18673 Religious Revivals 



I thought an open mind and at the end concluding 

 that the case was not proved. Earlier (at about the "A prayer 

 age of eight) I had made some tests of prayer. When & au e " 

 a toy boat I had built became entangled on the pond 

 in the crotch of a log from which only a north wind 

 could release it, I prayed for a north wind ; by morn- 

 ing the boat had arrived in port. I was thus en- 

 couraged to petition, although unsuccessfully, for 

 some things I knew I ought not to have. 



With other youths of that time I was exposed to Religion 

 the peculiar institution known as the "revival." and 

 In western New York the Methodist Episcopal 

 Church had been split by the secession of a group 

 called Free Methodists or "Nazarites," who be- 

 lieved in intense emotionalism and the need of a 

 spasmodic transformation to "a state of grace." 

 One of them, a famous evangelist named Gilbert 

 Delamatyr, painted the horrors of hell in vivid colors 

 and scorching language ; in his way he was an orator, 

 not a clown, as some later exhorters have been. 

 The general effect of his discourses was to create in 

 believers a violent nervous disturbance so that some 

 rolled on the floor, shouting incoherently. The re- 

 action which followed when the blood-flow became 

 relatively calm again was taken as a "new birth" and 

 pledge of salvation. Often, however, the results of 

 these emotional spasms were distinctly mischievous 

 as to both sanity of life and personal morals. 



At such meetings I was never moved. But the 

 Congregational Church undertaking in its cool way 

 what it also called a revival, I rose and went forward 

 with the others looking for "conversion." I was 

 sincere enough in this matter, but it made no real 

 difference in my life so far as I remember, and was 



C49 3 



