Cautions for Evangelism

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0 height="100%"><tr> <td valign="top" width=200 BGCOLOR="#003399" TEXT="#080000" background="040c8c00erkjxk.jpg"> <div> <B><U>Dr. Ebenezer Porter</U></B><FONT SIZE="2" COLOR="#CC0033" FACE="Arial" ><B> </B></FONT></div> <div> <B>was a congregational pastor in New England during the time of the Second Great Awakening, and also served as president of Andover Seminary.  This is an excerpt from his </B><I><B>Letters on the Religious Revivals which Prevailed about the Beginning of the Present Century</B></I><B>.</B></div> <bR> <div> <B>I find his insights most helpful and needed today, though I doubt many will pay attention anytime soon.</B></div> <bR> </td> <td valign="top" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#080000"> <div> <FONT SIZE="7" COLOR="#0000CC" FACE="Brush Script MT" ><B>Restoration Ministries</B></FONT><FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#FFFF99" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#FFFFFF" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#CC0000" FACE="Arial" > </FONT><FONT SIZE="1" COLOR="#00FFFF" FACE="Arial" >       </FONT><A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Restoration Ministries"><U>H</U></A><A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Restoration Ministries"><U>ome</U></A></div> <div>                                                   </div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <IMG SRC="073f8480.jpg" border=0 width="504" height="72" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <div> <B>By Ebenezer Porter</B></div> <div> ______________________________________________________________</div> <bR> <div> What does the Gospel require that sinners, under the excitements of a awakened conscience, shall do? That they shall repent — not that they shall purpose to repent or promise to repent, but repent. When must they repent? Now. If you turn back to the extracts last given and examine the clauses printed in italic, you will see the ground of my scruples as to some prevalent modes of preaching. “All who are determined now to yield their hearts to God,” etc. The preacher, on a former occasion, had spoken of the Gospel as demanding, “an immediate decision.” What decision? Why, to <I>think</I> on Christianity seriously; to “attend now to their souls' welfare.” </div> <bR> <div> All this, doubtless, is well intended, but it is not the apostolic way of pressing immediate obligation. The language is equivocal and vague on a point where the New Testament is perfectly explicit. A serious inquirer might ask, “How much does the preacher mean by my determining ‘to become the servant of Jesus Christ' or ‘determining now to yield my heart to God?' Does he mean that by so determining I do now exercise true repentance or merely that I have a resolve to become repentant? If it is the latter, I can kneel, etc., for I do thus determine. But if he had said, ‘All who at this moment exercise true repentance for sin are requested to kneel, etc.', I should not dare to do it, for I have not sufficient evidence that I do now exercise a repentant heart.”</div> <bR> <div> The practical difficulty, and it is very serious, lies here: some men are in the habit of exhorting their hearers, “to an immediate decision,” “to make up their minds now,” and so forth, yet leave it uncertain whether they mean a decision that implies the actual present surrender of the heart to God by repentance, or a decision to make Christianity now the subject of their solemn attention, etc. But between the two things there is an infinite difference. One secures the salvation of the soul, the other leaves it exposed to eternal death. Now if we preach the Gospel as the apostles did, unrepentant men cannot do what we exhort them to do and still perish.</div> <bR> <div> But there is a greater difficulty still. “The converts being called to separate themselves from the anxious, about one third declared themselves converts.” So in another case: “The second day of the meeting, the converts and the anxious were called on to separate themselves,” etc. I object to this on several grounds.</div> <bR> <div> <B>Premature Hopes of Conversion</B></div> <bR> <div> <I>In the first place, </I>the hopes are premature. The settlement of our controversy with God is a business of awful moment It respects our whole past life and our whole eternity to come. The work may be done in a moment and God may see it done as effectually, but the proof to ourselves and to other men that it is done is not the work of a moment, nor of a day. A man on Monday is a careless sinner. He listens to preaching. On Tuesday, he thinks himself converted. What is the evidence? None at all. None, I mean, that is adequate to the momentous importance of the case. </div> <bR> <div> The existence of such evidence is impossible. No voice from heaven has announced the fact — if it is a fact, only omniscience can know it, for the ordinary principles of evidence cannot reach the case. There has not been time for this and the circumstances do not allow it The man has been under strong excitement, such excitement as, I have said, is properly brought to bear on the unawakened conscience. But it is certainly not safe for him to determine, under this state of mind, that he is a Christian. This requires opportunity for calm thought, reading and examination of his own heart and the evidences of grace. He may be truly born again and yet be ignorant as a child respecting the proper evidence of this change.