to them new-fangled places and gitten skins to preach by?

No, sirs, I allow not; no, sirs, we don't pretend to loguk--this here _new_ testament's sheepskin enough for me. And don't Prisbeteruns and tother baby sprinklurs have reskorse to loguk and skins to show how them what's emerz'd didn't go down into the water and come up agin? And as to Sprightly's preachurs, don't they dress like big-bugs, and go ridin about the Purchis on hunder-dollur hossis, a-spunginin on poor priest-riden folks and a-eatin fried chickin fixins so powerful fast that chickins has got skerse in these diggins; and then what ain't fried makes tracks and hides when they sees them a-comin?

"But, dear bruthrun, we don't want store cloth and yaller b.u.t.tins, and fat hossis and chickin fixins, and the like doins--no, sirs! we only wants your souls--we only wants beleevur's baptism--we wants prim--prim--yes, Apostul's Christianity, the Christianity of Christ and them times, when Christians _was_ Christians, and tuk up thare cross and went down into the water, and was buried in the gineine sort of baptism by emerzhin. That's all we wants; and I hope all's convinced that's the true way--and so let all come right out from among them and git beleevur's baptism; and so now if any brothur wants to say a word I'm done, and I'll make way for him to preach."

Antic.i.p.ating this common invitation, our friend Sprightly, indignant at this unprovoked attack of Doctor Lobelia, had, in order to disguise himself, exchanged his clerical garb for a friend's blue coatee bedizzened with metal b.u.t.tons; and also had erected a very tasteful and sharp c.o.xcomb on his head, out of hair usually reposing sleek and quiet in the most saint-like decorum; and then, at the bid from the pulpit-stump, out stepped Mr. Sprightly from the opposite spice-wood grove, and advanced with a step so smirky and dandyish as to create universal amazement and whispered demands--"Why! who's that?" And some of his very people, who were present, as they told me, did not know their preacher till his clear, sharp voice came upon the hearing, when they showed, by the sudden lifting of hands and eyebrows, how near they were to exclaiming: "Well! I never!"

Stepping on to the consecrated stump, our friend, without either preliminary hymn or prayer, commenced thus:

"My friends, I only intend to say a few words in answer to the pious brother that's just sat down, and shall not detain but a few minutes.

The pious brother took a good deal of time to tell what we soon found out ourselves--that he never went to college and don't understand logic.

He boasts, too, of having no sheepskin to preach by; but I allow any sensible buck-sheep would have died powerful sorry, if he'd ever thought his hide would come to be handled by some preachers. The skin of the knowingest old buck couldn't do some folks any good--some things salt won't save.

"I rather allow Johnny Calvin's boys and 'tother baby sprinklers,'

ain't likely to have they idees physicked out of them by steam logic, and doses of No. 6. They can't be steamed up so high as to want cooling by a cold water plunge. But I want to say a word about Sprightly's preachers, because I have some slight acquaintance with that there gentleman, and don't choose to have them all run down for nothing.

"The pious brother brings several grave charges; first, they ride good horses. Now don't every man, woman and child in the Purchase know that Sprightly and his preachers have hardly any home, and that they live on horseback? The money most folks spend in land these men spend for a good horse; and don't they _need_ a good horse to stand mud and swim floods?

And is it any sin for a horse to be kept fat that does so much work? The book says 'a merciful man is merciful to his beast,' and that we mustn't 'muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn.' Step round that fence corner, and take a peep, dear friends, at a horse hung on the stake; what's he like? A wooden frame with a dry hide stretched over it. What's he live on? Ay! that's the pint! Well, what's them buzzards after?--look at them sailing up there. Now who owns that live carrion?--the pious brother that's just preached to us just now. And I want to know if it wouldn't be better for him to give that dumb brute something to cover his bones, before he talks against 'hunder-dollur hossis' and the like?

"The next charge is, wearing good clothes. Friends, don't all folks when they come to meeting put on their best clothes? and wouldn't it be wrong if preachers came in old torn coats and dirty s.h.i.+rts? It wouldn't do no how. Well, Sprightly and his preachers preach near about every day; and oughtn't they always to look decent? Take, then, a peep at the pious brother that makes this charge; his coat is out at the elbow, and has only three or four b.u.t.tons left, and his arm, where he wipes his nose and mouth, is s.h.i.+ny as a looking gla.s.s--his trousers are crawling up to show he's got no stockings on; and his face has got a crop of beard two weeks old and couldn't be cleaned by 'baby sprinklin"; yes, look at them there matters, and say if Sprightly's preachers ain't more like the apostles in decency than the pious brother is.

