Near Charleston, Va., I attended, for the first time, a Methodist camp-meeting, and have not since been anxious to renew my acquaintance with such gatherings. It was held in a beautiful grove, and there were present some two thousand people, black and white. During the services, the whites were seated in front of the speaker’s stand, and the negroes in its rear. The speakers would talk awhile to their white brethren, and then turn on their heels and give the black brethren a broadside, and the latter always responded to the condescension of the preachers with a hearty shout. The night was the hour of promise; then they were almost sure of being blessed with copious showers of “grace.” Sunlight, it seems, is not favorable to its descent; it comes more plentifully with moonshine. The night I was on the ground, there were all sorts of manifestations of the “spirit.” Some laughed, others cried, groaned, and threw themselves on the ground. I noticed one poor fellow trying to climb a tree, and I asked him where he was going. “To heaven,” said he, and he kept scratching the tree with his finger and toe nails, for he was bare-footed. The preachers and the hearers generally, seemed to think all that hopping, jumping, shouting and screaming, was the work of God in converting the souls of the people. Every good thing can be abused, and thus become an evil. Religious excitement, when kept within due bounds, is productive of much good, but when it overleaps all bounds, and becomes temporary insanity, as it did on this occasion, it is prostituted to a very bad purpose. I spent a short time in the “preacher’s tent” where the following conversation ensued: “John Wesley was opposed to such excitement as you have here.” “You are mistaken,” replied the Presiding Elder; “that man of God was in favor of it, for he knew it was the work of the spirit of God, and I warn you to flee from the wrath to come, before it shall be eternally too late.” “Do not get excited, my friend. Let us see what Wesley says about what you call the work of the Holy Spirit. In one of his volumes he speaks of the doings of Satan thus:--‘Satan strives to push many of them to extravagance. This appears in several instances: “‘1. Frequently three or four, yea, ten or twelve, pray aloud together. “‘2. Some of them, perhaps, may scream altogether, as loud as they can. “‘3. Some of them use improper, yea, indecent expression in prayer. “‘Several drop down as dead, and are as stiff as a corpse; but in a while they start up and cry, “glory, glory!” perhaps twenty times together. Just so do the French prophets, and very lately the Jumpers in Wales, bringing the real work into contempt. “‘Scream no more at the peril of your soul. God now warns you by me. I never scream, I never strain myself; I dare not, I know it would be a sin against God and my own soul!