I. EDWARDS' 
 
 J.IBllAKV. 
 
 M mmii 
 
WESVER mU STORE 
 
 40.£> King, Lancaster, Pa. 
 
 USED BOOK DEPT. 
 
 A B C D E F G Hi J K L 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2014 
 
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HELPS 
 
 PEOMOTION OP REVIVALS. 
 
 By Kev. J. V. WATSON, D. D., 
 
 Ta)ITOR OP THE NORTHWESTERN CHRISTIAN ADVOOATB. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY CARLTON & PORTER, 
 
 200 MULBERRY-STREET. 
 
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1856, 
 
 BY CAIILTON & PORTEE, 
 
 in the (^^lerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern 
 District of New- York. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 As our title implies, the subject-matter of this 
 volume is treated rather suggestively than ex- 
 haustively. We have aimed to set forth princi- 
 ples, and left their details and applications to 
 the reader. Indeed, it is too late to teach Meth- 
 odist preachers how to conduct revivals, but not 
 too late to help one another by our suggestions 
 to bring about this most blessed condition of the 
 Church in which it can exist out of heaven. 
 
 Much of the matter of this volume has already 
 appeared in the columns of the paper under the 
 author's control. But for the flattering atten- 
 tion which it has there excited, we might never 
 have thought of giving it its present form. 
 Numerous letters from highly respectable 
 sources have reached us at different times, solic- 
 iting its publication in a less ephemeral form 
 than that of a newspaper. Yielding to the 
 judgment of our friends, we hope the volume 
 
4 
 
 PKEFACE. 
 
 will do good. We the more readily make a 
 book upon this subject because, so far as we are 
 aware, the catalogue literature of Methodism is 
 unsupplied with such a work. Albeit we would 
 not forget to mention the most excellent little 
 work of Eev. James Porter, D. D., which has 
 had a steady sale for several years. 
 
 The work has been prepared under disadvant- 
 ages altogether peculiar, and which none but 
 the author can duly appreciate. Should the 
 critic here seek work, he would be apt to find 
 enough to do. We hold ourself responsible not 
 for its verbal accuracy, but for its doctrines 
 alone. If it have merit, as we flatter ourselves 
 it has, it will make its way in the world. If it 
 have not, it does not deserve to. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Chapter I.— WHAT IS REVIVAL. 
 
 THE CHURCH IN NEED OF REVIVALS — A REVIVAL NOT A MIRACLE 
 
 REVIVALS THE RESULT OF THE USE OF APPROPRfATE MEANS 
 
 THE PLACE WHERE REVIVALS MUST BEGIN PRIVATE 
 
 PRAYI.R AND PERSONAL EFFORT THE WORKING OF TllK 
 
 SOCIAL PIUNCIPLE PAGE 11 
 
 Chapter II.— HINDERANCES TO REVIVALS. 
 
 WANT OF FAITH A REVIVAL FAITH DEFINED THE GOSPEL*S 
 
 CROWNING GIFT — THE MORAL MIGHT OF THE OLD REFORMERS 
 
 — THE OFFICIAL CHRISTIAN THE DIPLOMATIC CHRISTIAN — 
 
 THE PARTISAN CHRISTIAN 19 
 
 Chapter III.— HINDERANCES TO REVIVALS. 
 
 THE CHURCH NOT GENERALLY HATED — A TACIT WANT OF FAITH 
 IN HKR CLAIMS A CAUSE OF MORAL OBDURACY — SOCIAL CASTES 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL ELEMENTS WANTING IN PERVASIVENESS 
 
 THE MATERIALISM OF THE POPULAR MIND 27 
 
 Chapter IV.— HINDERANCES TO REVIVALS. 
 
 THE PROTEAN CHARACTER OF UNBELIEF — THE VERY ELECT MAY 
 
 BE DECEIVED INFIDELITY ASSUMING TO BE AN ANGEL OF 
 
 LIGHT IT FINDS APOLOGY FROM THE CONDUCT OF CHRISTIANS 
 
 AN EXAMPLE GIVEN — THE PRKVALENCK OF PKRVERTED SCI- 
 ENCE AND PHILOSOPHY FALSELY SO CALLED MARVT.LOUS 
 
 MATERIAL PROGRESS MAN'S ABUSE OF BLESSINGS AND MISIN- 
 TERPRETATION OF THE PURPOSES OF THEIR BESTOWMENT 
 
 THE PULPIT SHOULD ADAPT ITSELF TO THE POPULAR MIND — 
 THE LOGICAL ELEMENT MORE PREDOMINANT THAN THE EMO- 
 TIONAL — OUR SUFFICIENCY OP GOD 34 
 
6 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Chapter^ y.— HINDERANCES to REVIVALS— plan OF 
 RESISTANCE PROPOSED. 
 
 GERMAN RATIONALISM — THK EMIGRATION O*' ERROR — SPIRITUAI/- 
 
 ISM AND ITS COGNATES DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE ETHICAL 
 
 AND THE DOCTRINAL — A DEFECT IN THE PULPIT AN ILLUS- 
 TRATION ILLUSTRATED CONCLUSION OF A LEGITIMATE RATION- 
 ALISM — THE PREACHER SHOULD STUDY NATURE — A PULPIT 
 REFORM SUGGESTED PAGE 44 
 
 Chapter VL— PREACH JESUS. 
 
 THE CENTRAL GLORY OF THE UNIVERSE THE WORLD'S GREAT 
 
 WAKT JESUS MUST BE PREACHED, OR THE PULPIT WILL 
 
 BECOME EXTINCT BOSTON UNITARIANISM UNION BETWEEN 
 
 CHRIST AND HIS MINISTERS ILLUSTRATED THE CROSS IN- 
 VESTED WITH STUPENDOUS EVIDENCES MERITLESSNESS OP 
 
 MAN'S RIGHTEOUSNESS HOW THE SINNER IS SAVED THE 
 
 TRUE PROTESTANT IDEA HOW GOD DESCENDS TO MAN'S CA- 
 PACITY — THE INCARNATION CHRIST ALWAYS THE PREACHER'S 
 
 THEME 53 
 
 Chapter VII.— THE CLASS-MEETING. 
 
 WORKING THE SOCIAL AND SYMPATHETIC PRINCIPLE — MAN MORE 
 SOCIAL AS HE BECOMES MORE RELIGIOUS — THE FOLLY OF 
 
 ANCHORITISM THE CLASS-MEETING THE CLASS-MEETING AS 
 
 THE MEANS OF CONSECRATING THE SOCIAL PRINCIPLE 
 
 CLASS-MEETINGS SUPPLY A NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL WANT 
 
 THEIR PHILOSOPHY ILLUSTRATED THE CONVERSATION OF THE 
 
 CLASS-ROOM THE RECLAIMING POWER OF CLASS-MEETINGS 
 
 IMPORTANCE OF RELIGIOUS CONVERSATION 65 
 
 Chapteh VIIL— revivals A WANT OF OUR NATURE, 
 AND A NECESSITY OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 BEFINITION OP REVIVALS — ALL HISTORY ILLUSTRATES THEIR NE- 
 CESSITY HOW THE QUESTION IS TO BE VIEWED — RELIGION 
 
 AND NATURE TOO OFTEN DIVORCED THE CONDITION OP THE 
 
 CHURCH WITHOUT REVIVALS THE MORAL BEAUTY OF A RE- 
 VIVAL MANIFESTATION 78 
 
 Chapter IX.— PROTRACTED MEETINGS. 
 
 THE ADAPTATION OP PROTRACTED MEETINGS TO OUR WANTS 
 
 ORDINARY AND EXTRAORDINARY MEANS OF GRACE TAKING 
 
 ADVANTAGE OF TIMES AND SEASONS — PASTORAL ECONOMY — 
 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED 85 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Chapter X.— PROTRACTED MEETINGS. 
 
 EXTRAVAGANT DEMONSTRATIONS CORRECT TEACHING NEEDED 
 
 RELIGIOUS RESPONSES LET ALL METHODISTS SAY *' AMEN " 
 
 ALL CORNERS SHOULD BE " AMEN CORNERS OBJECTIONS 
 
 ANSWERED THE INVETERATE FAULT-FINDER NOTHING HU- 
 MAN PERFECT APOSTASIES IN REVIVALS THEIR OCCURRENCE 
 
 CONSIDERED THE MORAL STATE OF THE BACKSLIDER NO 
 
 ONE EVER MADE WORSE BY CONVERSION THE BACKSLIDER THE 
 
 FIRST TO BE RE-CONVERTED PAGE 93 
 
 Chapter XI.— NECESSITY OF AGGRESSIVE ENTERPRISE. 
 
 A RARE BUT INSIDIOUS EVIL EXPOSED THE FEARFUL PREACHER 
 
 HIS FEARS FOUNDED IN A FALSE PHILOSOPHY A STUNTED 
 
 CHURCH INSTRUCT THE PEOPLE IN THE AGGRESSIVE MOVE- 
 MENTS OF THE CHURCH THEY ONLY GROW STRONG BY 
 
 BEARING BURDENS THE "QUARTER OF A DOLLAR" TYPE OF 
 
 METHODISM — SPIRITUAL BABIES AT FORTY — PLANS AND PUR- 
 POSES SHOULD BE LARGE REASONS WHY THE WEST HAS 
 
 BEEN PARTICULARLY FAVORED WITH REVIVALS — THE PREACHER 
 WHO WILL BE BLESSED WITH THEM — A WORKING LAITY 
 DETERMINES A CHURCH'S PROSPERITY — DANGER OF METHOD- 
 ISM BEING OUTSTRIPPED BY SISTER SECTS 103 
 
 Chapter XII.— NURSING THE YOUNG CONVERT. 
 
 A DISPROPORTION BETWEEN CONVERSIONS RECORDED AND ULTIMATE 
 RESULTS — INCREASE IN THE MEMBERSHIP IN THE YEARS 1854-5 
 
 NOT FLATTERING MORE IMPORTANT TO TAKE CARE OF WHAT 
 
 WE HAVE, THAN TO SECURE MORE AT THE NEGLECT OF THAT 
 
 THE YOUNG CONVERT MUST BE INSTRUCTED KIND OF IN- 
 STRUCTION NEEDED THE HELP PROVIDED FOR THE PASTOR — • 
 
 THE CLASS-LEADER OUR CHURCH LITERATURE NECESSITY OF 
 
 CATECHETICAL INSTRUCTION THE EXAMPLE OF THE ANCIENT 
 
 CHURCH OUR INCREASED FACILITIES FOR NURSING THE YOUNG 
 
 CONVERT LOSS TO THE ANCIENT CHURCH FOR THE WANT OP 
 
 THE PRESS THE BIRTHPLACE OF THE POPE NECESSITY OP 
 
 SPREADING OUR BOOKS — TH^ YOUNG CONVERT TO BE AT ONCE 
 
 SUPPLIED IMPORTANCE OF THE RELIGIO'US WEEKLY RELATION 
 
 OF RELIGIOUS READING TO REVELATION — THE BIBLE ALWAYS TO 
 PRECEDE, BUT NEVER SUPERSEDE THE CONSECRATED TONGUE 
 AND PEN 113 
 
8 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Chapter XIII.— THE POWER OF KINDNESS. 
 
 "WHAT CHRISTIAN KINDNESS IS NOT — CHRISTIAN KINDNESS DEFINED 
 
 ERRONEOUS VIEWS CORRECTED THE ESTHETIC ELEMENT OF 
 
 KINDNESS THE POWER OF KINDNESS ILLUSTRATED RELATION 
 
 OF KINDNESS TO GOOD MANNERS — ^KINDNESS AS A REVIVAL EL- 
 EMENT — CONSTITUTES A WANT OF THE CHURCH^ — KINDNESS A 
 TEST OP CHRISTIAN CHARACTER PAGE 124: 
 
 Chapter XIY.— INFRACTIONS OF THE LAW OF KIND- 
 NESS CONSIDERED. 
 
 LAW OF KINDNESS VIOLATED IN SPIRIT — THE PULPIT SCOLD 
 
 THE ACID REVIVALIST RESULTS OF SUCH REVIVALS THE RE- 
 LATION OF THE TONES OF THE VOICE TO KINDNESS ANECDOTE 
 
 OF WHITEFIELD VOICE OF THE PREACHER IN THE PULPIT 
 
 ANECDOTE OF THE LITTLE GIRL IMPORTANCE OF THE SUBJECT 
 
 TOO LITTLE REALIZED WORDS UNFITLY SPOKEN PERSONAL- 
 ITIES IN DEBATE AN APOLOGY FOR THEIR PREVALENCE THE 
 
 OLD WRITERS THE YOUNG WRITERS REFORM NEEDED... 133 
 
 Chapter XY.— THE LAW OF FORGIVENESS. 
 
 REVENGE ALWAYS A VICE — ANECDOTE OF COL. GARDINER 
 
 REVENGE PERPETUATES, BUT FORGIVENESS EXTERMINATES 
 
 WRONG — REACTING POWER OF REVENGE SMALL RESENTMENTS 
 
 SINFUL THE FACT ILLUSTRATED LEGAL PUNISHMENT OF 
 
 CRIMINALS NOT REVENGE SUGGESTIVE PRINCIPLES FORGIVE- 
 NESS AND MERCY FORGIVENESS ESSENTIAL TO REVIVALS 
 
 SOLEMNITY OP THE SUBJECT 144 
 
 Chapter XYL— PIETY THE HOPE OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 A WORD TO THE PREACHER THE LIFE OR DEATH OP A CHURCH 
 
 TO BE TESTED BY HER PIETY A PHOSPHORESCENT CHURCH LIFE 
 
 ELEMENTS OF PIETY TREATED OF ABSURDITY OF DIS- 
 BELIEF IN THE SPIRITUALITY OF PIETY SPIRITUALITY OF THE 
 
 HEART ONLY CERTAINLY KNOWN BY ITS FRUITS — TEMPERS AS 
 A TEST OP SPIRITUALITY — CONDUCT AND CREED AS PROOFS OP 
 SPIRITUALITY — IMPORTANCE OF HOLY TEMPERS 153 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 9 
 
 Chapter XYII.— INTELLIGENCE AS AN ELEMENT OF 
 PIETY. 
 
 WHAT TS KNOWLEDGE — DEFINITION OP TRUTH WHEN KNOWL- 
 EDGE BECOMES POWER DIFFERENCE BETWEEN KNOWLEDGE 
 
 AND WISDOM THE KIND OF KNOWLEDGE THE CHRISTIAN 
 
 SHOULD SEEK THE BIBLE-READING CHRISTIAN SECURITY 
 
 AGAINST APOSTASY — THE BIBLE AND POPULAR LITERATURE 
 
 THE NEWSPAPER AN INTERPRETER OF THE BIBLE — CHRISTIANS 
 AND THE PROMISES PAGE 159 
 
 Chapter XVIIL— MOTIVES AND INDIVIDUALITY AS 
 ELEMENTS OF PIETY. 
 
 MOTIVES — DIVIDED INTO INNOCENT AND RELIGIOUS AND BOTH 
 
 DISINTERESTED BENEVOLENCE SINISTJIR MOTIVES — TWO THINGS 
 
 TO BE CONSIDERED IN THE DOCTRINE OF MOTIVES THE MAN 
 
 WHO HANGS OUT HIS OWN SIGN INDIVIDUALITY A CHARAC- 
 TER FOUND IN THE WAY REWARD PROPORTIONED TO ABILITY 
 
 ANECDOTE OF A GREAT GENERAL — THE LONDON MERCHANT 
 
 IMPORTANT LAW OP SPIRITUAL GROWTH — REVIVAL HELP- 
 HINTS 166 
 
 Chapter XIX.— VARIETY OF MINISTERIAL TALENT. 
 
 VARIETY OF MINISTERIAL TALENT 173 
 
 Chapter XX.— THE PAST AND PRESENT— A CHARAC- 
 TER. 
 
 THE PAST AND PRESENT A CHARACTER 179 
 
 Chapter XXL— PASTORAL VISITING. 
 
 THE FOOLISH PHYSICIAN AND PREACHER CONTRASTED — HOW POWER 
 
 MAY BE COLLECTED FOR THE PULPIT JOHN E. GOUGH THE 
 
 PEOPLE TO BE SEEN AT THEIR HOMES A GOOD PASTOR SELDOM 
 
 IMPUTED AN INFERIOR PREACHER THE PREACHER WHO CANNOT 
 
 VISIT ANECDOTE OF THE CRIMEA THE MODEL TEACHER A 
 
 MODEL PASTOR — HEARTS ARE TO BE READ AS WELL A3 BOOKS. 184 
 
10 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Chapter XXII.— PASTORAL VISITING. 
 
 PASTORAL AND SOCIAL VISITING — THE PASTOR , THE COMMON 
 
 PROPERTY OF ALL — BEING INSTANT IN SEASON THE SICK 
 
 ROOM EMERGENCES — DEATH IN A FAMILY — FUNERAL 
 
 SERMONS DUE REFERENCE TO BE HAD TO THE CUSTOMS OF 
 
 SOCIETY PAGE 192 
 
 Chapter XXIII.— EXCITEMENT. 
 
 METHODISTS NOT ALARMED EXCITEMENT FEARED BECAUSE IT 
 
 CONFLICTS WITH A CREED — SELDOM SUCCESSFULLY GUARDED 
 AGAINST DEFINITION OF METHODISM — EXTRAVAGANCES DEP- 
 RECATED — EXCITEMENT ANALYZED — FOUR CARDINAL SOURCES 
 OF EMOTION — RELIGIOUS EXCITEMENT ALWAYS WHOLESOME. 200 
 
 Chapter XXIY.— HAVE FAITH IN REVIVALS. 
 
 REVIVALS SCRIPTURAL — THEIR SPIRIT FLOWS IN THE PRAYERS OF 
 THE BIBLE, IN THE PROPHECIES OF THE BIBLE, IN THE PROMISES 
 
 OF THE BIBLE, AND IN BIBLE HISTORY SECULAR HISTORY OP 
 
 REVIVALS — REVIVALS AND METHODISM — A SOLECISM 208 
 
 Chapter XXV.— HOLINESS. 
 
 DISTINCTIONS AND DEFINITIONS — THE THING AND NOT THE 
 
 MODE TO BE INVESTIGATED AGREEMENT AS IT RESPECTS THE 
 
 THING IN ESSENCE DEFINITION GIVEN TRUE STANDARD 
 
 AROUND WHICH WE CAN HARMONIZE QUESTIONS WHICH LIE 
 
 BEYOND PROFITABLE INVESTIGATION THE THEORISTS SPE- 
 CIAL MEETINGS TO SEEK FOR CHRISTIAN HOLINESS THE 
 
 GRAND PECULIARITY ADVANCING FROM THE " HOPE SO " TO 
 
 THE KNOW SO HOLINESS UNDER THE DIFFERENT DISPENSA- 
 TIONS HOLINESS THE BIBLE'S LAST DEMAND UPON THE 
 
 WORLD 214 
 
HELPS 
 
 TO THE 
 
 PROMOTION OF REYIYALS. 
 
 > 4»» . 
 
 CHAPTEE 1. 
 
 WHAT IS A REVIVAL? 
 
 THE CHURCH IN NEED OF REVIVALS A REVIVAL NOT A MIRACLE 
 
 REVIVALS THE RESULT OF THE USE OF APPROPRIATE MEANS 
 
 THE PLACE WHERE REVIVALS MUST BEGIN — PRIVATE 
 
 PRAYER AND PERSONAL EFFORT THE WORKING OF THE 
 
 SOCIAL PRINCIPLE. 
 
 Like the land of Israel in the days of Elijah, 
 the Churches are withering away for the want 
 of a revival shower. The exceptions are rare. 
 All acknowledge these facts with regret, and 
 look out and abroad for relief, whether they 
 commence to work at home to secure it or not. 
 This delineation is true at this writing. We 
 hope it may not be, dear reader, when it falls 
 into your hands. 
 
 What is a revival, and how can we, how 
 
12 HELPS TO THE PliOMOTION OF REVIYALS. 
 
 must we, labor to promote it? A revival is not 
 a miracle. Things marvelous in our eyes may 
 often occur in a revival, but miracles are not 
 now wrought in them. A miracle is the setting 
 aside or suspension of some law of nature, to 
 show that God is above nature, to prove his pres- 
 ence, and for the establishment of some revela- 
 tion which he is about to make. But God has 
 made all the revelation to man that he will ever 
 make, and the mission of miracles has ceased. 
 God has revealed himself, and accompanied the 
 revelation by miraculous demonstration. He 
 would now show that he is the author of nature 
 and her laws, by always acting in accordance 
 with the requirements of the latter, and thus 
 evincing his approval of them. We are not to 
 look, then, for miracles in revivals. The}^ are, 
 the result of natural causes, the fruit of the use 
 of appropriate means, and the certainty or prob- 
 ability of their occurrence must be judged of 
 by considering the means used, the wisdom em- 
 ployed in the use of these means, and the oppo- 
 sition to be overcome. 
 
 A revival consists of a greatly increased in- 
 terest on the subject of religion on the part of 
 believers ; in which they are blessedly conscious 
 of an increase of love to God, faith in his truth, 
 
WHAT IS A REYIYAL? 13 
 
 a growth in all the graces of the Spirit, and a 
 deep solicitude for the salvation of sinners. In 
 this spiritual condition, believers are ready in 
 word, and in spirit, and by action, to exert them- 
 selves to bring souls to the cross. The Church, 
 made up of such believers, becomes a quickened 
 mass of spiritual life, and the very atmosphere 
 becomes electrical with spiritual influences. 
 The social principle is brought into action, and 
 man becomes a missionary to his fellow, neigh- 
 bor, child, or kinsman, under circumstances of 
 very great advantage, the Holy Ghost being 
 present, to impart power from on high, just in 
 proportion to our faith and eflfort. Led by the 
 faithful pastor, as an army by its general, this 
 squadron of live Christians are going forth into 
 the highways and hedges, and " compelling them 
 to come in." O, what a lovely sight is this, one 
 over which the angels in heaven swell higher the 
 notes of gladness, and bend from their celestial 
 stations to gratulate men on earth. How often 
 has our poor heart dilated over scenes like these, 
 and how sweet still their memory I When will 
 these days of refreshing again revisit the whole 
 Church — days when saints were thrilled with un- 
 earthly joy and transport, and sinners, willing 
 and weeping, came trembling to the altar, with 
 
14: HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF EEVIYALS. 
 
 the inquiry on their lips, uttered in fragments," 
 by reason of their deep, heart-swelling sobs, 
 mat must I do to be saved?" " O Lord, re- 
 vive thy work." The right place for a revival 
 to commence, then, is in the Church — in the 
 hearts of believers. 
 
 But what means are to be employed? And 
 here we would insist upon the importance of 
 considering revivals as the result of the use of 
 the appropriate means, so far as man is concern- 
 ed. If we consider them as miracles — as occur- 
 ring arbitrarily — ^as being confined to particular 
 seasons of the year, we are in great danger of 
 losing sight of our responsibility in the case ; of 
 waiting for a revival instead of working for it. 
 The Holy Ghost is always equally ready, but 
 man, though always equally needy, is not always 
 equally ready. Would we have a revival ? then, 
 the first thing to be done is not to look to others 
 — not to wait the coming of some famous re- 
 vivalist — not to look out of ourselves, but into 
 our own hearts, and then up to heaven. What 
 IS our own condition as it respects our personal 
 piety and holiness? What is the condition of 
 our spiritual emotions ? Are we merely formal 
 in duty and moral in practice, and have we come 
 to conclude that pure and undefiled religion be- 
 
WHAT IS A KEVIVAL? 
 
 16 
 
 fore God consists in this ? What are our spirit- 
 ual tastes ? Do we linger as upon the banks of 
 the pure river of the waters of life, clear as 
 crystal, over the inspired page, and hear the 
 whispers of the Spirit, and feel his refreshing- 
 presence like the fragrance of the flower, in the 
 word of the Lord, which endureth forever ! Do 
 we, betimes, love retirement, and seek the closet 
 for uninterrupted communion with our heavenly 
 Father, that he may reward us openly ? With- 
 out private prayer, personal religion loses its 
 vitality, and ceases to be a constant and abiding 
 joy to its possessor — a well of water within the 
 heart, springing up into everlasting life. O, 
 this is the place to begin ! What would be the 
 result of the re- erection of the four hundred 
 thousand fallen closet-altars in the Methodist 
 Episcopal Church ? We verily believe that no 
 religious duty equaling it in importance is so 
 frequently and generally neglected as that of 
 secret prayer. Hence, the spiritual life of many 
 is like a wet- weather spring, when it ought to 
 be perennial, a living spring. 
 
 There is an individualism in the spiritual 
 life that must be commenced and be con- 
 tinued by an habitually secret intercourse 
 with God. This fact is exemplified in the 
 
16 HELPS TO THE PKOMOTION OF REVIVALS. 
 
 lives of all good men, both inspired and 
 uninspired. In holy intercourse with God, 
 in heavenly vision, patriarchs, prophets, and 
 apostles have always commenced their event- 
 ful careers. ^'From the closet to the Church, 
 from our knees to the pulpit," were the mot- 
 toes of the reformers ; and every revival min- 
 ister since their days knows that here is the 
 hiding of his power, the beginning of his 
 strength. 
 
 The Church, then, would she have a revi- 
 val, must potentialize herself by an individual 
 resort to the holiest altar of the cathedral, the 
 one that shuts out alike the gaze of man, the in- 
 terruption of the world, and leaves the worshiper 
 alone with his God, like Jacob at Bethel, at the 
 hour of midnight. " Give me Scotland, or I 
 die !" " Give me souls, or take my soul !" were 
 the overheard closet supplications of John Knox 
 and the rapt Whitefield. O, for this fervor of the 
 hidden life, that takes the kingdom of heaven by 
 force ; the absence of this is the generic cause 
 of the absence of revivals, and the prevalence 
 of dearth and spiritual languor. It was while 
 Cornelius fasted and prayed, that a man — an 
 angel, Jesus Christ — "stood before him in bright 
 clothing," and instructed him in the way of life 
 
WHAT IS A REVIVAL? 
 
 17 
 
 everlasting. The example of Cornelius, the first 
 Gentile convert, is still a model for the whole 
 Church. Among professors, the sins of omission 
 are greater than those of commission, and of the 
 first named the greatest of all is that of restrain- 
 ing prayer before God. 
 
 Beginning with the right duty in the right 
 place, family, social, and public prayer, attended 
 with a greatly quickened faith, and an increased 
 love for all the services and ordinances of the 
 sanctuary, will be the result naturally, as flows 
 the stream when the fountain is opened. A re- 
 vival is the result of a union of effort on the 
 part of spiritually intensified individuals. ^'For 
 where two or three are gathered together in my 
 name, there am I in the midst of them." It 
 must commence with the individual, and work 
 socially ; commence within, and work outwardly ; 
 commence in the Church, and especially with 
 the ministry of the Church. ''And there shall 
 be like people, like priest." It must be com- 
 menced with the grace we have, and not wait 
 for grace to commence it. " Unto him that hath 
 shall be given." The Holy Ghost is always 
 w^illing and waiting to shed on the Church the 
 spirit of revival ! " If ye then^ being evil, know 
 
 how to give good things to your children, how 
 2 
 
18 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF KEVIYALS. 
 
 much more shall your Father in heaven give 
 the Holy Spirit to them that ask him ?" If a 
 Church be destitute of a revival, whose fault is 
 it? Let every Christian and every Christian 
 pastor start the searching inquiry, "Is it I?" 
 ^^Lord, is it I?" 
 
HIia)ERANOES TO KBVIVALS. 
 
 19 
 
 CHAPTER 11. 
 
 HINDERANCES TO REVIVALS. 
 
 WANT OP FAITH A REVIVAL FAITH DEFINED THE QOSPEL*S 
 
 CROWNING GIFT THE MORAL MIGHT OF THE OLD REFORMERS 
 
 THE OFFICIAL CHRISTIAN THE DIPLOMATIC CHRISTIAN 
 
 THE PARTISAN CHRISTIAN. 
 
 First we will mention the absence of a pure, 
 simple, and vigorous faith, on the part of 
 Christians. By a pure faith, we mean that 
 which troubles not itself with rationalizing or 
 philosophizing; that which rises above syllo- 
 gisms ; that which stops not to reason on questions 
 eternally settled, but takes God at his word ; 
 that which believes his promises, interpreted 
 upon the most literal principle, so that they 
 accord with the analogy of Scripture, and the 
 evidence of the senses. It is not the faith of 
 transcendentalism, which affects to understand 
 itself, and deceives itself, by conceit, into a be- 
 lief that it does ; nor of German rationalism, 
 which affects to believe nothing that it cannot 
 demonstrate; nor the faith of the Eomanist, 
 which pollutes itself by believing what is not 
 
20 HELPS TO THE J>ROM0TION OF REVIYALS. 
 
 required, and omitting what is; nor is it the 
 faith of ignorance, which substitutes for a con- 
 fiding conception of the great truths of Chris- 
 tianity, a mere spasmodic and evanescent fervor. 
 By a simple faith, we mean that whicli refuses 
 to parley wdth obstacles, like Abraham when re- 
 quired to offer up Isaac ; a faith that does not 
 disdain means because they are seemingly sim- 
 ple, but which goes and washes in the Eiver 
 Jordan, like the leper in the days of the proph- 
 et, no matter how loathsome the disease; a 
 faith, whose motto is, With God all things are 
 possible to them that believe. By a vigorous 
 faith, we mean that which embraces the heart 
 as well as the mind ; tlie affections, as well as 
 the enlightened judgment. Perfect faith is per- 
 fect love and perfect confidence acting in sub- 
 missive harmonj^ This is faith of that vigorous 
 type that secures a personal salvation with the 
 evidence of it in the witness of the Spirit, and 
 wliicli makes affliction delight, infirmity and 
 tribulation glory, and duty a relief. But O, 
 how rare this faith! how prevalent unbelief! 
 And, in view of the absence of revivals, one 
 almost fancies he literally hears again the lan- 
 guage, " Christ could do no mighty work there, 
 because of their unbelief." 
 