"A word now about chickin-fixins and doins. And I say it would be a charity to give the pious brother sich a feed now and then, for he looks half-starved, and savage as a meat-ax; and I advise that old hen out thare clucking up her brood not to come this way just now, if she don't want all to disappear. But I say that Sprightly's preachers are so much beliked in the Purchase, that folks are always glad to see them, and make a pint of giving them the best out of love; an' that's more than can be said for some folks here.

"The pious brother says he only wants our souls--then what makes him peddle about Thomsonian physic? Why don't he and Campbell make steam and No. 6 as free as preaching? I read of a quack doctor once, who used to give his advice free gratis for nothing to any one what would _buy_ a box of his pills--but as I see the pious brother is crawling round the fence to his anatomical horse and physical saddle-bags, I have nothing to say, and so, dear friends, I bid you all good-by."

Such was Rev. Elder Sprightly, who preached to us on Sabbath morning at the Camp. Hence, it is not remarkable that in common with many worthy persons, he should think his talents properly employed in using up "Johnny Calvin and his boys," especially as no subject is better for popularity at a camp-meeting. He gave us, accordingly, first, that affecting story of Calvin and Servetus, in which the latter figured to-day like a Christian Confessor and martyr, and the former as a diabolical persecutor; many moving incidents being introduced not found in history, and many ingenious inferences and suppositions tending to blacken the Reformer's character. Judging from the frequency of the deep groans, loud amens, and noisy hallelujahs of the congregation during the narrative, had Calvin suddenly thrust in among us his hatchet face and goat's beard, he would have been hissed and pelted, nay possibly been lynched and soused in the branch; while the excellent Servetus would have been _toted_ on our shoulders, and feasted in the tents on fried ham, cold chicken fixins and horse sorrel pies!

Here is a specimen of Mr. S.'s mode of exciting triumphant exclamation, amens, groans, etc., against Calvin and his followers: "Dear sisters, don't you love the tender little darling babes that hang on your parental bosoms? (amen!)--Yes! I know you do--(amen! amen!)--Yes, I know, I know it.--(Amen, amen! hallelujah!) Now don't it make your parental hearts throb with anguish to think those dear infantile darlings might some day be out burning brush and fall into the flames and be burned to death! (deep groans.)--Yes, it does, it does! But oh!

sisters, oh! mothers! how can you think your babes mightn't get religion and die and be burned for ever and ever? (O! forbid--amen--groans.) But, oho! only think--only think, oh! would you ever a had them darling infantile sucklings born, if you had a known they were to be burned in a brush heap! (No, no!--groans--shrieks.) What! what! _what!_ if you had _foreknown_ they must have gone to h.e.l.l?--(hoho! hoho--amen!) And does anybody think He is such a tyrant as to make spotless, innocent babies just to d.a.m.n them? (No! in a voice of thunder.)--No! sisters! no! no!

mothers! No! _no!_ sinners, _no!!_--He ain't such a tyrant!

Let John Calvin burn, torture and roast, but He never foreordained babies, as Calvin says, to d.a.m.nation! (d.a.m.nation!--echoed by hundreds.)--Hallelujah! 'tis a free salvation! Glory! a free salvation!--(Here Mr. S. battered the rail of the pulpit with his fists, and kicked the bottom with his feet--many screamed--some cried amen!--others groaned and hissed--and more than a dozen females of two opposite colors arose and clapped their hands as if engaged in starching, etc., etc.) No-h-o! _'tis_ a free, a free, a _free_ salvation!--away with Calvin! 'tis for all! _all!_ ALL! Yes! shout it out! clap on! rejoice! rejoice! oho-oho! sinners, sinners, sinners, oh-ho-oho!" etc., etc.

Here was maintained for some minutes the most edifying uproar of shouting, bellowing, crying, clapping and stamping, mingled with hysterical laughing, termed out there "holy laughing," and even dancing!

and barking! called also "holy!"--till, at the partial subsidence of the bedlam, the orator resumed his eloquence.

It is singular Mr. S. overlooked an objection to the divine Providence arising from his own ill.u.s.tration. That children do sometimes perish by being burnt and drowned, is undeniable; yet is not their existence prevented--and that in the very case where the sisters were induced to say _they_ would have prevented their existence! But, in justice to Mr.

S., we must say that he seemed to have antic.i.p.ated the objection, and to have furnished the reply; for, said he, in one part of his discourse, "G.o.d did not _wish_ to foreknow _some_ things!"

But our friend's mode of avoiding a predestined death--if such an absurdity be supposed--deserves all praise for the facility and simplicity of the contrivance. "Let us," said he, "for argument's sake, grant that I, the Rev. Elder Sprightly, am foreordained to be drowned, in the river, at Smith's Ferry, next Thursday morning, at twenty-two minutes after ten o'clock; and suppose I know it; and suppose I am a free, moral, voluntary, accountable agent, as Calvinists say--do you think I'm going to be drowned? No!--I would stay at home all day; and you'll never ketch the Rev. Elder Sprightly at Smith's Ferry--nor near the river neither!"

