A Good Word for "The Good Old
Days"
These latter years have witnessed a rash of books depicting the old parlor-lamp and family-album days of a generation now gone. These writers have not dealt kindly with the faith of their fathers. Human frailty in pulpit and pew has been exploited, and, in an effort to produce racy reading, liberties have been taken with the holiest matters. It is to be feared that fools have rushed in where angels fear to tread.
It is very fashionable nowadays for this age to give vent to long-suppressed resentment and rebellion by ridiculing the religious life of its elders. One would think, to read some of this muckraking, that all deacons and preachers were Pharisees. It would seem that any generation that has made as big a mess of things as has this one would be too red in the face to sling mud at its forebears. Back of some of it there may be a nostalgia and a suspicion that perhaps our elders really had something which our pride will not let us stoop to find. Then, of course, we have heard everything, read everything, experienced everything—except those secrets which are hidden from the wise and prudent and revealed unto babes. Even a knowledge of the good
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may keep us from knowing the best. Knowing too much, we do not know enough.
This writer can hold his own with any of the scriblers so far as a countrified background is concerned. I did not grow up in a parsonage, but my father's house almost amounted to one. He was called to preach, but he didn't, and for the rest of his life he felt that he had missed his calling. He worked doubly hard trying to make up for some of it on second bests. For one thing, his home was open to preachers, and they seemed to gravitate to our ''prophet's chamber.'' We had a blessing at every meal, family prayers at night. Father was a strict disciplinarian. His thumbs were down on movies, cards, dancing. Although he lived on a farm he looked more like a preacher, wore a white collar and derby hat. His garb seemed to suggest the minister he should have been. His church work at old Corinth came first. Bee-keeping was his hobby. I was his greatest human interest. He lived over in me, and when I asked to be licensed to preach he was in seventh heaven.
If I were following the popular pattern I would digress at this point and begin poking fun at the narrow Puritanism of those days in contrast with this modern paradise of sweetness and light. I see no reason why I should do so. If I were going to have some fun, it would be at the expense of this present race of aspirin eaters hunting as feverishly as their stomach ulcers will allow for a hole in the ground where they can hide from their own inventions. At least, we could live on top of the ground in the old days. If Father thought the world was growing worse — and he did — he was a pretty good prophet. For further information, read any newspaper and listen to the radio — if you can.
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I recall the revival meetings at old Corinth Church at ''laying-by time,'' when the farmers had a little leisure. The church yard was filled; some of the elite came in surreys. Hound dogs roamed here and there. Inside the church we hung kerosene lamps on the walls. There was the wheezy organ and singing from shaped-notebooks. Preaching was long and loud, with a call for mourners.
I do not defend all that happened. Sometimes much was made of the emotional appeal—meeting our loved ones in heaven, for instance. We sang songs with separate verses about father, mother, sister, brother, husband, wife, children. The pressure was pretty heavy. Some of the more stubborn held out, but you had to be pretty stubborn. At the mourners' bench instruction was not always clear. The penitent might be kneeling between two of the brethren, one exhorting him to ''hold on'' while the other urged him to ''turn loose.'' Usually there was crisis, when the seeker came through shouting, and sometimes walked all over the church shaking hands with everybody. We had some dear souls who always went into a shout when the spiritual temperature reached a certain point. My grandmother shouted through the Baptist revival one week and the Methodist revival the next week, year after year, and the denomination didn't matter when she really ''got happy.'' One sister used to go up and down the aisles shouting with her eyes shut, and never did hit a bench. I don't know how she did it.
Yes, I know that some of the converts didn't ''stick,'' but most of them did. Those who did stick are grandparents now, and grace has brought them across many
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a rough mile since. I do know that after a rousing morning service when people were converted, we went home that day feeling fresh and clean inside. ''Heaven above was softer blue, earth around was sweeter green,'' and our humdrum lives had been touched with the light of a better world. And when we came back at ''early candle-light'' for "night preachin'' those plain old faces had something written on them that I don't read on the countenances I scan in hotel lobbies and Pullman lounge cars these days.