HTNDERANCES TO REVIVALS. 
 
 21 
 
 Brethren of tlie pulpit and the pews, let the 
 prayer ascend : Lord, we believe, but help thou 
 our unbelief! Yes, here is just the point, the 
 gist, the canker at the heart and the lungs of a 
 consumptive Church. We believe, but we have 
 not faith ; or, if it be liked better, we have faith, 
 but not enough of it. We believe in the Bible 
 historically, conform to its worship formally, and 
 practice its morality prudentially. But the 
 legalist and the moralist, the followers of Moses 
 and Epictetus, are but the meager skeleton 
 samples of Christians ; they are but the bones 
 in the vision, which have just stood up, it is true, 
 but the flesh and sinews have not come upon 
 them; they are not the temples of the Holy 
 Ghost. The crowning gift of the Gospel is the 
 gift of the Holy Ghost; and he that hath not 
 this gift is destitute of power from on high — a 
 dead-head — a negative pole in the communion 
 of saints. Like the foolish virgins in the parable, 
 his lamp, though it may once have been lit, has 
 gone out ; or, like the branch which abideth not 
 in the vine, it is withering away, though it may 
 yet hang pendent from its parent stem. When 
 will Christians learn that the life and vitality 
 of religion consist in an experimental con- 
 sciousness of a spiritual union with God, through 
 
22 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF EEYIVALS. 
 
 our Lord Jesus Christ ? The restoration of this 
 life-imparting and life-intensifying union, is the 
 first form and foundation of everything that is 
 worth calling a revival. In reading the lives of 
 the saints, whether sacred or profane — those 
 saints, we mean, who were moral giants, and 
 shook the earth with their tread and the heavens 
 with their prayers, though constantly exclaiming, 
 "of ourselves we can do nothing" — we find them 
 preeminently distinguished for this simple, pure, 
 and vigorous faith. They consecrated them- 
 selves to God in its hallowed flame, with rap- 
 turous resolves and alacrity, though the flames 
 of martyrdom curled over the pathway of duty, 
 or the clanking chains of dungeons commingled 
 with the prayers of their persecutors ; for no such 
 persecutors as confronted many of them are per- 
 mitted to confront Christians now. What, with 
 such obstacles removed out of the way, would 
 such types of the Christian character do for the 
 world now, where but a tithe of those professing 
 evangelical Christianity, thus to live up to their 
 privileges, and take to themselves this great 
 power of compelling the sinner to come in ! 
 The great defect of the Christian character, at 
 this age, we apprehend, is, that of being legal^ 
 ofliicial, diplomatic, and partisan. To obey the 
 
HINDERANCES TO REVIVALS. 
 
 23 
 
 Discipline of the Church, and the moral law 
 of God, with some faint resolves of intending 
 to be more spiritual, seems to quite satisfy the 
 consciences of some. Cursed be such opiates! 
 Away with such chloroform of modern invention, 
 the very mesmeric manipulations of the devil. 
 
 By an oflScial piety, we mean that which 
 gets along easy, whether as class-leader, local 
 preacher, or pastor ; many of the latter often 
 seeming to think, or, rather, so acting, that the 
 thoughts of men will not rise any higher in 
 reference to them, than that preaching is one of 
 the common callings of life, and an honorable 
 means of at least a frugal livelihood. Class- 
 leaders of such spirit parrot over the same stere- 
 otyped stories and phrases, until insipidity and 
 monotony become the terror of the class-room, 
 and flow out by imitation into the thinly at- 
 tended, and late and irregular arriving, weekly 
 prayer-meeting. Such pastors, too, are often 
 found feeding, discouraging, and disgusting their 
 flocks with stale and wormy manna ; using that 
 which has been kept over too long, rather than 
 gather it freshly descended from heaven. 
 • By the diplomatic Christian, or Christian 
 minister, we mean the man whose whole soul 
 seems to be absorbed, like Martha at Bethany, 
 
2i HELPS TO THE PKOXOTIOX OF REYIYALS. 
 
 with too much serving. There are wrongs la 
 the Discipline, order, and policy of the Church, 
 not here and there an obvious, colossal wrong, 
 but wrongs, in his view, almost innumerable ; 
 and with such, every inconsiderable defect looms 
 up into a hydra, which must be immediately 
 righted, cured, or the Church, like the Turkish 
 empire, is on her last legs, and only asks decent 
 burial. Or, another type of this diplomatic 
 Christian character consists in immensely busy- 
 ing itself about the mere external manifestations 
 of the enterprise, and the benevolence of the 
 Church. They have no time for anything but 
 to build academies, seminaries, and colleges; 
 multiply, in some form, organizations of aggress 
 iveness — ^fiscal plans of relief and Church ag 
 gression; no time, we say, for this spiritual 
 intensification of the man personal in the 
 Church of God; no time to arm themselves 
 with those elements of moral power, which alone 
 can result in the sinner's conversion. Now, we 
 like this man of so great a zeal for the mere 
 material and external in our Zion, but we know 
 well that the health of the whole Church re- 
 quires that his zeal have a higher origin ; that 
 these things he ought to do, and not to leave 
 the other undone. The great error of the 
 
HINDERANCES TO KEVIYALS. 
 
 25 
 
 Church, in every age, has been that of having 
 her attention diverted from the spiritual and the 
 invisible, to the external and the visible. Like 
 the tree that has suddenly lost its powers to 
 drink in life from the earth through its root- 
 lungs, and dies, though covered with fruit and 
 foliage, assuming in its death all the fascinating 
 and dolphin hues of our Western forests in 
 autumn, is such a Church. We hope our read- 
 ers will profit by the suggestive simile. All our 
 works must be wrought in God, or they are but 
 the hay, the wood, and the stubble ; at best, the 
 precious stones. Methodism builds a church 
 daily, but what avails this, if she has acres of 
 church room to spare all over the land, and sin- 
 ners rush to hell like flocks of shepherdless 
 sheep rushing into the jaws of the foe, because 
 she has not in these churches altars blazing with 
 heaven-descended fire, to arrest their attention 
 or summon their presence ? Catholic countries 
 are full of churches : Paris has church room for 
 nearly every thousand of her population, and 
 yet she has lost her power, and deservedly so, 
 to attract the mass to her altars. O God, 
 make our Zion to the people of this country, 
 what the pool of Bethesda was to the afflicted 
 and the maimed of Jerusalem. They resorted 
 
26 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF EEVIVALS. 
 
 thither, because a messenger from heaven de- 
 scended and troubled the waters. 
 
 By the partisan Christian, we mean the man 
 of great denominational confidence, of profound 
 respect for old-fashioned Methodism ; one that 
 is perpetually dilating on what Methodism has 
 done ; and his denominational egotism is perpet- 
 ually oozing out, not only at a proper time and a 
 proper place, and with good taste, but at all times, 
 and on all occasions. Like the Jews in the days 
 of the Saviour, such persons' liveliest emotions 
 seem to be kindled up in an overweening venera- 
 tion for the fathers, with an exaggerated estimate 
 of whatever has passed in the history of our 
 Church, accompanied with a disposition to de- 
 preciate, or look with suspicion or distrust on 
 whatever is present. We sometimes fear that, 
 for the interests of revivals, this character is 
 quite sufliciently numerous. The Jews, in the 
 zenith of their apostasy, beautified the tombs of 
 the prophets, and yet beheaded ' John the Bap- 
 tist, and crucified Christ. But we have only 
 space to hold the mirror for a moment before 
 this character, and to ask him to join with us in 
 the common-place and yet appropriate prayer : 
 Lord, give us all more religion ! " O Lord, in 
 the midst of these years, revive thy work 1" 
 
HrNDKBAKCES TO REVIVALS. 
 
 27 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 HINDERANCES TO REVIVALS. 
 
 THE CHURCH NOT GENERALLY HATED A TACIT WANT OF FAITH 
 
 IN HER CLAIMS A CAUSE OF MORAL OBDURACY SOCIAL CASTES 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL ELEMENTS WANTING IN PERVASIVENESS 
 
 THE MATERIALISM OF THE POPULAR MIND. 
 
 This chapter shall be confined to the considera- 
 tion of obstructions that lie between the Church 
 and the sinner — between the Church and the 
 popular mind. And here we will announce a 
 conviction, which, though most reluctant to en- 
 tertain, yet are we compelled to entertain it. 
 We live in a day when the obstacles to the 
 spread of a spiritual and experimental Christian- 
 ity are greater than they have been before in 
 half an age. We speak more particularly of 
 this country, though we fear that the same is 
 true of Christendom generally. Among these 
 obstacles is not to be ranked a growing con- 
 tempt for the Church, its services and its ordi- 
 nances. The Church is not despised by the 
 world, for it is not felt by it to be particularly 
 in the way. Men of intelligence have come to 
 
28 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 
 
 realize the great fact of all history — that relig- 
 ion and worship of some sort are but the crop- 
 ping out of man's strongest instincts ; and see- 
 ing that human nature was not made to do 
 without some such things, they are not destruc- 
 tionists in their feelings with respect to the 
 Church, but look upon it, upon the whole, as 
 one of the highest and purest forms of what they 
 realize to be necessary to human nature. They 
 prefer all the stir that is made about religion, to 
 no religion. Hence, for this reason, as well as 
 for others that might be named, we often see 
 noble examples in pecuniary contributions, and 
 other courtly acts, involving the interests of the 
 Church and its ministry, on the part of men 
 whose hearts seem dead to every awakening, 
 spiritual, and evangelical visitation; and for such 
 acts of benevolence and amenity, for ourselves, 
 we feel thankful. The Church, too, is high in 
 popular favor, from the fact that it always takes 
 hold, in some form, of some of those cords that 
 chain the hearts of men. In some localities it 
 is a place of fashionable resort, the weekly ren- 
 dezvous of a large representation of the social 
 circles ; (though everybody affects to despise aris- 
 tocracy and fashion, yet are they really always 
 and ever the idol of the popular heart ;) resorts 
 
HINDERANCES TO HEVIVALS. 
 
 29 
 
 where the socially esthetic, chastened and re- 
 fined by the sacred, finds a ready and free in- 
 dulgence. Most men, also, still respect the 
 Church, because some members of their family 
 or ancestry, a pious parent or grandmother, 
 there sought refuge and rest at the foot of her 
 altars. No, no, the American people do not 
 despise the Church, nor plan in the dark, fili- 
 bustering expeditions against her. Their reason- 
 ings, instincts, memories, all yet bind them to 
 the Church. Why, then, has not the Church 
 more power over them ? Why the genuine phe- 
 nomena of conversion, old-fashioned conversion 
 if you please, so rare ? 
 
 Nor must we, in considering obstacles in the 
 way of revivals, urge their necessity from any 
 remarkable decline in memhership on the part 
 of any of the evangelical branches of the Church 
 famil}^ In particular localities such diminu- 
 tions are not uncommon ; but, as a whole, statis- 
 tics show that every branch of the Church has 
 continued, and does still continue to progress 
 numerically, in wealth, and social consequence. 
 But still, every thinker upon this subject seems 
 fully aware, that, if there be not in the Church 
 (and we thank God that there is not) the total 
 absence of the spiritual element that descended 
 
30 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS, 
 
 at Pentecost, there is an immense and lam- 
 entable absence of pervasiveness on the part 
 of this element. The leaven is, indeed, hid in 
 the meal, but the process of leavening seems 
 feeble and slow. Like the barometer, that fore- 
 tells the storm, while the golden, hazy light of 
 the softest calm sheds beauty over the land- 
 scape, and the balmy zephyrs do not turn aside 
 the butterfly in his flight, so every deeply-spirit- 
 ual mind yet feels the pressure of the world's 
 great necessity, and sighs with a sickening and 
 sinking heart over the desolations of Zion. Not, 
 indeed, over her material any more than over 
 her numerical desolations. Such heart feels 
 that the Church is prosperous in all her exter- 
 nal manifestations, scarcely less than society 
 or the commonwealth, in this age of unparalleled 
 material prosperity. But what pious heart knows 
 not that the strength of a Church consists not in 
 numbers, any more than do railroads make the 
 way to heaven shorter and easier. The strength 
 of the Church consists not in the magnificence 
 of her altars, any more than did its purity con- 
 sist in the gorgeousness of her temple (a splen- 
 dor that dimmed the luster of the sun, and smote 
 the beholder with blindness) at the time of the 
 crucifixion. Externals are not to be depreciated, 
 
HINDERANCES TO REVIVALS. 
 
 31 
 
 but the spiritual and the invisible, of which they 
 are but the husks, are to be exalted. Not in 
 this mountain, nor in that, but in spirit and in 
 truth, God is to be worshiped. Why, then, we 
 again ask, this generally pervading want of 
 power on the part of the Church, the want of 
 spiritual aggressiveness, the want to humble, to 
 save, and to develop the spiritual life of the sin- 
 ner? On the part of many members of the 
 Church it would be the veriest croakery, if not 
 slander, to say, that they are not as holy as they 
 ever were; ay, more, their intelligence is greatly 
 increased, their habitudes of piety matured by 
 experience, their spirituality is of a more mascu- 
 line and, therefore, effective type. Nor will it 
 do to depreciate either the piety or talent of 
 the pulpit ; for if it be no better in these re- 
 spects, it is scarcely reasonable or philosophical 
 to suppose it to be any worse. In an age of 
 such mighty progress, to make it an exception 
 to all progress, would be to assume a position 
 immensely difficult to prove. Relatively, we 
 doubt not, the pulpit is weaker ; weaker, be- 
 cause the obstacles to be overcome are stronger; 
 but here we anticipate the question, which w^e 
 will again ask, and then answer : Why are not 
 conversions more frequent? Why are not mani- 
 
32 HELPS TO THE PBOMOTION OF REVIVALS. 
 
 festations of spiritual life, of holy living, more 
 common ? 
 
 Is not this the answer: That while, on the 
 part of men, respect for the Church has not 
 been diminished, and even confidence in the 
 great principles of Gospel morality, in the cer- 
 tainty with which these principles follow their 
 tendencies, has actually been on the increase 
 in the popular mind, there has actually been 
 going on, at the same time, a sad reaction in 
 another direction ? Has not the public mind, in 
 respect to Christianity, been like two counter 
 currents ; like a suddenly -swollen river, which 
 runs down stream on one side, and up stream 
 on the opposite bank? What we mean is this: 
 there is a sadly-increasirfg w^ant of confidence 
 in the popular mind in such truths as regenera- 
 tion and sanctification by the Holy Spirit ; par- 
 don and purity, by faith in an atoning Saviour, 
 accompanied by the witness of the Spirit, which 
 Spirit is to continue to take of the things which 
 are Christ's, and reveal them to the apprehen- 
 sion of the renewed mind, and constitute the at- 
 mosphere of the soul in that hidden life, that 
 kingdom of Christ which is not of this world. 
 Is there not an increasing skepticism to the ex- 
 perimental verities of the Gospel ? Does not the 
 
niNDERANCES TO REYTVALS. 33 
 
 popular mind, everywhere, tiacitly look upon the 
 spiritual essentials of a heaven-descended evan- 
 gelism, as dogmas about which it is not called 
 to concern itself? Thi», we think, is that form 
 of infidelity, the united product of many other 
 forms, and the careful nursing of many other 
 modern things, that constitutes the very Alp and 
 Apennine ramparts that now lie before the 
 Church, in her attempts to promote revivals. 
 The fruitful causes of this colossal obstacle, and 
 the course to be pursued in order to overcome 
 It, may constitute the theme of future chapters. 
 In the meantime, we close this by an exhorta- 
 tion to our brethren, to "strengthen the things 
 which remain, that are ready to die." 
 
 3 
 
34: HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 HINDERANCES TO REVIVALS. 
 
 THE PROTEAN CHARACTER OF UNBELIEF — THE VERY ELECT MAY 
 BE DECETTED — INFIDELITY ASSUMING TO BE AN ANGEL OF 
 LIGHT — IT FINDS APOLOGY FROM THE CONDUCT OF CHRISTIANS 
 — AN EXAMPLE GIVEN — THE PREVALENCE OF PERVERTED SCI- 
 ENCE AND PHILOSOPHY FALSELY SO CALLED — MARVELOUS 
 MATERIAL PROGRESS — MAN^S ABUSE OF BLESSINGS AND MISIN- 
 TERPRETATION OP THE PURPOSES OF THEIR BESTOWMENT — 
 THE PULPIT SHOULD ADAPT ITSELF TO THE POPULAR MIND — 
 THE LOGICAL ELEMENT MORE PREDOMINANT THAN THE EMO- 
 TIONAL—OUR SUFFICIENCY OP GOD. 
 
 In the last chapter we mentioned, as the great 
 obstacle in the way of the Church's access to 
 the outsiders and sinnersj the existence of popu- 
 lar infidelity in regard to the experimental veri- 
 ties, the spiritual truths of the Gospel. This type 
 of infidelity is not outspoken, it hides itself in 
 silence ; w^e would that it existed in another than 
 tacit form. Like Satan, from the time that he 
 entered the serpent until he went into the swine 
 of the Gadarenes, so does infidelity assume all 
 shapes. It has as many incarnations as the 
 Brahmin god Yishnu ; like Satan, too, one of 
 its oldest tricks is to conceal its preserce. It 
 
HINDERANCES TO KEVIYALS. 
 
 35 
 
 may be that the devil's power is greatly in- 
 creased because he keeps himself invisible. 
 The form of infidelity we are considering, also, 
 is so subtle, that it may even deceive, and often 
 does, its own possessor ; he may not always be 
 conscious of the vital extent to which he is a 
 hell-exposed unbeliever ; like as the odors of the 
 fabled upas, may the dreadful conclusion which 
 he has settled in his own mind, rest in his own 
 consciousness, and yet, like it, its subtle virus is 
 fatal. " Yerily, verily, I say unto you. Ye must 
 be born of the Spirit." 
 
 Every form of infidelity has its own particu- 
 lar epoch, in which it flourishes best ; certain 
 social phases of the age are more or less con- 
 genial to its growth, and determine the particu- 
 lar type which it may assume. Infidelity, in 
 these days, does not denounce the Bible by 
 wholesale. Contrariwise, it professes for it a 
 great reverence, as Judas said, "Hail, Master! 
 and kissed him." Every form of infidelity now 
 quotes Scripture in its support. 
 
 We come, then, to name summarily a few 
 of the principal elements that are now in active 
 occupancy of the popular mind, and admirably 
 calculated, if not of necessity, by ready abuse, 
 to foster the form of infidelity we are deploring. 
 
36 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 
 
 "We first name the sectarian polemical element. 
 What we mean is this : the evangelical Church 
 exists fragmentarily, and these fragments are 
 called sects or denominations ; naturally enough, 
 then, do sectarian rivalries, contests about doc- 
 trines and dogmas, arise. And now, let us ask, 
 and it will be quite sufficient to ask. What is 
 the spirit, as a general thing, with which these 
 contests are carried on? So far from it being 
 an occasional exception, it rather amounts to 
 the rule, that the religious controversies of. the 
 pulpit, but more especially of the press, are 
 carried on with almost as much of the spirit of 
 bitterness and sarcasm, though, we admit, with 
 much improvement of diction, as are the battles 
 of party strife in the political world. How 
 many painful examples might here be adduced ; 
 how much is here suggested, that we have 
 neither space nor desire to say ; how sickens 
 the heart imbued with that spirit of gentleness, 
 meekness, love, and long-suffering, at what we 
 have said. If the spiritual man possessed by 
 the Christian, manifest all tliose moral phenom- 
 ena in temper, words, etc., that are manifested 
 by men who make no pretensions to regenera- 
 tion, the former, at the same time, contending 
 with "/apostolic blows and knocks," that the 
 
HINDEKAKCES TO REYIYALS. 37 
 
 spiritual life is the very antithesis of such phe- 
 nomena, what other result have we any reason, 
 logically, to expect, than that of breeding a 
 popular infidelity to the spiritual verities of the 
 Gospel ? As a painful example of denomination- 
 al selfishness and bigotry, we record here a late 
 current fact. Who has not read of the immor- 
 tal Mills and Hall of Williams College, in Mas- 
 sachusetts, consecrating themselves to the work 
 of foreign missions, then little thought of, by 
 daily meeting for prayer by the side of a certain 
 haystack ? This fact has become of sublime his- 
 toric importance. At a late commencement of 
 Williams College it was appropriately resolved 
 to celebrate this event by a grand catholic mis- 
 sionary jubilee. 
 
 The representatives of sister Churches, besides 
 the Presbyterian, were Dr. Tyng, Episcopalian, 
 of New- York ; Dr. Wyckoflf, Dutch Reformed, 
 of the same city, and Rev. Mr. Briggs, LL.D., a 
 Baptist. These respective denominations, to- 
 gether with representatives of the American 
 Board of Commissioners for Foreign Mis^ons, all 
 faithfully represented to the numerous audience 
 in attendance the success of the missionary work 
 among the heathen. But — would the reader .be- 
 lieve it? — ^no allusion whatever was made, during 
 
88 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF KEYIYALS. 
 
 the interesting proceedings, to one of the largest 
 missionary denominations of all Christendom. 
 Methodism, taken in its several sections, is the 
 banner missionary Church of the world. Of the 
 thirty or more evangelical foreign missions, 
 six were established by and belong to leading 
 branches of the great Methodist family. About 
 one third of all the missionaries in the foreign 
 fields are Methodists. One half of all the Church 
 members gathered from heathendom are under 
 the care of Methodists ; and this noble work is 
 carried on by Methodism at an expense of about 
 one fifth of all the missionary means raised by 
 the entire evangelical Church. And yet, these 
 learned professors and doctors, the acknowledged 
 embodiment of American evangelism, could not 
 render honor to whom honor was due. Can 
 reading and thinking outsiders fail to observe 
 such conduct? And what effect will such dis- 
 coveries have upon their faith? The natural 
 inference is, that human regenerated nature is 
 about the same, after all, with human nature 
 imsubmitted to the process. Fatal conclusion! 
 and who is responsible for it? 
 
 There was a time w^hen such things were less 
 deleterious than now, though, probably, there 
 never was a time when their prevalence was 
 
HINDERAKCES TO REYIYALS. 
 
 39 
 
 more general. That time was, when the popular 
 mind was less logical, and more under the con- 
 trol of the emotional. Ours is an age of popular 
 thinking, because it is an age of such popular 
 reading as never existed before. All men, now, 
 ask a reason for things, and answer they will 
 tlieir own questions, if not answered for them. 
 How sad to reflect, that this mighty increase of 
 popular intelligence should thus, by the action 
 of Christians, be turned against us ! 
 
 We may next mention the prevalence of 
 popular delusions — sciences, falsely so called ; 
 phrenology, mesmerism, spiritualism, etc., etc. 
 In many of these delusions there is much truth, 
 though perverted ; and the more, the more dan- 
 gerous ; not that all ages have not had their 
 delusions, and many, in the Christian Church, a 
 hundredfold more numerous than the present, 
 but no such means existed in those days for the 
 general diffusion of such delusions. They were 
 local, and therefore ephemeral, They did not 
 take those organized forms, with their organs, 
 oracles, and their chief of magicians, as with us. 
 Simon Magus could not issue a newspaper, as 
 he can do now 5 at the s^me time that the Church 
 can work no miracle to withstand his dirty 
 divinations. There is, too, in society, the work- 
 
40 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF KEYIYALS. 
 
 ing of an element most mischievously materializ- 
 ing in its tendencies. Like the postdiluvians on 
 the beautiful and sunny plains of Shinar, man- 
 kind are ever prone to abuse God's greatest gifts 
 to purposes of blasphemy and sacrilege. The 
 very marvel of the daguerreotype, the steam- 
 ship, the telegraph, the railroad, and the loco- 
 motive, from the transports of wonder at which 
 mankind have not yet cooled down, has, doubt- 
 less, weakened the popular faith in the old- 
 fashioned order of human restoration and ame- 
 lioration. Indeed, it would be a serious oversight 
 in our study of the means by which society is 
 affected, not to look upon the discoveries of tlie 
 present half century as affecting it most pro- 
 foundly. Mankind is not only given to the 
 abuse of blessings, but is perpetually misin- 
 terpreting the purpose of their bestowment. 
 Like the children of Israel, when they were 
 without meat, they murmured from fear of 
 starvation. When the Lord converted the region 
 around the camp nightly into a pigeon roost, they 
 waxed fat and sensual, " ate and drank, and then 
 rose up to play;" many nowadays, expatiating 
 on the world's progress, seem to have had their 
 heads turned, and we should scarcely be as- 
 tonished to hear of their soon preachiiig that 
 
HINDERAKCES TO KEYIVALS. 
 
 41 
 
 men are to be regenerated by electricit3% and 
 "^^v, go to heaven by steam. Nor are these effects 
 upon the world's mind so surprising, considering 
 the marvelousness of the cause. It was but in 
 1807, that Fulton launched the first steamboat. 
 In 1825 the first railroad was put into operation. 
 The electric telegraph was not demonstrated as 
 feasible until 1815. Hoe's printing press is but 
 an invention of yesterday. Gas light w^as un- 
 known to the world in 1800. The beautiful 
 discoveries of Daguerr6 were unknown until 
 1839 ; and while discoveries have thus been going 
 on upon this earth, astronomy has been enlarging 
 her borders in the heavens, and planet after 
 planet has been discovered. The mind of the 
 world has been shocked at its own inventions, 
 and is intoxicated with extravagant expectations 
 of what may be discovered in the next half 
 century. Nothing short of a millennium with- 
 out submitting to the old and trite requisition 
 of entering in at the " strait gate," is expected. 
 - Fatal and fanatical conclusion ! Depraved man 
 will attempt to walk by sparks of his own kind- 
 ling, and hew out to himself cisterns that will 
 hold no water. 
 
 By many these are considered, without a 
 question, as the effective agents of a social mil- 
 
42 HELPS TO THE PEOMOTION OF REVIYALS. 
 
 lennium near at hand. Sad and fatal mistake ! 
 Just as apt are they to be the agents of human 
 degeneracy and sensualism, if the old " balm of 
 Gilead" (the vital principle of spiritual life, that 
 connects the soul with its Maker) be overlooked 
 in the construction of society. But still the 
 popular belief obtains, that men are actually to 
 be made better by steam and electricity, rather 
 than by the Spirit of God. Deluded with the 
 belief that society is being constantly lifted to 
 some better state, as with the lever of Archime- 
 des, favored with the fulcrum of modern discov- 
 ery, the sinner fancies himself going up with the 
 world, and feels willing to risk his chance. 
 
 The popular mind, too, must be considered as 
 just passing a transition state; formerly, the 
 emotional almost uniformly controlled the intel- 
 lectual ; now the intellectual controls the emo- 
 tional. Not that the laws of sympathy have 
 changed, but the intellect, dependent upon differ- 
 ent laws and circumstances for its growth, has 
 been placed under those circumstances that have 
 developed its power. Is ot that true earnestness 
 is any less appreciated, or less essential. ISTot that 
 in the storming of the city of Mansoul, (to use a 
 thought of that incomparable dreamer of Bed- 
 ford jail,) Mr. Wet-eyes is any less needed; but 
 
HINDERANCES TO REVIVALS. 
 
 43 
 
 certain it is, that we have arrived at a period in 
 which, if we are not called to give the sinner a 
 rationale of his conversion, we are called, in a / 
 manner commensurate with his own intelligence, 
 and the logical processes of his own mind, to 
 give him a reason, par excellence, why he should 
 be converted, and the Spirit or grace of God be 
 the essential agent in the work. The ordinary 
 fervid and dogmatic ministrations of our fore- 
 fathers, just here, should not be looked to wholly 
 as a model. We know not but that we may be 
 called to fight the battle of the Christian evi- 
 dences over again, with reference to this phase 
 of unbelief. Certain it is, that men are now 
 moved more by moving their thoughts than 
 moving their emotions; and the former seems 
 the MalakofiF Tower, on which, first, to make the 
 attack ; while, at the same time, Methodist 
 preachers should have all of the latter that they 
 ever had; and God forbid they should have less. 
 And, above all, may God save us from that en- 
 thusiasm that disdains the appropriate means, 
 on the one hand, and from that self-suflSciency 
 which forgets that it is " Not by might, nor by 
 power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord," on the 
 other. 
 
44: HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF BEYIVALS. 
 
 OHAPTEE Y. 
 
 HINDERANCES TO REYIYALS— PLAN OF RESIST- 
 ANCE PROPOSED. 
 
