The Other Missing Tears - Glenn Conjurske

The Other Missing Tears

Introduction: The Absence of Tears in Modern Christianity
More than five years ago, we published an article on “The Missing Tears.” We spoke then of the tears which characterized the pulpit in better days of the church, and of the general absence of those tears in the present day. The missing tears in the pulpit, however, are but one facet of the deficiencies of the modern church. We also look in vain for tears in the pew.

The Value of Tears: A Mark of Emotion
But what do we want with tears? Is there any value in them? Does their absence indicate some serious deficiency? We have no doubt that it does. Tears are the mark of feeling, of emotion as such, and the absence of tears marks the absence of emotion—at any rate, of deep emotion. We all know that women, in general, weep more easily and freely than men do. The reason for this lies in the constitution of femininity. The things which belong to the spirit predominate in the masculine constitution, and masculinity therefore excels in reason, determination, and action. The things of the soul predominate in the feminine constitution, and femininity therefore excels in emotion. Women, therefore, weep more easily than men do.

Men of little understanding, or little feeling, have despised woman’s tears, and a proverb was once current among such men which affirmed, “It is as great a pity to see a woman weep as a goose to go barefoot.” But this is a great mistake. A woman weeps because she feels. Such is the marvelous connection between our bodies and our souls, that when the soul is moved, the tear-drops flow. This is involuntary and unavoidable, as are all the motions of the soul in general. The lack of tears is a deficiency. It is the mark of a deficiency in the soul.

Reason and Emotion in Christianity
We know right well that emotion without reason is seldom worth much, but reason without emotion is no better, if indeed it be not worse. We suppose a woman who doesn’t think a better creature than a man who doesn’t feel. But modern Christianity has made it a virtue not to feel. Intellectualism reigns, and feeling is feared. Men are ashamed to weep, where they ought to be ashamed not to.

The Coldness of Modern Christianity
Now, I believe this general absence of tears is one of the most telling symptoms of the poverty of the modern church. It bespeaks the general coldness of the religion of the present day, in which a dry intellectualism prevails, and heart feeling is either shunned or unknown. It bespeaks the shallowness of modern religion. It bespeaks the lukewarm state of Christians in general.

The Lack of Tears in the Pew: A Reflection of the Pulpit
But more specifically, the absence of tears in the pew is one of the most telling indications of the poverty of what comes from the pulpit. An old proverb tells us, “What comes from the heart goes to the heart.” What fails to go to the heart has probably not come from the heart. The preaching which draws no tears has evidently not gone to the heart. At any rate, it has not gone very deeply into the heart. The coldest and most indifferent hearts can be made to feel, by an earnest preacher, who feels himself. The motions of the soul are involuntary, and men may be made to feel, and therefore to weep, quite against their own inclinations.

I recall an incident which took place nearly twenty years ago, when I was speaking to men about their souls’ salvation on the campus of the University of Wisconsin in Madison. I spoke with an old penniless drunk, who I learned was living on a park bench and begging for a living. After speaking with him for a while, I began to tell him of the love of Christ for his sinful soul. The tears began to flow down his cheeks, quite against his will. He admonished me, “Don’t talk to me like that. You make me cry.” The fact is, he was made to feel, and therefore to weep, though he was ashamed of his tears.

A Story of a Weeping Girl
On another occasion, I was knocking on doors preaching the gospel. I came to a house where there were four young people, evidently students—three young men and one girl. I talked to them for some time, but it was a dreary argument, the girl especially strongly opposing all that I said. At length, we fell upon the subject of persecution, and she said, “If you want to see persecution, look at the history of the Jews.” I looked her in the eye and asked, what I suspected, “Are you a Jew?” She replied that she was. I said, “I know the history of the Jews, and when I read it, I weep.” The tears began to run down my cheeks, but I continued to look her in the eye, and said, “I love Jews. And Christ loves Jews.” She immediately burst into tears herself, and covered her face with both of her hands to hide them while she ran from the room. Now the fact is, she was made to weep quite against her will. Till that moment she had repeatedly spoken disdainfully of Christ. She was unwilling that I should see her tears. Yet she wept, and could not help it. She was made to weep because she was made to feel, and both of them quite against her will.

