These
were guided by visions and revelations. Signs, omens and impressions
directed them to their field of labor and controlled their lives.
Ecstatic joy, vivid impressions, voices in the air, or seeing the Lord
in the tree-tops, were their evidences of pardon.
Once every year the people came together to a great camp-meeting. There
was intense excitement and enthusiasm, and many got religion; and this
was followed by spiritual lethargy, coldness and apostasy. It was a
short, hot summer, followed by a long, cold winter of moral and
spiritual death.
Among the Old Baptists there was preaching once a month. This was all.
There were no prayer-meetings, no meeting together every first day of
the week to break break and read the Holy Scriptures. Christian morality
was at a low ebb, and Christian liberality down to zero.
At length there came a change. The fountains of the great deep were
broken up, and men broke loose from the dominion of these old and
man-made systems. John Smith took the lead, and was followed by old
Jacob Creath, Samuel Rogers, John Rogers, John Allen Gano, P.
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