 GERMAN RATIONALISM — THE EMIGRATION OF ERROR SPIRITUAL- 
 ISM AND ITS COGNATES DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE ETHICAL 
 
 AND THE DOCTRINAL — A DEFECT IN THE PULPIT — AN ILLUS- 
 TRATION ILLUSTRATED CONCLUSION OF A LEGITIMATE RATION- 
 ALISM — THE PREACHER SHOULD STUDY NATURE A PULPIT 
 
 REFORM SUGGESTED. 
 
 In the last chapter we named, as the most for- 
 midable obstacle in the way of revivals, a grow- 
 ing infidelity to the experimental verities of 
 Gospel truth. The tendencies of the age were 
 to materialism and rationalism. These errors, 
 which have nearly ingulfed the evangelism of 
 the Lutheran Keformation on the European con- 
 tinent, were insidious, difi'usive, and contagious. 
 Like the cholera, they were now on their Western 
 emigration. To do right was to be right, in the 
 tacit estimation of men generally. The great 
 truths, " Ye must be born again " By grace ye 
 are saved through faith " He that is born of 
 God hath the witness in himself,'^ were popu- 
 larly ignored. And as the spiritual life ap- 
 
PLAN OF EESISTAJSrCE PKOPOSED. 45 
 
 preached the mysterious, outsiders were willing 
 to give to "mystics," to " fanaticism," to "gray- 
 headed orthodoxy, and superannuated old age," 
 the full monopoly of these things. The mysti- 
 cism of many of the unclean spirits abroad in the 
 land, such as clairvoyance, spirit-rapping, etc., 
 and the strange experiences of Judge Edmonds, 
 the marvelous and magniloquent revelations of 
 A. J. Davis, and the mystic dreams of Emanuel 
 Swedenborg, are secretly claimed to be all of a 
 piece with the spiritual transports of the young 
 convert, and the mysterious transitions of mind 
 that he underwent, as he passed from conver- 
 sion to sanctification, as described by such 
 writers as Professors Upham and Mahan, Ma- 
 dame Guyon, Mrs. Rogers, and Mrs. Phoebe 
 Palmer. The popular mind, we say, under the 
 far-reaching influence of this rationalistic poison, 
 was coming to regard the spiritual verities of 
 Christianity as all of a piece with those ludicrous 
 marvels, which, like Jonah's gourd, come up in 
 the dark and perish in the light. How best to 
 resist this tendency in the minds of men, 
 becomes the question which our last chapter 
 suggested, because it is manifest, that if the 
 creed of men, whether in the Church or out of 
 it, consists in substituting mere Gospel morality 
 
46 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 
 
 for Gospel spirituality^ the Church and tlie 
 world will soon become bankrupt of both. As 
 one step toward curing this evil, we intimated 
 that the pulpit might find it necessary to dwell 
 more frequently and directly upon those experi- 
 mental verities, upon those truths of the Gospel 
 which spring not from its ethics, but from its 
 doctrines ; and which address not themselves to 
 man's mere intellectual sense of right, but to his 
 spiritual nature. These truths do not so much 
 regulate human conduct between man and man, 
 as they open an experimental intercourse be- 
 tween man and his Maker. They involve 
 social intercourse with God. The other class of 
 truths involve more directly our social relations 
 to our fellows. 
 
 The pulpit, in insisting upon these spiritual 
 verities that meet the want of our spiritual 
 natures, is generally too technical, obsolete, 
 given to a trite sameness of expression, and 
 sadly wanting in illustration. By being too tech- 
 nical, we mean, that it is wont to content itself 
 by quoting some of the language of the " twenty- 
 five articles," the standard authorities, and ap- 
 propriate passages of Scripture. This, after all, 
 we apprehend, to the popular mind, is neither 
 explaining nor expounding. It is well enough, 
 
PLAN OF RESISTANCE PROPOSED. 4T 
 
 as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough. 
 It is wanting in adaptation, in that sense to which 
 we give the phrase of " up with the times," and, 
 in illustration, in that sense in which truth 
 should be illustrated by the things of the present 
 with which men's thoughts are familiar. 
 
 Our Saviour's parables illustrate the careful 
 reference he always had in his teaching to the 
 principle just named. We will attempt to il- 
 lustrate what we mean by an illustration that 
 particularly interests, because it includes what 
 was before in the mind of the hearer. Is the 
 operation of the Divine Spirit, for instance, upon 
 man's moral nature, changing the disposition 
 thereof, objected to, on account of its inconceiv- 
 ableness or profound mystery? Let the force 
 of the objection be broken by an analogy from 
 the natural world. How happens it, the speak- 
 er may say, that light, the most imponderable 
 and subtle of all substances, reveals its red in 
 the rose, its white in the lily, its blue in the 
 violet, compounds itself into every hue of beau- 
 ty in the pride of spring, and stains with vermil- 
 ion or silvery whiteness the clouds of the sky ? 
 Who can conceive of this process, and yet, who 
 dare deny the facts ? And these facts become 
 the more striking, when it is remembered that 
 
48 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF EEYIVALS. 
 
 the virgin petals of the lily of to-day, were yes- 
 terday but the mud of the swamp. Or, take 
 another illustration from the wondrous doings of 
 that most incomprehensible of physical agents, 
 electricity. Its wonders have now become 
 familiar to the minds of everybody. And, that 
 it does traverse a continent, or an ocean, in a 
 time too short for measurement; that it per- 
 vades with unimpeded ease, huge masses of 
 iron ; that it drops through mountains of rock 
 with infinitely more ease than our volition can 
 move us through an open door, are all facts 
 which a school-boy, now, does not think of de- 
 nying. But these are but physical agents, pro- 
 ducing visible and wonderful results. To dis- 
 card them, because the manner in which it is 
 done lies beyond the power of our analysis, or 
 comprehension, would be worse than stupidity. 
 But if such things are true of natural agents, 
 what are we not to expect of spiritual agents ? 
 If matter does thus operate upon matter, is it 
 unreasonable to suppose that mind may not so 
 operate upon mind as to produce phenomena 
 correspondingly wonderful? And who does not 
 know that it is but an experimental fact, that 
 even finite mind does influence mind with a 
 transforming power often nearly analogous to 
 
PLAN OF RESISTANCE PROPOSED. 49 
 
 that which natural agents produce before our 
 eyes in the opening bud. But, if we rise from 
 the mind of man to the mind of God, from the 
 spirit of man to the Spirit of God, and presume 
 upon the possibility of an intercourse between 
 God and man, what results does it become most 
 reasonable for us to look for? Why, that our 
 minds be purified, renewed, born again, trans- 
 formed in their measure into the Divine likeness 
 — these, we say, are the results which a legiti- 
 mate rationalism would look for. Certainly it is 
 not unreasonable to suppose that the mind of 
 God and man may be brought into contact, 
 w^hen the Spirit of God, like an all-pervasive 
 life, touches everything in the vast universe. It 
 is, then, but sheer atheism to laugh at spiritual 
 regeneration as a mere dogma of the Church, 
 discarded by true philosophy ; while it is worse 
 than childish to object to anything taught 
 in the Scriptural experience of the Christian 
 because of its mystery or incomprehensibil- 
 ity! 
 
 Now, in some such way as the above, would 
 we have the pulpit in its lessons, more immedi- 
 ately logical and illustrative, address the popu- 
 lar mind. We would have the pulpit commune 
 
 no less with the cross, but at the same time 
 4 
 
50 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF KEVIVAXS. 
 
 much more with those " all things which were 
 made by Him" the Victim of the cross. The 
 pulpit should abound more with illustrations 
 fresh from the fountain of nature. The preach- 
 er should study nature only second to revelation. 
 The facts of natural science should be as famil- 
 iar to him as the facts of Bible history. 
 
 Read nature : nature is a friend to truth ; 
 Nature is Christian, preaches to mankind, 
 And bids dead matter aid us in our creed." 
 
 It is not a lack of Hebrew^, Greek, or Latin, that 
 constitutes a scientific want of the pulpit, by 
 any means, but a want of a knowledge of the 
 natural sciences does ; and in no apologetic 
 spirit or tone, would we have the duty dis- 
 charged. That is, we would not have the pul- 
 pit defer, for a moment, to that infidelity that 
 secretly, if not avowedly, challenges these spirit- 
 ual verities. But we would have it demon- 
 strated that these spiritual verities are actually 
 the highest type of a legitimate rationalism. 
 Such a coming at the mind, we think, would 
 excite thought, and while the word was 
 preached, it would also be expounded in a 
 manner which gathered freshness from the liv- 
 ing present. We think, if we mistake not, that 
 
PLAN OF EESISTAKCE PROPOSED, 51 
 
 the pulpit must swing itself loose more from the 
 technical and the obsolete, in this momentous 
 department of theology. But, by all means, let 
 it not degenerate into a mere scholarly exhibi- 
 tion of scientific facts, though important they 
 may be in the illustration of the holy record. 
 Let not preaching degenerate into philosophiz- 
 ing, but let philosophy ever keep her place as a 
 servant. The messenger of the pulpit has mis- 
 taken his mission whenever he presumes it is 
 primarily an intellectual one. Effort should be 
 made always to move the heart, always to stir 
 the affections, always to awaken deep emotions 
 in alliance with spiritual truths. Were we on 
 a hymeneal errand, on a courting excursion, 
 we would as soon pay our addresses to Powers's 
 statue of the Greek slave, as an excitant of 
 our affections, as to go to church and hear 
 nothing but a purely scientific and intellect- 
 ual harangue. Intellect, of course, must be 
 there, otherwise the sermon is wanting in* in- 
 telligence. Science, of course, must be there, 
 otherwise we are annoyed with the blunders 
 of the speaker. But these are but the scaffold- 
 ing of the builder. There must be life, the life 
 of emotion occasioned by the speaker's com- 
 munion with God. The Holy Ghost must be 
 
52 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 
 
 there, of which the speaker is but a medinm of 
 intercourse between Heaven and his people: 
 "And my speech and my preaching was not 
 with enticing words of man's wisdom, but in 
 demonstration of the Spirit, and of power." 
 
PREACH JESUS. 
 
 63 
 
 CHAPTER VL 
 
 PREACHJESUS. 
 
 THE CENTRAL GLORY OF THE UNIVERSE THE WORLD'S GREAT 
 
 "WANT JESUS MUST BE PREACHED, OR THE PULPIT WILL 
 
 BECOME EXTINCT — BOSTON UNITARIANISM UNION BETWEEN 
 
 CHRIST AND HIS MINISTERS ILLUSTRATED THE CROSS IN- 
 VESTED WITH STUPENDOUS EVIDENCES MERITLESSNESS OP 
 
 man's RIGHTEOUSNESS HOW THE SINNER IS SAVED THE 
 
 TRUE PROTESTANT IDEA HOW GOD DESCENDS TO MAN's CA- 
 PACITY THE INCARNATION CHRIST ALWAYS THE PREACHER's 
 
 THEME. 
 
 In our last, we were touching upon the duty of 
 the pulpit in a given ease, in the promotion of 
 revivals. A general hint was all that we in- 
 dulged in, and all that we intended, ere we 
 passed to the employment of measures by the 
 Church. We may linger in the pulpit long 
 enough to insist upon a common, and yet au- 
 gustly momentous and precious topic. 
 
 The pole-star of the pulpit is the cross. The 
 central idea of the Bible is Jesus. The intelli- 
 gent soul of the world's history is the idea of the 
 world^s Saviour. History would be without 
 order, Providence without polarity, but for Cal- 
 vary. Redemption is the sweet influence of the 
 
54 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF EEYIVALS. 
 
 Pleiades, melting in healing odors over the 
 wounded, dying race, amid the wandering mu- 
 sic of the stars of the morning ; and which faith 
 only can hear, faith only can see, and faith only 
 can feel. Redemption is the great law of grav 
 itation in the moral world, mysteriously attract- 
 ing it onward to its destiny, upward to its God. 
 Redemption means reconciliation by virtue of a 
 reason. It is the great, felt want of humanitj". 
 "How shall we come before God, and where- 
 withal can we bow ourselves before the high God, 
 and how can man be just with God ?" have con- 
 stituted the outcry of the crushed nations, with 
 which they have ever filled the ear of the leaden, 
 lazy-footed ages. In the absence of satisfactory 
 answers to these questions, foolish man has at- 
 tempted to invent answers. What, otherwise, 
 mean the smoking altars of paganism, the heca- 
 tombs of victims at the shrine of idols ? What 
 else mean those self-immolations, self-inflicted 
 tortures, and long and painful pilgrimages, 
 which the imperfect annals of man without a 
 Bible are constantly disclosing ? The fact is, a 
 consciousness of guilt, a self-disapproval, and a 
 sense of danger, are universal to humanity. 
 These dark shadows fall upon his soul every- 
 where, (darker at certain seasons than others,) 
 
PREACH JESUS. 
 
 55 
 
 as certainly as is his shadow cast from him in 
 the sunlight. Man is instinctively prepared to 
 hear of a Saviour. His condition in the world 
 is to him as "The voice of one crying in the 
 wilderness," saying, "Where is he of whom 
 Moses in the law and the prophets did write ?" 
 The popular heart feels that a sermon without 
 a Saviour is a solecism. The preacher who 
 preaches most about Jesus and the resurrection, 
 other things being equal, will have the largest 
 and most delighted audiences. It is a striking 
 fact, and yet one often overlooked, that God 
 himself has so arranged, that the principal theme 
 of the pulpit, when properly evolved, will al- 
 ways be found the most popular. Men never 
 complain of hearing too much from the pulpit 
 about Jesus Christ. And it is the evangelical 
 pulpits of the land which alone can succeed in 
 keeping up a congregation. Boston Unitarian- 
 ism is in the yellow leaf, and, but for its wealth 
 and social powers, the sentimentality, poetry, 
 and learning of its pulpit, would to-day have 
 been numbered among the historic follies of 
 another attempt to perpetuate the public wor- 
 ship of God on earth, without insisting, also, 
 that men ought to worship at the manger and 
 at the cross. The same may be said of Christ- 
 
56 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REYIYALS. 
 
 ianism, Arianism, and various other types of 
 religious error. But even Unitarianism is far 
 from crying after the man Christ Jesus, Cru- 
 cify him, crucify him !" away with such a man 
 from the earth !" If, in their creed, Jesus Christ 
 be not God, he is, nevertheless, the most exalted 
 of creatures — a God-revealed model of perfect 
 humanity. If he did not die to save the sinner, 
 he died as the noblest of martyrs, in the defense 
 of the truth. Now, this error of making the 
 Saviour human, and no more, and investing his 
 death with the glories of martyrdom, and no 
 more, has not been without its power. It has 
 imparted to that pulpit, at least, a dramatic effect. 
 The themes of that pulpit have thus not been 
 without their principal hero. Romance and 
 chivalry, or something analogous to these quali- 
 ties, have lent to the desk an attraction. Let 
 even this view of Christ be ignored, and the 
 pulpit sink to the mere defender of theism, 
 become deistic, the doler-out of mere ethical 
 lessons, sanctioned, indeed, by God, and im- 
 pressed by the motives of immortality, and how 
 soon would such a sect of religionists become 
 extinct! 
 
 The pulpit, without Christ, becomes secular- 
 ized, sinks to the level of common things. It 
 
PREACH JESUS. 
 
 57 
 
 loses, in fact and in the minds of men, all its 
 unearthly, its peculiarity of power, and only be- 
 comes a thing of preference, from mere accident 
 or factitious circumstances. A Christless pulpit 
 is as Eden would have been without the river 
 to " water the garden." The life-imparting in- 
 timacy between Christ and his Church, between 
 Christ and his ministers, is radiantly illustrated 
 in the first chapter of the Revelation of St. John : 
 " Clothed with a garment down to the feet, and 
 girt about the paps with a golden girdle, [sym- 
 bolic of his priestly office.] His head and his 
 hair were white like wool, as white as snow ; 
 and his eyes were as a flame of fire ; and his feet 
 like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a 
 furnace; and his voice as the sound of many 
 waters he is represented as being in the midst 
 of the " seven golden candlesticks," which were 
 the seven Churches of Asia, and which were 
 selected as generic of the Church in all ages. 
 The seven pastors were " seven stars, which he 
 held in his right hand, while out of his mouth 
 went a sharp, two-edged sword, and his counte- 
 nance was as the sun shining in his strength !" 0 
 blessed Jesus ! how near thou art to thy people, 
 and yet they see thee not ! How certainly do 
 thy footfalls waken the echoes of the rudest, the 
 
58 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 
 
 wild wood sanctuary, or float in sacred accents 
 through the aisles of the houses erected for thee, 
 and yet, how dull their ears of hearing ! How 
 certainly dost thou lead thy embassadors by the 
 hand, and yet, with what timid and faltering 
 steps do they follow! 
 
 And now, brothers, in the inventory of good 
 things on which we discourse weekly from the 
 pulpit, let us not forget to preach Jesus. And 
 Jesus first, not subordinately. A system of the- 
 ology, without Jesus in the center, would be as a 
 system of solar astronomy that left out the sun. 
 ^'I am the way, the truth, and the life." The 
 name of Jesus is the revolted sinner's password 
 on his return to God. His death is the reason 
 why God can be just, and yet the justifier of 
 every one that believeth in his death. His 
 Divinity, which never died, but only suffered a 
 voluntary obscuration of its glory, not only im- 
 parts to the humanity, in which it saw fit to 
 temple itself, an awful sacredness, and to the 
 blood of that humanity an everywhere-reaching 
 efficaciousness, but it furnishes an assurance to 
 the sinner that there could be no mistake about 
 the offering up of the great sin-offering for the 
 world, at Jerusalem, many centuries ago, about 
 the time of the celebration of the symbol of that 
 
PREACH JESUS. 
 
 59 
 
 event, the Jewish passover. That God presided 
 at the cross, and at the grave, he did more than 
 to set his bow in the heavens, as at the flood, to 
 prove. As then, he registered the evidence of 
 his presence upon the pages of nature ; the sun 
 withheld his hght, and supernatural darkness 
 prevailed ; earthquakes rent the rocks and the 
 temple's vail, and the long-buried dead were 
 made to live again after his resurrection. Stu- 
 pendous wonders ! And yet they are but worthy 
 witnesses, that God, in unerring wisdom and 
 mercy, had " provided himself a sacrifice." Yes, 
 for himself, and for man also. Henceforth, the 
 sinner needs no further sacrifice. Let all altars 
 but the cross be leveled down. It is enough. 
 Jesus hath " tasted death for every man." The 
 sinner is saved, not because he submits to pen- 
 ance, not because he inflicts suff*ering upon 
 another, but because Jesus " hath borne our 
 sins in his own body on the tree." The sinner is 
 saved, not because he repents; not because he 
 prays ; not because he believes ; not by works 
 of righteousness which he hath done, for all these 
 are but the voluntary acts of appropriating pro- 
 vided mercies, but because Christ died, "the 
 just for the unjust, to bring us to God." In 
 repentance there can be no merit, because this 
 
60 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIYALS. 
 
 does no more than dignify humanity. In belief 
 there can be no merit, because no man ought to 
 be rewarded for believing that which is true. 
 In doing right, there can be no merit, for this is 
 best for human nature under all circumstances. 
 Such voluntary acts on the sinner's part, then, 
 which he may be induced to perform by the 
 teachings of the holy Gospel, and aided to per- 
 form by the Spirit, which is mercifully given to 
 him to enable him to overcome the bent of his 
 nature toward evil, and to balance against the 
 infusion of Satanic influence, such voluntary 
 acts on the sinner's part, we say, only bring him 
 just where the gift of eternal salvation is. '^By 
 grace are ye saved, through faith ; and that not 
 of yourselves; it is the gift of God ; not of works, 
 lest any man should boast." This blessed doc- 
 trine of a salvation free for all, and, consequently, 
 can neither be merited nor monopolized by any, 
 is the great central luminary in the firmament 
 of Protestantism. No wonder that it shook the 
 priest-ridden world like an earthquake, when, 
 from being so long lost to it, it was discovered 
 by Luther, apparently accidentally. It will yet 
 shake the heads of pseudo Churches from their 
 thrones, and popes from their chairs. It will 
 shake the earth, ay, and heaven too ! It will 
 
PREACH JESUS. 
 
 61 
 
 shake the earth till it sift out its errors, and then 
 make eternity's long aisles tremulous to the song 
 of its triumphs, and the far-off new-born worlds 
 to clap their hands to the greetings of the spread- 
 ing music ! 
 
 - O, how blessed and self-commendatory is this 
 truth. It exalts the king and the beggar to the 
 same common level, empowering each with the 
 privilege of settling his spiritual and immortal 
 concerns with his Maker, without the interposi- 
 tion of a fallible, and, it may be, sinister inter- 
 mediate. It is the republicanism of Christ's 
 spiritual kingdom. " If the Son shall make you 
 free, you shall be free indeed." And yet, para- 
 doxical as it may at first sound, man, in the bud- 
 dings of his first thinkings of salvation, is 
 brought directly in contact with his "fellow," 
 his kindly sympathetic fellow, a priest, "who 
 can be touched with the feelings of his infirmi- 
 ties." In accommodation to that finite mind 
 that cannot grasp or locate its confidence upon 
 a God that is an everywhere present Spirit, 
 much easier than one perishing for want of 
 breath can grasp the four winds in his embrace, 
 God embodies himself in the man Christ Jesus, 
 and thus, as it were, locates his presence where 
 local thoughts can come unto him ; and so at- 
 
62 HELPS TO THE PKOMOTION OF REVIVALS. 
 
 tempers his glory, that we are not intimidated 
 in our approaches, and so blends his love with 
 the sympathies of our common humanity, that, 
 while we are found in kindred affinity with the 
 Son of God, and in natural sympathy with his 
 suflferings, and admiration for the sublime moral 
 beauty of his character, through this door which 
 God has thus opened in our hearts, he himself 
 enters; and, as thought expands and faith in- 
 creases, the awakened sinner, like the convinced 
 Thomas, exclaims of the man Christ Jesus, " My 
 Lord and my God !" God was manifested in the 
 flesh. And one of the blessed facts in the mys- 
 tery of this manifestation is, that God literally 
 speaks to us in the person of our own nature ; 
 weeps in our presence such tears as we weep ; 
 touches us with a hand of flesh, that he may lay 
 upon our hearts the hand of the Spirit. As man, 
 our Saviour is one of us. As God, he is one of 
 the Holy Three. To read the holy Gospel is to 
 read the biography of the Godhead. God's will 
 is not only here revealed, but his character con- 
 creted in sinless humanity : and yet, that 
 humanity suff'ering as a sinner, that believing 
 sinners might escape the damnation of hell. 
 
 This blessed theme can never be tame. It 
 imparts to pulpit truth all the naturalism of 
 
PEEACH JESUS. 
 
 63 
 
 heaven, tlie eternal freshness of Divinity. Every 
 sermon, then, should be preached in the shadow 
 of the cross. Like the incense, which burned 
 perpetually before the Lord in the sanctuary, 
 every sermon should be odorous with the doc- 
 trines of Jesus. ISTor should we think the theme 
 incapable of new modes of presentation, incapa- 
 ble of new and striking illustrations. Not only is 
 the theme, like certain forms of life, incapable 
 of losing its interest by familiarity, but it is ca- 
 pable of infinite development. It is a fountain 
 of thoughts, as exhaustless as the Divine mind, 
 capable of being expressed by an infinite variety 
 of wordings. The whole Bible is as full of the 
 Spirit of Christ, in every text, sentence, proper 
 name, word, and syllable, as is the whole body 
 of a living man full of life. The geologist miglit 
 as well expect to dig through some rock or strata, 
 and find some spot, some object, in the ingre- 
 dients of the globe, unpervaded with the laws of 
 gravitation, as might the Bible student expect 
 to find some desert waste in its pages, unmarked 
 by the footsteps of Him whose goings forth have 
 been from everlasting, and whose last crowning 
 act was to come into humanity, and down into 
 the world, to seek and to save that which was 
 lost. 
 
64: HELPS TO THE PEOMOTION OF REVIVALS. 
 
 Brethren of the piilpitj in the promotion of 
 revivals, intensify your sermons by refusing 
 more and more to know anything among men 
 but Jesus Christ and him crucified. . Men will 
 welcome the doctrine, for man instinctively feels 
 the need of help from a superior power, without 
 and above him. All men want to be saved, 
 and, therefore, want some one to save them. 
 But, after all, the difficulty lies, in getting men 
 to receive the Saviour of the Gospel, in persuad- 
 ing men to believe that this is the only true 
 Saviour, and the only true God. O Jesus ! hast 
 thou yet found faith on the earth ? Increase in 
 us, that believe the power of that grace, and 
 overcome by thy Spirit the obstinacy of unbelief 
 in others! 
 
THE CLASS-MEETING. 
 
 65 
 
 CHAPTEE VIL 
 
 THE CLASS-MEETIKa. 
 
 W>RKINO THE SOCIAL AND SYMPATHETIC PRINCIPLE — MAN MORE 
 SOCIAL AS HE BECOMES MORE RELIGIOUS — THE FOLLY OP 
 
 ANCHORITISM THE CLASS-MEETING THE CLASS-MEETING AS 
 
 THE MEANS OF CONSECRATING THE SOCIAL PRINCIPLE 
 
 CLASS-MEETINGS SUPPLY A NATURAL AND SPIRITUAL WANT 
 
 THEIR PHILOSOPHY ILLUSTRATED — THE CONVERSATION OF THE 
 
 CLASS-ROOM THE RECLAIMING POWER OF CLASS-MEETINGS 
 
 IMPORTANCE OF RELIGIOUS CONVERSATION. 
 
 In our last, we meagerly glanced at the prom- 
 inence that should at all times be given by the 
 pulpit to the ever-blessed doctrine of atonement 
 Amid the vast variety of pulpit themes, we 
 maintained that Christ, like the guiding banner 
 of a battling host, or like the symbolic serpent 
 amid the smitten camp of Israel, should have a 
 paramount prominence. 
 
 In further consideration of the obstacles to be 
 overcome, in the prosecution of revivals, we pass 
 now from the pulpit to the Church ; and hav- 
 ing, in former pages, spoken with some perti- 
 nence of the duty of personal religion, (the ne- 
 cessity of stated, incessant, wrestling, private 
 
 5 
 
66 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF EEVIVALS. 
 
 prayer,) we come now to ofter a thought or two 
 on the duty of working the symjpathetiG and 
 social principle. 
 
 ''It is not good for man to be alone." Man 
 was never made to act with vigor in a condition 
 of isolation. Man, individually, is not the com 
 plement of humanity. To turn hermit, for any 
 purpose, is to act the madman, and stultify and 
 dwarf all progress. The biggest of all fools 
 were those, in the dark ages, who turned her- 
 mits for the kingdom of heaven's sake. The 
 sympathetic and social feelings are not mere 
 accidents of human nature; they are cardinal 
 and rational essentials. Man always becomes 
 the more social as he becomes the more enlight- 
 ened and refined ; the more social as he becomes 
 the more like his Maker. True religion is ever 
 subordinating selfishness to the action of the 
 social feelings. This is the Eden soil in which 
 the missionary tree, the leaves of which are for 
 the healing of the nations, grows so luxuriantly. 
 Like the patriarch of old, from being blessed, 
 the Christian is ever seeking how he may become 
 a blessing. " I will bless thee : and thou shalt 
 be a blessing." 
 
 But how, as Church members, may we best 
 work this principle for purposes of mutual 
 
THE CLASS-MEETING. 
 
 67 
 
 spiritual invigoration, edification, felicitation, 
 and Church aggression ? As Methodists, we 
 may appropriately call attention here to class- 
 meetings. Not that we would discuss the sub- 
 ject of class-meetings in their conventional or 
 disciplinary rfelations. It is foreign to our pur- 
 pose to lug in the question here, whether 
 attendance upon class-meetings should or should 
 not be made a test of membership, attendance 
 upon class-meetings made disciplinarily coercive, 
 or left optional with the communicant. It is the 
 principle which underlies class-meetings that we 
 wish now particularly to consider. This princi- 
 ple, emphatically, is the social principle ; and 
 class-meeting is but a provision for the employ- 
 ment and consecration of the social principle 
 for religious purposes; and that this principle 
 should be so employed, we think no one, upon a 
 moment's reflection, can doubt. Other Churches 
 may employ this principle in modes the best 
 adapted to their tastes, prejudices, or views 
 of propriety. We take it for granted, that 
 the employment of this principle in a man- 
 ner that answers the end of our class-meet- 
 ings, is everywhere essential to the unity 
 of Christianhood, the communion of the saints, 
 and the vStrength of the Church. We have a 
 
68 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 
 
 mode of employing it which seems to have orig- 
 inated with Wesley, providentially, and to have 
 become so inaugurated in form in Methodism, 
 as to have answered the desired end most hap- 
 pily. What Methodist who has tried the ex- 
 periment, will pretend to say that he has never 
 been made the recipient of great good in the 
 class-meeting? The provision in our Church 
 for the weekly meeting of the class, is at once 
 a confession of a great confidence in the power 
 of social unity as an element of a Church's 
 strength. It is a wholesome, disciplinary safe- 
 guard against isolation and individualism among 
 Church members, and in matters of religion. It 
 happily provides for a personal acquaintance 
 among the membership. Acquaintance is ne- 
 cessary to mutual interests, the first step toward 
 friendship ; and friendship is but the outer 
 court of the holy temple of brotherly love. 
 The class-meeting provides specially for religioiis^ 
 conversation. It extends this blessed privilege 
 to the humblest. It throws around the weak 
 and the unlearned (the inexperienced) the pro- 
 tection of privacy, the encouragement of confi- 
 dence, and secures to him access to riper expe- 
 rience and maturer wisdom. The strong here 
 are made to bear the infirmities of the weak, 
 
THE CLASS-MEETING. 
 
