This post (and the following) is an article written by Robert L. Dabney on the subject of false religious excitement as it relates to the "Revival movement" of the 19th Century. Although today's version of such movements are not as wide-spread, the attendant evils are. Because of the article's length, I have split in into two parts relatively equal in length.
SPURIOUS RELIGIOUS EXCITEMENTS
by Robert L. Dabney
It
is believed all thoughtful Christians are alive to the fact that
religious excitements, which consist of temporary movements of the
emotions devoid of any saving operation of the Truth on the reason
and conscience, are equally frequent and mischievous in America. This
judgment not seldom expresses itself in very queer and inaccurate
forms. Thus: good brethren write to the religious journals grateful
accounts of a work of grace in their charges, and tell the editors
that "they are happy to say, the work has been purely rational
and quiet, and attended by not the slightest excitement." They
forget that the efficacious (not possibly, tempestuous) movement of
the feelings is just as essential a part of a true religious
experience, as the illumination of the intellect by divine truth; for
indeed, there is no such thing as the implantation of practical
principle, or the right decisions of the will, without feeling. In
estimating a work of divine grace as genuine, we should rather ask
ourselves whether the right feelings are excited, and excited by
divine cause. If so, we need not fear the most intense excitement.
This misconception is parallel to the one uttered by public speakers,
when they assure their hearers that, designing to show them the
respect due to rational beings, and to use the honesty suitable to
true patriots, "they shall make no appeal to their feelings, but
address themselves only to their understandings." This is
virtually impossible. On all practical subjects, truth is only
influential as it stimulates some practical feeling. There is no
logical appeal of the rhetorical nature which does not include and
appeal to feeling. Does the orator proclaim, for instance, that
waiving all appeals to passion, he will only address his hearers'
intellects to prove what is for their interest, or "for their honor,"
or "for the good of their country"? What is he really doing
except appealing to the emotions of desire for wealth, or love of
applause, or patriotism?
In
the Southern, Presbyterian Review, 1884, I presented a discussion on
the psychology of the feelings. I wish to recall a few of the
fundamental positions there established. The function of feeling is
as essential to the human spirit, and as ever present, as the
function of cognition. The two are ever combined, as the heat-rays
and the light-rays are intermingled in the sunbeams. But the
consciousness intuitively recognizes the difference of the two
functions, so that it is superfluous to define them. "Feeling is
the temperature of thought." The same kind of feeling may differ
in degree of intensity, as the heat-ray in the brilliant winter
sunbeam differs from that in the fiery glare of the "dog days";
but the thermometer shows there is still caloric in the most wintry
sunbeam, and even in the block of crystal ice. So a human spirit is
never devoid of some degree of that feeling which the truth then
engaging the intelligence tends to excite. No object is or can be
inducement to volition unless it be apprehended by the soul as being
both in the category of the true and of the good. But, that function
of soul by which the object is taken as a good, is desire, an act of
feeling. Whence it follows, that an element of feeling is as
essential to every rational volition as an act of cognition. The
truly different sorts of feelings were distinguished and classified.
But this all important division of them was seen to be into the
passions, and the active feelings; between those impressions upon the
sensibility of the soul, caused from without, and in receiving which
the soul is itself passive, and its spontaneity has no
self-determining power (as pain, panic, sympathy) on the one hand,
and on the other hand those subjective feelings which, while
occasioned from without, are self-determined by the spontaneity from
within and in which the soul is essentially active, (as desire,
benevolence, ambition, etc.)
It
may be asked here: Does the writer intend to rest the authority of
his distinction between genuine and spurious religious experiences on
a human psychology? By no means. The Scriptures are the only sure
source of this discrimination. Its declarations, such as that
sanctification is only by revealed truth, its anthropology, its
doctrine of redemption, and its examples of saving conversions, give
the faithful student full guidance as to the conduct of gospel work,
and the separation of the stony-ground hearers from the true. But it
is claimed that the psychology outlined above is the psychology of
the Bible. It is that theory of man's powers everywhere assumed and
postulated in Scripture. It gives that theory of human action on
which all the instances, the narratives, and the precepts of
Scripture ground themselves. Hence these mental laws and facts are of
use, not as the mistress, but as the hand-maid of Scripture, to
explain and illustrate those cautions which the Bible gives us.
