Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 23, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 July 1885 — A Southern Revivalist. [ARTICLE]

A Southern Revivalist.

Sam Jones was once conducting a revival in Atlanta, Ga, For a full week he addressed himself to the members of the church. At last one of the stewards suggested that he had better begin to pitch into the sinners. “No, sir,” said Sam, “I want to get the church good stirred up first. I never kill hogs till I have got my water hot.” What he said in Chattanooga a local paper thus tells:

“The great trouble with preachers in this good day is that they are so elegant that they always refer to hell as the ‘burnt district.’ This sort of dignity is the starch of a shroud. One preacher said to me once: ‘Jones, if I preached as plain as you I’d lose my religion.’ I replied: ‘lf I preached like you I’d lose my congregation.’ There is not a man in Chattanooga who doesn’t have family prayers that has got as much religion as a goat. I don’t want to hear anything from you old humbugs who belong to the church and don’t have family prayers. Of course you’ll go off and say you don’t like some things I’ve said.

“Some say this book is not the word of God. I’ve never seen a town yet that didn’t have a ‘smiling’infidel. The Ten Commandments are sufficient. I care not who wrote them, but the man who lives below them ought to be on the chain gang. You who break them are not only on your way to hell, but are outlaws. You say you have doubts; if you quit your meanness I’ll be responsible for your doubts. I never yet saw a man who disbelieved in a hell who, if there is one, is not making a bee-line for it. A man never had a doubt which, if he pulled it up by the roots, had a seed at the bottom, and the name of that seed is sin. Your infidelity is as deep as your meanness, and no deeper. “Is there a progressive eucher Christian in town who has family prayers ? I have been looking for a Christian, I don’t mean a professing Christian, who plays cards and has family prayers; I want to shake hands with him. I’ll tell you what, a decent sinner, in the best sense, don’t play cards, much less a Christian! You can no more play cards, go to theaters, and be a Christian than you can fly, and the church member who says that his church does not oppose these things tells a lie as black as hell! “The women have much to do with this great wrong. It’s society—society does so and so—and some people will go to hell with society. There is not a society woman in Chattanooga who does not know that she has to get out of society before she can get to heaven. A woman can’t be a Christian and chaperon a ball. The ball-room is the devil’s own territory. . “If there’s one man I despise it is the dancing master. He comes often from the chain gang to teach the children of church-going parents how to attend the ball I A mother who is a church member and who sends her child to dancing school is a hypocrite of the deepest dye.

I have got more respect for a barkeeper than a dancing master.”