 69 
 
 until the weak become strong. Nor is the 
 religious conversation of the class-room want- 
 ing in specificness. It is sacredly guarded, 
 from the very nature of the institutioUj the or- 
 ganic law of the Church, from being miscella- 
 neous, diffusive, or controversial in its character. 
 The leader is to see each member in his class 
 once a week, to inquire how his soul prospers. 
 Personal experience, then, is the theme of con- 
 versation in the classrrpom. And there is a 
 marked peculiarity about the conversation of 
 the class-room. It is not given to human nature 
 for man not to feel, first and foremost, the 
 highest possible interest in himself. This is 
 essential to self-preservation. This may exist 
 without selfishness; and, in this sense, the 
 love of self is made the highest standard of 
 man's love to another. "Thou shalt love thy 
 neighbor as thyself." 
 
 We have said, that in the specificness and 
 character of the sacred conversation of the class- 
 room, there is a peculiarity. And we might 
 have said (for this is what we mean, and onr 
 meaning shall be illustrated in a moment) that 
 this peculiarity is admirably adapted to the 
 awakening of social sympathy, and to the 
 working with vigor of the social principle for 
 
TO HELPS TO THE PKOMOTION OF REVIVALS. 
 
 the promotion of religious ends. Every man 
 knows that nothing delights him more, or 
 awakens his emotions sooner, than to rehearse, 
 to eager listeners, chapters of his own experience. 
 Is it the soldier, who has encomitered death in a 
 thousand forms, and yet escaped it ? How im- 
 passionately eloquent does he grow over ac- 
 count of contending armies ! How startlingly 
 descriptive does he become in portraying the 
 dreadful scene, w^hen the excitement of the con- 
 flict was over, and the dead strewed the field for 
 miles ! the dying pierced the air with their 
 shrieks; the desolating flame shot up into heaven 
 from vanquished cities melting away into smoke; 
 the random gun was heard in the distance, from 
 the retreating foe, as troops of pursuers hung on 
 their rear, while, anon, the wearj'^ drum beat the 
 death-thinned ranks to quarters, that the living 
 might be distinguished from the dying, and 
 preparation be made for that most savage and 
 yet saddest of all hours, when a few hundred 
 powder-blackened and blood-besmeared survivors 
 should be detailed to dig pits in which to heap 
 the slain. How, we say, does the old and crip- 
 pled soldier become reanimated, almost rejuve- 
 nated, as he recounts, for the thousandth time, 
 these dread scenes through which he has passed ! 
 
THE CLASS-MEETING. 
 
 71 
 
 Personal experience is so near a part of our- 
 selves, that it never becomes devoid of interest. 
 The sailor, also, will grow impassioned over de- 
 scriptions of sea adventure and marine disaster. 
 We hear the roar of the storm in his eloquence ; 
 we see the mountain billows lifting their crested 
 tops to the clouds ; we hear the creak of the 
 foundering vessel, the scream of the despairing, 
 and the crash of her masts. Our pioneer 
 fathers, also, how love they to recount the scenes 
 of other days, and to live over again, in magic 
 memory, and by the power of retrospect, that 
 life of wild adventure amid unshorn forests, 
 trials and dangers, struggles and triumphs, which 
 excited to eflPort, and hastened the more halcy- 
 on and eligible days of the present. Like Israel, 
 they then dwelt in tents ; but now, like Israel 
 in the days of David and Solomon, they dwell 
 in ceiled houses, and sit, each under his own 
 vine and fig-tree, no one daring to molest or 
 make afraid. But these are but secular expe- 
 riences, and yet they delight with the charm 
 of the drama. The heart is led captive by their 
 power. It is mutually a privilege to hear and 
 to relate them. 
 
 It is a familiar law of our nature, that what 
 interests us highly, we love to speak of fre- 
 
72 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 
 
 quently, and never fail to feel the inspiration of 
 the theme. In worldly matters, men never keep 
 silent, or secrets, only from sinister or mercenary 
 motives. The emigrant dwells incessantly upon 
 the better land in the West, and elates in the 
 prospect of realizing improved fortunes. The 
 successful speculator, in the veriest self-defense, 
 in the indulgence of a feeling which it gives him 
 relief to embody in words, waxes warm as he 
 recounts his success. Now, were no provision 
 made in the Church for the mutual relation of 
 experience, a great natural want would have 
 teen unprovided for. And it is but a sad proof 
 of the want of interest which Christians feel, 
 when they do not delight both in hearing and 
 relating their Christian experience. Did they 
 but think and feel more upon the subject of 
 religion, it would be unnatural for them not to 
 talk more about it. But as to hear others talk 
 about it, has a tendency to excite thought and 
 feeling, it can but be regarded as a wnse pro- 
 vision of the Church, that she has instituted class- 
 meetings, and those kindred associations, the 
 love-feast, general class, etc. How often are 
 they found quickening the lukewarm, reclaiming 
 the backslider, opening the^eyes of the blind and 
 the mouths of the dumb! "Who has not often 
 
THE CLASS-MEETING. 
 
 73 
 
 resorted to them out of respect for the mere dis- 
 cipline of the Church, and returned deh'ghted and 
 refreshed? "Those that wait upon the Lord 
 shall renew their strength." The social law in- 
 volved in the case, has operated like the wine 
 and oil upon the victim of the thieves, between 
 Jerusalem and Jericho. The atmosphere of the 
 class-room has been to the drj and deadened 
 heart, as the touch of the bones of Elisha upon 
 the dead man hastily obtruded into that proph- 
 et's sepulcher. The bitter w^aters of discontent, 
 disaffection, surmise, and alienation, have been 
 made to feel a sweetening power like the waters 
 of Marah, in which Moses threw the healing 
 lotion prescribed by God. 
 
 But we digress. We were speaking of the 
 grand peculiarity of the conversation of the class- 
 room. This peculiarity borrows additional pow- 
 er from the consideration that the personal ex- 
 perience to which it is confined, is not secular, 
 but religious experience. What is the ex- 
 perience of the soldier or the sailor, the pioneer 
 or the emigrant, to the experience of the soldier 
 of the cross, the traveler from the City of De- 
 struction to the Celestial City, where death is 
 swallowed up of victory, and the shining sisters 
 of immortality bid the weary pilgrim welcome, 
 
74 HELPS TO THE PEOilOTION OF RETIYALS. 
 
 and lie will go no more out forever? TThat 
 fiction half so strange as the truth, as portrayed 
 in the drapery of fiction, in the dream of the 
 victim of Bedford jail? Bunyan's Pilgrim's 
 Progress has been unequaled in its popularity, 
 simply because it is a truthful diorama of the 
 highest life which a man can lead on this earth, 
 the Christian's life. In the class-meeting, the 
 brother freely discloses his struggles with the 
 world, the flesh, and the devil. He dwells upon 
 those deeds of heroism performed by one in his 
 efi'orts to govern his own spirit. Greater is he 
 that governeth his own spirit, than he that tak- 
 eth a city." Xot in the spirit of self-exaltation 
 does he dwell upon his deeds of success, his 
 triumphs over humanity's greatest foe, but gives 
 to the Author of helping grace, all the glory. 
 How beautiful to witness from week to week,- a 
 brother's growth in goodness, his progress in 
 holiness. What a thrill of congratulation and 
 emulation do such testimonials impart to the 
 worshiping circle. Xor is it less useful, though 
 solemnly sad to hear a backslider, or a fallen 
 brother, relate the process of his departure from 
 God and duty, how, little by little, first by the 
 sin of omission, and then of commission, he re- 
 sumed again the road that leadeth to destruction. 
 
THE CLASS-MEETING. 
 
 T5 
 
 Confession relieves his own monntain-burdened 
 heart, and inspires the brethren with confidence 
 to rally again about him to his rescue, and to 
 welcome home again, like the father of the prod- 
 igal, him who was lost. Another brother in 
 broken accents, and in unlettered language it 
 may be, may testify to us of the Spirit's workings 
 and of the word's whisperings, instinct with life 
 by the Spirit — "my words are spirit and life" — in 
 a manner that so perfectly corresponds with our 
 own experience, that one is made to feel that 
 " in the mouth of two or three witnesses, every 
 word shall be established." Faith burns with 
 increased brightness, as when the half-expiring 
 lamp receives a fresh supply of oil, and distinct 
 vision seems awfully and yet sweetly near. 
 These, brethren, are the Mount Tabor visions of 
 our disciplehood, and, like the disciples who re- 
 turned from that vision, and descended from that 
 mountain height, to encounter new and severer 
 trials, we are prepared by these blessings for 
 renewed conflicts with the flesh and the world. 
 
 It had not been our design to enter the 
 class-room, to reveal its family-like privacies and 
 privileges, its blessedness and its glory. But 
 what we meant to say, and will now say, is this : 
 that Christians, in order to arouse thought upon 
 
76 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 
 
 the subject of religion, in the minds of sinners, 
 must have constant living, active thoughts upon 
 the subject themselves. And if their minds are 
 thus interested, they will seek to talh about it, 
 seek to call into action the great social principle 
 which constitutes, so far as anything human can, 
 the power of the class-meeting. And, brother, 
 if morally insensible, if mentally apathetic and 
 dumb upon the subject of thy soul's salvation, go 
 where you can hear others talk about it ; go, even 
 though your heart be not free to it, and their 
 conversation shall (and it seldom ever fails to) 
 excite an interest in you. 
 
 Finally, as we in our first chapter intimated, 
 the first obstacle to a revival, which a Church has 
 to overcome, is for Church members to speak 
 oftener to one another, and thus revive them- 
 selves. More frequent intercourse and converse 
 for religious purposes alone, constitute a great 
 want of the Church at present. The almost 
 universal neglect of attendance on class-meetings 
 either in their stated form, or by the working 
 of the principle that constitutes their power in 
 some form, is the evil day that has fallen upon 
 Methodism. 
 
 It can scarcely be said of Methodists now, as 
 was said of the godly in the days of Malachi: 
 
THE CLASS-MEETING. 
 
 77 
 
 "Then they that feared the Lord sjpake often one 
 to another, and the Lord hearkened and heard 
 it ; and a book of remembrance was written be- 
 fore him, for them that feared the Lord, and 
 that thought upon his name." If, among the 
 angels, a special secretary be now employed to 
 record the religious conversations of Methodists, 
 whether in or out of class-meetings, we fear that 
 his office is almost reduced to a sinecure. 
 Preachers preach enough upon the subject of 
 religion, they preach well enough upon the sub- 
 ject, but neither preachers nor people converse 
 often enough upon the subject of religion, vital, 
 experimental, and spiritual godliness. May God 
 grant that our people may again gather around 
 the class-room, like the sons of Levi around 
 Moses at Mount Sinai, when rebellious Israel 
 wandered after the golden calf. 
 
Irs HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 
 
 CHAPTER YIIL 
 
 REVIVALS A WANT OF OUR NATURE AND A NE- 
 CESSITY OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 DEFINITION OP REVIVALS — ALL HISTORY ILLUSTRATES THEIR NE- 
 CESSITY — HOW THE QUESTION IS TO BE VIEWED — RELIGION 
 
 AND NATURE TOO OFTEN DIVORCED THE CONDITION OF THE 
 
 CHURCH WITHOUT REVIVALS THE MORAL BEAUTY OF A RE- 
 VIVAL MANIFESTATION. 
 
 A REVIVAL implies an increased interest on the 
 subject of religion, the sanctification of souls, the 
 reclaiming of backsliders, and the conversion of 
 sinners. Under such circumstances, religious 
 manifestations and demonstrations become ex- 
 traordinary, and the Church, in seeking a name 
 for such a state of things, adopted the Scriptural 
 one of revival. And it would be quite easy to 
 show from history, that from the days of the ex- 
 odus to the " day of Pentecost," and from thence 
 to Luther or Whitefield and Wesley, and from 
 Wesley to the days of the Tennetts and Ed- 
 wardses of New-England to this present," that 
 such religious states and religious social conditioris 
 occurring frequently, or at longer intervals, have 
 
REVIVALS A WANT OF OUR NATURE, ETC. 79 
 
 been indispensable to the Church's spiritual prog- 
 ress, and apparently necessary to prevent her 
 from extinction. " But," says one, " the Church 
 should seek to be in a condition of continuous 
 revival." Certainly she should. This is but the 
 utterance of one of those truisms which squints 
 toward an apathetic conservatism upon the sub- 
 ject of revivals, without removing any of the 
 difficulties in the way of their discussion. It is 
 a mere begging the question. The Church that 
 seeks, and seeks right, to be in a continuous re- 
 vival state, will generally be so ; not that we 
 believe, for reasons that we shall offer presently, 
 that such Church would be at all times equally 
 excited. 
 
 In discussing the merits of revivals, or the 
 measures to be employed in their promotion, the 
 question is not so much what men ought to he^ as 
 what human nature is / not so much what the 
 Church ought to do, as what the Church can be 
 induced to do. The question is one of fact and 
 practice, and not of theory and abstraction. We 
 aver, then, that it is not the law of human nature 
 to be equally excited upon the same subject at 
 all times, let the subject be never so momentous. 
 Nor is it the law of human nature to be equally 
 easily moved by the same subject at all times. 
 
80 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 
 
 though all things may be equal, as to the mode 
 of appliance. 
 
 We deem these two propositions too obvious 
 to need extended illustration. To assert them is 
 to prove them. An equal susceptibility of ex- 
 citement at all times, and the continuance of an 
 equal measure of interest through every day and 
 hour of our being, upon the same subject, 
 would, in fact, neutralize all revivals. Man, in- 
 dividually, or the Church in the aggregate, 
 would present nothing but the manifestation of 
 the same unvarying monotony. Nature her- 
 self, though governed by laws most stubbornly 
 uniform, yet is ever exemplifying a great variety 
 and broad contrasts in the fulfillment of the 
 same great offices. Some summers are longer 
 and hotter than others; a greater quantity of 
 rain falls during one season than another. Some 
 winters are much colder than others. For 
 months, the snow of winter may sometimes 
 mantle the earth, when another winter may 
 occur in which nature omits this crystal robe. 
 Now to ask why the Church is not always in a 
 state of revival, seems to us much like asking 
 why all summers are not precisely of the same 
 length and temperature, and all rains and 
 dearths are not of the same continuance. 
 
REVIVALS A WANT OF OUR NATURE, ETC. 81 
 
 Some such religious phenomena, then, as re- 
 vivals, in the very nature of things, are always 
 to be looked for in the Church, provided nature 
 be given fair play, and be not, as it so often has 
 been, unnaturally taught. Under the pretense 
 of doing honor to religion, it has often been sadly 
 divorced from the true philosophy of human 
 nature. Man's spiritual emotions, like any other 
 class of his emotions, are subject to a law similar 
 to that which controls the waves and the winds. 
 They retire to gather strength to come again ; 
 they lull, that nature may enjoy the deep hush 
 and quiet of a calm. Take notice, we do not 
 maintain the necessity of backsliding in summer 
 in order to be reclaimed by an extra effort in 
 winter, which practically seems to be an error 
 into which some poor souls fall, who'^are gov- 
 erned disproportionately by emotion and feel- 
 ing, there being little intelligence and faith pres- 
 ent. We repeat, then, that revivals constitute 
 the invigorating and natural festivals of the 
 Church. Like the world without a Sabbath, 
 and like the family without its holidays, its 
 sweet remembrances of birthdays, and matri- 
 monial days, meetings and greetings, which lift 
 the heart of home afresh into third-heaven 
 
 visions, and open the tear fountain as if the 
 6 
 
82 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REYIYALS. 
 
 head were waters — without revivals, we say, the 
 Church would become an ice palace. Religion 
 would petrify into mere forms, a train of bur- 
 densome or fantastic ceremonials; a round of 
 mere notions in the head, and even these notions 
 would lose all their power over thought and re- 
 flection, and the very w^ords in which they are 
 couched, whether Latin or English, it matters 
 not, would not be understood by the devotee. 
 This state of things finds its type in Gothic archi- 
 tecture, read prayers, rubrics, the burning of 
 wax candles by daylight, and learned divines 
 quarreling over an ecclesiastical regalia, which 
 would enable them to dispute with the clown his 
 place in the "sports of the ring." Its hugest 
 concrete, however, is found in Romanism, the 
 nightmare of the nations for, so many ages. We 
 would rather gaze upon the starting tear that 
 traced the rough and bronzed cheek of some 
 honest yeoman, and see in that tear a prophetic 
 ocean of eternal felicity, in some log school-house, 
 in which the spirit of revivals was abroad upon 
 its welcome mission, than to look for an hour 
 upon the most magnificent pageant that ever 
 issued from the gate of St. Peter's. "VVe would 
 rather hear a half-suppressed " Halleluiah," a 
 "Bless God, O my soul, and forget not all his 
 
REVIVALS A WANT OF OIJK NATURE, ETC. 83 
 
 benefits," uttered by some aged mother in our 
 Israel, followed by the stifled groan and drooped 
 head of that young man, for whom she has so 
 long prayed; we would rather listen to such 
 music, while the faithful preacher presses the 
 truth that Jesus saves, and saves now, than to 
 stand for an hour amid the magnificent aisles 
 and arches of the cathedral of the Bishop of Can- 
 terbury, and listen to the deep-toned organ, 
 whose combined voices, almost like the seven 
 thunders of the throne, sweep in a gust of mere 
 artificial and head music up to that God who 
 alone delighteth in the worship of the broken 
 and contrite hearted. There is food for the 
 heart in revivals. They are as necessary to the 
 health and purity of the Church, as is congenial 
 air to the invalid, or salt and soap to the health 
 and cleanliness of civilization. 
 
 The proper management of a revival forms no 
 small part of that wisdom necessary in the win- 
 ning of souls. The law of our nature above 
 evolved, may remove some difliculties, and sug- 
 gest some useful practical lessons to our brethren. 
 Let them remember that revivals are necessities 
 of the Church, that the state of things under- 
 stood by the term is nothing more than what we 
 may expect in view of what human nature is. 
 
84: HELPS 10 THE PROMOTIOISr OF KEVIVALS. 
 
 Let them remember, also, that the Spirit of God 
 never forces human nature to the destruction of 
 its freedom. To wait, then, for the Spirit of God 
 to get the people ready for a revival, before we 
 ourselves commence making direct efforts to 
 that end, is preposterous. And not to make 
 special efforts in religious matters, in view of 
 the fact, that man needs seasons of special ex- 
 citement upon the subject of religion as well as 
 any other, is also absurd. But of the "times 
 and the seasons" when these special efforts 
 should be commenced, it may require all the 
 wise, prayerful scrutiny of the pastor to determ- 
 ine. Tliey may be commenced very un- 
 timely. Their omission at other t'mes may be 
 a great misfortune to the Church. ''He that 
 winneth souls is wise." 
 
PKOTKACTED MEETINGS. 
 
 85 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 PROTRACTED MEETINGS. 
 
 THE ADAPTATION OF PROTRACTED MEETINGS TO OUR WANTS 
 
 ORDINARY AND EXTRAORDINARY MEANS OP GRACE TAKING 
 
 ADVANTAGE OF TIMES AND SEASONS PASTORAL ECONOMY 
 
 OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. 
 
 If it be true that religion does not change the 
 laws of our nature, (regeneration being but a 
 change of the heart, from the unnatural to the 
 natural — sin being a perversion of our nature,) 
 but conforms to them, as the lightning, that 
 strikes the tree, follows the grain of the wood ; 
 and if it be true that, in religious matters, the 
 interest and excitement of Christians are govern- 
 ed to some extent, as in other matters, and are 
 subject to ebbs and flows, to seasons of less and 
 seasons of greater fervor, as was demonstrated 
 in the last chapter, then must the services of the 
 Church be conformed to this state of things. To 
 the ordinary means of grace must sometimes be 
 added the extraordinary. Stated meetings will 
 sometimes need to be protracted. Protracted 
 
86 HELPS TO THE PEOMOTION OF EEYIVALS. 
 
 meetings, then, have their foundations in the 
 very nature of the case. A protracted meeting 
 differs, after all, from the ordinary means of 
 grace only in this : it consists of more frequently 
 employing the means of grace, of appointing 
 meetings with shorter intervals between them. 
 It occurs to us, from many considerations, that 
 this is a most wise course. We may name a 
 few of these considerations. The officiating 
 preacher may detect in his audience a more 
 than ordinary disposition to hear the word. 
 Secondly, it may be a season of the year of 
 comparative leisure. Commerce is not hurried, 
 navigation is closed, winter reigns over the 
 farmer's fields, and he hibernates upon the su- 
 perabundance of the last season ; or, it may be 
 one of those seasons (rather rare seasons nowa- 
 days !) when the public mind is comparatively 
 free from a state of qui vive and solicitude, 
 owing to events at Washington, Kanzas, or the 
 Crimea, and to which excitement every flash of 
 the telegraph makes a new contribution. Or 
 the members of the Church themselves may re- 
 quest of the pastor the privileges of such ex- 
 tended services, and special efforts for the good 
 of their own souls, and to enable them more 
 satisfactorily, and with greater boldness, to dis- 
 
PROTKACTED MEETINGS. 87 
 
 charge those duties which they owe to uncon- 
 verted children, kindred, and neighbors. Or 
 the pastor, fully awake to the fact that a 
 season of leisure is always a season of levity; 
 a season of routs, soirees^ balls, frolics, noctur- 
 nal excursions, etc., and that such a state of 
 things not only needs extraordinary effort as a 
 counteracting check, but that protracted meet- 
 ings may tlien become necessary to keep Cliris- 
 tians out of temptation and mischief. Now, of 
 one or all of these circumstances, the pastor may 
 desire to take advantage. Spiritual economy in 
 a paster is a mark of great wisdom. It is often 
 that Satan can be checkmated in no other way. 
 To take advantage of our delinquency, or want 
 of alertness, is an old trick of the devil. Pie 
 sowed the tares among the wheat " while men 
 slept." Wise is he in winning souls, who suc- 
 cessfully employs similar tactics. The devil is 
 not omnipresent, though human depravity is. 
 How far we may practically calculate upon this 
 fact we do not undertake to say. But we will 
 say, that everj^ pastor who^ Church is growing, 
 and not dying on his hands, will detect occasions 
 when the necessity of employing extraordinary 
 efforts will seem most clearly indicated ; and in 
 Buch cases such meetings are seldom, if ever, 
 
88 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 
 
 failures. A pastor should be a careful reader of 
 the esprit de corps of his Church and congrega- 
 tion, of the moral physiognomy, so to speak, of 
 the community in which he labors. He should 
 study it as a patient in danger of death, eternal 
 death ; study it with that careful scrutiny with 
 which the conscientious, scientijfic, and logical 
 physician studies the symptoms of some illustri- 
 ous patient. How carefully does he ponder over 
 the number of pulse-beats in a minute ! What 
 studious comparisons and deductions does he 
 make from the beating of the heart, the color 
 and temperature of the skin, or the reports of 
 the stethoscope to the ear! How carefully does 
 he watch the sun in the heavens, and the ther- 
 mometer on the wall, that he may make proper 
 allowance for the influence of atmospheric 
 changes upon the nervous system ! With equal 
 scrutiny, and from more exalted motives, should 
 the pastor study the spiritual condition of his 
 flock, and look to occurring circumstances as 
 affecting it more or less friendly. Some neigh- 
 borhood calamity; the prevalence of a dread 
 epidemic saddening the thoughts of men, and 
 turning them toward eternity ; the hand of God 
 in an especially-marked manner, either in judg- 
 ment or mercy, may be taken advantage of by 
 
PROTRACTED MEETINGS. 
 
 89" 
 
 the pastor, as indicative of the " set time " for 
 God to favor Zion. 
 
 Nearly all the arguments against protracted 
 meetings which we ever heard or read, were 
 based upon their abuse. Such arguments are 
 often plausible, but seldom legitimate. There is 
 no good thing in the world that men do not 
 abuse, and it would seem that the better the 
 thing, the more liable to abuse. Now, we 
 maintain that there are very few good things, if 
 any, which ought to be abandoned because sub- 
 ject to abuse; while, if we should abandon 
 everything that was subject to abuse, we would 
 have nothing left. It is objected to protracted 
 meetings, that the extraordinary intensification 
 of the means of grace which they imply, causes 
 our people to undervalue the ordinary means of 
 grace. Such may sometimes be the case, but 
 ought not to be, and when so, it is but another of 
 those many instances so frequently occurring, in 
 which the pastor will find it necessary to teach 
 his people the " way of the Lord more perfectly." 
 We regret to mention, however, that but too 
 much reason is often given for this objection, 
 by the conduct of pastors and Christians them- 
 selves. With them, practically, the ordinary 
 means of grace are attended to with extraordin- 
 
90 HELPS TO THE PKOMOTIOX OF HEYIYALS. 
 
 ary coldness and indifference — their occurrence 
 looked to as a matter-of-course thing, and the 
 duties they require are to be attended to as a 
 kind of penance or trade. In the genuine spirit 
 of the meeting, no difference should be allow- 
 ed to exist between the ordinary Sabbath-day 
 service, or the weekly prayer-meeting, and 
 the meeting that may have lasted a week. 
 Christians should always be in earnest in the 
 service of God. And, dear brethren in the min- 
 istry, this earnestness must, and will, always 
 take its key-note from the pulpit. 
 
 Another objection is, that the long-continued 
 excitement consequent upon protracted meet- 
 ings, is wont to be followed by a sad reaction, a 
 season of great spiritual languor and dullness. 
 We are persuaded that this objection is often 
 very much magnified. In an experience of 
 twenty years, we have never witnessed the re- 
 sults charged in the objection, unless it be in 
 those individual instances of persons being pe- 
 culiarly given to an excess of the emotional, and 
 w^ho have been betrayed into excesses and ex- 
 travagances. Such persons are rather the ex- 
 emplifications of the exceptions of the rule that 
 governs in the case, than the rule. Such indi- 
 viduals, also, as every one knows, possess an 
 
PROTRACTED MEETINGS. 
 
 91 
 
 idiosyncrasy of constitution, and are always ab- 
 normal in the social mass. And, if they drop 
 spiritually dead soon after a protracted meeting, 
 this seems to be their natural condition, and, but 
 for the protracted meeting, they would never be 
 spiritually alive. We are not at all disposed to 
 calculate the chances of the salvation of such, 
 but we have sometimes thought that these 
 chances might be much increased, should their 
 demise occur in a protracted meeting, camp- 
 meeting, or some other occasion of unusual re- 
 ligious excitement. For, unless favored at death 
 with this special start toward the good world — • 
 unless, like Moses, they die upon the mountain- 
 top, they may never reach the gates of the new 
 Jerusalem. It may be all to the credit of pro- 
 tracted meetings, and their cognate meetings, 
 that they, so far, make provision for such per- 
 sons. And as to the reaction objected to, so far 
 as it relates to the Church generally, it may be 
 but the necessary result of cause and effect, and 
 in no wise an unhealthy reaction. For w^e 
 again repeat, that, taking our nature as it is, w^e 
 are always to look for ebbs and flows, for action 
 and reaction. And the reaction, when healthy, 
 is as necessary as the action, and both together 
 are infinitely preferable to that spiritual dull- 
 
 4 
 
92 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF EEVIVALS. 
 
 ness, lukewarmness, and formality, that grow 
 so rapidly in a Church, in the absence of occa- 
 sional, special, and protracted religious effort, 
 and for which such efforts seem the only 
 specific. 
 
PROTBACTED MEETINGS. 
 
 93 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 PROTRACTED MEETINGS. 
 
 EXTRAViGANT DEMONSTRATIONS — CORRECT TEACHING NEEDED 
 
 RELIG:0US RESPONSES — LET ALL METHODISTS SAY *' AMEN ^' 
 
 ALL CORNERS SHOULD BE "AMEN CORNERS" OBJECTIONS 
 
 ANSWERED — THE INVETERATE FAULT-FINDER — NOTHING HU- 
 MAN PERFECT APOSTASIES IN REVIVALS — THEIR OCCURRENCE 
 
 CONSIDERED THE MORAL STATE OF THE BACKSLIDER NO 
 
 ONE EVER MADE WORSE BY CONVERSION THE BACKSLIDER THE 
 
 FIRST TO BE RE-CONVERTED. 
 