One
inference is simple and clear. The excitement of mere sensibilities,
however strong or frequent, can offer no evidence whatever of a
sanctified state. The soul is passive in them; their efficient cause
is objective. An instinctive susceptibility in the soul provides the
only condition requisite for their rise when the outward cause is
applied. Hence the excitement of these sensibilities is no more
evidence of change or rectification in the free agency, than the
shivering of the winter wayfarer's limbs when wet by the storms. Now
the doctrine of Scripture is that man's spontaneity is, in his
natural state, wholly disinclined and made opposite (yet freely) to
godliness, so that he has no ability of will for any spiritual act
pertaining to salvation. But it is promised that, in regeneration,
God's people shall be willing in the day of his power. He so
enlightens their minds in the knowledge of Christ, and renews their
wills, that they are both persuaded and enabled to embrace Jesus
Christ. The very spontaneity is revolutionized. Now the stimulation
of merely passive sensibilities, in which the will has no causal
part, can never be evidence of that saving change. No evidence of it
appears, until the subjective desires and the will exhibit their
change to the new direction. That fear, that selfish joy, that hope,
that sympathy are excited, proves nothing. But when the soul freely
exercises a "hungering and thirsting after righteousness,"
hatred of sin, desire of God's favor, love of his truth, zeal for his
honor, this evinces the sanctifying revolution.
Shall
we conclude then that the excitement of the passive sensibilities by
the pastor is wholly useless? This class of feelings presents the
occasion (not the cause) for the rise of the subjective and
spontaneous emotions. This is all. It is this connection which so
often misleads the mental analyst into a confusion of the two classes
of feelings. The efficient cause may be restrained from acting by the
absence of the necessary occasion; this is true. But it is equally
true, that the occasion, in the absence of the efficient cause, is
powerless to leaving any effect. If the pastor aims to move the
sensibilities merely for the purpose of gaining the attention of the
soul to saving truth, and presents that truth faithfully the moment
his impression is made, he does well. If he makes these sensibilities
an end, instead of a means, he is mischievously abusing his people's
souls.
People
are ever prone to think that they are feeling religiously because
they have feelings round about religion. Their sensibilities have
been aroused in connection with death and eternity, for instance; so,
as these are religious topics, they suppose they are growing quite
religious. The simplest way to clear away these perilous illusions
is, to ask: What emotions, connected with religious topics as their
occasions, are natural to the carnal man? These may be said to be,
first, the emotions of taste, or the mental-aesthetic; second, the
involuntary moral emotion of self-blame, or remorse; third, the
natural self-interested emotions of fear and hope, and desire of
future security and enjoyment; and fourth, the emotion of instinctive
sympathy. The following conclusions concerning these feelings need
only to be stated, in order to be admitted.
The
aesthetic feeling may be as naturally stimulated by the features of
sublimity and beauty of God's natural attributes, and of the
gospel-story, as by a cataract, an ocean, a starlit sky, or a
Shakespearean hero. Now it is most obvious that the movements of
taste, in these latter cases, carry no moral imperative whatever.
They have no more power to reform the will than strains of music or
odors of flowers. Yet how many souls are deluded into supposing that
they love God, duty, and gospel truth, because these aesthetic
sensibilities are stimulated in connection with such topics!
When
the ethical reason pronounces its judgment of wrongfulness upon any
action or principle, this may be attended by the feeling of moral
reprehension. If it is one's own action which must be condemned, the
feeling takes on the more pungent form of remorse. But this feeling
is no function of the. soul's spontaneity. Its rise is purely
involuntary; its natural effect is to be the penal retribution, and
not the restrainer of sin.
How
completely this feeling is disconnected with the correct regulation
or reformation of the will, appears from this: that the
transgressor's will is usually striving with all his might not to
feel the remorse, or to forget it, while conscience makes him feel it
in spite of himself. A Judas felt it most keenly while he rushed to
self-destruction. It is the most prevalent emotion of hell, which
gives us the crowning proof that it has no power to purify the heart.
