have any account of which bears the slightest similitude to the singular, irrational, and often violent transactions at one of our fashionable revivals.

In all the New Testament, not an allusion is made, nor a syllable uttered, about inquiry meetings, whispering meetings, four days meetings, protracted meetings, anxious seats, the parcelling out of congregations into separate divisions, one composed of saints, and the other of sinners, nor of rooms assigned exclusively for the offering up of special prayer for those laboring under conviction, and deeply agonizing for the salvation of their souls. No; familiar as these things have become to every body in the present day, nothing of the kind is put down as forming a part of the policy and doings of Christ and his apostles, or of the incidents which were deemed worthy of insertion among the records of the New Testament Scriptures. And still, many other events, of far less moment than these, if modern revivalists are right in their assumptions, are carefully noted in these holy records.

But why is this? How shall we account for this circumstance, this entire omission of the most effectual means of securing the salvation of immortal souls, in the original and only authentic records of this merciful and stupendous enterprise? Were they not in use when those records were made? But why not? Were not souls as precious, and their salvation as desirable and important, then, and during the ages which had intervened from the creation of the world and of man, as they are now? What good reason can be offered to the contrary? None, it would seem. None, I presume, exists. All souls were created by the same God, and were created to be immortal, and must, therefore, it would seem natural to conclude, be deemed, by the infinite Father, of equal value, and of course as equally deserving of means sufficient to secure their everlasting salvation; and these means, it is now confidently affirmed, are to be sought among the measures of the revivalists. Those who do not fall in with their measures, and, more especially, those who repudiate them altogether, are looked upon, and spoken of, as being nearly, if not quite, beyond the reach of saving mercy!

Now, if these suppositions be true, how were sinners

saved in former times, and especially those of very remote periods? Did they all fail of the grace of God, and sink into interminable perdition? So it would seem, and so it must have been, if the doctrines of modern revivals be well founded. Are not these conclusions inevitable? It seems to me they are; because, from the creation of the world to the days of Jesus and his apostles, and from their times down through more than sixteen centuries, nothing of the singular and saving measures of modern revivalism was known, or had ever been heard of. Through all this succession of ages, the principal agent in the work of human salvation was utterly unemployed. The chief, or at least the most efficacious, means for securing it were in no instance applied. Must not, then, the entire population of the globe, during those periods, have been lost forever? And, till within a few years, must not heaven have been without an inhabitant from among the race of man, scene of unbroken silence and solitude? What was there to prevent this state of things? Surely, nothing; for, till the time of John Wesley and George Whitefield, two young students at a university in England, in the eighteenth century, whose piety bordered upon enthusiasm, the whole world was utterly ignorant of these paramount means of grace and salvation.

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Here, then, was the origin of modern revivals. were ushered into existence by two young men of the Church of England, somewhat more than a century since. Their origin, then, was human, not divine, and of course they are not sacredly binding upon any of us; and, from these very circumstances, their importance and superior efficacy may lawfully be called in question.

To the position here assumed, some, I am aware, may object, that the New Testament furnishes accounts of great religious movements in the apostolic age, of revivals more wonderful than any which have occurred in modern times, of seasons in which the spirit of God was so copiously and powerfully shed down upon the people, as to effect the conversion of thousands in a single day. This is true. We meet, I allow, with such accounts in the records of the New Testament. But still, those instances, if carefully examined, will be found not to militate in the

least against my position, that the origin of modern revivals is of quite recent date. There is scarcely a shade of resemblance between the two classes of cases. Let any one examine them respectively, and with the attention they demand, and he will be satisfied that they are, with but few exceptions, entirely dissimilar.