 Protracted meetings have been objected to, be- 
 cause many of the worshipers have often lost 
 sight of religion, and religious decorum and order, 
 and been betrayed into extravagances, both of 
 speech and ''bodily exercise," unbecoming the 
 house of God. Our answer is, that, in the 
 matter of spiritual manifestations, as there is a 
 " diversity of gifts," we would set ourself up as 
 a judge of these extravagances, with very great 
 caution. Our judgment of order, in the house 
 of God, under such circumstances, may be very 
 erroneous. Nature, in numberless instances, pre- 
 sents to the eye nothing but a scene of confusion 
 and havoc, where the most perfect order reigns, 
 
94: HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF KEYIYALS. 
 
 and the greatest good is to be the result. We 
 will venture to say, however, that extravagances 
 have occurred at such meetings, that might 
 easily have been prevented by the right kind of 
 teaching. Somehow or other, some have con- 
 founded the disciplining of the emotions with 
 the "quenching of the Spirit." The pulpit, at 
 times, has very erroneously taught, that when 
 the Christian's spiritual emotions are struggling 
 for vent or expression, it is never, safe not to 
 cry out or shout, whatever the surrounding cir- 
 cumstances may be, lest, by so doing, the Spirit 
 be grieved. Now, weak and nervous persons, 
 taking the advantage of such a sentiment, have 
 been often found annoying fellow-worshrpers, 
 and seriously interfering with the edification of 
 the meeting, by the untimeliness and obtrusive- 
 ness of their demonstrations of joy. The brother 
 or sister that must needs shout aloud for an hour, 
 and that hour the hour of preaching, and who 
 has been indulged in doing so under the preten- 
 sion that it was eminently his or her duty to do 
 so, and that neither could help it, is simply to be 
 pitied more than to be blamed. That such can 
 help it, every reflecting person has come to be- 
 lieve. That they .think they cannot or dare not 
 help it, no one for a moment doubts. But this 
 
PROTRACTED MEETINGS. 
 
 95 
 
 is the result either of erroneous teaching, or of 
 the absence of all teaching upon the subject. 
 Let us be understood. We doubt not for a mo- 
 ment that the power of the Holy Ghost may, 
 sometimes, prompt involuntarily to a momentary 
 shout, and when of this type, w^e love to hear it 
 at any time. But the idea that it will urge in- 
 voluntarily to a continuous squall for half an 
 hour, is simply ridiculous. We are not " opposed 
 to shouting " at religious meetings, but we are 
 opposed to unnatural and fanatical shouting. 
 And as to the hearty " Amen," (the frequent 
 religious response,) when these manifestations 
 of warmth and earnestness shall have ceased in 
 the M. E. Church, then will her pure gold have 
 become very dim, and her glory, if not depart- 
 ed, be departing. We regard such responses as a 
 duty, and as necessary to keep up the proper 
 sympathy between the pulpit and the people. 
 They bespeak the earnest, social, and simultane- 
 ous character of our worship. They reveal our 
 Protestantism. They show that the congrega- 
 tion has no faith in that worship in which the 
 people's business with their Maker is " done up" 
 by priests and proxies. They have been regard- 
 ed thus by the Church in all ages, and even the 
 prayer-book of the self-styled, t/ie Church, true 
 
96 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 
 
 to this fact of history, provides for these respon- 
 ses. Let all Methodists, thenj say ''Amen" in 
 the great congregation. Give us the people to 
 preach to, who convert all corners of their 
 church into "Amen corners," and who both 
 live^ as well as respond or shout " Amen." As 
 for the preacher whom a good hearty " Glory to 
 God," or other devotional ejaculation, throws 
 entirely off his equilibrium, we hope that if 
 such be a Methodist preacher, the brethren will 
 shout him out of the pulpit, and clear back to 
 Jericho, where he may tarrj^ until his beard be 
 grown, and he endowed with " power from on 
 high." As to the extravagances mentioned, 
 then, they have, indeed, been the abuse of a 
 good thing among us, which will yield at once 
 to intelligent instruction. And even these ex 
 travagances have, as yet, done so little harm, 
 in proportion to the immense good that has been 
 the result of our revival demonstrations, that 
 they constitute but a very feeble objection to 
 them. Imperfection, more or less, enters into 
 all our plans, and their execution. It is not 
 given to man to secure to himself, in this world, 
 an unmixed good. "If I say I am perfect, 
 it shall prove me perverse." God may perfect 
 his gracious work in us, and this is spiritual 
 
PBOTRACrrED MEETrnGS. 
 
 97 
 
 perfection, often (but with very doubtful propri- 
 ety) called Christian perfection. And the Chris- 
 tian in whom God's work is thus perfected is, 
 nevertheless, not infallible; and while it is not 
 erroneous to apply the epithet, sinless, to his 
 actions, it is erroneous to claim that anything he 
 does is personally perfect. And he whose trans- 
 cendental notions of Christian character and 
 Church order are always finding the preacher 
 falling a little below what he ought to be, 
 always finding fault with things in the Church 
 as not being exactly right, is certainly unfitted 
 for the next world, and but very poorly fitted to 
 do good in this. The seeker of perfection, in 
 matters of human judgment in this world, like 
 the evil spirit in the Gospel, when cast out, 
 will always be found wandering in desert 
 places, seeking rest and finding none. We never 
 expect to attend a meeting of any kind, in 
 which everj'thing that occurs will please us; 
 and, indeed, we go to Church partly on that 
 account For the strong should always be 
 present to bear the infirmities of the weak, 
 while the weak should be where the strong are, 
 that they may acquire strength. What, then, are 
 these extravagant demonstrations but another 
 
 manifestation of human imperfection ? And when 
 
 7 
 
98 HELPS TO THE ifROMOTION OF KEVIYALS. 
 
 anything in which human agency is employed 
 shall be free from manifestations of imperfec- 
 tion, some reason will then exist for claiming 
 that revivals should be free from them. 
 
 Another objection to protracted meetings is, 
 and it is the last we will mention, that they are 
 apt to be followed by apostasy on the part of a 
 large majority of the converts. Well, apostasies 
 happen in the Church at all times, whether the 
 subjects were converted on these special, or other 
 occasions. It is rather a difficult question to de- 
 termine w^hether the converts of a protracted 
 meeting are more apt to backslide than those of 
 other occasions, as by far the greater number of 
 conversions occur in protracted meetings, and 
 kindred efforts. Apostasies cannot occur where 
 there are no converts to backslide. And as to 
 the number of backsliders following in the train 
 of a protracted meeting, it is often exaggerated. 
 Instances where apostasies have been very nu- 
 merous, certainly have occurred. But, as an 
 offset against this, it may be urged, that, on other 
 occasions, persons brought out in religion by 
 these protracted efforts, have almost unanimously 
 stood firm. 
 
 In the great revivals in which the Calvinistic 
 Churches of New-England shared so largely, it 
 
PROTRACTED MEETINGS. 
 
 99 
 
 has been subsequently shown that apostasies 
 were most encouragingly rare. The subject of 
 their results has been examined with much 
 care. 
 
 In 1829, a letter was addressed to the Congre- 
 gational ministers of Connecticut, proposing, 
 among others, the following inquiries: First. 
 What was the whole number of professors of 
 religion in your Church at the commencement 
 of the year 1820? Second. What number were 
 added to your Church by profession during the 
 years 1820— i? Third. Of those who are now 
 members of your Church, what proportion may 
 be considered as the fruits of a revival, and what 
 is their comparative standing for piety, and ac- 
 tive benevolent enterprise? Dn Hawes, of Hart- 
 ford, writing under date March 12th, 1832, says: 
 " I am able to state that the answers were in a high 
 degree satisfactory." It appeared that a very 
 large proportion of all who are now members of 
 the Congregational Churches in this state, became 
 such in consequence of revivals ; that the rela- 
 tive proportion of such, as revivals have been 
 multiplying, has been continually increasing; 
 that the most active and devoted Christians are 
 among those who came into the Church as fruits 
 of revivals; tliat those Churches in which re- 
 
100 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 
 
 vivals have been most frequent and powerful, 
 are the most numerous and flourishing; and 
 that in all the Churches thus visited with Divine 
 influence, there has been a great increase of 
 Christian enterprise and benevolent action. 
 Bishop M'llvaine, under date April 6th, 1832, 
 writes : " I owe too much of what I hope for as 
 a Christian, and what I have been blessed with 
 as a minister of the Gospel, not to think most 
 highly of the eminent importance of promoting 
 this spirit, and consequently guarding it against 
 all abuses. Whatever I possess of religion, be- 
 gan in a revival. The most precious, steadfast, 
 and vigorous fruits of my ministry, have been 
 fruits of revivals. I believe that the spirit of 
 revivals, in the true sense, was the simple spirit 
 of the religion of apostolic times; and will be 
 more and more the characteristic of those as 
 the day of the Lord draws near." — Sjprague on 
 Mevivals, 
 
 Again, who are these backsliders ? It is said 
 that God is married to them. We hold not that 
 conversion implants an undying germ of grace, 
 however much we may apostatize. But we do 
 hold to the doctrine that there is a very high and 
 mysterious relation between the backslider and 
 his God. The impressions made in genuine con- 
 
\ 
 
 PEOTRACTED MEETINGS. 101 
 
 version, may be covered up by subsequent apos- 
 tasies. Their possessor may deny their existence, 
 but still they are there, with a kind of living 
 power, like the handwriting on the w^all, that so 
 troubled the luxurious monarch. The spiritual 
 affections having been once warmed into life, 
 the memory thereof lingers, and will obtrude 
 itself, in hours of silence and of though tfulness, 
 upon the conscience, like those memories of 
 home that haunted the swine-feeding and starv- 
 ing prodigal. Does death threaten ? The back- 
 slider will soon give evidence that he under- 
 stands the alphabet of Christianity. Men are 
 never worse for having been once converted, 
 and their restoration to the favor of God, after 
 all, is generally more easily effected, from the 
 fact that they once tasted that Jesus was pre^ 
 cious. 
 
 In all genuine revivals, the backsliders are 
 among the first to be converted. Away, then, 
 with the objection, that we are to be hindered 
 from employing those means of grace which so 
 often result in the conversion of many, because, 
 of this many, some backslide. 
 
 We repeat, then, that protracted meetings con- 
 stitute a requirement of the Church, but that we 
 should not exalt them to the depreciation of the 
 
102 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 
 
 stated means ; that their abuses can and ought to 
 be corrected; that they constitute the only spe- 
 cific against the Church's relapse into formalism ; 
 that those who object to them, make up their ob- 
 jections of their abuses ; and that those who do 
 not employ them, substitute nothing better, and 
 seldom succeed in securing the conversion of sin- 
 ners as well as those who do. Protracted meet- 
 ings should be the outgrowth, generally, of that 
 w^ell-instructed condition of the Church, brought 
 about by the faithful labors of the pastor. The 
 ordinary means of grace should seem, of them- 
 selves, to push themselves out into the extraor- 
 dinary. Protracted meetings are a natural 
 growth of the Church, and not a graft upon the 
 original tree. 
 
NECESSITY OF AGGKESSIVK ENTERPRISE. 103 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 NECESSITY OF AGGRESSIVE ENTERPRISE. 
 
 A RARE BUT INSIDIOUS EVIL EXPOSED THE FEARFUL PREACHER 
 
 HIS FEARS FOUNDED IN A FALSE PHILOSOPHY A STUNTED 
 
 CHURCH INSTRUCT THE PEOPLE IN THE AGGRESSIVE MOVE- 
 MENTS OF THE CHURCH — THEY ONLY GROW STRONG BY 
 
 BEARING BURDENS THE "QUARTER OF A DOLLAR*' TYPE OF 
 
 METHODISM SPIRITUAL BABIES AT FORTY — PLANS AND PUR- 
 POSES SHOULD BE LARGE — REASONS WHY THE WEST HAS 
 BEEN PARTICULARLY FAVORED WITH REVIVALS — THE PREACHER 
 
 WHO WILL BE BLESSED WITH THEM A WORKING LAITY 
 
 DETERMINES A CHURCH'S PROSPERITY — DANGEE OP MEXHOIh 
 ISM BEING OUTSTRIPPED BY SISTER SECTS. 
 
 ''Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse, that 
 there may be meat in mine house, and prove 
 me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I 
 will not open you the windows of heaven, and 
 pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be 
 room enough to receive it." " The liberal soul 
 shall be made fat : and he that watereth shall 
 be watered also himself." " The diligent hand 
 maketli rich." " But this I say, Lie which sow- 
 eth sparingly, shall reap also sparingly ; and he 
 which soweth bountifully, shall reap also bounti- 
 fully. Every man according as he hath pur- 
 
104 HELPS TO THE PKOMOTION OF REVIVALS. 
 
 posed in his heart, so let him give ; not grudg- 
 ingly, or of necessity ; for God loveth a cheerful 
 giver. And God is able to make all grace 
 abound toward you." 
 
 The pertinence of the above passages of 
 Scripture to our present purpose will appear 
 presently. We wish to expose a great error which, 
 though not everywhere prevalent, yet is it too 
 prevalent if found in one case in fifty. It is an 
 insidious error, which may exist in cases suffi- 
 ciently extreme to excite attention but rarely; 
 and yet, like unseen miasma, this error may 
 work a wider mischief than we suppose. What 
 we mean is this : Naturally enough, and relig- 
 iously enough, one of the first objects of concern 
 with a Methodist preacher is, how he may best 
 secure the raising of his " claim," which, frorri 
 its smallness, is every cent needed by himself 
 or family, to whom he first and foremost owes 
 duty. On his arrival, therefore, upon his circuit 
 or station he reconnoiters at once the ability of 
 his people to support him, and enters into con- 
 siderations as to their probable liberality. The 
 conclusion is, that if his people are not pressed 
 # hard for other pecuniary objects, they are fully 
 able to, and most certainly will, "meet his 
 claim." True, a parsonage should be built, or 
 
KECESSrrY OF AGGRESSIVE EOTERPEISE. 105 
 
 the old one repaired ; the Church should be 
 renovated, or a new one built ; the library of 
 the Sabbath school should be enlarged and re- 
 plenished ; a box of books should be sent for, 
 and the people urged to buy ; every family 
 should be visited, and urged to take some one or 
 two of our periodicals ; and then there is the 
 presiding elder's claim ; and besides incidental 
 expenses, applications for collections for some 
 itinerant object of benevolence, there are the 
 stated collections : collections for missions, the 
 Bible cause, Sunday-School Union, Tract cause, 
 Fifth Collection, collection for expenses of dele- 
 gates, etc. Now our fearful brother runs over 
 this long list, and with a most lugubrious sigh 
 and look resolves honestly, out of self-protection, 
 t5 give just as many of them the go-by" as he 
 can. His philosophy is, that the less frequently 
 people are called upon to give, and the less they 
 are required to give, the easier will it be to raise 
 that little. A more erroneous sentiment could 
 scarcely be entertained. It is untrue to the laws 
 of our mental and moral nature ; contradicted 
 by every day's experience, and exposed and con- 
 demned by the Scriptures. The sentiment, also, 
 is incalculably deleterious in its effects upon the 
 preacher. It generates fearfulness and selfish- 
 
106 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 
 
 ness. The former is weakness, and the latter is 
 apt to manifest itself in croaking and censori- 
 ousness. For the preacher who trembles at this 
 large competition, is almost sure to find his own 
 pay coming in tardily, grudgingly, and stinted- 
 ly. Under such a pastor the Church feels that 
 its liberality has put on a Chinese shoe. It 
 moves slowly and sluggishly, for the want of the 
 inspiration of an example of an aggressive enter- 
 prise in its pastor. If periodicals are subscribed 
 for, the brethren make application to their pas- 
 tor, and not their pastor to them. The Disci- 
 plinary collections are taken up, unaccompanied 
 by any very explicit explanation, or urgent so- 
 licitation from the pulpit. If the work of 
 church repairing or church building goes on, it 
 originates with the laity, by seeming suflferance 
 of the pastor ; or, what is most commonly the 
 case, is only. talked of by the brethren during the 
 term of service of such a preacher. Who does 
 not know that in aU these matters the pastor 
 must not say, " Go on," but " Come on f Rarely 
 is it that a revival breaks out under such a cleri- 
 cal administration, and for the reasons intimated 
 in the above scriptures. Like Mount Ebal, such 
 a charge is wont to be mantled with barren- 
 ness. 
 
NECESSITY OF AGGRESSIVE ENTERPRISE. lOT 
 
 Who are the ministers most liberally supported 
 among us ? Are they the disciples of this school 
 of the philosophy of benevolence ? The results 
 of even a casual observation will always furnish 
 but one answer to these questions- Twenty- 
 three years' scrutiny in this direction, has fixed 
 this conviction in our mind, that the preacher 
 who is most apprehensive about his support, has 
 tlie greatest reason to be; and that the man 
 w^ho neglects to draw out the liberality of the 
 Church for other objects besides that of himself, 
 will not fare half so well as the brother who 
 pursues a widely different course. Indeed, 
 there is no department of truth so admirably cal- 
 culated to stimulate a Church to look well after 
 its pastor, and build up its home interests, as a 
 thorough indoctrination into oar various systems 
 of benevolent and aggressive enterprise. A 
 people ignorant of our current literature, desti- 
 tute of our periodicals, with very little of the 
 missionary spirit, is expected to take liberal 
 views in supporting the preacher who is sent to 
 them ! How hugely absurd ! It would be quite 
 easy now to point to districts in our Zion, where 
 the fathers and the mothers — good, pious souls — • 
 seem not to have the slightest idea that it is any- 
 thing less than heresy to teach that " quarter- 
 
108 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF EEYIVALS. 
 
 asre" does not mean a quarter of a dollar, paid 
 once in three months ; and that by a free Gos- 
 pel is meant that God would convert the world 
 without the money of the Church ; the gold and 
 silver belonging to the members being no longer 
 his : that Christians were proprietors of their 
 possessions, and not sUicards. Thirty-iive or 
 forty years ago, they paid the preacher tiiis by 
 a hard effort, and divided witli him their pot of 
 hominy, and it was all that was required. Since 
 that time, their broad alluvial acres have 
 become worth thousands upon thousands, and 
 their bams burst out with the pressure of their 
 contents. They have, indeed, kept their faith, 
 amid this elevation from poverty to prosperity. 
 But, if they hare gi'own in gi'ace, they have not 
 grown in knowledge. Their conservatism is 
 that of ignorance and bigotry. We do not say 
 that they are not Christians, but we do say that 
 they are just such Cln-istians as the erroneous 
 pastoral policy we are exposing is well calcu- 
 lated to produce. TTith all their loud shoutings 
 at camp-meetings, they are dwarfs in the Church 
 of God, and will be monsters of minuteness 
 among the angels of heaven. Tney spent their 
 childhood where tlie schoolmaster was not 
 abroad, and commenced their Christian career 
 
NECESSITY OF AGGRESSIVE ENTERPRISE. 109 
 
 without reading. They have continued it with- 
 out reading. The Church of which they are 
 members, is to them as much of a terra incog- 
 nita^ as is the empire of Russia to one of its 
 serfs. Their souls never felt the expansive 
 sympathy of our great organized functions, for 
 the purpose of " spreading Scriptural holiness 
 over these lands." They might, did they but 
 know it, (and the act would be a mighty blessing 
 to them,) give their thousands and tens of thou- 
 sands for the endowment of colleges, replenishing 
 of our exhausted missionary treasury, or the 
 spread of religious literature. But, to solicit of 
 such brethren what it is no more than simple 
 duty for them to do, actually discourages, if it 
 does not disgust and alienate them. It is like 
 teaching dogmatically the profoundest truths 
 of our theology to an infant class in Sabbath 
 school. Now, such a crop of Christians as 
 these, are sustained and nursed up for heaven 
 by the Church. Yes, nursed ; for they will be 
 children all their lives, spiritual babies of forty 
 or fifty years of age. They are sustained by the 
 Church ; they do not sustain it. We rejoice to 
 think they may be scarceh/^^ saved, but we do 
 not believe in sowing for such a crop. In the 
 former period of our history they formed a good 
 
110 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 
 
 army of occupation. In making additions to 
 our conquered territory, we find them of little 
 avail. The time has come in our own history 
 when efforts for the world's conversion must be 
 made on a larger scale. Work of a masculine, 
 massive, colossal character, must distinguish our 
 ministry and people. Our piety must be back- 
 boned with principle, and rendered prophet- 
 visioned, by standing just where the throne 
 flashes its ceaseless light earthward. Our 
 people must be a reading people, or they will 
 be a weak people ; they must be a working 
 people, or they will become spiritually dyspep- 
 tic for the want of exercise ; and our piety will 
 be made up of spasms, strongly tinctured with 
 animal fervors, and based upon half principles. 
 There is a sense in which a Church may always 
 be said to be in a revival state, if all its mem- 
 bers but be hard at work to accomplish some 
 great object of Church aggression. It may be 
 the building of a church edifice, or the estab- 
 lishing of a seminary. One reason, as it seems 
 to us, why the AVest, both this winter and last, 
 has been distinguished by such a large number 
 of revivals, is, that our people are all at work, 
 building churches and parsonages, establishing 
 schools^ new church organs, etc. And it will 
 
NECESSITY OF AGGRESSIVE ENTERPRISE. Ill 
 
 generally be found that that preacher who has 
 not secularized himself by inordinate land specu- 
 lations, the purchase of railroad stock, etc., and 
 who is not fearful and unbelieving on the sub- 
 ject of his own support, and who has his hands 
 the deepest in this good work — the greatest 
 number of irons in the fire — will be found the 
 most certainly to be blessed with a revival, and the 
 most certainly to get a competent support. 
 
 We have spoken of the activities of Methodism 
 in the Northwest as it finds itself without a 
 shelter, and must needs meet the want. This 
 suggests to us a great fact of modern date in the 
 history of sister denominations, going alike to 
 illustrate the fact that a worhing laity will 
 always graduate a ChurcKs prosperity. With 
 Methodists the principle was early incorporated 
 in the order of their worship, that the Church 
 member should not only be privileged, but that 
 it is made his duty to reveal the state of his 
 faith and Christian experience before his breth- 
 ren from time to time, and at the same time 
 his benevolence in the support of the institutions 
 of the Church sh#uld be taxed. This provision 
 is found in the class-meeting, where those who 
 love the Lord speak often one to another, and 
 make weekly contributions for the support of the 
 
112 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF KEVIVAL8. 
 
 ministry and relief of the poor. Here, we re- 
 peat, was an early provision for the continuous 
 working of the laity, and just as long as it could 
 be carried into effect, Methodism was little else 
 than another name for a continuous revival. 
 But no adequate provision, we apprehend, has 
 been made for the working of the laity in other 
 evangelical Churches. In the course of events, 
 however, work, noble work, has been thrust upon 
 them. In the Missionary, Tract, Sabbath-School, 
 and other glorious reforms and enterprises, all of 
 which are of modern date, the laity find abund- 
 ant food for thought, motive for effort, and 
 channels for benevolence. The effect upon 
 sister Churches has been most invigorating. 
 The Episcopalian, Presbyterian, and Congre- 
 gational branches of the Church were never 
 more flourishing in this country than now. 
 Their aggressive power, especially in Western 
 cities and towns, is such as should not only pro- 
 voke Methodists to emulation, but excite in them 
 the greatest caution, lest, by apathy, they permit 
 others to enter into their labors, to supplant 
 them in their position. Are they not doing 
 this in not a few localities ? 
 
NUESDSTG THE YOUNG CONVERT. 113 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 NURSING THE YOUNG CONVERT. 
 
 A DISPROPORTION BETWEEN CONVERSIONS RECORDED AND ULTIMATE 
 RESULTS — INCREASE IN THE MEMBERSHIP IN THE YEARS 1854-5 
 NOT FLATTERING — MORE IMPORTANT TO TAKE CARE OF WHAT 
 WE HAVE, THAN TO SECURE MORE AT THE NEGLECT OF THAT — 
 THE YOUNG CONVERT MUST BE INSTRUCTED KIND OF IN- 
 STRUCTION NEEDED THE HELP PROVIDED FOR THE PASTOR 
 
 THE CLASS-LEADER OUR CHURCH LITERATURE NECESSITY OF 
 
 CATECHETICAL INSTRUCTION — THE EXAMPLE OF THE ANCIENT 
 CHURCH — OUR INCREASED FACILITIES FOR NURSING THE YOUNG 
 
 CONVERT LOSS TO THE ANCIENT CHURCH FOR THE WANT OF 
 
 THE PRESS — THE BIRTHPLACE OF THE POPE — NECESSITY OF 
 SPREADING OUR BOOKS — THE YOUNG CONVERT TO BE AT ONCE 
 SUPPLIED — IMPORTANCE OF THE RELIGIOUS WEEKLY — RELATION 
 OF RELIGIOUS READING TO REVELATION — THE BIBLE ALWAYS TO 
 PRECEDE, BUT NEVER SUPERSEDE THE CONSECRATED TONGUE 
 AND PEN. 
 
 " Till I come, give attendance to reading." The 
 theme of the present chapter is the relation of 
 the J^oung convert to our religious literature. 
 This, in these days, must be introduced as an 
 auxiliary to pastoral, verbal, and catechetical 
 training. It must constitute the pabulum of the 
 babe in Christ. We the more readily offer some 
 thoughts upon this theme, in view of some im- 
 portant facts in our late history. During the years 
 8 
 
114 HELPS TO THE PJIO:MOTION OF EEYIYALS. 
 
 1854-5, the .columns of our Advocates were res- 
 onant with revival shouts. We rejoiced to be 
 privileged to read of the conversion of many hun- 
 dreds, and we felt, until the General Minutes came 
 out, that the Methodist Episcopal Church, nu- 
 merically, had taken a hopeful stride onward. 
 The showing of the General Minutes disappointed 
 us, and we read of a decrease, in fourteen confer- 
 ences, of three thousand seven hundred and 
 forty. To be sure, emigration mainly accounted 
 for this fact. But still, the aggregate increase, 
 sixteen thousand and seventy-three (two and one 
 third per cent.) disappointed us. Among these 
 sixteen thousand increase, were to be counted 
 the conversion of several thousand in the Sabbath 
 school, and also the addition of several thousand 
 by letter, from England, Ireland, and Canada, 
 leaving quite too small a showing as the result 
 of revival effort. We numbered Israel, at the 
 close of last year, with no fearful or croaking 
 spirit, and yet we felt that, so far as we had 
 sent out our influence in favor of revivals, we 
 had proved, emphatically, an unprofitable serv- 
 ant. And while we first examined ourselves 
 to see what was wrong at home, as we think 
 every minister should do, in pondering a great 
 question of Church progress and responsibility, 
 
NURSma THE YOUNG CONVERT. 115 
 
 we felt that something was wrong, and that the 
 wrong was, probably, wide-spread. Had there 
 not been a want of proper nursing extended to 
 the young convert ? And in what did this de- 
 fect consist? Every one, perhaps, will agree 
 with us, that the principal work of the pastor, 
 with the young convert, commences after his 
 conversion and admission to the Church. So 
 important has our Church ever regarded instruc- 
 tion of this kind, that she has provided the pas- 
 tor a number of subordinate helps in the class- 
 leaders. That the pastor can be much with the 
 convert in person, and instruct him; find out his 
 difficulties, strengthen him against temptation, 
 and encourage him to renewed effi^rt, every one 
 knows to be generally impracticable. What, 
 then, besides the stated instruction of the pulpit, 
 and the application of these lessons by the faith- 
 ful leader in the class-room, comes in, most 
 efficiently, to supply this lack of service ? We 
 unhesitatingly answer, our books and period- 
 icals. 
 
 In far the larger number of cases, religious 
 reading is essential to make up the complement 
 of that happy combination of moral and religious 
 influences that should be ever kept, like a life- 
 infusing atmosphere, about the young convert. 
 
116 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 
 
 "We fear this arm of our strength has not been 
 duly appreciated. We fear that the practice of 
 the primitive Church has not been pleaded in 
 example, here, as it ought to have been. He has 
 read Church history to very little purpose, who 
 fails to remember, that, in the early periods of 
 the Church, when the wondrous press, w^hich 
 multiplies its tongues at will, and speaks to many 
 millions in the same minute, was unknown, that 
 the catechising of the young convert, the initia- 
 ting of him into the doctrine of the Gospel, and 
 order of the Church, occupied far the larger por- 
 tion of the pastor's time. Hence it was that the 
 young converts, for many centuries, were called 
 catechumens, or, pupils of the Gospel. "Would 
 that our young converts were induced to become 
 students of the Gospel at once! Would that 
 more prompt efforts were made to awaken 
 thought, and thus wed the young convert to the 
 Church by adding this tie to the fervors of a fii^st 
 love ! What the ancient pastors were w^ont to 
 do, verbally, for the want of it, modern pastoi's 
 may now do by the printed page. Look over 
 our extended catalogue of book, tract, and Sab- 
 bath-school publications ; recommend, also, with 
 no less zeal, some one of our weekly sheets, for 
 in all will be found, for every man, exhaustless 
 
NURSING THE YOUNG CONVERT. 117 
 
 stores of "meat in due season." With the 
 wholesome and strong-textured government of 
 the primitive Church, with the requirements 
 which it laid upon the man mental, as well as 
 the man spiritual, we have often thought, that 
 the primitive fathers would have kept the gates 
 of hell from prevailing against the Church, nine 
 tenths more than they succeeded in doing, had 
 they but been favored with the facilities of the 
 modern press. Their programme was right, but 
 they failed for the want of means to carry it out. 
 They were without the means of unitizing 
 thought, and this was weakness ; they were 
 without the means of perpetuating thought, 
 and this was poverty, always rendering them 
 new beginners. They were without the means 
 of spreading thought, commensurate with the 
 outside pressure from the all-surrounding dark- 
 ness. Ignorance begat superstition, and su- 
 perstition begat the pope. Like the old flood 
 of Noah, the consequences that followed have 
 left their traces of moral ruin everywhere upon 
 the face of the earth. After miracles ceased, 
 and inspiration returned to its home in heaven, 
 the pulpit seemed without ability to hold its 
 place of purity and power among mankind. 
 This, brethren, is the age of the press, and the 
 
118 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF KEYIYALS. 
 
 work of the Church is to consecrate that press. 
 The Church has provided for your young con- 
 verts the unobtrusive, and yet fascinating, the 
 silent, but yet eloquent, catechist. It visits him 
 with but trifling expense ; it asks no place in his 
 bed nor at his board ; it lays no tax upon his 
 hospitalities, and yet, when its mouth is opened, 
 it teaches him, without the possibility of being 
 misunderstood, those lessons of caution and love, 
 of ethics and of doctrine, of discipline and of 
 duty, without a knowledge of which, early im- 
 parted, many will be sick and weakly among 
 us, others draw back, and some to perdition. 
 Dear brethren, place our books in the hands of 
 the young convert, with the injunction of Paul 
 to Timothy, ''Give thyself to reading till I come." 
 