But many transgressors are persuaded that they exercise repentance
because they feel remorse for conscious sins. Man's native
selfishness is all-sufficient to make him desire the pleasurable, or
natural good, and fear and shun the painful, or natural evil. Those
desires and aversions, with the fears and hopes which expectation
suggests, and the corresponding terrors and joys of anticipation, may
be stimulated by any natural good or evil, more or less remote, the
conception of which occupies the mental attention distinctly. Just as
the thoughtless child dreads the lash that is expected in the next
moment, and the more thoughtful person dreads the lash of next week
or next month, just so naturally a carnal man, who is intellectually
convinced of his immortality and identity, may dread the pains, or
rejoice in the fancied pleasures, of another life. He may fear death,
not only with the unreasoning instinct of the brute, but also with
the rational dread (rational, though purely selfish) of its penal
consequences. Selfishness, with awakened attention and mental
conviction, suffices fully for all this. In all these feelings there
is nothing one whit more characteristic of a new heart, or more
controlling of the evil will, than in the wicked sensualist's dread
of the colic which may follow his excess, or the determined outlaw's
fear of the sheriff. Tet how many deluded souls fancy that, because
they feel these selfish fears or joys in connection with death and
judgment, they are becoming strongly religious. And unfortunately
they are encouraged by multitudes of preachers of the gospel to make
this fatal mistake. Turretin has distinguished the truth here by a
single pair of phrases, as by a beam of sunlight. He says: Whereas
the stony-ground believer embraces Christ solely pro bono jucundo,
the gospel offers him mainly pro bono honesto. True faith
desires and embraces Christ chiefly as a Saviour from sin and
pollution. The false believer embraces him only as a Saviour from
suffering and punishment. Holy Scripture is always careful to
represent Christ in the former light. His "name is Jesus because
he saves his people from their sins." He gives himself to redeem
us from all iniquity, and to purify us unto himself a peculiar
people, zealous of good works. But preachers so prevalently paint the
gospel as God's method of delivering sinners from penal pains and
bestowing the enjoyment of a sensuous paradise, and the guilty
selfishness of hearers is so exclusively exercised about selfish
deliverance, that we apprehend most men are permitted to conceive of
the gospel remedy solely as a bonum jucundum, a provision for simply
procuring their selfish advantage. It is true that, if asked, Is not
the gospel to make you good also? many of them might reply with a
listless "Yes." They have a vague apprehension that their
grasping the bonum jucundum is somehow conditioned on their becoming
better; and they suppose they are willing to accept this
uninteresting formality for the sake of the enjoyment that follows
it, just as the epicure tolerates the tedious grace for the sake of
the dainties which are to come after at the feast. But were one to
tell this gourmand that the grace was the real chief-end of the
feast, and the eating a subordinate incident thereto, he would be
exceedingly amazed and incredulous. Such would also be the feeling of
many subjects of modern revivals, if the Bible conception of
redemption were forced on their minds. Hence, one great reform in our
preaching must be to return to the scriptural presentation of the
gospel in this particular. A grand reform is needed here. This
grovelling, utilitarian conception of redemption must be banished.
Men must be taught that the blessing is only for them "who
hunger and thirst after righteousness," not for those who
selfishly desire to grasp enjoyment only, and to shun pain. They must
be made to see clearly that such a concern does not in the least
differentiate them from reprobate souls in hell, or hardened felons
on earth; not even from the thievish fox caught in a trap.
