Skepticism and American Faith by Grasso Christopher;

Author:Grasso, Christopher;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press, Incorporated
Published: 2018-05-02T16:00:00+00:00

11

Converting Skeptics

Infidel and Protestant Economies

On February 14, 1833, at a little after five o’clock in the afternoon, a thirty-year-old lawyer named Charles R. Baldwin, sitting alone in his office in Charleston, in western Virginia, turned the back of his chair to the door and began to pray. He was a leading light of the Kanawha County bar, an admired orator, a rising star. Twenty days earlier his young wife, Elizabeth, had died. She had been declining since the previous November and had struggled to surrender herself completely to Christ. She found peace a week before her death. In a cot next to her bed on the night of her conversion, Charles was relieved for her but was still tormented by the idea that her impending death was a punishment for his sins. He promised her that he would seek real religion just as she had. As he sat in his office at the end of that busy February day, he vowed that he would do anything to experience the assurance of salvation. He would give up all he had—his books, his office, his career, even his baby daughter—for Christ’s sake. The prosperous lawyer would turn his back on all the honors and pleasures of the world and become a Methodist preacher. With that conviction, he wrote, “I experienced a feeling which I had never known before. … I had peace, and love, and joy. My heart rose up in my throat, and I was filled with delight and surprise.”1

About five months later, John Scarlett, a thirty-year-old New Jersey shoemaker, sat alone on a decaying log in the woods and remembered the sharp knife in his pocket. He had been attending his first Methodist revival meeting. Friends and strangers alike had prayed and wept for him. But when an old woman publicly prayed for his conversion at the meeting he felt like slinking home in disgrace. He had tried to read the Bible, but the words that thrilled and comforted so many others only seemed strange to him. He vowed not to work, eat, or drink until the question of his conversion was settled, but as he sat on the log he could only feel a crushing despair. He took the knife out of his pocket, and with the other hand felt his chest where the blade would have to penetrate to pierce his heart. A large stone nearby had a concave surface, like a shallow bowl; he imagined it filling with a suicide’s blood. Suddenly he heard “an intelligible voice, not of audible sound,” asking him why he thought killing himself—merely separating his soul from his body—would give any relief to his spiritual anguish. He knew it was the voice of God. He hurried back to the meeting, asked the preacher to say a prayer for him, and felt Christ remove his burden of sin. Later he had a vision: a high mountain, a bright cloud, an amber light, the lovely face of a man smiling with no earthly smile.

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