 Especially in the periodical form should our 
 Church literature be commended, and urged 
 upon our young converts. In this age of news- 
 papers, every interest has its organ. The ped- 
 dler of some newly-invented peat-bog pill must 
 needs issue a newspaper, and organize, by its 
 power, his circle of friends, to make Brandreth 
 the pill-monger, Brandreth the millionaire. 
 This use, or misuse of the press has become so 
 customary, that it amounts to a social law, to an 
 order of things. "Shall the children of this 
 
NURSING THE YOUNG CONVERT. 119 
 
 world be wiser than the children of light?" 
 Can we expect the young convert to feel a lively 
 interest in that numerous and far-extended 
 brotherhood, to which he is an additional broth- 
 er, if he be ignorant of her history and her 
 achievements? The Church must be known to 
 be loved, and the heart of Methodism is made to 
 beat weekly against the heart of the young con- 
 vert by means of the religious sheet. Among 
 the twenty-five hundred young converts, whose 
 translation from darkness to light, and admission 
 into the bosom of our Zion, how many new sub- 
 scribers ought we to expect for our papers? We 
 were told the other day, by a German presiding 
 elder, that one of tlie matter-of-course things 
 always attended to whenever they receive a new 
 member into the Church, is then and there " to 
 urge him to take the ' Apologisty^ If not in 
 form, in fact we consider the example a noble 
 one, and full worthjiof imitation by our brethren, 
 who are now enjoying such blessed revival 
 visitations. Who doubts but there is a con- 
 servative power, ay, a sanctifying power, in such 
 a course, that will tell favorably upon our sta- 
 tistics of increase. It is one thing to be instru- 
 mental in the sinners CQUversiqii, an(J record it 
 in our revival notices, to the glory of God, and 
 
120 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 
 
 another thing, and no less a work, to keep the 
 sinner converted, and develop his suscepti- 
 bilities of Christian character "into the fullness 
 of the stature of a man in Christ Jesus." 
 
 But some may be ready to accuse us of over- 
 rating the importance of merely uninspired re- 
 ligious reading — of exalting the servant above 
 his Lord — the book above the Bible. By no 
 means. We are only introducing the true mis- 
 sion of the herald, the John the Baptist, to 
 prepare the way. We grossly err in supposing 
 that even the Bible will be read, by even young 
 converts, in preference to some religious litera- 
 ture in another form. To suppose this is to err 
 as greatly as to suppose that the unconverted 
 will read the Bible sooner than hear preach- 
 ing. And as experience demonstrates the 
 truth in the latter case, so, very limited ob- 
 servation will demonstrate it in the former. 
 But why has preaching beeft instituted ? Why, 
 for the purpose of adapting the truth to man's 
 capabilities certainly, and so simplifying it, and 
 mixing it with the facts and experiences of the 
 present, that it more readily coalesces with the 
 thoughts of the hearers, and proves the " power 
 of God unto salvation." Precisely so wdth the 
 religious book. It is preaching to the eye, 
 
NUESING THE YOUNG CONVERT. 121 
 
 while the living voice preaches to the ear. But 
 how can we exalt ■aninspired religious reading 
 above the Bible, when, as we now assume, if it 
 be the kind of religious reading needed, it per- 
 fectly accords with the Bible ? It would not be 
 religious reading if it did not defer to the Bible 
 as the rule, and only rule of our faith and prac- 
 tice. The moon would cease to be the moon 
 did she cease to reflect, though attempering 
 them in the process, the rays of the sun. But 
 what is the true relation of the consecrat- 
 ed page to holy writ? An illustration may 
 help us to a clearer and more extended concep- 
 tion. The Bible is a volume full of great first 
 truths in morals and doctrines, history and duty. 
 But these truths but rarely lie within its sacred 
 in closures imder any system of classification, 
 while the concrete of these truths — concrete is 
 the embodiment of the abstract, as seen in the 
 acts of men — is illustrated by example in a wide- 
 ly diff'erent manner. Truth, in the Bible, lies 
 like the precious ore in the bosom of the mount- 
 ain. It is there in inexhaustible stores. But, 
 comparatively speaking, only now and then is 
 this ore to be found quarried, and smelted, and 
 ready for use. Well, now, what relation does 
 the preacher or the pious pen sustain to this 
 
122 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF EEYIYALS. 
 
 massive mine ? It is to quarry, and smelt, and 
 prepare its precious boon for the readier recep- 
 tion of others. But let there be no monopoly of 
 mining. That the priests only can understand 
 and interpret the Bible, is one of the giant lies 
 of papacy. Let every man quarry and smelt 
 for himself. Let not the young convert neglect 
 the Bible for a moment, because, in his first in- 
 troduction to it, he may find many things " hard 
 to be understood." He will also find many 
 things easy to be understood, and the products 
 of the pens of the wise and the good will help 
 him to wade, with the intrepidity of the angel- 
 led prophet, far into the depths of the river of 
 life. " And he brought me through the waters ; 
 the waters were to the ankles : again he measur- 
 ed a thousand, and brought me through the 
 w^aters; the waters were to the knees. Again 
 he measured a thousand, and- brought me 
 through ; the waters were to the loins. After- 
 ward he measured a thousand, and it was a 
 river that I could not pass over ; for the waters 
 were risen, w^aters to swim in, a river that 
 could not be passed over." What the angel 
 visitant, with his measuring line, was to the 
 prophet Ezekiel, the living teacher and the print- 
 ed teacher are to the sinner and to the young 
 
NURSING THE YOUNG CONVERT. 123 
 
 convert. The Bible, in the work of reform, 
 conversion, and development, was never design- 
 ed to supersede the anointed, holy tongue, and 
 the consecrated pen. Brethren, do we duly 
 appreciate the evidently heaven-ordained mis- 
 sion of the latter no less than the former ? 
 
124: HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF EEVIVALS. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 THE POWER OF KINDNESS. 
 
 "WHAT CHRISTIAN KINDNESS IS NOT — CHRISTIAN KINDNESS DEFINEL 
 
 ERRONEOUS VIEWS CORRECTED — THE ESTHETIC ELEMENT OP 
 
 KINDNESS THE POWER OF KINDNESS ILLUSTRATED — RELATION 
 
 OF KINDNESS TO GOOD MANNERS KINDNESS AS A REVIVAL EL- 
 EMENT — CONSTITUTES A WANT OF THE CHURCH KINDNESS A 
 
 TEST OP CHRISTIAN CHARACTER. 
 
 ''If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, 
 live peaceably with all men." It is a Scriptural 
 principle, then, that it is not always possible to 
 live peaceably with all men. Differences of 
 opinion, inducing pungent resistance in argu- 
 ment, occurred even among inspired apostles. 
 Paul '' withstood Peter to his face, because he 
 was to be blamed." Perfect non-resistance on 
 all occasions when right is at the risk, or char- 
 acter hazarded, is but mawkish piety, the strain- 
 ing of a virtue beyond its natural bounds, until 
 it ceases to be a virtue. In such persons, all 
 positiveness, all aggressiveness of character is 
 sacrificed. Self-defense is by no means to be 
 confounded with rendering evil for evil." The 
 cause of innocence and truth may require such 
 
THE POWER OF KINDNESS. 
 
 125 
 
 defense, even if their assaulter should be made 
 the sufferer by it. By kindness, then, we do 
 not mean that insipid, affected, and water-gruel 
 sentimentality that fears the ill-will of the sin- 
 ner more than it desires and burns to rebuke 
 the sin ; and apologizes with the waft of a white 
 handkerchief, cologned for the occasion, for por- 
 traying in Scripture language that outer dark- 
 ness and hell of fire and brimstone which are the 
 terminus of the sinner's course. Nor do we 
 mean that wishy-washy piety that talks much 
 of persecution, of suffering in silence, and claims 
 that it is its duty to do no more than throw up 
 its hands in prayer for its enemies, whatever 
 dastard tattler, insidious whisperer, or open ca- 
 lumniator may undertake to inflict, in the indulg- 
 ence of a morbid appetite, upon its reputation. 
 Nor does it care to busy itself to chase down 
 every latest edition of a lie. Christian kindness 
 is a masculine virtue. It is strong to bear the 
 infirmities of the weak, but equally prompt to 
 defend the right, when assailed in its own per- 
 son or otherwise. Its controlling power is love, 
 and not fear. And it is always more ready to 
 resent injury done to, innocence, or to repel a 
 thrust at truth, than to count the cost — weigh 
 the consequences. And yet it is not rash. It 
 
126 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 
 
 always makes haste slowly. It is' always in 
 haste, but never in a hurry. " It doth not be- 
 have itself unseemly." There is a morally es- 
 thetic beauty about it, to which we give the 
 name of courtesy. This ^^irtue leavens the ad- 
 ministration of its rebukes, and makes them ad- 
 mired, even where they are repulsed ; but not 
 wholly repulsed. An appreciation of the fitting 
 and a love of the beautiful are primary senti- 
 ments in the mind. And the man who differs 
 with me in kindness, and points to the Delilah 
 of my ruin, has begotten a species of conviction, 
 even in spite of my most obstinate opposition. 
 There are those among Christians, and even 
 Christian ministers, who contend that they can 
 do nothing with some, without making them 
 mad. Such persons are, certainly,*rare excep- 
 tions to the power of kindness, and we think 
 kindness itself demands they should never be 
 mentioned. This is a dangerous doctrine, and 
 very full of mischief. 
 
 True kindness must be inbred. It is the fruit 
 of grace, under the husbandry of self-discipline. 
 Some temperaments are vastly better adapted 
 to the development and exercise of this virtue 
 than others. But no temperament is so per- 
 verse, no constitutional peculiarities too obsti- 
 
THE POWER OF KINDNESS. 
 
 127 
 
 nate to be 'overcome. And we should plead 
 their existence in Christian character, as an 
 apology for rashness, rudeness, acerbity of spirit, 
 harshness of speech, and carelessly-chosen words, 
 with great hesitancy. If the grace of God will 
 not induce us to treat each other kindly, either 
 it has failed in its efficacy, or we have mistaken 
 something else for its efficacy. The world ex- 
 pects Christians to be kind one to another, and 
 will detect a departure in speech, spirit, or act, 
 with preeminent readiness and precision. "Be 
 kindly affectioned one to another, in honor pre- 
 ferring one another." No chord of the human 
 heart has lost less its sensitiveness, by man's 
 lapse from Eden purity, than that which awak- 
 ens to the touch of kindness. Her gentlest 
 breath inspires it with song, while an opposite 
 look or gesture becomes electrical, and equally 
 causes it to vibrate, but with pain, pity, or with 
 hate. There is a vast, diffusive, conservative, 
 and controlling power in kindness. The every- 
 day social illustrations of this are so familiar, as 
 to become self-suggestive. But does an emer- 
 gency arise ? Are the elements of strife abroad, 
 and waking the social waters into fury and 
 foam, like the winds of the great ocean ? Con- 
 ceive we of such a state of things in a deliberative 
 
128 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVFTALS. 
 
 body, a church meeting, etc. ? Watch yonder 
 the man who has an "excellent spirit within 
 him," the man who has studied kindness by 
 keeping himself in the love of God, and who 
 has attired himself in her beautiful robes, by 
 studying the laws of courtesy, whose acts are 
 replete with gentleness, as the zephyrs, and little 
 eddying winds, prophets of the coming storm, 
 but whose firmness without obstinacy, and 
 whose independence without egotism, are as 
 strong as that storm ; show us that man, arid it 
 may scarcely be deemed desecration to compare 
 his control in that body, other things being 
 equal, to the "Peace, be still," once uttered over 
 tempestuous Galilee. The kind man, especially 
 the kind Christian, carries with him — be his 
 talent indeed humble — an atmosphere of force 
 and sweet impressiveness wherever he goes. 
 Kindness is not "good manners," technically 
 speaking. He may be wholly ignorant of the 
 canons of Chesterfield, and the programme of 
 Count d'Orsay. Uninitiated into the school of 
 fashionable etiquette, he may have read or 
 lieard nothing, systematically, upon that sub- 
 ject, more than what is found in the thirteenth 
 chapter of first Corinthians. But like the flower 
 of the wilderness* kindness sheds as sweet an 
 
THE POWER OF KINDNESS. 129 
 
 odor upon a cabin hearth, with its rude attire, 
 scanty vocabulary, and frugal fare, as the rose 
 that blooms upon the walls of mural palaces. 
 Xindness extemporizes an etiquette for itself, 
 and becomes a "stroke of nature that makes all 
 men kin." Not that it seeks an individualism of 
 manner, or glories in personal eccentricities, part- 
 ly natural and partly affected. 'Nov does it dis- 
 claim many of what are called the laws of good 
 manners. It becomes no oddity in the social cir- 
 cle, to the level of which it may have been raised 
 by taste and talent. Contrariwise, the most ap- 
 proved manners of the refined gentleman soon 
 become, by study and acquisition, the most ap- 
 proved etiquette of the Christian, but especially 
 of the Christian minister. And in this the kind- 
 hearted Christian always has the advantage, for 
 if Christian kindness be not the body of refined 
 manners, it is much more, it is the soul of that 
 body. A high state of Christian civilization, 
 without such refinement of manner as sphere in 
 life, capacity, and education would call for, all 
 must acknowledge to be a solecism. Kindness, 
 then, is the art of pleasing, practiced by a heart 
 that has become graciously kind and charitable 
 under the influence of grace and the illumina- 
 tions of the Bible. But to please a nxan is to 
 
130 HELPS TO THE PROMO'nON OF BEVIVALS. 
 
 win his confidence. It imperceptibly sways 
 him in our favor, and in favor of the opinions 
 we advance. ''Let every one of us please his 
 brother, for his good to edification." 
 
 When we commenced to develop, as we have 
 done above, this essential element of power in 
 the winning of souls, w^e had designed to trace in 
 our pulpit, and in our press and social life, what 
 we deem departures from the law of kindness. 
 Our remarks have become so extended as to for- 
 bid this in the present chapter, and never did we 
 more readily permit an application to take care 
 of itself. We think the principles we have 
 enumerated will readily suggest to our readers 
 many, at least, of those practical lessons of 
 which they are so replete. Will they especially 
 consider the power of kindness in its application 
 to the promotion of revivals, and the husbandry 
 of their blessed fruits? It is an element of 
 power that should be confined to no department 
 of the Church. It should extend from the high- 
 est functionary to the last converted infant in 
 the Sabbath school, whose limping lisps and 
 dewy eye "perfect the praise of Jesus." As 
 far as any single grace, or combination of 
 graces, for such it is, involve the interests of our 
 Church in practice, the want of being kindly 
 
THE POWER OF KINDNESS. 
 
 131 
 
 aflfectioned one toward another may be pro- 
 nounced a great Want of our Zion. Thank 
 God, we speak not despairingly. The present 
 blessed, and almost universal revival visitation, 
 has greatly increased the prevalence of brotherly 
 love. It is not our province nor our privilege 
 to mingle much with the little flock" who are 
 to inherit the " kingdom but it is to see many 
 of our embassadors for Christ, (and hear from 
 hundreds more,) who shaking us with unwonted 
 warmness by the hand, refer to the revival col- 
 umns of our Advocates, with glowing emphasis, 
 as the common weekly band-meeting of the 
 whole Church, who sympathize in sentiment, 
 and seem especially urged to the practice of the 
 apostle's injunction: ''Finally, be ye all of one 
 mind, having compassion one of another; love 
 as brethren, be pitiful, be courteous: not ren- 
 dering evil for evil, or railing for railing ; but 
 contrariwise, blessing; knowing that ye are 
 thereunto called, that ye should inherit a bless- 
 ing. For he that will love his life and see 
 good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil, 
 and his lips that they speak no guile." 
 
 "See how these Christians love," has often 
 been an argument before which infidelity has 
 withered and vanished, like the fabled upas 
 
132 HELPS TO THE PEOMOTION OF KEYIVALS. 
 
 upon the brink of an active volcano. Dear 
 brethren, let us pause, ponder, and pray over the 
 emphasis which we are to place upon this 
 how^'' with reference to the state of our own 
 cherished Methodism. 
 
INFRACTIONS OF THE LAW OF KINDNESS. 133 
 
 OHAPTEE Xiy. 
 
 INFRACTIONS OF THE LAW OF KINDNESS CON- 
 SIDERED. 
 
 LAW OF KINDNESS VIOLATED IN SPIRIT THE PULPIT SCOLD 
 
 THE ACID REVIVALIST — RESULTS OF SUCH REVIVALS THE RE- 
 LATION OF THE TONES OF THE VOICE TO KINDNESS — ANECDOTE 
 
 OP WHITEFIELD — VOICE OF THE PREACHER IN THE PULPIT 
 
 ANECDOTE OF THE LITTLE GIRL IMPORTANCE OF THE SUBJECT 
 
 TOO LITTLE REALIZED WORDS UNFITLY SPOKEN PERSONAL- 
 ITIES IN DEBATE — AN APOLOGY FOR THEIR PREVALENCE — THE 
 OLD WRITERS THE YOUNG WRITERS — REFORM NEEDED. 
 
 We spoke in the last chapter of the power of 
 kindness as a potent element in the work of win- 
 ning souls, keeping them wedded to our holy 
 altars, and nurturing them for the skies. We 
 promised, by way of illustration and warning, to 
 point out what we regarded as some of the de- 
 partures from the law of kindness. 
 
 The law of kindness may be violated in spirit. 
 By the spirit of a man we now mean those social, 
 intellectual, and moral impressions, which, either 
 as a writer, preacher, or private companion, he 
 makes upon us, and which are more or less 
 agreeable to us, and which we so readily feel to 
 
134 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 
 
 be in accordance with candor, truth, goodness, 
 and charity, or their opposites. A right act 
 may be done in a wrong spirit. The spirit in 
 which men say and do things is, in fact, one of 
 the great powers of life in the promotion of 
 good or ill. A good act done in a bad spirit, 
 might often better not have been done. A ser- 
 mon preached in the spirit of the scold, had, we 
 believe, generally, better have remained un- 
 preached. There are those who pique them- 
 selves on what they call " whipping the Church 
 into the harness," and all this under the shield 
 of that great truth in the work of revivals, that 
 the Church must first be set right. Nor is it to 
 be denied that some successful revivalists are 
 greatly given to a censorious, denunciating, dog- 
 matical, harsh, and acid mode of presenting the 
 truth. We have often heard them, in their pre- 
 liminary lectures, picking out w^hat they called 
 the sins of Church members, as if they had 
 brought the Church to judgment, ex cathedra^ 
 and then, in a seemingly commingled spirit of 
 harshness, egotism, and self-satisfaction, they de- 
 cided upon each one's fate. We have said that 
 such preaching is not always wanting in marked 
 success. And here let it be borne in mind, that 
 we have long settled it as a fact in the economy 
 
INFRACTIONS OF THE LAW OF KINDNESS. 135 
 
 of God's grace, that sermons often quite as de- 
 ficient in the right spirit, as a sermon well could 
 be in intellectual merit, is often made the means 
 of great good. We are not speaking, then, of a 
 style of preaching that does 710 good, but of one 
 which always fails seriously of doing the greatest 
 good. A revival, originated and matured under 
 the type -of pulpit labor which we have here so 
 imperfectly described, is very apt to be wanting 
 in deepness of earth. In all revivals, the spirit 
 of the preacher is preeminently catching, and if 
 he be given to censoriousness, denunciation, and 
 a right-angled — sometimes acute — spirit, this 
 same spirit will take possession of the Church 
 and the young converts. And when the rains 
 come, and the winds blow upon such a moral 
 structure, if it do not always all fall, we have 
 always noticed a great falling away. Every 
 zealous member and young convert must needs 
 be as urgent, extreme, and peremptory in his de- 
 mands upon a brother, or the sinner ^e would 
 reform, as was his late spiritual model. But, in 
 such cases, resistance follow^, feelings ^re hurt, 
 heart-burnings occur, and the further consequen- 
 ces need not be detailed, We maintain, that in 
 this case there is a sad departure in spirit from 
 that law of kindness described in our last chapter. 
 
136 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF KEVIVALS. 
 
 The law of kindness may be violated in the 
 tones of the voice. This, perhaps, is often acci- 
 dental. In the former case, the importance of 
 the subject may have been never considered. 
 Bad practices may have become chronic, by 
 time and the power of habit. Not a few, how- 
 ever, are to be found who seem to delight in a 
 gruff, surly, and austere-toned address. There is 
 no power in nature more mysterious, none that 
 operates with greater certainty, than that of the 
 innumerable intonations of which the human 
 voice is capable. In a tone, grief becomes irre- 
 sistibly eloquent, hate suggests the deadly 
 poison of the dreaded basilisk, love unmans, and 
 beauty transports. It is not the words of the 
 mother, for many long months, that make her 
 babe feel that the heart of love is its cradle, and 
 the lessons of discipline its lot. " Not so much 
 what my mother said to me, as the way she 
 said it," was once remarked to the writer by a 
 despairing young man, who had sadly strayed 
 from the precepts of the parental roof. " O," 
 said he, as the great tears coursed down his 
 cheeks, ^' the way my mother said that last thing 
 to me! The tones of her voice murmur this 
 moment in my ear !" Is there^ then, no moral 
 power in the tone of a word ? As well deny to 
 
INFBACTIONS OF THE LAW OF KINDNESS. 137 
 
 music its charms, to the rose its odor, to the sky 
 its beauty. Without insisting upon the study of 
 any of those systems of art, calculated to put the 
 human voice right, here we will say, that this 
 is a subject well worthy of consideration — a sub- 
 ject demanding attention, even by private 
 Christians, where none is often thought neces- 
 sary ; while, as it respects the Christian minister 
 or teacher, it is one that should be studied as of 
 no secondary importance. Says Whitefield, " I 
 carefully sought out those acceptable tones that 
 won like a spell upon the heart, even when the 
 w^ords were unremembered." So wonderfully 
 modulated was his voice, that Garrick said, "he 
 could make men either laugh or cry, by pro- 
 nounoing the word Mesopotamia." 
 
 " His words, they had so sweet a flow, 
 And spoke the truth so richly well, 
 
 They fell like heaven's serenes t snow. 
 And all was brightness where they fell." 
 
 The power which appropriate intonations 
 have upon our own moral emotions, and the in- 
 fluence, again, which these moral emotions have 
 to produce thought, should suggest a valuable 
 lesson to every Christian minister. The man 
 who is always talking gruffly, and in harsh tones, 
 may think strongly, but he will think roughly. 
 
138 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 
 
 Like the picture of the artist, which becomes 
 more accurate and mellowed by age, so the 
 sound of one's own voice is an imperceptible 
 educator of his taste. Much of the harshness of 
 tone of which we are now speaking, and whicli 
 vacillates between the scold and hoarseness, un- 
 doubtedly arises from that common fault of the 
 pulpit of pitching the voice at once on one key, 
 and keeping it there, only with increased or 
 diminished percussion, through an entire dis- 
 course. The preacher who corrects this fault 
 by the study of elocution, does vastly more than 
 to achieve an important intellectual victory. 
 He increases mightily his powder of persuasive- 
 ness. He studies the elocution of moral emo- 
 tions. He learns to speak kindly in public. 
 There might have been the absence of all un- 
 kindness before. But now there is the presence 
 of that potent charm. We appeal to the ex- 
 perience of brethren. How often have we re- 
 gretted, even while preaching, that our voice 
 was so little in harmony with what we really 
 felt and desired to teach. " Ma," said the little 
 girl to her mother, on returning from church, 
 " I like our preacher when he comes to see us, 
 but I don't like to hear him preach." On being 
 asked why, the response was, " His preaching 
 
INFRACTIONS OF THE LAW OF KINDNESS. 139 
 
 sounded like scolding all the time." Here we 
 are speaking of sacrificing the power of kind- 
 ness, where the fault, perhaps, is more a misfor- 
 tune than a fault. But let no one treat these 
 suggestions lightly. Daily experience demon- 
 strates their value. Least of all, let no one dis- 
 miss the subject with the mere truism: ''Be 
 natural, and your voice will always be right." 
 If such teaching would have reformed these 
 faults, but few charges of the kind would lay 
 against the pulpit to-day. It is, in fact, simply 
 begging the question, which is. What is it to be 
 natural? Man has no natural gifts which are 
 perfected by instinct. All the excellence of any 
 gift which he possesses, is attributable essen- 
 tially to art and education. 
 
 The law of kindness is often infracted by an 
 indiscreet use of words and phrases^ proper 
 enough in themselves and in the proper time. 
 How often do we meet with religious teachers, 
 from the pulpit to the exhorter, that seem to 
 claim that, because Christ called people hypo- 
 crites on a most appropriate occasion, they are 
 to employ the same epithet on almost any occa- 
 sion. And because whited walls, sepulchers, 
 vipers, spoilers of widows' houses, etc., were em- 
 ployed by Christ but once, perhaps, in a minis- 
 
140 iHELPS TO THE PROMOTIOK OF EEVIYALS. 
 
 try of three years, these same epithets are to dance 
 through half their discourses. And, as to the 
 ^' terrors of the law,^' strange and magniloquent 
 descriptions of the state of the lost, why it would 
 seem if they were to learn moderation on these 
 subjects they would, indeed, be robbed of all 
 their thunder. ^'Pa," said the little boy, " didn't 
 the preacher swear though to-day? was he 
 mad ?" Let every one such go and learn what 
 this text meaneth : A word fitly spoken is like 
 apples of gold in pictures of silver." This style 
 of preaching and exhorting, though not so 
 intended, fails to cherish the power of kind- 
 ness. 
 
 But worse than all that we have yet said, does 
 the law of kindness suffer among us when contro- 
 versial intercourse arises. Lamentably true has 
 tliis been of our press, numerous and largely in 
 the majority as are many of the noble examples 
 to the contrary*. We do not say that our writers 
 are' wanting in manliness or in magnanimity, 
 any more than they are in ability. At least, 
 the exceptions are exceptions. But it is only 
 due to truth to say, humiliating as is the con- 
 fession, that rarely do two Methodist preachers 
 meet in discussion, in the columns of a newspa- 
 per, without some sacrifice of mutual good feel- 
 
INFRACTIONS OF THE LAW OF KINDNESS. 141 
 
 ing, and a manifest disposition, before they close, 
 to digress from the subject they are dissecting, 
 and by way of episode thrust sharply at each 
 other's real or fancied weaknesses. Here, what 
 we are wont to call "personalities" arise. 
 While we can offer no apology for this, further 
 than that of the weakness of our common hu- 
 manity, we may say, that there is a reason ex- 
 tending far back in our history that has tended 
 largely and imperceptibly to produce this state 
 of things. For several generations of our itin- 
 erants, in different localities, they had to contend 
 inch by inch for the ground which they gained ; 
 contend with the ministry of other sects, who 
 looked upon Metliodists as ignorant interlopers ; 
 not subjects of argument, but fit subjects only for 
 ridicule. These opponents could appreciate no 
 pay but in their own kind. The fool must needs 
 be answered according to his folly ; and scarcely 
 less prepared was society to appreciate argu- 
 ment destitute of this appendage. It has always 
 been unfortunate for the kindness and etiquette 
 of debate, where sect has been incessantly grap- 
 pling with sect. Man's religious prejudices are 
 the strongest of his nature, and where an honest 
 preference first degenerates into prejudice, and 
 this again into bigotry, there is no bitterness of 
 
142 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 
 
 opposition or expression of which the heart fails 
 to become a fountain. 
 