Reader, is it any wonder Calvinism is on the decline? Logic it _can_ stand; but human nature thus excited in opposition, it can not stand.

Hence, throughout our vast a.s.sembly to-day, this unpopular _ism_, in spite of Calvin and the Epistle to the Romans, was put down; if not by acclamation, yet by exclamation--by shouting--by roaring--by groaning and hissing--by clapping and stamping--by laughing, and crying, and whining; and thus the end of the sermon was gained and the _preacher_ glorified!

The introductory discourse in the afternoon was by the Rev. Remarkable Novus. This was a gentleman I had often the pleasure of entertaining at my house in Woodville; and he _was_ a Christian in sentiment and feeling; for though properly and decidedly a warm friend to his own sect, he was charitably disposed toward myself and others that differed from him ecclesiastically. His talents were moderate; but his voice was transcendently excellent. It was rich, deep, mellow, liquid and sonorous, and capable of any inflections. It could preserve its melody in an unruffled flow, at a pitch far beyond the highest point reached by the best-cultivated voice. His fancy naturally capricious, was indulged without restraint; yet not being a learned or well-read man, he mistook words for ideas, and hence employed without stint all the terms in his vocabulary for the commonest thoughts. He believed, too, like most of his brotherhood, that excitement and agitation were necessary to conversion and of the essence of religion; and this, with a p.r.o.neness to delight in the music and witchery of his own wonderful voice, made Mr. Novus an eccentric preacher, and induced him often to excel at camp-meetings, the very extravagances of his clerical brethren, whom more than once he has ridiculed and condemned at my fireside.

The camp-meeting was, in fact, too great a temptation for my friend's temperament, and the very theater for the full display of his magnificent voice; and naturally, this afternoon, off he set at a tangent, interrupting the current of his sermon by extemporaneous bursts of warning, entreaty and exhortation. Here is something like his discourse--yet done by me in a _subdued tone_--as, I repeat, are most extravaganzas of the ecclesiastical and spiritual sort, not only here, but in all other parts of the work.

"My text, dear hearers," said he, "on this auspicious, and solemn, and heaven-ordered occasion, is that exhortation of the inspired apostle, 'Walk worthy of your vocation.'

"And what, my dear brethren, what do you imagine and conjecture our holy penman meant by 'walking?' Think ye he meant a physical walking, and a moving, and a going backward and forward thus? (represented by Mr. N.'s proceeding, or rather marching, _a la militaire_, several times from end to end of the staging). No, sirs!--it was not a literal walking and locomotion, a moving and agitating of the natural legs and limbs. No, sirs!--no!--but it was a moral, a spiritual, a religious, ay! yes! a philosophical and metaphorically figurative walking, our holy apostle meant!

"Philosophic, did I say? Yes: philosophic _did_ I say. For religion is the most philosophical thing in the universe--ay! throughout the whole expansive infinitude of the divine empire. Tell me, deluded infidels and mistaken unbelievers! tell me, ain't philosophy what's according to the consistency of nature's regular laws? and what's more onsentaneous and h.o.m.ogeneous to man's sublimated moral nature, than religion? Yes! tell me! Yes! yes! I am for a philosophical religion, and a philosophical religion is for _me_--ay! we are mutually made and formed for this beautiful reciprocality!

"And yet some say we make too much noise--even some of our respected Woodville merchants--(meaning the author). But what's worth making a noise about in the dark mundane of our terrestrial sphere, if religion ain't? People always, and everywhere in all places, make most noise about what they opine to be most precious. See! yon banner streaming with golden stars and glorious stripes over congregated troops, on the Fourth of July, that ever-memorable--that never-to-be-_forgotten_ day, which celebrates the grand annual anniversary of our nation's liberty and independence! when our forefathers and ancestors burst asunder and tore forever off the iron chains of political thraldom! and rose in plenitude, ay! in the magnificence of their grandeur, and crushed their oppressors!--yes! and hurled down dark despotism from the lofty pinnacle of its summit alt.i.tude, where she was seated on her liberty-crus.h.i.+ng throne, and hurled her out of her iron chariot, as her wheels thundered over the prostrate slaves of power!--(Amen)--Yes!--hark!--we make a noise about that! But what's civil liberty to religious liberty, and emanc.i.p.ated disenthraldom from the dark despotism of yonder terrific prince of darkness! whose broad, black, piniony wings spread wide o'er the aerial concave like a dense cloud upon a murky sky?--(A-a-men!)--And ain't it, ye men of yards and measures, philosophical to make a noise about this?--(Amen!--yes!) Yes! _yes!_ and I ain't ashamed to rejoice and shout aloud. Ay! as long as the prophet was ordered to stamp with his foot, I will stamp with my foot;--(here he stamped till the platform trembled for its safety)--and to smite with his hand, I will _smite_ with my hand--(slapping alternate hands on alternate thighs.)--Yes! and I will shout, too!--and cry aloud, and spare not--glory!

for--ever!--(and here his voice rang out like the sweet, clear tones of a bugle).

