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Extensive archive from Methodist minister and revivalist preacher Irving R. Lovejoy from 1860-1888. This archive of over 250 handwritten pages includes 19 handwritten and hand bound sermons, most tied with blue string, totaling 247 pages on subjects ranging from Judgment day to building fraternity between Methodist ministries, and 237 pages of handwritten notes and thoughts for later sermons. Reverend Lovejoy was born in Kansas to ardent abolitionists in the violent years leading up to the Civil War. Multiple attempts were made on his parents' lives and his uncle was murdered for publishing abolitionist materials. Young Lovejoy grew to embrace the ministry like his father before him. Lovejoy was known for his fierce prose, evident throughout the handwritten sermons. "If they are not upon the side of Christ, they are opposed to him," he writes in one, "It is plainly taught that we cannot serve God and Mammon.Listen to Christ calling. Cease persecuting Christ by coming to his call." His sermons frequently criticize mainstream culture, "For the great day of his wrath is come and who shall e able to stand? Our knowledge of the future is limited. It is bonded by reason and revelation-one dim and uncertain, the other clear. Reason is dim because of unbalanced minds and uncertain because of untrue premises. We reason thus and so concerning the issue of any plan we may formulate. Business men think and plan to succeed but fail. Lawyers think and please but their client does not escape the penalty of law. Ministers occupy the pulpit but their heart dies the death of the ungodly." Reverend Lovejoy's ministry was part of The Third Great Awakening, a period of religious activism in the United States from the late 1850s to the early 1900s. The movement came out of the post millennial belief that the Second Coming of Christ would come after mankind had reformed the earth. Throughout his ministry Lovejoy continuously brings focus back to the importance of Christlike community, "It is not too much to urge upon every Methodist to read the proceedings of this occumenical conference. This is the best way for us all to become full of fraternal feelings and move intelligently alive to the interests of Christ's blessed kingdom." The alternative to that community is a world at war with itself, "One of the leading particular motives is fear. He was afraid of being punished and in that fear rested his own condemnation. I know where my brother is that he is where I put him. I have done evil to him and because of it I will be punished if found out. I will therefore feign ignorance. This leads from the motive to the question itself." The reverend's many loose notes show his forming thought toward future sermons, the raw material of his mind at work. "The spirit convicts of sin by the word of God, the word made flesh and by the conscience. The fact of sin done so and so, the fault of sin done ill in doing so, fully of sin, a text against right reason, the faith of sin-odious to god, fountain of sin, corrupt nature and lastly the fruit of sin-death." Many of his notes focus on judgment day, both past and future, "By faith Noah being warned of God of things not seens as yet moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house by the which he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith. Noah's-wooden, 1. occasion-wickedness 2. Design-To save 3. Need-Flood to come 4. Materials-Gopher wood 5. Carpenter-Noah. Laughed at 6. Preparation-120 yrs. 7. Completion-It was made perfect. 8. Capacity-sufficient 9. Occupants-8 souls 10. Safety-peace within, rode on water 11. Supply-food 12. Preserved through all to land once more, kept them till all wickedness was destroyed and the flood was gone." In 1888 Lovejoy moved from Massachusetts to California where he preached for over 20 years, hosting revival meetings across the state. The archive includes a broadside advertisement for one of these meetings with Lovejoy's black and white ph. Seller Inventory # 15279
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