 But, after conquering a peace with our neigh- 
 bors, and becoming ourselves organized and ex- 
 tended, our papers becoming established as a 
 medium of intercourse, and questions of order, 
 discipline, policy, etc., arising among ourselves 
 for discussion, too much of the same polemical 
 spirit and system of tactics prevailed among our- 
 selves. We but register here what we believe 
 to be a fact, and do it with profound regret, that 
 the oldest habitual and most useful writers 
 among us now, are not the least addicted to the 
 very fault which we are considering ; and, at 
 the same time that we venerate that class of 
 men, we feel that there is an apology for this 
 weakness in them that never ought to be pleaded 
 by their juniors. It is much to be regretted 
 that many of the rising generation of writers are 
 given to imitate the weaknesses of our seniors, 
 without being able to imitate their strength. 
 Eeform, reform, must be prosecuted in our cur- 
 rent periodical literature. "If the man that 
 wrote that is a preacher," said a young convert, 
 on reading an article in one of the Advocates 
 the other day, "I don't want to hear him preach 
 until he is converted over again. He writes as 
 
INTKACTIOKS OF THE LAW OF KINDNESS. 143 
 
 if he had no religion." How awfully suggestive 
 the remark, when what the hand puts on paper 
 may chance to be a living epistle, read and 
 known of all men until the judgment ! How 
 true, also, to the Bible was the sentiment of this 
 young brother ! "He that saith he is in the 
 light, and hateth his brother, is in the darkness 
 until now." Brethren, have we forgotten that 
 our "words do eat as doth a canker?" and 
 that it is the " soft answer that turneth away 
 wrath?" 
 
14A: HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 
 
 CHAPTER XY. 
 
 THE LAW OF FORGIVENESS. 
 
 REVENGE ALWAYS A VICE — ANECDOTE OP COL. GARDINER 
 
 REVENGE PERPETUATES, BUT FORGIVENESS EXTERMINATES 
 
 WRONG — REACTING POWER OF REVENGE SMALL RESENTMENTS 
 
 SINFUL THE FACT ILLUSTRATED — LEGAL PUNISHMENT OP 
 
 CRIMINALS NOT REVENGE — SUGGESTIVE PRINCIPLES FORGIVE- 
 NESS AND MERCY FORGIVENESS ESSENTIAL TO REVIVALS 
 
 SOLEMNITY OF THE SUBJECT. 
 
 The Gospel absolutely forbids every form of 
 revenge. And yet, with a heart uncontrolled by 
 grace, this is one of the strongest natural impulses 
 of our depravity. To perfectly shun this sin, 
 requires a steady perseverance in self-denial, as 
 rare, we fear, as it is ennobling and elevating in 
 the Christian character. 'No man was ever a 
 great man, not to say a good one, who could not 
 afford to forgive an enemy, to overcome evil 
 with good. The pious Col. Gardiner was once 
 insufferably insulted by a rash upstart of an in- 
 ferior officer. Though his sword hung by his 
 side, with steady nerve and dignified meekness, 
 he drew his handkerchief from his pocket, and 
 wiped the spittle from his face, remarking, 
 
THE LAW OF FORGIVENESS. 145 
 
 "Young man, could I wipe thy blood from my 
 conscience as easily as I can wipe thy foul 
 saliva from my face, I had killed thee in a mo- 
 ment." At first, his friends poured contempt 
 upon his rigid Christian principles, but when 
 they saw the young man trembling and sneak- 
 ing away to write an apology, they felt that they 
 were in the presence of a transforming greatness, 
 heavenly and sublime. Kevenge perpetuates 
 the very evil which it seeks to cure, while for- 
 giveness alone puts a stop to its ravages. How 
 strikingly is this illustrated in the life of the 
 savage, where no less than deadly revenge for 
 injuries is ever thought of. A family feud may 
 boil for centuries, until the two tribes, under 
 their respective chieftains, may both become 
 swallowed up in the fiery maelstrom of revenge. 
 In civilized life, revenge may assume types less 
 savage, but not less deadly in its hate, and scarce- 
 ly less fatal in its effects. The man who pursues 
 revenge, is pursuing a fiery flying serpent over 
 deserts barren of the emblems of affection and 
 hope, and whatever the consequences to his 
 victim, that serpent will finally return and nestle 
 in his own bosom. The eternal law of God can 
 no more be violated with impunity, than could 
 
 one leap from a precipice, expecting that the 
 10 
 
146 HELPS TO THE* PROMOTION OF KEVTVALS. 
 
 laws of gravity would be suspended for his safe 
 descent. " If ye forgive not men their trespasses, 
 neither will your heavenly Father forgive 
 yours." 
 
 And here we would observe, let no one pre- 
 sume that the law of forgiveness may not be 
 violated as certainly by the little as by the 
 much. A brother may have provoked me to 
 retaliation in a matter seemingly trivial, and I 
 seek the first opportunity for retribution, "to 
 be up with him." I may be successful in my 
 attempts. The occurrence may be forgotten, 
 and yet in my future intercourse with that 
 brother, our passage-at-arms is almost sure to 
 have a resurrection. It is literally true that we 
 forgive, but do not forget. Reciprocal revenge 
 is almost sure to make brethren surround them- 
 selves, like the harbor of some cities, with in- 
 visible chevaux-de-frise. Now had I forborne 
 taking revenge, I would have occupied a vant- 
 age ground over this brother. My kindness 
 would have disarmed him, and my example 
 duplicated itself. 
 
 Not only is revenge so strongly instinctive to 
 depravity, but, like the Eden tempter, it com- 
 pounds its subtle lotion ; it assumes as^ many 
 forms as the fabled Proteus. It is felt to be sweet. 
 
THE LAW OF FORGIVENESS. 
 
 147 
 
 We sometimes reason ourselves into its justice. 
 It is often thought to be necessary to reform an 
 offender. Let the student of Christian ethics 
 carefully scrutinize, in the light of the Gospel, 
 these false maxims. " If thine enemy be hungry, 
 give him bread to eat; and if he be thirsty, give 
 him water to drink : for thou shalt heap coals of 
 fire upon his head, and the Lord shall reward 
 thee." The protection of society requires the 
 legal infliction of punishment upon the offender. 
 But this is not revenge. It is justice. By such 
 proceedings the sum of human sufierings is less- 
 ened. " Much better that one suffer than many." 
 So, also, there are circumstances where personal 
 injury must needs be inflicted, in obedience to 
 the law of self-preservation. I awake and smite 
 the burglar to death, who, with hand upon the 
 throat, is seeking my life. The deed is neither 
 revenge nor murder. Nor am I to be accused of 
 inflicting injuries, though he should prove to be 
 my next-door neighbor, and, like the extraor- 
 dinary Webster case, in Boston, a lovely and in- 
 nocent family experience that life forever 
 is shrouded in gloom. Nothing should be 
 esteemed more sacred to one than his reputation, 
 and if I become the victim of slander, and noth- 
 ing can save my reputation but the exposure 
 
148 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 
 
 of the character of a witness, this also is not re- 
 venge. But no limit but an impossibility should 
 be put to our exertions to live peaceably with all 
 men, whether they will reciprocate the effort or 
 not. "If it he possible^ as much as in you lieth, 
 live peaceably with all men." 
 
 In accordance with the last-named principle, 
 we are not to wait for the brother who is the first 
 offender, to first propose terms of reconciliation, 
 but we are to admonish him of his duty, and 
 affectionately urge upon him an interview, and 
 thus seek to be reconciled to our brother. So 
 sacred is this duty, that it seems almost to take 
 precedence of prayer. " If thou bring thy gift to 
 the altar, and there rememberest * that thy 
 brother hath aught against thee, leave there thy 
 gift before the altar, and go thy way ; first be 
 reconciled to thy brother, and then come and 
 offer thy gift" " If ye forgive men their tres- 
 passes, your heavenly Father will also forgive 
 you." 
 
 In the above, we have but announced princi- 
 ples, and pointed them with their proof texts. 
 If they suggest to our readers the same lessons 
 that they do to us, they will lay them low at the 
 foot of the cross, exclaiming, " Who, then, can be 
 saved 2" Like David, they will ejaculate, " The 
 
THE LAW OF FOEGIVENESS. 149 
 
 arrows of the Almighty stick fast within me." 
 Alas! who of us are not guilty of revenge? at 
 least, of that mitigated and gentler form called 
 retaliation ? If we refuse to forgive a brother 
 who repents, even for times innumerable, we 
 cherish the spirit of revenge. "Then came 
 Peter to him, and said, Lord, how often shall 
 my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? 
 till seven times ? J esus saith unto him, I say not 
 imto thee. Until seven times; but, Until seventy 
 times seven." If we refuse to seek to be recon- 
 ciled to a brother, who may have been the first 
 aggressor in the offense, we are guilty of revenge, 
 and have no claim upon Divine forgiveness until 
 we repeat. Surely the Spirit of eternal truth 
 here searcheth the heart and trieth the reins, 
 and pierceth to the dividing asunder of soul 
 and spirit. Opposed as are these requirements 
 to the natural heart, with God nothing is im- 
 possible. Grace strengthening us, we can, 
 thank God, tower above the littleness of doing 
 wrong, because a brother, in some forgetful 
 or wayward moment, has sought to inflict upon 
 us wrong. 
 
 There is a majesty in forgiveness which always 
 elevates the sufferer above the offender. In no 
 act does man more imitate his blessed Maker. 
 
150 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF KEYIVAL8. 
 
 " If any man have a quarrel against any, even 
 as Christ forgave you, so also do ye." Here, for- 
 giveness is nearly synonymous with that sweet 
 word, mercy, of which the great poet of nature 
 has thus truthfully spoken : 
 
 *^The quality of mercy is not strained; 
 It droppeth as the gentle dew from "heaven 
 Upon the place beneath : it is twice blessed ; 
 It blesseth him that gives, and him that takes; 
 'Tis mightiest in the mightiest ; it becomes 
 The throned monarch better than his crown." 
 
 With a good man, the occasion of forgiveness 
 becomes a feast to his conscience, and the force 
 of his example restrains men before him, and 
 purifies the moral atmosphere about him. He 
 was smitten, but, like the sandal-tree, which the 
 ax-man refuses to spare, it perfumes the air with 
 frankincense from its wounds. 
 
 The importance of forgiveness among brethren, 
 of loving each other as little children, in the 
 great work of revivals, needs, here, no more than 
 the naming. ]Vo Church is ready for a revival 
 until its memhership are living injpeace with each 
 other. Old quarrels, grudges, jealousies, bicker- 
 ings, mutual suspicions, envyings, and strife, 
 must be rolled from the bosom of the Church, 
 just where Christian, in Bunyan, lost his burden. 
 
THE LAW OF FORGIYKNESS. 151 
 
 And, as it respects the fruits of a revival, they 
 should be preserved at once from the dry-rot of 
 revenge. Young converts should be carefully 
 taught the law of mutual forbearance and for- 
 giveness. The luxuries of peace, the omnipo- 
 tence of union among ourselves, and the God- 
 conferred title of the peacemaker, should never 
 be lost sight of. ''Blessed are the peacemakei^, 
 for they shall be called the children of God." 
 The young convert should be taught never to 
 'lose sight of the manners of the angels, the 
 etiquette of heaven. Angels will not bandy 
 epithets of reproach, even with Satan himself. 
 " Michael the archangel, when, contending with 
 the devil, he disputed about the body of Moses, 
 durst not bring against him a railing accusation, 
 but said. The Lord rebuke thee," That clause 
 in the Lord's prayer, " Forgive our trespasses, as 
 we forgive those who trespass against us," should 
 never be repeated but with a feeling of con- 
 sciousness that we love our enemies, and are 
 willing to do good to those who despitefully use 
 us. But, like Moses before the bush, we pause 
 upon this holy ground to unsandal our feet; and, « 
 like Habakkuk, before his terrible vision of the 
 great God, which overwhelmed him with con- 
 fusion, and a sense of self-annihilation, we can 
 
152 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 
 
 do no more than say, " 0 Lord^ I have heard thy 
 speech^ and was afraid: O Lord, revive thy 
 work in the midst of the years ; in the midst of 
 the years make known; in wrath remember 
 mercy/' 
 
PIETY THE HOPE OF THE CHUKCH. 153 
 
 CHAPTEE XVI. 
 
 PIETY THE HOPE OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 A WORD TO THE PREACHER — • THE LIFE OR DEATH OF A CHURCH 
 TO BE TESTED BY HER FIETY — A PHOSPHORESCENT CHURCH LIFE 
 — ELEMENTS OP PIETY TREATED OF — ABSURDITY OP DIS- 
 BELIEF IN THE SPIRITUALITY OF PIETY SPIRITUALITY OF THE 
 
 HEART ONLY CERTAINLY KNOWN BY ITS FRUITS — TEMPERS AS 
 " A TEST OF SPIRITUALITY — CONDUCT AND CREED AS PROOFS OP 
 SPIRITUALITY — IMPORTANCE OF HOLY TEMPERS. 
 
 Brother minister in the glorious work of revivals, 
 even at the risk of some repetition, we wish to 
 press some thoughts farther, which may be ap- 
 propriately arranged under the above caption. 
 They may suggest to you an appropriate pulpit 
 theme, and thus aid you in the great and only 
 work to which you so readily subordinate all 
 work, the work of saving perishing souls. . 
 
 Piety, that shall be the rule, and not the ex- 
 ception; a pious pulpit; a pious officiary ; pious 
 fathers, and mothers, and children ; three quar- 
 ters of a million of Methodists, generally, if not 
 universally pious! Who could calculate the 
 efficacy of such leaven in the three measures of 
 meal; of such salt for a corrupted earth; of such 
 
154 HELPS TO THE PKOMOTION OF EEVITALS. 
 
 a great light in a dark world ? Piety is the onljr 
 principle of Church life that makes the existence 
 of that Church conservative and regenerative in 
 its effects. It is, in fact, the only life that distin- 
 guishes a live from a dead Church. A dead 
 Church may shine by its doctrines and by its 
 learning; but this light is phosphorescent, and 
 only decoys to sloughs of deeper, though it may 
 be more refined sensuality. 
 
 We will speak of piety as it respects its 
 spirituality, its intelligence, motives, and indi- 
 viduality. As it respects its spirituality, God 
 is a spirit, and acceptable worship can only be 
 rendered him in the spirit. The fact of the 
 Spirit's presence in religion, though incompre- 
 hensible as to manner, is quite comprehensible 
 as to the fact. It is a fact of revelation, and 
 has its home no more in mystery, than a thou- 
 sand daily familiar facts of nature. Any num- 
 ber of examples will here suggest themselves to 
 the thoughtful. Analogy speaks out in favor of 
 the same great truth. If the Spirit of God gar- 
 nish the heavens ; if it operate, with or without 
 means, on gross and insensible matter, moving 
 this great universe on its rounds of harmony and 
 grandeur, as the body is moved by the soul, is it 
 unreasonable to suppose that the souls of men, 
 
PIETY THE HO:^E OF THE CHUECH. 155 
 
 God's offspring, may be quite sensible to the Spir- 
 it's touch, voice, and teachings ? Does the great 
 heart of boundless goodness throb up against 
 an inanimate clod, and yet, between that heart 
 and an infinitely higher order of existence, does 
 there exist an impassable gulf, a terrible vacuum? 
 Is the society of man, that embraces humanity 
 in one brotherhood, and that sweeps into another 
 world, and includes, also, its unseen population, 
 to end this side of society with our Maker ? The 
 affirmative of the thought is an aggravation of 
 the crudities and cruelties of atheism. Such a 
 view unhearts Christianity, and leaves it a mere 
 carcass, to be ever and andh galvanized into 
 mimic life, by the fervors of fashion or poetry, 
 superstition or sentimentality. Thank God, 
 revelation here stands boldly out. It pleads, 
 first of all, the sinner's sensible communion with 
 God, through Christ, by the aid of the Holy 
 Spirit. "Christ in you, the hope of glory." 
 " The Spirit beareth witness," etc. 
 
 But the presence of the Spirit can only safely 
 be judged of by its fruits. And, first, these 
 fruits commence their growth, and are seen in 
 the moral dispositions of men, far more, even, 
 than in the rectitude of their conduct ; and, cer- 
 tainly, far more than in the soundness of their 
 
156 HELPS TO THE PBOMOTIOlSr OF REVIVALS. 
 
 judgments, or harmony of their views on ques- 
 tions of casuistry, ethics, and doctrine. The 
 latter have to do with the intelligence; the for- 
 mer with the moral biases and emotions of the 
 mind. The one has reference to what a man 
 knows; the other to the purity of his heart. 
 The heart can alone be made pure by the Spirit. 
 This purity the Spirit imparts to even the weak- 
 est in wdsdom, the wayfaring man, though a fool. 
 The latter deeds are to be learned by efforts of 
 the disciple: "Take my yoke upon you, and 
 learn of me." " Search the Scriptures." 
 
 We are brought naturally to consider intelli- 
 gence as an element of strength in piety. We 
 prefer, however, to leave some thoughts upon 
 this topic, and the others above named, until 
 the next chapter. We close with a word upon 
 Christian tempers as an element of power in 
 Christian example. Here, we verily believe, is 
 a subject of paramount importance in relation 
 to the Church's strength and aggressiveness. 
 The temper in which a deed is done often goes 
 further with a witness, in making up his judg- 
 ment of one's religion, than the character of the 
 deed itself. Nothing is more manifest than this : 
 if the dispositions and tempers of professed 
 Christians habitually manifest themselves as the 
 
PIETY THE HOPE OF THE CHUECH. 157 
 
 dispositions and tempers of the world around are 
 manifested, men will attribute to such Christians 
 nothing but the form and shell of Christianity. 
 Let but the flush of fretfiilness or anger redden 
 upon the cheek, or murmur in the voice of the 
 occupant of the pulpit, at causes that should 
 only occasion him grief, and furnish him an op- 
 portunity for the exercise of forbearance, and that 
 man's preaching is vain. Let it be seen that an- 
 ger burns as violently in the bosom of the pro- 
 fessing and the praying, and breaks forth as 
 readily, when it is appealed to, and the sinner 
 will silently ask himself, " How dwelleth the 
 love of God in that man ?" Let but the pride 
 of opinion, a mere egotism, a spirit of spite, keep 
 one from acknowledging his errors, when he 
 has been clearly proven in the wrong, whether 
 these be errors of the intellect, or errors of con- 
 duct, and it is hard to believe that man's body 
 a temple of the Holy Ghost. Let the man who 
 would buy, and sell, and get gain, decrease in 
 liberality as he increases in goods, and exhibit, 
 as he improves by practice, an admirable skill at 
 driving a bargain, and then smile triumphantly 
 over the advantage of questionable honor which 
 he had gained, and it will not be easy to attribute 
 to that man a very high degree of spirituality. 
 
158 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF KEVIYALS. 
 
 Let polemic ecclesiastics practice sophistry for 
 the sake of their cause, play upon words, and 
 commit diversions by sarcastic quibbles, and 
 practice proving their points by illegitimate syl- 
 logisms and false analogies ; such men will soon 
 be suspected of being destitute of the spirit of 
 truth, as they certainly will be suspected of being 
 destitute of the spirit of religion. We repeat it, 
 the heart of man can be read more readily in 
 his tempers than in his actions. These tempers 
 are loopholes through wooded landscapes, that 
 exhibit the sterile background; the heavens 
 aiigry with storms, or open upon flowery lawns 
 or fruitful fields, over which bends the sky in 
 the deep blue of its repose and purity. Such 
 are the relations of man's tempers and actions. 
 And it is truly remarkable, that among the 
 largest enumeration of the fruits of the Spirit, 
 found in the New Testament, tempers, rather 
 than actions, are enumerated as evidences of the 
 spirituality of the Christian's character: "But 
 the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long- 
 suff*ering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, 
 temperance : against such there is no law. And 
 they that are Christ's, have crucified the flesh, 
 with the affections and lusts. If we live in the 
 Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit." 
 
INTELLIGENCE AS AN ELEMENT OF PIETY. 159 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 INTELLIGENCE AS AN ELEMENT OF PIETY. 
 
 WHAT IS KNOWLEDGE — DEFINITION OF TRUTH WHEN KNOWL- 
 EDGE BECOMES POWER — DIFFERENCE BETWEEN KNOWLED*GE 
 AND WISDOM — THE KIND OP KNOWLEDGE THE CHRISTIAN 
 
 SHOULD SEEK — THE BIBLE-READING CHRISTIAN SECURITY 
 
 AGAINST APOSTASY — THE BIBLE AND POPULAR LITERATURE 
 
 THE NEWSPAPER AN INTERPRETER OF THE BIBLE — CHRISTIANS 
 AND THE PROMISES, 
 
 "I WILL give you pastoi^s according to my heart, 
 which shall feed you with knowledge and under- 
 standing." " My people are destroyed for lack 
 of knowledge." "In everything ye ai'e enrich- 
 ed by him in all knowledge." "Wisdom and 
 knowledge shall be the stability of thy times, 
 and strength of thy salvation." 
 
 In offering some thoughts under this caption 
 in the last chapter, we spoke principally of the 
 spirituality of piety, and promised to resume this 
 subject by offering some thoughts upon inteUi- 
 gence as an element of power, in piety, upon 
 motives and individuality. 
 
 Of the importance of cultivating the intellect 
 as well as the heart, in a life of piety, the Scriptures 
 
160 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 
 
 just quoted treat most conclusively. These texts 
 are but a brief selection from a very large class. 
 But what is knowledge ? And what the princi- 
 pal branches that Christians generally in private 
 life should pursue ? When one knows a thing, 
 the simple meaning of that is, he conceives of a 
 thing as it exists. And as truth is no more^than 
 th^ condition of things as they exist, such a man, 
 as far as he goes, has a knowledge of the truth. 
 But this truth may do him no good if he fail to 
 appropriate it, or attempt to appropriate it 
 wrongly, or neglect it altogether. Knowledge 
 only becomes power by a proper use. The man 
 who makes the running stream turn the wheel 
 of his mill, or the wind fill the sails of his ship, 
 must first know the laws of gravity and thc^ 
 course of the winds. The more skillfully tliL 
 knowledge be applied to the great practical pur 
 poses of life, the more wisely are they applied 
 Here, then, is the general difterence between 
 the meaning of the word knowledge and wis- 
 dom as employed in the Scriptures. The one is 
 an acquisition of truth, the other relates to the 
 manner in which that truth is employed for the 
 benefit of ourselves and others. A man of 
 knowledge is not always a wise man, and the 
 man who may be called truly wise may some- 
 
INTELLIGENCE AS AN ELEMENT OF PIETY. 161 
 
 times be very limited in knowledge. " Great 
 men are not always wise," and the wise man is 
 very apt to be better off than the great man ; 
 hence " with all your getting get wisdom." 
 
 But of the knowledge which the pious man 
 should study constantly to acquire, we would 
 not disparage a knowledge of the sciences; a 
 knowledge of nature's great laws, which will 
 reveal to the student so much of God, of his wis- 
 dom and his goodness. But it falls to the lot of 
 but few Christians to be students in the technical 
 sense of that word : far the larger mass of good 
 people will be quite limited in scholastic attam- 
 ments. It is the few only who will devote their 
 lives to the majestic mysteries of astronomy, the 
 wonders of chemistry, or the hidden beauties of 
 philology. As the miner reveals the hidden 
 treasures of earth for the rest of mankind, so 
 these devotees of hard study constitute the few 
 that work for the world in matters of science. 
 All honor to them. Yet is there a common 
 ground, which every Christian can occupy for 
 the purpose of adding to his faith not merely 
 virtue, that is, virtuous dispositions, holy desires, 
 and the like^ hnt knowledgre. And in a hasty 
 specification of the branches of knowledge which 
 
 every Christian should pursue, we would first 
 11 
 
162 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 
 
 name the reading of the Holy Scriptures, the 
 reading of them carefully, humbly, fervently, 
 and prayerfully ; all of which, with much more, 
 is included in the phrase, "Search the Scrip- 
 tures." The critical reading of the sacred text 
 may be left to men of learning and of leisure ; 
 to those whose business it is thus to sift out the 
 whole idea of the Spirit. But the daily reading 
 of the sacred text without such helps will be 
 found to the pious mind a perpetual repast, a 
 well of water springing up within him unto ever- 
 lasting life. He will find his Bible an Eden, 
 without the forbidden tree ; an Eden in which 
 the tree of life has been restored. How many 
 saints does biography trace through life, in which 
 the well-thumbed Bible, without note or com- 
 ment, was their daily companion, and found a 
 place under their dying pillow! How many 
 men, distinguished for their learning and re- 
 search, does history show us expressing a regret 
 at the sundown of life that they have read the 
 Holy Scriptures so little ! In addition to that 
 spiritual-mindedness which will surround the 
 soul of the daily reader of the Holy Scriptures 
 as does an atmosphere of fragrance the flower, 
 such a one will never be found wanting in those 
 intellectual qualities which constitute the intel- 
 
INTELLIGENCE AS AN ELEIVIENT OF PIETY. 163 
 
 ligent man. Possessing, as do the Holy Scrip- 
 tures, a living freshness of truth, a perpetual 
 adaptedness, they lead the mind to the pursuit 
 of subordinate and cotemporaneous knowledge. 
 A man who reads his Bible diligently will read 
 other good books and works no less. He who 
 searches the Scriptures will find them to be not 
 merely a record of things past, but such a record 
 as will prompt him to a study of the present; he 
 will understand better, and take a deeper inter- 
 est in the ministrations of the pulpit ; he will be 
 prompted to study the history, order, genius, 
 and workings of the Church of which he is a 
 member ; he will become in that edifice a lively 
 stone ; he will find himself feeling the pressure 
 of individual responsibility. And as the best 
 security against apostasy is to keep Christians 
 hard at work, he will find that his knowledge is 
 a fundamental contribution to his stability. " If 
 ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye 
 shall bear much fruit." 
 
 Christians in this age can scarcely be said to 
 be seriously wanting in intelligence. It is an 
 age of books and intelligence. God, in his 
 providence, seems to have said, "Let there be 
 light," and Christendom is radiant from a 
 myriad sources. We fear, however, that Chris- 
 
164 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF KEVIVALS. 
 
 tians, in those superior mental acquisitions 
 which constitute so largely the popular privi- 
 lege of the times, do not begin to get knowledge 
 at the right place. Begin not with the news- 
 paper or the periodical, but with the Bible. 
 The Bible will render both of the former neces- 
 sary. And unlike the voices of the seven thun- 
 ders that were sealed up, the voices of the popu- 
 lar press will contribute to the interpretation of 
 the sacred text, and Providence will be seen, in 
 prophecy, on His glorious march to the world's 
 final rescue. O, for more Bible-reading Chris- 
 tians! O, for a Church which, like the pious 
 Bereans of old, should constantly search the 
 Scriptures, amid these stirring times, to see 
 whether these things are so ! 
 
 We fear, also, that Christians err in not ap- 
 propriating the knowledge they possess as they 
 ought, to the high purposes of duty and holy 
 living. The man who knows the powers of the 
 water-wheel, but refuses to appropriate them ; 
 tlie potency of steam, but treats it with neglect, 
 is a dwarf in material progress ; and were society 
 generally to act upon this principle, it would 
 soon relapse into barbarism. Christian, do you 
 fail to apply the promises of God, with which 
 you have been made so familiar, from the Sab- 
 
INTELLIGENCE AS AN ELEMENT OF PIETY. 165 
 
 bath school to the sacred desk, in the day of 
 temptation ? or do you refuse to feast daily upon 
 this bread, which comes down from heaven, to 
 drink daily at this fountain, of which if a man 
 drink he shall never thirst? Do you fail to 
 meditate upon those holy mysteries of our sacra- 
 ments, and doctrines of our creed, which have 
 tempted the prying inquiries of angels ? 
 
166 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REYIYALS. 
 
 CHAPTEE XYin. 
 
 MOTIVES AND INDIVIDUALITY AS ELEMENTS OF 
 PIETY. 
 
 MOTIVES — DIVIDED INTO INNOCENT AND RELIGIOUS AND BOTH 
 
 DISINTERESTED BENEVOLENCE — SINISTER MOTIVES — TWO THINGS 
 
 TO BE CONSIDERED IN THE DOCTRINE OF MOTIVES THE MAN 
 
 WHO HANGS OUT HIS OWN SIGN — INDIVIDUALITY — A CHARAC- 
 TER FOUND IN THE WAY — REWARD PROPORTIONED TO ABILITY 
 
 ANECDOTE OF A GREAT GENERAL — THE LONDON MERCHANT 
 
 IMPORTANT LAW OF SPIRITUAL GROWTH — REVIVAL HELP-HINTS. 
 
 Having, in previous chapters, spoken of spiritu- 
 ality and intelligence^ as elements of power in 
 piety, we come now to speak of the Christian's 
 motives^ and of his responsibility or individual- 
 ity. The doctrine of motives involves the most 
 delicate shades of casuistry, the profoundest dis- 
 tinctions in Christian ethics. Much confusion 
 of thought, and incorrect judgment of the con- 
 duct of our fellows, have been the result of not 
 understanding when motives are innocent ; when 
 they are pious, and when they are sinful, or 
 purely selfish. One may do me a favor simply 
 to win my good-will. There may be nothing 
 religious in it, and yet, at the same time, there 
 
MOTIVES, INDIVIDUALITY, ETC. 167 
 
 may be nothing wrong in it ; it is an innocent 
 motive. Another may do me a favor, both to 
 obtain my good- will, but, first and foremost, in 
 the needed kindness which he bestowed upon 
 me, he sought the glory of God, and was ac- 
 tuated by a sense of duty to him. Here the 
 motive, in some sense, doubled itself, and yet it 
 was purely religious. A brother may give 
 largely of his means for the erection of a place 
 of worship near his own dwelling, or where such 
 an improvement will advance the price of his 
 lands, and he may be properly enough influ- 
 enced by these motives, and yet these minor 
 motives may be so subordinated to the higher, 
 that they may be perfectly righteous before 
 God. One of the most common, and, at the 
 same time, one of the most grossly uncharitable 
 views which we can take of the motives of our 
 brethren, is to suppose them always selfish, 
 whenever they seem prompted by temporal in- 
 terest, though the object to be promoted is pure- 
 ly a righteous one. The phrase " disinterested 
 benevolence," is only comparative in its mean- 
 ing. The Almighty never designed us to do 
 right without promoting our own interest. And 
 he who pretends to have lost sight of this, of 
 having become wholly insensible to it, is simply 
 
168 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF KEVIVALS. 
 
 a fanatic, as his own betrayed selfisliness will 
 soon prove. 
 
