124. “It proves nothing against it,” we are told from the other side. The remark is most true; but most foreign at the same time from the point, so far as the position of the tract is concerned. The object of this chapter is, not to present any positive argument against the Bench, but simply to undermine certain presumptions in its favor, which are known to stand in the way of a calm and dispassionate consideration of its merits, as afterwards examined. The argument here is negative, not positive. The patrons of the system, it is plain, make much account of its popularity, of the success with which it seems to be attended, and of the power it is supposed to manifest on the part of those who can use it with effect. In the present chapter it is attempted to show simply that opportunity and apparent success prove nothing, and that the measure is of such a character as to call for no particular moral force to give it effect. In the following chapter the argument becomes positive, showing that there is actual weakness and quackery at the bottom of the whole system.
125. This has been contradicted; with more courage, however, than wisdom. It is notorious to all who know anything about the subject that the system of New Measures, in the sense of the present tract, as represented some years since in the north by such men as Burchard [Jedediah Burchard (1791–1864), a prominent revivalist associated with Finney] and Finney, has latterly fallen into discredit and general disuse throughout the Congregational and Presbyterian Churches. They still cherish of course prayer meetings, protracted meetings, and revivals; and it is quite possible that a number of ministers may still have recourse to the anxious bench as a particular measure at certain times; but the system, to which this measure of right belongs, is no longer in vogue. By general consent the churches have fallen back upon the evangelical method to which the use of the anxious bench can adhere only as an accident, if it adhere at all. The revivals of last winter in the North, according to the testimony furnished concerning them in the New York Observer, were of a wholly different stamp from those of Mr. Finney’s school in former years. These last had strength; but it was such as a wasting fever imparts to a sick man, opening the way for a long prostration afterwards. The revivals of the past winter, it may be trusted, have been the first fruits only of the quiet and enduring vigor that springs from renovated health.
126. “Who can behold a congregation of christians wrestling for an altar full of penitent, anxious sinners, and witness the success of such instrumentality, and say, this is ignorance or fanaticism? God blesses only one way, which is the right way; He has blessed this way, therefore it is the right way”—Correspondence of the Lutheran Observer [10, no. 24], Feb. 17, 1843 [p. 2].
127. [W. H. C. Frend introduces monasticism in The Rise of Christianity, 574–79; M. A. Smith provides a popular treatment of the entire phenomenon in The Church Under Siege, 99–123. Nevin had not yet developed the appreciation of pre-Reformation Christianity he would evince after his interaction with Philip Schaff.]
128. [American William Miller (1782–1849), founder of the Adventist church, believed that the end of the world and the return of Christ would occur in 1843.]
129. [Written by an English Baptist pastor Edmund Jones (1722–1765) who introduced hymn singing to his Exeter congregation in 1759.]
130. “Females and persons who are quite young have souls to be saved, as well as males and persons who are advanced in life; nay ‘mere girls and boys’ have an eternal interest pending.”—Luth. Obs. [Lutheran Observer 11, no.17], Dec. 29, 1843 [p. 3].
“And was not woman last at the cross, and first at the tomb of the Son of God?”—Davis’ Plea [James M. Davis, A plea for new measures in the promotion of revivals, or, A reply to Dr. Nevin against the Anxious bench (Pittsburgh: A. Jaynes, 1844)], p. 45.
“‘Low and jejune’ indeed ‘must be the conception of a religion’ which can allow a divine to attempt to destroy a ‘measure,’ through which ‘females, girls and boys,’ run to as a means to enable them to flee the wrath to come.”—Denig’s Strictures [John Denig, Strictures on the mourners’ and anxious bench (Chambersburg: Thom. J. Wright, 1843)], p. 26 [Denig’s emphasis; Denig is parodying Nevin in the single quotes, although he adds “females”; the editor has added the first two sets of single quotes].
What a coincidence of judgment, among the critics of the tract, at this point! And what shall we say of the relevancy and honesty of the criticism itself, in view of the passage thus censured, as it actually stands, and taken in its plain sense? This is a fair specimen, however, of a large part of all that has been argued against the tract in these publications. [For a further argument that the “Awakenings” introduced an “emotional appeal” into the conversion experience, see Layman, general introduction to Born of Water and the Spirit, 8–10.]
131. [Presbyterian pastors Thomas Campbell (1763–1854) and son, Alexander (1788–1866), sought the unification of Christians into a single body patterned after the New Testament church. In order to restore the New Testament Church in nineteenth-century America they believed in no creed but Christ, no book but the Bible, and no name but Christian.]
132. [According to the Unitarian Universalist Association (www.uua.org), Universalism developed in American in, at least, three geographical locations. By 1781, Elhanan Winchester had organized a Philadelphia congregation of Universal Baptists. At about the same time, in the rural, interior sections of New England, a small number of itinerant preachers, among them Caleb Rich, began preaching salvation for all. John Murray, an English preacher who immigrated in 1770, helped lead the first Universalist church in Gloucester, MA. After officially organizing in 1793, the Universalists spread their faith across the eastern United States and Canada.]
133. [The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), more commonly known as the “Mormon” church, traces its origins to Joseph Smith (1805–44) who claimed to have been called by God to restore the church that Christ had established on the earth, but which had been lost after the deaths of the original apostles.]
134. “Who ever dreamed that a single invitation to penitents to come forward, and a personal conversation with them on their spiritual condition and duties, demanded uncommon inward spiritual force?” Thus the editor of the Luth. Obs. [Lutheran Observer 11, no. 11], Nov. 17, 1843 [p. 3], mystifying the point as usual. His colleague of Pittsburgh, however, comes up boldly to the mark, “A quack may preach a sermon and make