There came a time when I returned to old Corinth and smiled condescendingly at the mourners and shouters, who were becoming fewer by then. I thought I had advanced into intellectual realms beyond such primitive ways. I can understand some of the stuff I read now that laughs at hill-billy religion. It reminds me of when I was reading Elbert Hubbard, trying to wear a flowing tie and be a free-lance writer. It took me a long time to learn that the Bible means what it says when it declares that we must become fools to be wise.We either become fools God's way or stay fools our way.
I wasted several years dabbling in more liberal views. The worst of that is, it does not satisfy, and yet ninety-nine of a hundred are not willing to admit they are wrong and go back to the old paths. I have found nothing that works except the simple faith in Jesus Christ that obeys Him in loving service. I am no advocate of the orgies now abounding in some store-front churches and among religion's lunatic fringe. But the big church folk lost something when they let the little churches across the railroad tracks produce all the hallelujahs
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and amens. I have never shouted in public, but I see no reason why all the exuberance should be found at political rallies and ball games.
And what was wrong with the old method of scaring the ungodly with a sermon on hell? My father was jolted loose from his lethargy by a hair-raising, blood-curdling treatment of the text, ''He that being often reproved hardeneth his neck shall suddenly be destroyed and that without remedy.'' Such a sermon would horrify the delicate sensibilities of a modern ''refined'' audience that can enjoy the filth of a theater or wade through the corruption of some best-sellers but cannot endure sound doctrine from the pulpit. But that discourse landed my father in the Kingdom of God and made him a moral and spiritual force in his community for the rest of his days. I am thankful that a preacher scared him into heaven instead of lulling him into hell.
As I have indicated, sometimes the very opposite of this method was employed, and sinners were urged to be converted that they might some day join their loved ones in heaven. Of course, there was a terrific pull in that appeal. We have gone the other way now, and sermons on heaven are as scarce as the proverbial hen's teeth. Some have long since ceased talking about the ''land that is fairer than day'' for fear of being called ''celestial excursionists'' living for ''pie in the sky.'' I hear ''survival of personality'' but not heaven. Well, after the years have taken their toll and so many we loved dearly are congregated on the other side, the new skepticism affords us cold comfort. Those we have loved long since and lost awhile are somewhere, and folks who talk so much of the historic Jesus should remember
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that it was He who spoke most clearly on both hell and heaven.
Maybe one reason why some no longer sing. ''There's A Land That Is Fairer Than Day'' is because the next line says ''And By Faith I Can See It Afar.'' You have to have faith to see it, and there isn't much of that nowadays. In fact, our Saviour left no doubt that He didn't expect to find much of it when He comes again.
If I were still among the unconverted, it would be smart, according to present standards, to blame my plight on the way I was brought up. More infidels than Bob Ingersoll have made much of a stern religious childhood. I passed through a period of reaction myself, but today I am preaching substantially the same doctrine my father believed and stood for, and I think he would say ''amen'' through any of my sermons. If I departed from it awhile, I returned to abide forever. I do not now think his standards were too high. From all I can see and hear of the life I miss by being a Christian I realize more and more that I haven't missed much.
I was not convinced of these spiritual realities at the end of an argument. Very few people are—on any subject. A lot of people simply don't want to be convinced because they don't want to give up their evil ways. No use arguing, something must happen on the inside.
That is the cure for all the cynicism that slurs the ''good old days.'' I am not blind to the evils of those times and am painting no haloes for the old-timers. But what some of their critics need is just to be converted.
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I would not waste time, breath or ink trying to out-argue them. There is a world that the humblest soul may know, while kings may never find it. No college degree will furnish the password nor can wealth buy us entrance. We get in by being born again, and that means a miracle and all that is foolishness to this age. Wherever there is one who will humble himself to prove it, it works just as it always works. But stiff necks and hard hearts find it too difficult to buck the horse-laugh of the cynics and be God's fools. It was difficult for a learned doctor to take it in when Jesus was on earth, but still the accents ring across the years from a still night long ago.
Ye must be born again!.