</div> <bR> <div> <B>Premature Public Profession</B></div> <bR> <div> Of course, in <I>the second place, </I>if it is so premature for him so soon to indulge in a hope, it is still more so to proclaim it. Why should he be called upon to “declare himself a convert,” while it is impossible that the evidence of this can be such as ought to be satisfactory to his own mind? The measure is full of awful hazard to his soul, without any imaginable advantage. </div> <bR> <div> When an indiscriminate call is given to a public assembly for the “converts” of a protracted meeting to separate themselves from others, it requires but little acquaintance with revivals and with men to know that the confident, the ignorant and the sanguine will be first in responding to the call, while the judicious, the modest, and the heart-broken will stand back from so sudden and public exhibition of themselves.</div> <bR> <div> <B>Premature Announcement by Ministers</B></div> <bR> <div> <I>Third, </I>another difficulty is that these hopes, true or false, are confirmed by the influence of ministers and churches. I speak of that class of individuals described above who are publicly called on “to declare themselves converts.” In doing this, the understanding is that they are regarded by the minister as converts, and thence the inference is easy and most certain on their part that they are converts. </div> <bR> <div> But what is the minister's proof of their being so? He may have found, amid the hurry and excitement of a protracted meeting, opportunity for momentary conversations with them, but the sum of the whole evidence is that they have a hope. This ought, indeed, to imply that there is some valid ground of hope, but cannot itself be that ground. Of itself, the hope is not the proper evidence that they are converted, nor any part of that evidence. A man hopes that he shall be rich, or shall live to old age; is this any proof that he will be rich, or will live to old age? The foolish virgins had a hope, but they had no oil in their lamps. Many will say, “Lord, Lord, open up to us,” who will be shut out of heaven.</div> <bR> <div> What, then, is the minister's evidence that these individuals are converted? They hope it is so and he hopes because they do, while in the case supposed, it is impossible that they or he should have such evidence as the nature of the subject demands, to authorize this hope. And yet, as if the minister could judge of hearts by intuition, without liability to mistake, or as if mistake on a subject of eternal moment must be harmless, these persons are announced as “converts” without the epithet of “hopeful,” or any adjunct denoting the necessity of caution in judgment. </div> <bR> <div> Indeed, any language implying caution, dangers of false hopes, etc., is professedly, not to say contemptuously, discarded from the vocabulary of some in these times who glory in being called revival preachers. Perhaps they may have seen some good men who carried caution to excess, but does this justify a heedless, undiscriminating procedure in themselves? A few fanatical men in the time of (Jonathan) Edwards and at other periods of religious excitement, have professed to decide whether one is a Christian by hearing him speak a few words or even by looking in his face. But Christian sobriety and common sense demand evidence in the judging of ourselves and others. </div> <bR> <div> If this is a needless scrupulosity, why did the apostles incessantly repeat their admonitions against self-deception? “Examine yourselves whether ye be in the faith,” ‘Prove your own selves,” “Be watchful.” Why did they exhort individuals to keep up this humble, devout self-inspection through life, and exhort churches to beware of false professors, if it is sufficient evidence of a man's piety that he entertains hope?</div> <bR> <div> <B>Dangers of Premature Professions</B></div> <bR> <div> But on the supposition that individuals do entertain hopes and unite with the church prematurely, in what does the danger consist? There is a two-fold answer. <I>First</I>, as it respects themselves. It puts their eternal interests in imminent and needless jeopardy, because it surely need not be proved that a sinner, if he has a groundless hope of heaven, is in far greater danger of perishing than if he had no hope. </div> <bR> <div> Here I must be permitted to add more brief extracts from accounts given by ministers, as I wish it to be understood that I am not speaking at random. “A sick man was made the subject of special prayer by the people of God; he was convicted and converted and shortly died.” Christ said, “By their fruits you shall know them,” and what were the fruits? “... converted and shortly died.” Probably the man lived long enough to learn that the minister had assumed the dread responsibility of pronouncing him converted! Again: “Within a few moments after their own conversion, fervent cries were offered by these individuals for their unconverted companions.” Here must have been intuitive knowledge of hearts! </div> <bR> <div> Again: “The Lord is working gloriously here, within a little more than a week twenty conversions have taken place.” Again: “The two following days of the protracted meeting were distinguished by frequent and sudden conversions.” Language of this sort has been common, in which the number of conversions occurring within a specified number of days, before the account was written, is stated with the same confidence that we use in telling how many there are in our own family, or how many persons in our neighborhood have died in a week.