The
fourth and the most deceptive natural feeling of the carnal man is
instinctive sympathy. It will be necessary to state the nature and
conditions of this feeling. First, it belongs to the passive
sensibilities, not to the spontaneous appetencies. It is purely
instinctive, appearing as powerfully in animals as in men. Witness
the excitement of a flock of birds over the cries of a single
comrade, and the stampede of a herd of oxen. Next, it is even in man
an unintelligent feeling in this sense: that if the emotion of
another be merely seen and heard, sympathy is propagated, although
the sympathizer understands nothing of the cause of the feeling he
witnesses. We come upon a child, who is an utter stranger, weeping;
we share the sympathetic saddening before he has had time to tell us
what causes his tears. We enter a room where our friends are drowned
in laughter. Before we have asked the question, 'Friends, what is the
jest?' we find ourselves smiling. We see two strangers afar off
exchanging blows; we feel the excitement stimulating us to run
thither, while ignorant of the quarrel. Sympathy is in its rise
unintelligent and instinctive. The only condition requisite for it,
is the beholding of the feeling in a fellow. Third, this law of
feeling extends to all the emotions natural to man. We so often
connect the word with the emotion of grief, that we overlook its
applicability to other feelings, and we forget even its etymology:
pathos, in Greek philosophy, did not mean grief only, but every
exercise of feeling; so sympathein is to share by spiritual contagion
any pathos we witness in our fellows. We sympathize with merriment,
joy, fear, anger, hope, benevolence, moral approbation, courage,
panic, just as truly as with grief. Fourth, the nature of the emotion
witnessed determines, without any volition of our own, the nature of
the feeling injected into us. Sympathy with joy is a lesser joy. The
glow is that of the secondary rainbow reflecting, but usually in a
weaker degree, precisely the tints of the primary arch.
The
reader is now prepared to admit these conclusions: that sympathy may
infect men with a phase of religious emotion, as of any other; that
the sympathetic emotions, though thus related as to their source,
have no spiritual character whatever in themselves—for they are
involuntary, they are unintelligent, they are passive effects on an
instinctive sensibility, giving no expression to the will, and not
regulating it nor regulated by it. The animal feels these sympathies
as really as the man.
The
reader should notice that these propositions are asserted only of the
simple sensibility, the immediate reflex of strong feeling witnessed.
It is not denied that the capacity of sympathy is a social trait
implanted by a wise Creator for practical purposes. It is the
instrumental occasion of many useful results. Thus, upon the
excitement of sympathy with grief follow the appetency to succor the
sufferer, and the benevolent volition. The first is the occasion, not
the cause, of the second. On our natural sympathy with the actions we
witness, follows our impulse to imitate. But imitation is the great
lever of education. So sympathy has been called the sacred “orator's
right arm.” Let us understand precisely what it could and cannot do
in gaining lodgment for divine truth in the sinner's soul. This truth
and this alone is the instrument of sanctification. To Presbyterians
the demonstration of this is superfluous. It is impossible for the
truth to work sanctification except as it is intelligently received
into the mind. Light must reach the heart through the understanding,
for the soul only feels healthily according as it sees. To the
inattentive mind the truth being unheard, is as though it were not.
Hence it is of prime importance to awaken the listless attention.
Whatever innocently does this is therefore a useful preliminary
instrument for applying the truth. This, sympathy aids to effect. The
emotion of the orator arouses the slumbering attention of the sinner,
and temporarily wins his ear for the sacred word. Another influence
of awakened sympathy may also be conceded. By one application of the
law of association, the warmth of a feeling existing in the mind is
communicated temporarily to any object coexisting with it in the
mind; though that object be in itself indifferent to that soul. The
stone dropped into the heated furnace is not combustible, is no
source of caloric; but by contact it imbibes some of the heat which
flames there, and remains hot for a little time after it is drawn
out. So the mind warmed with emotion, either original or sympathetic,
is a furnace which gives some of its warmth to truth or concepts
coexisting in it, otherwise cold and indifferent to it. But the
warmth is merely temporary.
