that without these they shall never have life? Do our bowels yearn over the ignorant, and the careless, and the obstinate multitude; as men who believe their own doctrine, that our dear people must be eternally damned, if they be not timely recovered? When we look them in the faces, do our hearts melt over them, lest we should never see their faces in [the heavenly] rest? Do we, as Paul, tell them, weeping, of their fleshly and earthly disposition? And teach them publicly, and from house to house, night and day, with tears? And do we entreat them as if it were indeed for their lives and salvation; that, when we speak of the joys and miseries of another world, our people may see us affected accordingly, and perceive that we do indeed mean as we speak ?”*

We are, then, planning, associating, labouring, apart and in combination, to diffuse through the earth OUR religion. If we are not prospered, or not to the extent that we have deemed to be warranted by reasonable expectation, may we not easily infer the cause? If, on the other hand, we are permitted to enjoy any portion of the delight which incipient success justly inspires, ought we not to awaken a renovated and most scrutinizing jealousy, a most active vigilance and care, to exalt the character of our own religion, by refining it from its feculence, and by improving all its qualities? We design it to be universal and permanent: let it be FIT to be so.

* To excite the ministers of Religion, of every denomination, to greater devotedness and perseverance in promoting the Revival of Religion, we would earnestly recommend to their perusal "Baxter's Reformed Pastor," with an "Introductory Essay," by the Rev. Daniel Wilson, recently published in this Series.

That the humiliating descriptions which we have given do not apply universally, is a most gladdening fact. Many, we cordially believe that there are, whose tone of piety towards God, and of all that is amiable and righteous in their personal and relative character, makes them glorious exceptions to our topics of complaint. They are the lights of our land: they are the salt of their country: they are the living instruments of the new-creating Spirit, for the great purposes of knowledge, purity, and conservation. All blessings rest upon them! And may their numbers, their holy excellencies, and their efficient power, be multiplied ten thousand fold!

It is a merciful indication, and to be humbly viewed as a presage of heavenly mercy, that good men in our country have become deeply solicitous for the REVIVAL of religion among ourselves. Their thoughts and prayers, their private and public communications, have lately, to a remarkable degree, been employed in this direction. The tendency of this extensive movement is unutterably important. Its object is unmixed good; the increase of spiritual blessings, in degrees unlimited, to subjects ever increasing: "Peace, peace, to him that is afar off, and to him that is nigh." Our souls are exhilarated at its approach. It is as the red morning-dawn spread upon the mountains ;" bringing the presence of the Sun of Righteousness, with his beams of health and salvation.

But, wherever human agency is concerned, we “ rejoice with trembling." The proportion of benefit will be as the good or ill management of that agency. So God is wont to work. The excellency

of the power is his own; and he will be glorified in the display of it. But all the errors, the failures, the disappointments, the perversions, arise from our sinful weaknesses. It is infinitely proper that to HIM, "from whom all holy desires, right counsels, and just works do proceed," the glory of all that is good should be ascribed: and it is not less suitable on the ground of moral right, while it is eminently beneficial to us, that our minds should be the most deeply impressed with the fact of our ever-stirring propensities to mistake and sin. This is the lesson of unbiassed reason, of the world's uniform experience, and of the divine oracles. Its just inferences are self-distrust, the contrite heart, faith, the abjuring of all creature-dependencies, submission to the sovereignty of reigning grace, and entire dependence upon that grace; and its results will be a renewal, with all the superadded advantages which spring from the new covenant, of the blessings promised to the penitents of Judah: "Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily; and thy righteousness shall go before thee: the glory of the Lord shall be thy rereward. Then shalt thou call, and the Lord shall answer; thou shalt cry, and he shall say, Here I am. Thy light shall rise in obscurity, and thy darkness become as the noon-day: and the Lord shall guide thee continually, and satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones: and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a spring of water whose waters fail not. And they that shall be of thee shall build the old waste places: thou shalt raise up the foundations of many generations; and thou shalt be called,

The repairer of the breach, the restorer of paths to dwell in." Isaiah lviii. 8-12.

The machinery of evangelical means is of God's institution; and "the excellency of the power," which confers its efficiency, is also his. With admirable wisdom and condescension he has combined these two principles, so that from them emanate the manifested glory of his free grace, and a corroborating of the indispensable law of man's moral obligation. So he hath abounded towards us in all wisdom and prudence, that we should be to the praise of his glory." We use those means, without imagining that there is any formative power inherent in them, or that the wielding of our arm gives the determining impulse, or that the Lord of all hearts is subordinate to our behests; but we use them in obedience, in faith, with the submissive reliance of hope, and with "all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, watching thereunto with all perseverance."

It is agreeable to all the analogies which we are permitted to trace, in the works and the providential government of God, that an extensive and general revival of religion should be introduced, sustained, and carried onwards by Scriptural means thus used. Those means are not more the appointment of Eternal Wisdom, than they are in themselves befitting to the nature of the case, as acts of homage to God, as acknowledgments and practical exercises of dependence, and as suited to the rational nature of man. For instance; the state of mind implied in prayer, and without which indeed there cannot be prayer, is not only an approximation to the holy blessings that are sought, but it is an actual recep

tion of those blessings, incipient, and the pledge of further bestowinents. The connexion between faith and salvation, or that between prayer and the production and advancement of religion, is, to say the least, not more difficult to understand, in the order of the moral world, than that chain of antecedents and consequents, which we call the laws of matter and motion, is in the physical arrangements of the Creator.

The churches of Christ are ardently desiring an effective, solid, enduring, and universal increase of vital piety in themselves; and the transmission of it, under every advantage of purity and vigour, to all the families and nations of men. Attention has been drawn to many partial and local appearances answering to this desire, at different periods, in Scotland, in North America, and in some other parts of the Protestant world. Within the last few years, accounts, which seem deficient in no grounds of credibility, have assured us, that very remarkable revivals of true religion have occurred in many parts of the United States. The test has been applied to those occurrences-the test of extreme jealousy, of scepticism, of misrepresentation, of scoff and scorn, and of a prudent and rigorous scrutiny from judicious men, who possessed all the means of obtaining the amplest information, and of forming the most accurate conclusions.* We, in Great Britain, have

*

Among these, the reader may perhaps easily procure the Letter of Dr. Lyman Beecher of Boston, in the Christian Observer' for August and September, 1828. The minute investigations, the Scriptural principles, and the cautious judgment, displayed in that Letter, are most satisfactory.