In these latter days the question is sometimes raised, “Of what advantage are these Camp-Meetings, now that we have good Churches in which to worship God?” The question might be answered by another, “Of what advantage is it to have picnics and other excursions in the open air, and pleasant groves, since we have houses to dwell in and restaurants to supply the cravings of the appetite?” The fact is, Camp-Meetings are as thoroughly in harmony with the laws of Philosophy as they are in keeping with the principles of Religion.

To intensify either the mental or spiritual forces, it is necessary to break up, at times, their monotonous habits, and send them off into new channels of thought and feeling.  A lesson may be learned in this direction from the picnic excursion.  It is not the little ones alone who, relieved of the confinement of the parlor, gambol in half frantic ecstasy, but the sedate matron and the grave sire renew their youth, and in their exhuberance of spirit, join in the recreations with the zest of childhood.  The same law obtains in Camp-Meetings.  Why not go out into the woods, beneath the spreading branches of the trees, or even under the uncurtained canopy of Heaven, and enjoy a grand unbending of the spirit?  With the shackles thrown off that have so long fettered the soul, what a Heaven of felicity there is in its conscious freedom.  The eagle, long confined in a cage, after stretching his wings to satisfy himself that he is really free, gambols in the air with an indescribable ecstasy.  So there are thousands of Christians shut up in the Churches who are dying for a little spiritual freedom.  Their poor souls need a holiday.  Let them go out to a good thorough-going Camp-Meeting, and obtain a new lease of life.  And in saying this, I am not advocating undue license.  I am only pleading for the inalienable rights of a human soul.  Such freedom of spirit is entirely consonant with the highest culture and absolute decorum.  Communing thus with nature in her purest and most lovely moods, the soul is dwelling in the vestibule of God’s own sanctuary.  No wonder that prayer and song find such grand perfection in the Camp-Meeting.  It is there they find their highest inspiration.

But another advantage of the Camp-Meeting lies in the unbroken chain of religious thought and feeling which it affords.  In the ordinary experiences of life, the secular and the religious strongly mingle and intercept each other.  But in the tented grove the secular is shut away from the mind, and the religious holds complete mastery.  One service follows another, and one religious impulse succeeds another so rapidly that the soul finds no interval for communion with the world.  And as the ore, by long tarrying in the furnace, where no breath of cooling currents can reach it, flows as a liquid and is ready to take any form, so the soul, held in hallowed communion with the Divine spirit, is prepared to receive the perfect image of God.