How well the scene and the worship accorded! There was congruity in all—the woods, the tents, the people, and the worship. The impressions made that day upon my young mind were renewed at many a camp-meeting in after years; and so indelibly impressed as only to pass away with existence.
The preacher rose upon his elevated platform, and, advancing to the front, where a simple plank extending from tree to tree, before him, formed a substitute for a table or desk, where rested the hymn-book and Bible, commenced the service by reading a hymn, and then, line by line, repeating it, to be sung by all his congregation.
Whoever has listened, in such a place, amidst a great multitude, to the singing of that beautiful hymn commencing, "Come, thou fount of every blessing," by a thousand voices, all in accord, and not felt the spirit of devotion burning in his heart, could scarcely be moved should an angel host rend the blue above him, and, floating through the ether, praise God in song. In that early day of Methodism, very few of those licensed to preach were educated men. They read the Bible, and expounded its great moral truths as they understood them. Few of these even knew that it had been in part originally written in the Hebrew tongue, and the other portion in that of the Greeks; but he knew it contained the promise of salvation, and felt that it was his mission to preach and teach this way to his people, relying solely for his power to impress these wonderful truths upon the heart by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. For this reason the sermons of the sect were never studied or written, and their excellence was their fervor and impassioned appeals to the heart and the wild imaginations of the enthusiastic and unlearned of the land. Genius, undisciplined and untutored by education, is fetterless, and its spontaneous suggestions are naturally and powerfully effective, when burning from lips proclaiming the heart's enthusiasm. Thus extemporizing orations almost daily, stimulated the mind to active thought, and very many of these illiterate young Methodist preachers became in time splendid orators.
It was the celebrated Charles James Fox who said to a young man just entering Parliament, if he desired to become a great orator, and had the genius and feeling from nature, all he had to do was to speak often and learn to think on his feet. It is to this practice the lawyer and the preacher owe the oratory which distinguish these above every other class of men. And yet, how few of them ever attain to the eminence of finished orators. Eloquence and oratory are by no means identical: one is the attribute of the heart, the other of the head; and eloquence, however unadorned, is always effective, because it is born of the feelings; and there is ever a sympathy between the hearts of men, and the words, however rude and original, which bubble up from the heart freighted with its feelings, rush with electrical force and velocity to the heart, and stir to the extent of its capacities. Oratory, however finished, is from the brain, and is an art; it may convince the mind and captivate the imagination, but never touches the heart or stirs the soul. To awaken feelings in others, we must feel ourselves. Eloquence is the volume of flame, oratory the shaft of polished ice; the one fires to madness, the other delights and instructs.
Religion is the pathos of the heart, and must be awakened from the heart's emotions. The imagination is the great attribute of the mind, gathering and creating thought and inspiring feeling. Hence, the peculiar system of the Methodists in their worship is the most efficient in proselyting, and especially with a rude, imaginative people.
The camp-meeting was an admirable device for this purpose, and its abandonment by the sect is as foolish as would be that of a knight who would throw away his sword as he was rushing to battle. Fashion is omnipotent in religion, as in other things, and with the more general diffusion of education, camp-meetings have come to be considered as vulgar and unfashionable. To be vulgar, is to be common; to be common, is to be natural. The masses, and especially in democratic communities, must always be vulgar or common—must always be, in the main, illiterate and rude; and it is for the conversion and salvation of these multitudes the preacher should struggle, and in his efforts his most efficient means should be used.
The camp-meeting, at night, when all the fire-stands are ablaze, and the multitude are assembled and singing, is beyond description picturesque: when, too, some eloquent and enthusiastic preacher is stimulating to intense excitement the multitude around him with the fervor of his words, and the wild, passionate manifestations of his manner, to see the crowd swaying to and fro, to hear the groans and sobs of the half-frenzied multitude, and, not unfrequently, the maddened shriek of hysterical fear, all coming up from the half-illuminated spot, is thrillingly exciting. And when the sermon is finished, to hear all this heated mass break forth into song, the wild melody of which floats, in the stillness of night, upon the breeze to the listening ear a mile away, in cadences mournfully sweet, make the camp-meeting among the most exciting of human exhibitions. In such a school were trained those great masters of pulpit oratory, Pierce, Wynans, Capers, and Bascomb. Whitfield was the great exemplar of these; but none, perhaps, so imitated his style and manner as John Newland Maffit and the wonderful Summerfield.
Like all that is great and enduring, the Methodist Church had its beginning among the humble and lowly. Rocked in the cradle of penury and ignorance, it was firmly fixed in the foundations of society, whence it rose from its own purity of doctrine and simplicity of worship to command the respect, love, and adoption of the highest in the land, and to wield an influence paramount in the destinies of the people and the Government. Its ministers are now the educated and eloquent of the Church militant. Its institutions of learning are the first and most numerous all over the South, and it has done for female education in the South more than every other sect of Christians, excepting, perhaps, the Roman Catholic. In the cause of education its zeal is enlisted, and its organization is such as to bring a wonderful power to operate upon the community in every section of the South and West. That this will accomplish much, we have only to look to the antecedents of the Church to determine. Like the coral insect, they never cease to labor: each comes with his mite and deposits it; and, from the humblest beginning, this assiduity and contribution builds up great islands in the sea of ignorance—rich in soil, salubrious in climate, and, finally, triumphant in the conceptions of the chief architect—completing for good the work so humbly begun.
CHAPTER IX.
PEDAGOGUES AND DEMAGOGUES.
Education—Colleges—School-Days—William and Mary—A Substitute—Boarding Around—Rough Diamonds—Caste—George M. Troup—A Scotch Indian—Alexander McGilvery—The McIntosh Family—Button Gwinnett—General Taylor—Matthew Talbot—Jesse Mercer—An Exciting Election.
The subject of education engaged the attention of the people of Georgia at a very early day subsequent to the Revolution. Public schools were not then thought