The
whole use, then, of the sympathetic excitement is to catch the
attention and warm it. But it is the truth thus lodged in the
attention that must do the whole work of sanctification. Here is the
all-important discrimination. Attention, sympathetic warmth, are
merely a preparation for casting in the seed of the Word. The
preacher who satisfies himself with exciting the sympathies, and
neglects to throw in at once the vital truth, is like the husbandman
who digs and rakes the soil, and then idly expects the crop, though
he has put in no living seed. The only result is a more rampant
growth of weeds. How often do we see this mistake committed! The
preacher either displays, in his own person, a high-wrought religious
emotion, or stirs the natural sensibilities by painting in exciting
and pictorial words and gestures, some natural feeling connected by
its occasion with a religious topic, as a touching death or other
bereavement; or he stimulates the selfish fears by painting the
agonies of a lost soul, or the selfish desires and hopes by a
sensuous description of the pleasures of heaven. Then, if sympathetic
feeling is awakened, or the carnal passions of hope, fear and desire
are moved, he acts as though his work were done. He permits and
encourages the hearers to flatter themselves that they are religious,
because they are feeling something round about religion. I repeat: if
this stimulation of carnal and sympathetic feeling is not at once and
wisely used, and used solely as a secondary means of fixing a warmed
attention on didactic truth, which is the sole instrument of
conversion and sanctification, then the preacher has mischievously
abused the souls of his hearers. The first and most obvious mischief
is the encouragement of a fatal deception and self-flattery.
Unrenewed men are tacitly invited to regard themselves as either born
again, or at least in a most encouraging progress towards that
blessing; while in fact they have not felt a single feeling or
principle which may not be the mere natural product of a dead heart.
This delusion has slain its “tens of thousands.”
The
reader will remember the masterly exposition by Bishop Butler of the
laws of habit as affecting the sensibilities and active powers. Its
truth is too fully admitted to need argument. By this law of habit,
the sensibilities are inevitably dulled by repeated impressions. By
the same law, the appetencies and will are strengthened by voluntary
exercise. Thus, if impressions on the sensibilities are followed by
their legitimate exertion of the active powers, the soul as a whole,
while it grows calmer and less excitable, grows stronger and more
energetic in its activities, and is confirmed in the paths of right
action. But if the sensibilities are stimulated by objects which make
no call, and offer no scope for right action, as by fictitious and
unreal pictures of human passion, the soul is uselessly hackneyed and
worn, and thus depraved. Here we find one of the fundamental
objections to habitual novel reading. The excitement of the
sympathies by warmly colored, but unreal, portraitures of passions,
where there cannot possibly be any corresponding right action by the
reader inasmuch as the agents and sufferers are imaginary, depraves
the sensibilities without any retrieval of the soul's state in the
corresponding cultivation of the active powers. The longer such
reading is continued, the more does the young person become at once
sentimental and unfeeling. The result is a selfish and morbid craving
for excitement, coupled with a callous selfishness, dead to the
claims of real charity and duty. The same objection lies against
theatrical exhibitions, and for the same reason. Now this species of
spurious religious excitement is obnoxious to the same charge. In its
practical results it is fictitious. The merely sensational preacher
is no more than a novelist or a comedian, with this circumstance,
that he connects topics, popularly deemed religious, with his
fictitious arts. He abuses and hackneys the souls of his hearers in
the same general way, rendering them at once sentimental and hard,
selfishly fond of excitement, but callous to conscience and duty.
Once
more; spiritual pride is as natural to man as breathing, or as sin.
Its only corrective is sanctifying grace. Let the suggestion be once
lodged in a heart not really humbled and cleansed by grace, that the
man is reconciled to God, has “become good,” is a favorite of God
and heir of glory—that soul cannot fail to be swept away by the
gales of spiritual pride. Let observation teach us here. Was there
ever a deceived votary of a false religion, of Islam, of Buddhism, of
Brahmanism, of Popery, who was not in reality puffed up by spiritual
pride? It cannot be otherwise with a deceived votary of a Protestant
creed. The circumstance that there is divine truth in this creed,
which has no vital influence on his heart, is no safeguard. The only
preventive of spiritual pride is the contrition which accompanies
saving repentance. Here, also, is the explanation of the fact, that
the hearty votaries of those professedly Christian creeds which have
more of Pelagianism than of gospel in them, are most bigoted and most
hopelessly inaccessible to truth. Their adamantine shield is
spiritual pride, fostered by a spurious hope, and unchastened by
sovereign grace. Of all such self-deceivers our Saviour has decided
that “the publicans and harlots enter into the kingdom before
them.”
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