</div> <bR> <div> <B>What Are the Consequences?</B></div> <bR> <div> Now, lay these facts together and look at the results. On the last day of a protracted meeting at a call from the pulpit to that effect, ninety persons “declare themselves converts.” Within a few days, perhaps the next day, they see in the newspaper the statement of their pastor announcing the as “the converts of that meeting.” And suppose still (as the case certainly may be), that God sees twenty or thirty of the ninety to be utter aliens from the commonwealth of Israel. I ask — and the Judgment Day will give answer — who is responsible for the consequences? These immortal souls take it for granted, perhaps, that they are Christians and blindly cleave to this hope in defiance of evidence to the contrary, until their eyes are opened in eternity. </div> <bR> <div> The most decisive objection that I have always felt to the camp-meetings of our Methodist brethren in the indiscriminate manner in which men and women are announced as converts in the prayers and addresses of ministers. For all the universe, I would not be accountable for the false hopes which I fear are sometimes thus produced in a single day. And, yet, from ample documents now before me, I am constrained to think that irregularities under the name of revival measures, to some of which there is no room here to advert, have been carried to a most preposterous and presumptuous extreme in many of our churches. </div> <bR> <div> In too many cases, the aim has manifestly been to produce excitement, not by clear exhibitions of the truth, but by rousing the passions through continued and violent appeals that often amount to little more than shouting. The fault is not in producing emotion, for this God requires, but in presuming all high emotions to be such as He requires. Whereas emotion without conviction, without light, without contrition is not religious feeling, any more than are the thunder and the wind. Its action cannot be controlled, nor its results foreseen, except for the certainty that it will die when the occasion is over.</div> <bR> <div> The process of self-deception under these circumstances is easy. A careless sinner, ignorant of the Bible, comes under the influence of a protracted meeting. His fears and hopes are addressed by considerations appealing to his desire for happiness and dread of misery. He is told that conversion is a simple preference of God to the world, of heaven to hell — a preference as easy to be made by anyone present as the choice to go home when the meeting is over. He is alarmed, distressed, melted down; his sympathies are excited by seeing others go to the seat of the anxious and of the converts. He feels as he has never felt before and asks himself if this must not be conversion. </div> <bR> <div> This is the perilous and awful moment when he needs a spiritual guide to say, “Take care of your soul. Bow immediately at the foot of the cross. Delay for a moment may be your spiritual undoing. Watch and pray and search your own heart. But do not presume to hope that you are a convert now. If you are, the work of salvation will go on in your heart and in the fruits of holiness will bring to yourself and others the comforts of a good hope in your case. If you are not a convert now and yet entertain a hope, the probability is that you will die a self-deceiver.” So the great luminaries of past revivals have treated men in these circumstances.</div> <bR> <div> <B>“But We Have to Call to Decision...!”</B></div> <bR> <div> But it is said, “Some confession, given in the presence of a public assembly, is necessary to bring the hesitant to a decision.” To this point, only a moment can be devoted. Meetings for the anxious, that appropriate instructions may be given to them, are eminently proper. These, I <I>think</I>) should be appointed in public and attended always by pastors and experienced elders without anything of display and exhibition. But, as much as I respect the judgment and motives of excellent men who think otherwise, the public designation of the anxious in an assembly and the whole machinery of “anxious seats,” as they are called, seem to me at least liable to so much abuse as to be generally inexpedient. And as to the same procedure respecting “converts,” my whole judgment and heart revolt against it</div> <bR> <div> <B>Danger to the Church</B></div> <bR> <div> The second serious danger of these premature hopes is to the church, especially when combined with a premature confession of Christianity. This topic of itself demands a treatise, but I must confine myself to those suggestions which appear to me most practical at the present time. The prominent point for apprehension is that the spirituality of the church will be gradually undermined by unconverted members.