"And, therefore, my dear sisters and brethren, let us walk worthy of our vocation; not with the natural legs of the physical corporation, but in the apostolical way, with the metaphysical and figurative legs of the mind--(here Mr. N. caught some one smiling).--Take care, sinner, take care! curl not the scornful nose--I'm willing to be a fool for religion's sake--but turn not up the scornful nose--do its ministers no harm! Sinner, mark me!--in yon deep and tangled grove, where tall, aspiring trees wave green and lofty heads in the free air of balmy skies--there sinner, an hour ago, when the sonorous horn called on our embattled hosts to go to private prayer! an hour ago, in yonder grove I knelt and prayed for you!--(hooh!)--yes! I prayed some poor soul might be given for my hire!--and he promised me one!--(Glory! glory!--ah! give him one!)--laughing sinner!--take care!--I'll have you!--(Grant it--amen!--ooohoo!) Look out, I'm going to fire--(a.s.suming the att.i.tude of rifle-shooting)--bang!--may He send that through your heart!--may it pierce clean home through joints and marrow!--and let all people say amen!--(and here amen _was_ said, and not in the tame style of the American Archbishop of Canterbury's cathedral, be a.s.sured; but whether the spiritual bullet hit the chap aimed at, I never learned; if it did, his groans were inaudible in the alarming thunder of that amen).

"Ay! ay! that's the way! that's the way! don't be ashamed of your vocation--that's the way to walk and let your light s.h.i.+ne! Now, some wise folks despise light, and call for miracles: but when we can't have one kind of light, let us be philosophical, and take another. For my part, when I'm bogging about these dark woods, far away in the silent, somber shadows, I rejoice in suns.h.i.+ne; and would prefer it of choice, rather than all other celestial and translucent luminaries: but when the gentle fanning zephyrs of the shadowy night breathe soft among the trembling leaves and sprays of the darkening forests, then I rejoice in moons.h.i.+ne: and when the moons.h.i.+ne dims and pales away, with the waning silvery queen of heaven in her azure zone, I look up to the blue concave of the circular vault, and rejoice in starlight. No! _no!_ NO! any light!--give us any light rather than _none_!--(Ah, do, good--!) Yes!

yes! we are the light of the world, and so let us let our light s.h.i.+ne, whether suns.h.i.+ne, or moons.h.i.+ne, or starlight!--(oohoo!)--and then the poor benighted sinner, bogging about this terraqueous, but dark and mundane sphere, will have a light like a pole star of the distant north, to point and guide him to the sunlit climes of yonder world of bright and blazing bliss!"--(A-a-amen!)

Such is part of the sermon. His concluding prayer ended thus--(Divine names omitted).

"Oh, come down! come, come down! _down!_ now!--to-night!--do wonders then! come down in _might_! come down in _power_! let salvation _roll_!

_Come_ down! _come!_ and let the earthquaking mighty noise of thy thundering chariot wheels be heard, and felt, and seen, and experienced in the warring elements of our spiritualized hearts!"

During the prayer, many pet.i.tions and expressions were so rapturously and decidedly encored, that our friend kindly repeated them; and sometimes, like public singers, with handsome variations; and many pet.i.tions by amateur zealots were put forth, without any notice of the current prayer offered by Mr. N., yet evidently having in view some elegancy of his sermon. And not a few pet.i.tions, I regret to say, seemed to misapprehend the drift and scope of the preacher. One of this sort was the earnest e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.ns of an old and worthy brother, who, in a hollow, sepulchral, and rather growly voice, bellowed out in a very beautiful part of the grand prayer: "Oohhoo! take away _moons.h.i.+ne_!"

But our first performance was to be at night: and at the first _toot_ of the tin horn we a.s.sembled in expectation of a "good time." For, 1. All day preparation had been making for the night; and the actors seemed evidently in restraint, as in mere rehearsal: 2. The night better suits displays and scenes of any kind: but 3. The African was to preach; and rumor had said, "he was a most powerful big preacher, that could stir up folks mighty quick, and use up the ole feller in less than no time."