While reading the autobiography of the Campbellite preacher and early critic of the Church Jesse Jasper Moss (published over a 5-month period in 1938 by Christian Standard), I came across his recollection of an event from Spring 1831 with a Methodist woman. As it touches upon Luke 18:9-14 (an important text in the 'salvation debates') and the efficacy of prayer in a 19th-century context, I thought I would transcribe and share with those who follow this blog:
TEACHING A METHODIST
At this meeting I was invited by a stranger to go
home with him for supper. I learned that his wife was a Methodist, but that he
and his two daughters attended our meetings. The wife never attended. It was
thought that but for the opposition and bitterness of the wife and mother and
others would have obeyed the gospel long before. I gladly accepted his
invitation, and with his consent took Bro. Daniel Hayden with me.
At the house we met the wife. She was about as
sour a piece of womanhood as I ever saw. I concluded that it was of no use to
talk to her of religious matters while she was in that mood, so I set to work
to get into her good graces and so far succeeded as to get an invitation from
her to come back and stay all night. Of course, we gladly accepted. On our
return we sat and talked until 11:00 o'clock, when I ventured to introduce
religion into the conversation. She at once flew off on a tangent and I never
before or since heard such a tirade of abuse poured from a woman's tongue as
she poured out upon the disciples. I provoked her to get it all out. Her last
sentence was "This ducking folks in a mud hole for the remission of sins,
I don't believe in. I believe in praying for pardon."
As soon as I saw that she had fully relieved her
mind, I changed my tactics and addressing her familiarly as "Mother,"
asked her: "Did our heavenly Father ever give a command without annexing a
blessing thereto?"
"No," she answered short and snappy.
"Did the heavenly Father ever promise a
blessing but in connection with a command?" I next asked.
"No."
"Can there be any blessing then when there is
no command?" I asked.
"No."
"If God never commanded the sinner to pray
can the sinner get a blessing in answer to prayer?" I next asked.
"He has commanded the sinner to pray,"
she replied short and quick.
"That is not what I asked, Mother," I
said, "I said, if—mark the if—if God never commanded the
sinner to pray, can the sinner get a blessing in answer to prayer."
"No," not quite so snappish.
"Will you be so good then, Mother, to tell me
where in the Scriptures the command is?"
She quoted Matt. 7:7. I pulled my Bible from my
pocket and turned to Matt. 5:1, 13, 14 and asked her to read them. As she read
she saw my point and, dropping her head, studied the verses a moment. Then she
quoted Mark 11:24. I opened the Book again and asked her to read the twentieth
verse. She read and dropped her head again. Then she quoted Luke 18:10-14 to
the word "justified." Again I turned to my Bible and sked her to read
the ninth verse and the balance of the fourteenth which she had failed to
quote. I told her it was a parable, not to teach sinners how to come to Christ,
but to cut down the pride of a self-righteous Pharisee by placing the despised
publican above him. Still softening in her tone and manner, she quoted, or
misquoted, Acts 8:22, 23 as follows: "Repent therefore of all thy
wickedness and pray God, if perhaps the thought of thine heart may be forgiven
thee. For I perceive that thou art yet in the gall of bitterness and in
the bonds of iniquity." I turned to the Book again and showed her that she
had added to and altered the Word as to change its sense. I showed that Simon
had believed already as the others had (v. 13), that he was filled with joy (v.
8), that he had been baptized and had received the Word of God (v. 14) and the
Holy Spirit (v. 17). I showed her that after these blessings
he had committed one sin, the wicked thought that the gift of imparting the Holy
Spirit by the laying on of hands could be bought with money. Her last effort
was 1 Tim. 2:8; misquoting it as follows: "I will therefore that all
men pray everywhere." I again appealed to the Book. She claimed that it
meant all men. I asked her to read the ninth and tenth verses, asking if they
referred to all women. I also asked if all men could "lift up holy hands
without doubting." She handed me the Book, threw her apron over her head
and cried like a child. For fifteen minutes we sat there without a word being
spoken. At last she wiped her eyes and looking up into my face in the great
earnestness asked, "What then must a sinner do?"
I sat there until 2:00 o'clock in the morning
teaching her the gospel. She attended the very next meeting and the next time I
went there I baptized her, huer husband and her daughters. (Jesse Jasper Moss,
“Autobiography of a Pioneer Preacher,” ed. M. M. Moss, in Christian Standard,
January 22, 1938, 8, 22)