</div> <bR> <div> <I>In the first place, </I>there has lately been an evident tendency in the course of revival measures to count up and to publish, as early as possible, the number of converts and additions to the church. Pious and zealous ministers mean by this to do honor to divine grace. But let them ask if there is no measure of religious ostentation in this “numbering of the people,” and ask also if there is no sectarian policy connected with it. “Sixty hopeful subjects of grace are reckoned among my people this week. If they are not admitted together into my church very soon, many of them will probably unite with the church of brother A., and others go to different denominations. They must be secured, therefore, without delay.”</div> <bR> <div> <I>In the second place, </I>it is by no means probable that the ultimate prosperity of the church will be promoted by this hasty accession to its membership rolls. The strength of the church does not consist of the number, but of the character of those who belong to it. On this principle, when Gideon had mustered all his soldiers for the war with Midian and Amalek — presuming that all would be enough to encounter so mighty a host —  “The Lord said unto him, ‘The people that are with thee are too many.” </div> <bR> <div> Any skillful commander, if called to storm a fortification, would choose to rely on a select band of soldiers, known to possess true hearts and tried courage, instead of ten times their number of recent and promiscuous volunteers. And why should a principle, sanctioned by experience in all ordinary concerns, be discarded in Christianity? Paradox as it may seem to youthful ministers, of many a church it may be said, as to all the purposes of unity, stability and moral strength, “the people are too many.”</div> <bR> <div> Now I am ready to say, <I>in the third place, </I>that those who rush into the church without piety not only add nothing to its strength, but in various ways paralyze its energies and are a dead weight on its prosperity. To its doctrines, it is not improbable that they will be found in one form or another opposed. If the pastor preaches the soul-humbling truths of the Bible with fidelity, these false professors are the men from whom he may expect an influence, secret or open, to be arrayed against him. They have never been at heart reconciled to these truths. </div> <bR> <div> A man who had long been a professor of Christianity, though not of my pastoral charge, once came to tell me of his dissatisfaction with the sermon which he heard me preach on the preceding Sabbath. </div> <bR> <div> “So,” I said, “it seems you are not pleased with the doctrine of election (which was the subject of my discourse)?” </div> <bR> <div> “No, certainly I am not” </div> <bR> <div> “What then do you think of my text? And what do you think of the ninth chapter of Romans, from which my text was taken?” </div> <bR> <div> “Indeed, sir, to be honest, I have always thought that the Bible would have been quite as good a book without that chapter as with it.” </div> <bR> <div> Who can be assured that one-half the members of a church may not be of this description if they are hurried into its membership without having been instructed in the first principles of Christianity before or after their supposed conversion?</div> <bR> <div> As to the duties of evangelical piety, what is to be expected of such men? Strangers to the spirit of vital godliness, will they hold up their pastor's hands? Will they actively sustain the prayer meeting and the Sunday School? Will they devoutly maintain family worship and train up their households for God?</div> <bR> <div> As to the discipline of the church, what is to be expected? All of experience testifies to the indispensable importance of this to the prosperity of Christianity and the intrinsic difficulties attending it are equally apparent. But how is discipline to be maintained in a church without a predominant spirit of piety in its members? An individual is arraigned for open, perhaps habitual violation of the laws of Christ He is obstinate in self-justification. </div> <bR> <div> Others sympathize with him and take his part, prejudices are excited, parties are formed, a struggle for influence commences, clamor, wrath and all the mischiefs that result from baleful passions blown into angry commotion ensue. Plainly, a church cannot prosper without discipline and it cannot maintain discipline when one-half to one-third of its members choose to have none.</div> <bR> <div> To what purpose, then, is it to say, “Keep the door of the church wide open and if unworthy men enter, we will cast them out”? At the best. I admit the impossibility of wholly excluding such men, for with all the vigilance of the apostles in their day, “False brethren crept in unawares.” But it is easier to keep out ten such men than to cast out one.