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prostrate in the midst of a large assembly of persons of coarse and unga verned souls . Around the patient are some dozen hierophants , praying either singly or in pairs , or in a body , with all their might to God that he would break the heart of the hardened sinner before him , using the greatest and most offensive familiarity with the Creator , prescribing to him both the time and the way of the patient ' s conversion , at times calling on the prostrate
man himself to yield his stubborn soul , and threatening him in awful language with the Divine vengeance to everlasting woe ; while during the whole scene , often of considerable duration , voices either of supplication or threat , groanings , ejaculations , and sobs , are arising from every part of the building , and aiding in the general effect . At last , perhaps , the man is prepared to acknowledge the « ' good work . " The spirit of God , he says , lias descended on him . Straightway he is questioned as to the nature of his convictions , and it has happened that the interrogators , not being satisfied with the replies , have ordered him again to prostrate himself , and 10 " tell God he would have all or none . " We remember on one occasion to have seen a woman who had , as the parties said , been converted , led down the streets of a country town , and then first we formed what we deemed a somewhat adequate idea of the state of the Pythoness immediately after retiring from the tripod , to which she had been forced , and where amidst the furies to which she was stimulated she delivered her broken oracular accents . Nor must our
readers imagine that , once converted , a person is converted for life . The work in some instances requires to be frequently repeated , and is to some people what a course of medicine is to others after a debauch . Let not our readers be sceptical ( they mus 4 be pained ) at these representations . The following quotation might have served as the basis of the foregoing description . It is taken from the Protestant Methodist Magazine for Julv last . " The mercy of God displayed . At a public Methodist prayer-meeting
held in Yorkshire , about the middle of the service a number of thoughtless young men entered the meeting , when two of them kneeled down , apparently desirous of salvation ; the friends spoke to and prayed for them ; shortly afterwards a man present stated that those young men had agreed in their mirth , before they came to the meeting , that they would kneel down to be prayed with ; on receiving this information , the friends were deeply concerned for them , and prayed that the Lord would awaken them to a sense of
their danger . The agonizing prayers of the brethren for them at length prevailed ; they appeared greatly moved , and began to pray for themselves ! On one of them attempting to rise from his knees , he found his legs so singularly affected that he could not stand upright . They wept and prayed , assisted by the powerful intercession ofthe friends , and on retiring from the meeting they seemed to be in great distress . The one whose limbs were so seized , afterwards became truly serious , ( what became of the others ?) and joined the society . The writer was an eye-witness or the facts stated , which
took place during a revival of religion among the Methodists . " It is no longer than last summer that we saw a scene more revolting even than that we have described a few sentences before , but we abstain . There is no room for doubt that the form of religion , in some of the more retired parts
of England , is to the man of sound mind most offensive and painful . The schoolmaster , they say , is abroad ; but the present generation must pass off the stage before the good which he is fitted to effect will be seen in the villages of the more uncultivated parts of our country . We have now alluded to the capital error of the present day . From this
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40 Evils of a Belief in Special Interpositions . — Pious Orgies .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Jan. 2, 1830, page 40, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2580/page/40/
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