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In the great religious movements or excitements, if this term be preferred-recorded in the New Testament, the subjects received substantial and palpable benefits. They were renewed in knowledge, no less than in the spirit of their minds. They were previously in a state of heathenism. They had mostly been educated and brought up under the debasing errors and corruptions of idolatry. From their very infancy, they had been accustomed to worship objects as gods, which, in reality, were no gods. Hence they were without God and without hope in the world." They had no knowledge of Christ or of his gospel, nor of their own relations, their duties, or their destiny. Such, in brief terms, was their condition, when the great movements referred to, began; but, at the conclusion of them, what a palpable and marvellous change had taken place! These ignorant and debased creatures had become effectually renewed in knowledge. By their conversion, they had become correctly acquainted with the living and true God, with the Lord Jesus Christ, with the fundamental truths and duties of his religion, and, among other matters of thrilling interest, with the sublime doctrine of the resurrection of the dead to a future and immortal life. By the acquisition of such information, they were renewed, radically and thoroughly, in the spirit of their minds. The peculiar character of the knowledge acquired stamped itself upon their very hearts. All their feelings were moulded into its likeness. It was the knowledge of God and of Christ; and by its possession they became godly and Christlike. Their purposes, resolutions, and habits, were all changed by it. They felt and acted like new creatures. They were no longer Jews, nor Gentiles, nor the partisans of any partial enterprise. They were Christians, the disciples of Jesus, the followers of God as dear children, the lovers of piety and goodness any where and every where, the hearty friends

of universal man, the happy expectants of immortality and blessedness, not by their own works, but by the free grace of God. Here, then, were great, palpable, and

substantial benefits.

Now will it be pretended that anything to be compared with these acquisitions, is derived from modern revivals? It would seem not. The converts, surely,. make no new advances in the knowledge of important truths. They are, to all appearance at least, as ignorant after, as before, their conversion. They acquire no additional knowledge of God, of Christ, of the Bible, nor of a single branch of theology, or of ethics. Indeed, all the knowledge they do gain on these occasions, respects their own personal feelings and apprehensions. They are brought to realize that they have been culpably indifferent about religion, and their spiritual state in general; that their attention to these things has been aroused, and their fears powerfully wrought upon; that they have been allayed; that they have at length obtained a comfortable, or perhaps a rapturous, hope of pardon and salvation through Jesus Christ; and that they are resolved to devote themselves to his service. In plain terms, the amount of the whole seems to be, that they have been tremendously terrified, have surmounted their fright, feel secure and happy, and mean to do better. And, could these impressions and resolutions be depended upon, all would be very well; at least, there would be nothing reprehensible in the case. The truth, however, is, they cannot. Depending, as they do, upon the excitement of the feelings, instead of the perception of truth, they are liable, from a multitude of causes, to be changed. These raptures of hope may soon end in the gloom of despair. These hasty resolutions of holiness in future life may suddenly terminate in a renewed and more criminal career of sin. Instances of the kind, we have already said, frequently occur.

Still, were these scenes of extraordinary excitement and commotion followed by an obvious preponderance of salutary consequences, the friends of order and of the divinely appointed means of grace might safely tolerate them, so far, at least, as to be silent respecting them.

But this is exceedingly questionable. When it is considered that but few, comparatively, of the converts hold fast their integrity; that a decided majority of them fall back into their old habits, and become more recreant to everything serious and good than they were before their fright; that great numbers are driven to insanity, and not a few to the revolting act of suicide; that immense numbers of the more sober-minded and less excitable, by seeing and hearing the extravagance and apparent deceptions practised by those who have the management of these strange scenes, imbibe a settled disrelish for all religion. and religious institutions; and that fearful hosts, both among the young and the old, are forced by them into confirmed infidelity, and even atheism; - when all these circumstances, and others which might be named, are seriously considered, the discriminating and candid will find it exceedingly difficult, I apprehend, to believe that modern revivals are not attended by an alarming preponderance of evil. And this difficulty will be greatly increased, when it is considered how frequently these excitements become sources of angry dissensions and needless estrangements among the most intimate connections of life, between husbands and wives, parents and children, brothers and sisters, neighbors and friends. Will it be said that such consequences were foretold by the Saviour, and that they occurred under the ministry of the apostles? I answer, the cases are essentially dissimilar. The divisions and animosities of those days were fomented by the avowed enemies of Christianity, not by Christians themselves; and they grew out of an inveterate hostility to its great and fundamental doctrines. But those to which I refer are produced by professed Christians among their fellow-Christians, not on account of a difference of opinion with respect to the essential doctrines of the gospel, but of novel and very suspicious methods of propagating them. The contentions of which Jesus spake, were exclusively between the avowed friends and the open enemies of the gospel; but those of which I am speaking, are between the open and equally devoted friends of Christ and of his religion.

But I must further remark, that the measures of modern