The Silent Partner - Harvey Hardman - E-Book

The Silent Partner E-Book

Harvey Hardman

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Beschreibung

Experience the life-changing power of Harvey Hardman with this unforgettable book.

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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

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The Silent Partner

Harvey Hardman

The Colorado College of Divine Science

Denver, 1933

Part I

I was born in a little town in southern Indiana. During my boyhood, religion was one of the principal interests of the people in this small community. There were no motion pictures, no theatres, and the talking machine was just making its appearance. Some enterprising man had bought one with ear-phones connected with the cylinder record by means of some sort of tube, so that three or four people could listen in at one time. The charge for each selection was five cents per person. It was a great experience to hear a machine talk.

The major entertainment for the male members of the community was provided by the saloon, which was well patronized, and by an occasional travelling show. At one of these entertainments, which I attended with my father, a girl, wearing a dress with a huge hoop-skirt, sang a song, and at the end of each verse, were the words, “I will never marry a drunkard.” And I remember that a neighbor sitting next to my father said to him, “Harve, she will never find a husband around here.” There was much sordidness in that little town, and the interest provided by the churches was the greatest redeeming feature of its social life.

There were, of course, in addition to the usual church services, revival meetings, and these were often held in tents to accommodate the people who came in from the surrounding farms. It was at these revival meetings that I got my deepest impressions of religion. There was an emotional intensity, and a flaming eloquence present in the evangelist that was absent from the regular minister’s delivery. Then, too, the songs were usually of the type that stirred the audience to strong emotional activity. Simple tunes and simple words. I remember one in particular that was a great favorite. It ran on through all the human relationships:

“O father seek a home in that new bright world,

O father seek a home in that new bright world,

O father seek a home in that new bright world,

O father seek a home in heaven.”

Then the mother, the brother, sister, uncle, cousin and so on.

Naturally, heaven was not the only theme, either of the songs or of the sermons. Hell played a big part in the religion of that time. Heaven was an actual place and so was hell, and the latter was painted in lurid colors, and with all the artistry of Dante’s Inferno.

All this vivid presentation of religion made a profound impression on my childish imagination. I could not believe that I would be so fortunate as to go to heaven. I was so fascinated by the awfulness of hell that heaven could not attract my thoughts. I was magnetized by the danger, and lived in terror when these revival meetings were going on.

When I was about nine years old, I was helping an old man rive pickets for fencing. I asked him how old a boy had to be before he reached the “age of accountability,”–a phrase I had heard an evangelist use, to indicate that if death occurred before that age, the child would go to heaven regardless of the state of his soul, but if he died after that age had been attained without being “saved,” he would most certainly go to hell. The old man said eight years was considered the limit of freedom from “accountability,” and since I had passed that mark some months prior to the conversation, my heart sank within me as I realized the danger I was facing. I was sorry I had not died a year or two before reaching the deadline.