</div> <bR> <div> And as to the character of the church and its sanctifying influence on the world, what is to be expected from a lax system of admission to membership? How is she to be the light of the world if the light in her is darkness. Her unconverted members are the elements of death in her bosom, even if they maintain a blameless exterior. But, generally, they will not do this. Towards many of them, ungodly opposers of experiential piety will point the finger of reproach and say, “There are your converts — as worldly, as proud, as light-minded and as indifferent to religion as other people!” </div> <bR> <div> What is the reply? Can the church contradict what she knows to be unquestionable facts? Will it do for her to say, “These men are doubtless false professors and the peril is upon themselves; it is of no concern of the church”? It will not do to say this. It is a solemn concern of the church to maintain its holy character as a community instituted by God to train men for heaven and not for perdition. She is pledged to do this by most sacred vows; the world holds her to that pledge and God holds her to it. </div> <bR> <div> When Achan committed his trespass secretly, the indictment of heaven was laid in against the whole religious community to which he belonged: “Israel has sinned.” Divine wrath rested on the church as a body for the transgression of a single member until he was searched out and punished. Nor is it less true now that the tolerated sin of one member is the sin of the church.</div> <bR> <div> If, then, we heedlessly continue to admit unconverted men to our fellowship what hope can we entertain that God will bless us? If any considerable proportion of our members should be of this character, what is to become of our genuine revivals? Let the Spirit of God be withdrawn from us and leave us to fanatical excitements and human conirivances to multiply nominal Christians, and then we may have “human converts” and many accessions to the number of the church, but the glory of Zion will be departed. A few such seasons of ingathering in any church will be sufficient to render it an utter desolation.</div> <bR> <div> There are two other points which deserve more extended notice than I can give them under this head. One is the authority of apostolic precedent as alleged in favor of sudden admissions to the church. Without spending time to controvert the premises often assumed in regard to this matter, I will barely say that, as to any number of the individuals who have recently professed Christianity, let me be assured on divine authority (as I am, for example, respecting the Pentecost converts), that they “believed,” that “the Lord added them to the church,” that “they continue in the apostles doctrine and fellowship” and that “they shall be saved;” let me have this assurance and I can have no apprehension that any mistake has been committed. But who will undertake to give me this assurance?</div> <bR> <div> <B>A Final Warning </B></div> <bR> <div> The other note respects the loud note of warning to Christians of this time from a well-known apostasy which occurred in the New England churches during the last century. By a gradual and silent progress, the spirit of vital godliness was supplanted in many of these churches, in pulpits which had been occupied by the Mathers and Sheperds of former days, laxity of doctrine was introduced, the glory of the Gospel was obscured, the real divinity of the Savior and the special agency of the Spirit were kept out of sight, then called in question, then denied, until at length, a regular organized apostasy from the faith of the Gospel threw off its disguise and boldly unfurled the banner of error. </div> <bR> <div> This lamentable defection among the sons of the Pilgrims, which many generations cannot remedy, did not result from accident Whence did it come? The answer deserves to be proclaimed with trumpet tongue: The Puritan churches slept and the enemy sowed tares. Unconverted men, in great numbers, were admitted into their fellowship, hoping to become Christians. If I do not mistake the signs of the times, the danger of our churches now is that unconverted men in great numbers will be admitted to their fellowship hoping that they are Christians. Should this apprehension prove well-grounded, another century will disclose the calamitous results. God grant that it may prove without foundation.</div> <bR> <div> It will be evident, I presume, that in the foregoing remarks, my eye has been fixed on the single danger of rash and premature admissions to the church. Justice to my own views, however, requires me to say, that there is an opposite danger to be guarded against, namely, too much delay in bringing hopeful converts to a public profession of Christianity. That this mistake has often been committed in our evangelical churches cannot be doubted. The consequences of this undue delay are such as a judicious minister will least after a few years of pastoral experience and of careful attention to the spiritual state of individuals who need his special guidance. The most general usage of new England churches (with many exceptions, of course, to meet particular cases), I suppose has been to delay admission of candidates after hopeful conversion from two months to six. Within the last fifteen years, probably the time has not generally exceeded from two to four months.</div> <bR> </td> </tr></table></body>