One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic, Tome 1. John Williamson Nevin
target="_blank" rel="nofollow" href="#ulink_b37a9d47-b9d5-5950-8419-0e424c160cee">143. [Acts 19:13–15.]
144. Whitefield and Edwards! exclaim the champions of the Bench; they were both thorough going New Measure men, and it is a slander upon their names to speak of them as belonging to the opposite interest. Now it is not said here that they tolerated no new things in the worship of God; but only that they needed nothing of this sort to make themselves felt. What was new, in their case, was not sought; it came of itself, the free natural result of the power it represented. Whitefield had recourse to new methods himself to some extent, and Edwards carried his toleration of such things far in favor of others; but in neither instance could it be said that any value was attached to what was thus out of the common way, for its own sake, or as something to be aimed at with care and design beforehand. The judgment of Edwards in this case moreover, it should be remembered, as given in his Thoughts on the Revival in New England, had respect to the particular things it sanctions, not in a general way, but as related to an extraordinary work of God, of great extent and long continuance, most amply authenticated on other grounds. It is a widely different case when we are required to accept such things on their own credit as the evidence of a revival, or as the power of which it is to be secured. [Both Nevin and advocates of the new measures had some justification in their arguments: Whitefield and Edwards were Calvinists, and held that revival was the result of God’s supernatural activity in the church. It was this assumption that Finney denied. At the same time, the revivalist techniques of Whitefield, when transmuted into an Arminian key by Finney, became the new measures Nevin abhorred. See the explanation of the process in Layman, general introduction to Born of Water and the Spirit, 8–12.]
145. [Scriptural references are, in order: 1 Tim 3:2; Titus 1:7–8; 1 Tim 3:4; Titus 1:9; 1 Tim 6:11; 4:12; 2 Tim 2:24, 3, 15.]
Chapter IV.
Action of the Bench.—It creates a false issue for the conscience.—Unsettles true seriousness.—Usurps the place of the Cross.—Results in widespread, lasting spiritual mischief.
Let us now fix our attention on the action of the new system, directly and immediately considered. Without regard to its more remote connections and consequences, let us inquire what its merits may be in fact, as it respects the interest it proposes to promote, namely, the conversion of souls. Is it the wisdom of God and the power of God,146 as its friends would fain have us believe, for convincing careless sinners, and bringing them to the foot of the Cross? Let the Anxious Bench, in this case, be taken as the representative of the entire system. No part of it carries a more plausible aspect. If it be found wanting and unworthy of confidence here, we may safely pronounce it to be unworthy of confidence at every other point.
As usually applied in seasons of religious excitement, I hold the measure to be spiritually dangerous; requiring great skill and much caution to be used without harm in any case, and as managed by quacks and novices (who are most ready to be taken with it) more suited to ruin souls than to bring them to heaven. This view is established by the following positions.
1. The Anxious Bench, in the case of an awakened sinner, creates a false issue for the conscience. God has a controversy with the impenitent. He calls upon them to acknowledge their guilt and misery with true repentance, and to submit themselves by faith to the righteousness of the gospel. It is their condemnation that they refuse to do this. When any sinner begins to be sensible in any measure of his actual position in this view, he is so far awakened and under conviction. Now in these circumstances what does his case mainly require? Clearly, that he should be made to see more and more the true nature of the controversy in which he is involved, till he finds himself inwardly engaged to lay down the weapons of his rebellion and cast himself upon the mercy of God in Jesus Christ. He needs to have his eyes fastened and fixed on his own relations, spiritually considered, to the High and Holy One, with whom he is called to make his peace. The question is, will he repent and yield his heart to God or not? This is the true issue to be met and settled; and it is all-important that he should be so shut up to this in his thoughts that he may have no power to escape the force of the challenge which it involves. That spiritual treatment must be considered best in his case which serves most fully to bring this issue into view, and holds him most effectually confronted with it in his conscience, beneath the clear light of the Bible. But let the sinner in this state be called to come forward to a particular seat in token of his anxiety. He finds himself at once under the force of a different challenge. The question is not will he repent and yield his heart to God, but will he go to the anxious bench, which is something different altogether. Thus a new issue is raised, by which the other is obscured or thrust out of sight. It is a false issue, too, because it seems to present the real point in controversy, when in fact it does not do so at all, but only distracts and bewilders the judgment so far as this is concerned. While the awakened person is balancing the question of going to the anxious bench, his mind is turned away from the contemplation of the immediate matter of quarrel between himself and God. The higher question is merged, for the time, in one that is lower. A new case is created for the conscience of artificial, arbitrary form and ambiguous authority. Can it be wise thus to shift the ground of debate, exchanging a strong position with regard to the sinner for one that is weak? Suppose it were made a point with awakened persons that they should rise up and confess before the congregation all their leading sins, in detail and by name, to break their pride, show their desire to be saved, excite prayer in their behalf, &c.; would not this requirement, interposed as a preliminary to the main point of conversion itself, and enforced by no proper sanction for the conscience, serve only to turn away the attention of such persons from the object with which it should be employed, thwarting the very interest it might affect to promote? And is there not room for objection to the Anxious Bench on the very same ground? It is certainly a little strange that the class of persons precisely who claim to be the most strenuous in insisting upon unconditional, immediate submission to God, scarcely tolerating that a sinner should be urged to pray or read the Bible, lest his attention should be diverted from that one point, are as a general thing nevertheless quite ready to interpose this measure in his way to the foot of the cross, as though it included in fact the very thing itself. And yet a pilgrimage to the Anxious Bench is in its own nature as much collateral to the duty of coming to Christ as a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. In either case a false issue is presented to the anxious soul by which for the time a true sight of circumstances is hindered rather than promoted.
It may be thought, indeed, that the movement of going to the Anxious Bench is so easily performed as not to be properly open to this exception. It may be considered a mere circumstance that can have no weight practically in the view now presented. But we shall see that this is not the case. However small the point involved may seem, it is not only of account, as producing for the moment a factitious case of conscience, open to “doubtful disputation,”147 but it includes also actual difficulty that cannot fail to be felt. Whether the challenge be refused or accepted, it becomes in most cases more than a circumstance, and is of no small force in fact in the way of embarrassing the proper exercises of an awakened soul.
2. The Anxious Bench, in the case of those who come to it, is adapted by its circumstances to disturb and distract the thoughts of the truly serious, and thus to obstruct the action of truth in their minds. It is no doubt quite a common thing for persons to be carried into this movement who have little or no seriousness at the time, urged forward by sympathy, or superstition, or a mere taste for distinction. There is much reason in the remark of the Rev. Dr. Miller when he tells us that he should expect, in calling out the anxious, to find the persons rising and presenting themselves to be, for the most part, the “forward, the sanguine, the rash, the self-confident and the self-righteous,” while many who keep “their seats would prove to be the modest, the humble, the brokenhearted,” the very depth of whose seriousness had restrained them from coming forward in this way.148 And yet the measure may be expected to prevail of course with many persons also who are truly under conviction, and whom nothing but the fear of losing their souls could engage to thrust themselves thus into view. In any case, however, the genuine religious feeling that may exist is likely to be in a great measure overwhelmed by the excitement that must be involved in