The Significance of Tears in the Pew
The fact, then, that churches in the present day may go through their weekly routine for years and decades together, and never see a tear in the pew, is one of the surest indications of the weakness and unprofitableness of the pulpit. Christianity without emotion can scarcely be supposed to be Christianity at all. The Bible says, “With the heart man believeth unto righteousness,” though the modern church has turned what it calls “saving faith” into nothing more than an operation of the intellect. But the dry-eyed and emotionless Christianity of the present day is only a skeleton, or a shadow, of “the old-time religion.”

Tears in the Pulpit and the Pew in History
Look where we will in the history of the church, and we see an abundance of tears, not only in the pulpit but also in the pew. In looking over the notes which I have taken in my reading over the years, I find several hundred references to such weeping congregations, so that it is hard to know where to begin to make a selection. The thing was indeed so commonplace in former times, that I have long ceased to make note of many of the instances which I meet with in my reading. It were an easy matter to quote scores of examples from the most prominent preachers of the past, but it might defeat my purpose to do so. My readers would likely say, “We cannot all be Whitefields, and Finneys, and Moodys.” I am, therefore, careful to include examples from the lesser preachers of the past, whose names are less known in the church of God, or perhaps altogether unknown.

Examples of Weeping Congregations in History
I turn back five centuries to one of those “Reformers before the Reformation,” Girolamo Savonarola. His biographer writes:

“Words fail to describe it; he was, as it were, swept onwards by a might beyond his own, and carried his audience with him. Men and women of every age and condition, workmen, poets, and philosophers, would burst into passionate tears, while the church re-echoed with their sobs. The reporter taking notes of the sermon was obliged to write: ‘At this point, I was overcome by weeping and could not go on.’ The amanuensis subjoined this note to many of these sermons.”

Nor was this mere empty emotion. “Never was a multitude so entirely dominated by pious emotion, so easily plunged in tears! By the end of Lent, Savonarola had won almost a greater victory than the political triumph achieved by his sermons on Haggai. The aspect of the city was completely changed. The women threw aside their jewels and finery, dressed plainly, bore themselves demurely; licentious young Florentines were transformed, as by magic, into sober, religious men; pious hymns took the place of Lorenzo’s Carnival songs. The townsfolk passed their leisure hours seated quietly in their shops reading either the Bible or Savonarola’s works. All prayed frequently, flocked to the churches, and gave largely to the poor. Most wonderful of all, bankers and tradesmen were impelled by scruples of conscience to restore ill-gotten gains, amounting to many thousand florins.”

More Historical Examples of Weeping Congregations
Of the preaching of John Bunyan, we are told, “His friend, Charles Doe, says, ‘Thousands of Christians, in country and town, can testify that their comforts under his ministry have been to an admiration, so that their joy showed itself by much weeping.’”

Cotton Mather wrote in his diary in 1698, “…after our afternoon exercises were over, I visited the prison. There I prayed with the poor creatures and preached unto them, on Psalm 142:7. Bring my soul out of prison. They heard me with floods of tears.”

The following is a description of the effects of a sermon of Jonathan Edwards “at Enfield, at a time of great religious indifference there”: “When they went into the meeting house, the appearance of the assembly was thoughtless and vain. The people hardly conducted themselves with common decency. The Rev. Mr. Edwards, of Northampton, preached; and before the sermon was ended, the assembly appeared deeply impressed, and bowed down with an awful conviction of their sin and danger. There was such a breathing of distress and weeping, that the preacher was obliged to speak to the people and desire silence, that he might be heard.”

The Modern Absence of Tears
From the great George Whitefield, we might cite dozens of such accounts as this one: “Perhaps the auditory consisted of near fifteen thousand. Tears flowed like water from the stony rock.”

It was regarded as something unusual and unaccountable if the people did not weep under Whitefield’s preaching.

The Need for Emotion in Preaching Today
Where are the weeping congregations today? We have heard of a “laughing revival,” whatever that may be, but never of a weeping revival. The plain fact is, the Christianity of the present day is of a different sort from that “old-time religion” which once flourished upon this groaning earth. The preaching is of a different sort. All the great preachers of the past have been men who moved the hearts of men. Now they only inform the intellect, and do precious little even of that.

Conclusion: The Missing Tears
These all moved their hearers to tears. They made them weep because they made them feel. But how little of this is to be found in the twentieth century! We might name a few such preachers, such as Jonathan Goforth and Gipsy Smith, but these were carry-overs from the last century. The plain fact is, the lack of tears in modern churches is one of the clearest indicators of the weakness and fruitlessness of contemporary preaching.