 There are purely selfish and sinful motives. 
 Men may be stimulated to deeds of goodness, 
 wholly from the hope of gain. They may pam- 
 per you with kindness, and load you with favors 
 that they may the more readily make you their 
 victim. How fearfully prominent among men 
 are the workings of such motives ! How dis- 
 gusting are they to magnanimous goodness ! 
 How offensive to piety, and to that God who 
 searcheth the heart and trieth the reins! How 
 careful should we be to scrutinize our motives ! 
 "Thou, God, seest me," like the voice of the 
 great sea in the shell of its shore, should dwell 
 in our souls as a living whisper of warning. 
 
 In the doctrine of motives, then, two things 
 should always be carefully considered. First, 
 we should prayerfully and impartially scrutinize 
 our own. Secondly, we should be as cautious as 
 the foot of sensitive veneration when walking 
 among graves, while sitting in judgment on those 
 of others. "Judge not, that ye be not judged." 
 The man who is always criticising the motives of 
 others, hangs out his own sign. He speaks 
 from experience. He may judge wrongfully of 
 others, but others will judge rightly of him. It 
 
MOTIVES, mDIVrDUALITY, ETC. 169 
 
 is a very low view to take, of even unregener- 
 ate human nature, to suppose it incapable of 
 being prompted to worthy deeds by motives 
 destitute of piety, and yet these motives be in 
 themselves innocent and honorable. But that 
 readiness to attribute to our Irrethren sinister 
 motives for all that they do and say, is a very 
 unsightly grace. 
 
 By individuality^ as an element of strength in 
 piety, we mean, first, that all that voluntary hu- 
 mility or mock piety that induces one to disclaim 
 all influence or power in matters of religion, etc., 
 claiming that he is a mere binnacle on the old 
 ship Zion, should be ignored and despised. It is 
 a mere excuse for slothfulness in the vineyard of 
 the Lord. It is not a true humility, which 
 always elevates its possessor, but a mock lowli- 
 ness, which degrades the true man, and makes 
 the sinner in him bad-natured. In Church mat- 
 ters, none are more ready to dictate what should 
 be done, than those of this very class, who claim 
 that they cannot do anything. Than they, 
 none are less apt to be contented with what is 
 done. Of such persons we say, they are want- 
 ing in individuality in matters of religion. As 
 they do nothing, they are actually worth noth- 
 ing; and every brother will find them very 
 
170 HELPS TO THE PEOMOTION OF EEYIVALS. 
 
 much in the way in the time of revivals. The 
 latter fact, however, with all their humility, 
 they are slow to believe. They do not stand up 
 in the great spiritual edifice as supporting pillars, 
 but obstruct its entrance, or lie like broken 
 pews, unfit for use, yet occupying room. Every 
 Christian should remember that the Church, as 
 a whole, is composed of individuals ; individuals 
 compose its primitive elements, as certainly as 
 do particles compose the earth, or drops the 
 ocean. Now, every one of the self-neutralized 
 elements can scarcely be compared to anything 
 else than those branches of the true vine, which, 
 from bearing no fruit, were to be cast forth to be 
 withered and burned. It is not the much or lit- 
 tle that individual Christians can do, that is to be 
 at all taken into the account, in the consideration 
 of this question, of individual responsibility. It is 
 simply this : Does the Christian do what he can 
 for the upbuilding of the Church and the conver- 
 sion of the world? It is the ability of the 
 Christian to do, and not the quantity of what 
 he does, by which he is to be judged. The 
 widow's mite, or a cup of cold water given to a 
 disciple, may, under certain circumstances, rise 
 into a sublimer virtue before God, than the 
 offering of a man who should endow a college 
 
MOTIVES, INDIVIDUALITY, ETC. lYl 
 
 with a quarter of a million, to be a fountain of 
 usefulness to flow on to the judgment. Let no 
 Christian, then, be deterred from the most active 
 efforts in the walks of piety, because of his sup- 
 posed inability. In the language of a great 
 general, in reply to a compliment bestowed 
 upon him, for having obtained a most hazardous 
 victory : " Sir, we did what we could." This is 
 all our heavenly Father expects of us ; and all 
 wlio do what they can, occupy the same plat- 
 form of honor in the estimation of our unerring 
 Judge. 
 
 At the same time he so ordains, that an attempt 
 to improve the one talent, will duplicate it. 
 Christians who try to do something for the Lord, 
 will not long try unsuccessfully. In the lan- 
 guage of a successful London merchant : " My 
 capital, when I commenced in business, consisted 
 of shillings. I began at once to give a portion 
 of the proceeds, in the form of pennies, to the 
 Lord. My business capital soon increased to 
 pounds ; and from pence I gave shillings, and 
 fi'om shillings guineas." This law of growth in 
 ability to do good, iy doing good^ applies as 
 well to matters of mind as to matters of money; 
 while the heart that is perpetually set on good 
 deeds, is being led into the green pastures, and 
 
172 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 
 
 by the still waters of eternal love and tranquillity. 
 Every brother, we apprehend, who feels toward 
 the Church he would nurse and vivify, as a 
 mother toward her first-born, will be glad to 
 find these help-hints to the creation of revival 
 power. 
 
VARIETY OF MINISTERIAL TALENT. 173 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 VARIETY OF MINISTERIAL TALENT. 
 
 For the want of remembering the import of 
 our caption, false estimates are often made of 
 ministerial talent. Many are prone to set up one 
 standard for all. Every preacher must come to 
 their particular measure, or he is second-rate. 
 With some, the prestige of a great education, 
 with the name belled with literary titles, becomes 
 a charity that covereth a multitude of sins. With 
 another, these very qualifications excite suspicion. 
 The college-bred man is necessarily dull, arid, 
 and dry, a conclusion, by the way, as untrue as 
 it is unphilosophical, there being as few dry 
 preachers among the educated, as a class, as 
 among the non-educated. With another, the rea- 
 soner — the dealer in syllogisms — is the preacher 
 of his fancy; while, with another, the man is 
 mere mediocre unless he can deal in flights of 
 fancy, flowers of rhetoric, and gorgeous and 
 original creations of the imagination. With 
 another, (and he is the representative of a very 
 
174 HELPS TO THE PKOMOTIOX OF RETITALS. 
 
 large class,) the preacher is always perfection, no 
 matter how prosy, diffuse, and superficial his 
 thoughts, if he be but only able to burn himself 
 out of the brush at last ; in other words, if some 
 fifteen or twenty minutes of the conclusion of 
 his sermon be employed in the highly impas- 
 sioned. TVith another, the eccentric man is the 
 model of pulpit excellence ; he abounds in 
 flashes of wit, quaint sayings, facetious anecdotes, 
 etc., etc. I am for the learned preacher, says 
 one ; I am afraid of the man who preaches from 
 his learning, says another ; I am for the man who 
 makes me think, says another ; I, for him who 
 makes me cry, says another ; and I for him who 
 makes me laugh; and thus it is, some are for 
 Paul, and some for Apollos, while Christ may be 
 forgotten in the contest. Xow, the truth is, that 
 he who would correctly estimate ministerial 
 talent and qualification, would place a high esti- 
 mate upon all that diversity of talent just repre- 
 sented in the classes of ministers referi^d to. 
 Xo invidious distinction should be drawn. Xo 
 extolling of one above measure, and the depre- 
 ciation of the rest. All are necessary. There 
 are a divei^sity of gifts." "Were there but one 
 gift for the pulpit, and that gift the most brilliant, 
 men would soon become disgusted with it by 
 
VARIETY OF MINISTERIAL TALENT. 175 
 
 reason of its monotony. Yariety is a necessity of 
 the human mind. We should be careful, then, 
 in speaking of ministers, by what rule we esti- 
 mate their gifts. We may do them great in- 
 justice, and ourselves also. For the man who 
 cannot go and hear the preacher that happens 
 not to be a special favorite, or the brother who 
 cannot engage heartily in his pastor's support, 
 unless he happen to be of the class of preachers 
 for which he has taken a particular fancy, are 
 both alike guilty of folly. To expect all men to 
 preach alike, would be to require that all men 
 be constituted alike. This is no more true to the 
 great law of Providence in the case, than it 
 would be to require that the trees of the wood 
 should all be of the same species. What if all 
 forests were composed of the sugar maple? 
 Well, mankind might have a sweet time, espe- 
 cially about sugar-making season; but they 
 would, undoubtedly, soon feel that it would be 
 much better to do with less sugar, and have a 
 little oak and ash among their ligneous posses- 
 sions. " There are a diversity of gifts." Minis- 
 terial merit, also, should be estimated in the 
 light of its fruits. It often happens that the 
 very men upon whose talents we place the low- 
 est estimate, are the most highly honored of 
 
176 HELPS TO THE PEOMOTION OF REVIVALS. 
 
 God in the conversion of souls and the work of 
 building up his Church. By their fruits we 
 should judge them. But even in this there is 
 great danger of mistake. It is not always the 
 brother whose fruits are among the most showy 
 kind who is to be ranked foremost among the 
 apostles. There is such a thing as '' preparing 
 the way of the Lord," while another, again, may 
 herald him, and in so doing meet him. There 
 is such a thing as one preacher taking care of 
 the " stuff " that another may have collected. 
 It is not always the preacher that we hear 
 the most about who is actually doing most 
 for God. There is a talent that works in silence, 
 like the law that crystallizes the gem in its un- 
 discovered hiding-place. There are others, again, 
 who, like a summer rain, seldom come with- 
 out bringing thunder and lightning with them. 
 Both are necessary. " There are a diversity of 
 gifts." 
 
 But, after all, there is one fact about the 
 preacher and preaching, which may be men- 
 tioned almost as a universally attractive quality, 
 a quality, we mean, on which human nature 
 everywhere will place about the same estimate. 
 To this quality we give the single title of 
 earnestness. This word we would make generic 
 
VARIETY OF MINISTERIAL TALENT. 177 
 
 of strong sympathy with an audience, self-for- 
 getfulness and absorption in a subject. Such a 
 speaker will speak to men true to nature, what- 
 ever be his degree of education ; and if his gifts 
 be even but ordinary, men will flock to listen to 
 his stirring mission. He makes them feel^ and 
 this is the true test of oratory. The soul of elo- 
 quence is feeling, and eloquence can never have 
 a substitute. Such a speaker, if he be evidently 
 called of God, need fear no competition, no op- 
 position. Such a speaker is the product of no 
 system of education. Like the spirit within the 
 wheels in the prophet's vision, his masterly pow- 
 ers are born with him. The happy constitution- 
 ality that makes a highly earnest preacher, like 
 the powers of the poet, must be born with him. 
 Education may modify and chasten it, but so 
 far from chilling, it will become fuel to the 
 fire. The absence of much education will not 
 always prevent it from putting forth its great 
 power. The preacher whom education alone 
 can make is seldom worth having after he 
 is made. The preacher whom education can 
 spoil had not much about him to spoil. The 
 preacher who claims to be the better off be- 
 cause he never had educational advantages, is 
 
 either a fanatic, . or else he has obtained that 
 12 
 
178 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 
 
 yerj education in the absence of these advant- 
 ages. May God, in his mercy, give to the 
 Church, not a Paul, not an ApoUos, not a Bo- 
 anerges, not a Peter, not a John alone, but a 
 mighty host of all the classes represented by 
 these revered names. The Church needs a 
 diversity of gifts. But he who cannot, in some 
 goodly degree, manifest, from constitutional 
 sympathy, some of the earnestness or unction 
 above named, will always find his clerical 
 career a dull and cool one, however qualified or 
 gifted in other respects. But the object of this 
 chapter, more especially, is to rebuke that cap- 
 tiousness in our membership that underrates the 
 minister who happens not to be conformed to 
 their model. In the promotion of revivals this 
 will be found of the first moment, especially 
 when the mania seizes the Church of sending 
 for some favorite revivalist, a policy which 
 generally results as in the instance of John eat- 
 ing the little book ; the bitter is very apt to fol- 
 low the sweet. 
 
THE PAST AND PRESENT. 179 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 THE PAST AND PRESENT — A CHARACTER. 
 
 " Say not thou. What is the cause that the for- 
 mer days were better than these ? for thou dost 
 not inquire wisely concerning this." This scrip- 
 ture teaches that there may be an erroneous ret- 
 rospect, and deprecates it. A wise review of 
 the past is, indeed, rare. To come to a correct 
 judgment concerning it, the laws of the human 
 mind must be well studied. We are often de- 
 ceived for the want of self-knowledge. For ex- 
 ample : the remembrance of pleasure is always 
 fresher in the mind than the remembrance of 
 pain. A hasty conclusion on this subject would, 
 certainly, be contrary to the truth. The prin- 
 ciple is announced by our Saviour, in his allu- 
 sions to a mother's solicitude in the hour of her 
 extremity, which, when over, she remembereth 
 no more the anguish for joy." For the want of 
 due attention to this principle, there are many 
 who exalt the merit of the past over the present, 
 and say that the " former days were better than 
 
180 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF KEVIYALS. 
 
 these." With them, the preachers of the pres- 
 ent are pigmies, compared with those of the 
 past ; and the piety of the present is so diluted 
 with pride and formalism that " there is none 
 that doeth good ; no, not one." Our churches, 
 with steeples, are not as sacred as the former 
 cabins of logs, which they have superseded ; and 
 cushioned pews are much harder than rude 
 benches. Our class-meetings have all died out; 
 our prayer- meetings will soon call for obituary 
 notices ; the Church is getting proud ; the world 
 waxing worse than ever ; and it is as if Satan's 
 chain had been loosed for a little season. 
 " Why, w^e used to know every IVTethodist man by 
 his dress, every Methodist woman by her bon- 
 net, and the despised Methodists had come out 
 from among the world. They were not of it, 
 and were not, as now, like it. They then under- 
 stood this scripture, 'Come out from among 
 them, and be ye separate.' We got happy at 
 every meeting. The Church was in a state of 
 continual revival. Sinners were flocking to it by 
 scores and hundreds, like doves to the windows. 
 O, those were joyful days! We don't have 
 such times nowadays ; and it must be that the 
 Church is backslidden." Here our croaking 
 narrator heaved a sigh, and, suiting the action to 
 
THE PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 181 
 
 the word, he pointed toward the place where he 
 attended meeting with a long, lank finger, com- 
 pressed his thin lips ,over a large mouth, and 
 threw himself forward, shrugging his shoulders 
 as if he felt chilled to the heart with the 
 Church's moral apostasy. After a groan or two, 
 he resumed : " The extravagance of our preach- 
 ers and their families, why, don't you think, it 
 never used to cost us more than a quarter of a 
 dollar for quarterage, and now they want me to 
 pay five dollars a year for the support of the 
 Gospel, and throw in something at a public col- 
 lection every Sunday besides. Well, I wish I 
 had died before old-fashioned Methodism was 
 done away with ;" and here he put his hand in 
 his pocket, and we left our brother to his cen- 
 sorious cogitations and went on our way, indulg- 
 ing a few thoughts. This brother has wholly 
 overlooked the thousand and one little draw- 
 backs upon that millennium of his fancy, in the 
 past, his belief in which wholly unfits him for 
 the present. If preachers preached so much 
 better and abler then than now, the proof is 
 wanting. If human nature in those days would 
 have, or did always guard against an apostolic 
 altercation, and keep a Judas out of the college 
 of the evangelists, then was it holier than inspi- 
 
182 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 
 
 ration ever made it. If there was no pride 
 taken even in plainness, no glorying in the evi- 
 dences of one's humility in those pahny days of 
 primitive simplicity, then the Methodism of 
 thirty years ago, devoted and exalted as it v^^as, 
 has fallen very fast. If the rude conveniences 
 for worship were more promotive of piety than 
 the more tasty provisions of the present, then 
 penance is a virtue. If strife among brethren, 
 neighborhood tattle, Church trials, insubordina- 
 tion, secession, hypocrisy, and Phariseeism, were 
 never found to infest the Church in those palmy 
 days, when Sabbath schools were nearly un- 
 known, when our people had not the books and 
 newspapers to read they have now — had not the 
 material for their thought, nor the same motives 
 to be diligent in business — then history has slan- 
 dered them, and human nature, under the rule 
 of " Young America," seems to have become 
 something other than what it was. And as to 
 the little then required to support the Gospel and 
 our institutions, five dollars can now be as easily 
 raised as the twentieth part of it then. And as 
 to the sweeping assertion of the Church's apostasy, 
 is not God the same, Christ the same, the Gos- 
 pel the same ? Have not faith and prayer the 
 same prevailing power ? and do we not resort to 
 
THE PAST AND PRESENT. 
 
 183 
 
 the same sources and employ the same means? 
 and is not the same end present? Most cer- 
 tainly. But our brother's erroneous retrospect 
 is working a mighty mischief in his moral sen- 
 timents. He judges not wisely of the past, and 
 hence he is unprepared to appreciate the pres- 
 ent. Have our readers ever met with this char- 
 acter? 
 
 Our brother in the work of promoting revi- 
 vals will, we fear, often meet with this character, 
 much to his annoj^ance. We here send him a 
 daguerreotype likeness, that he may find no 
 difficulty in identifying him. 
 
184: HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 
 
 CHAPTEE XXI. 
 
 PASTORAL VISITING. 
 
 THE FOOLISH PHYSICIAN AND PREACHER CONTRASTED — HOW POWER 
 
 MAY BE COLLECTED FOR THE PULPIT JOHN B. GOUQH THE 
 
 PEOPLE TO BE SEEN AT THEIR HOMES A GOOD PASTOR SELDOM 
 
 IMPUTED AN INFERIOR PREACHER THE PREACHER WHO CANNOT 
 
 VISIT ANECDOTE OF THE CRIMEA THE MODEL TEACHER A 
 
 MODEL PASTOR HEARTS ARE TO BE READ AS WELL AS BOOKS. 
 
 What would be thought of the physician, who 
 was wont to prescribe for his patients without 
 acquainting himself with their symptoms, pre- 
 scribe upon the principles of physiology common 
 to all? Whatever his skill, would he not lose 
 both patients and practice ? Now, the pastor, 
 whose business it is to raise up a spiritual flock, 
 who neglects personal intercourse with them for 
 religious purposes, who neglects to look into 
 their spiritual symptoms, their individualisms, and 
 idiosyncrasies of experience, acts in spiritual 
 matters precisely as this physician in medicinal. 
 Pastoral visitation is an essential of success. 
 The pulpit will always be found borrowing from 
 it its principal power. The most effective dis- 
 courses are those in which the speaker seems 
 
PASTORAL VISITING. 
 
 185 
 
 best acquainted with the tjioiights and experi- 
 ences of the hearers. He seems to thread those 
 thoughts, to be famihar with the hearers' private 
 emotions, secret temptations, and little or great 
 solicitudes. He is full also of anecdote and il- 
 lustration, taken fresh from the life of the hour. 
 Such a preacher everybody will hear gladly. 
 This power of secretly learning from the people 
 what they need to be told, is not peculiar to the 
 pulpit. The popular lecturer resorts to these re- 
 sources for his thunder. A Gough, Brown, and 
 others, will be found collecting through the day 
 by observance and intercourse, the principal, and, 
 probably, the most interesting material of their 
 lectures for the evening. The most important 
 part of a preacher's study, is to study his people. 
 His books are walking books. Far the largest 
 portion of his library will speak out to him, and 
 that voice in the power which it may impart to 
 him may be as the voice from heaven which 
 John heard. Intercourse with individuals of his 
 flock never fails to endear them to him. The 
 preacher is not presumed to be a common friend. 
 The sacredness of his office encourages familiarity 
 when he has once made the first advances as 
 their spiritual adviser and sympathizer, and thus 
 it is that such friendship ripens into confidence 
 
186 HELPS TO THE PEOMOTION OF EEVIYALS. 
 
 and intimacy. O ! what a multitude of defects 
 in the pulpit exhibitions of such a preacher will 
 such a relation to his flock cover. Hence it is, 
 that the preacher who visits is never found an 
 unpopular, and seldom an unsuccessful preacher. 
 These visits should be made to the houses of the 
 people ; " from house to house," are the words of 
 Paul's journal in. his pastoration. The farmer 
 can indeed be seen in his field, the shoemakQr 
 on his bench, the mechanic at his plane, and the 
 merchant at his desk, and it is all .well, but not 
 well enough. Would the pastor occupy a vant- 
 age-ground of power? Let him seek the hearth- 
 side and the cradle-side; let him be seen among 
 the children, no matter how lowly that home. 
 Circumscribed as were the fishermen's huts of 
 Galilee, that so often sheltered Christ, squalid 
 and repulsive from nameless circumstances, it 
 may be, yet in this act, like the symbolic 
 horn in Habakkuk's vision, is the hiding of his 
 power. His call will be appreciated, perhaps, as 
 a condescension. His anxious inquiries about the 
 welfare of the family, temporal as well as spirit- 
 ual, will win their hearts. The lonely mother, 
 whose every hour of life is engrossed with the 
 care of a swelling group of children, and who 
 has to battle hard and long with intruding want, 
 
PASTORAL VISITING. 
 
 18T 
 
 feels that a friend has come, and the balm of a 
 sympathizing heart strengthens her afresh for 
 her task and her trials. The young husband and 
 father on whom the fortunes of life have not 
 yet smiled very propitiously, and around whose 
 soul the murky cloud of despondence has at 
 times essayed to unfold itself, feels at once, here 
 is a good man that careth for me. How like tow 
 before the fire is opposition to such moral power, 
 a power given to the pastor. O, fearful respon- 
 sibility ! If the persons thus visited are Church 
 members, it often becomes a new hegira in 
 their spiritual history. If not members, they 
 are secured as respecters and hearers. Nor are 
 the pastor's visits less appropriate, though at 
 times, perhaps, less powerful in their effects at 
 the homes of the more fortunate and the rich. 
 Every man feels that when you seek him at his 
 own home to do him good, you have taken a step 
 80 bold that it becomes him to believe you in 
 earnest. The law of hospitality diffuses the at- 
 mosphere of courtesy about the interview, and 
 the mutual restraint under which both are placed, 
 prepares the way for appropriate caution and 
 reciprocal kindness. Under such circumstances, 
 the warnings of the Gospel and the lessons of 
 piety, delivered in none of the cant of the sect, 
 
188 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF EEYITALS. 
 
 in no spirit of obtrusiveness or assumption, and 
 yet, so delivered as not to be edgeless, are 
 often like the fatal arrow sent at a venture 
 which smote the King of Israel between the 
 joints of the harness. In all our experience, 
 we have found that a good pastor was seldom 
 reported an inferior preacher, while, other 
 things being equal, his success in revival effort 
 always distanced immeasurably the man who 
 did not visit. 
 
 But some will say, I cannot visit, I have no 
 taste nor tact for it. Xow, such preachers are a 
 good deal like the nobleman's son, who procured 
 a commission and went to the Crimea. "When 
 there, upon the first whistle of a bomb-shell, he 
 was found by his superior officer, when he should 
 have been deploying his company, trembling like 
 an aspen leaf behind an embankment. In reply 
 to questions asked him, he stated, that he had 
 no taste whatever for such business, when the 
 opinion becoming mutual, he was ordered to be 
 drummed out of the army as a coward, and sent 
 home to his father as one out of his place. Xow, 
 the preacher who has no taste for visiting is sadly 
 out of his place. Had he accompanied the 
 Saviour while on earth, his tastes would certainly 
 have been subjected to many severe tests, for the 
 
PASTOKAL VISITING. 
 
 189 
 
 Saviour's public ministry was more than two 
 thirds made up of personal intercourse and con- 
 versation with those about him, while the asylums 
 of wretchedness, the rendezvous of want and 
 poverty, were his most common places of resort. 
 Sleeping to-night in the house of Peter, to-mor- 
 row night in that of Lazarus of Bethany, and 
 spending the next in the mountains for prayer, 
 are specimens of his itinerant pastoration. He 
 began with the lower strata of society, and 
 commenced to work up. The poor had the 
 Gospel preached to them, and common people 
 heard him gladly. How wise this philosophy 
 that commenced its mission to the poor and to 
 the common people. It is among them, that if 
 reforms be not the most needed, all permanent 
 reforms must begin. Pampered conservatism 
 never does anything for the world. Those who 
 are up in the world seldom care how the rest of 
 it goes. We are not, then, to look among the 
 high places of wealth and power for movements 
 in favor of humanity. Earthquakes do not com- 
 mence on the tops of mountains. There is no 
 shaking of the heavens and the earth, in which 
 the foundations are not first moved. It is the 
 common people whose respect, sympathies, love, 
 and confidence, the pastor should first seek. 
 
190 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF KEVIYALS. 
 
 And he who shuns the lowest spectacle of human 
 wretchedness, who shuns annoying ignorance, 
 who turns away from the low hovel of poverty, 
 looks in, but scarcely deigns to enter the house 
 of competence ; but seeks ease with book in hand 
 upon the sofa of palatial riches, might better 
 study, de novo^ the minister's great model, or else 
 remember the example of the nobleman's son, 
 as appropriate to himself. 
 
 But, says another, how can I visit and study 
 too ? In the first place, the lessons of the human 
 heart, the phase of human condition you learn 
 in visiting, constitute, as above intimated, an 
 essential part of your studies, and with a proper 
 husbandry of time, you can read books enough 
 as well as to read hearts. If you have been so 
 unfortunate as to enter the ministry prematurely, 
 as to be destitute of an elementary knowledge 
 of your profession, as we regret to say many 
 have, you must contend with this diflaculty as 
 best you can. But it will not lessen it a whit to 
 closet yourself in your library and forbear inter- 
 course with the people. If the great poet of 
 nature could find 
 
 " Books in running brooks, 
 Tongues in trees, sermons in stones, 
 And good in everything," 
 
PASTORAL VISITING. 
 
 191 
 
 he must be a dull learner who cannot glean 
 something through the week from the flashes of 
 an anxious eye, from the throbbing of a hopeful 
 or a sorrowful heart, from the tale of misfortune, 
 the story of bereavement and buried love, which 
 he may learn by intercourse with his flock, and 
 which, mingled with the lessons of duty, of piety, 
 or of Gospel promises, shall not infuse grace into 
 his lips for the Sabbath, and make his words like 
 the refreshing odors of the old sanctuary. As 
 with the eyes of the fabled Argus, the pastor 
 should scan the appearance of his flock, and seek 
 at the earliest possible convenience, a personal 
 acquaintance with each. "What means that 
 Scripture, where the shepherd who had a hun- 
 dred sheep lost one of them ? The ninety and 
 nine were temporarily abandoned, and the stray- 
 ing member of the flock sought until it was 
 found, borne home in triumph upon the shoulder, 
 and thus the number kept good. The preacher 
 who works for a revival and neglects the pas- 
 toral work, is a workman that needeth to be 
 ashamed. 
 
192 HELPS TO THE PROMOTIOl^ OF BEVTVALS. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIL 
 
 PASTORAL VISITING. 
 
 PASTORAL AND SOCIAL VISITING — THE PASTOR THE COMMON 
 
 PROPERTY OF ALL — BEING INSTANT IN SEASON THE SICK 
 
 BOOM EMERGENCES — DEATH IN A FAMILY — FUNERAL 
 
 SERMONS DUE REFERENCE TO BE HAD TO THE CUSTOMS OF 
 
 SOCIETY. 
 
 We would distinguish between pastoral and 
 social visiting. Nor do we see any necessity why 
 the pastor should forego the usual pleasures and 
 proprieties of the social circle. We would not 
 be fastidious here. Our Saviour performed his 
 first miracle at a festive and highly social occa- 
 sion. But while the Saviour thus revealed his 
 true character amid, perhaps, the exuberance of 
 hilarity, if not mirth, so a minister on any social 
 occasion where he may chance to be a guest, 
 should never lose sight of his true character ; 
 and on all social occasions in which a minister 
 may appropriately engage, the circle should never 
 be broken up without proposing prayer. Nor 
 would we deprive the minister's family of the 
 privilege of choosing their own associates with 
 
PASTORAL VISITING. 193 
 
 becoming propriety, just because it becomes the 
 bead of that family to become all things to all 
 men. The law of caste, to a greater or a less de- 
 gree, obtains in all conditions of society ; and as 
 it respects intimate social intercourse, not always 
 without propriety. But the preacher, as a pas- 
 tor, belongs to no caste or class ; he is neither an 
 aristocrat nor a democrat. The most refined and 
 the most elevated in society will only esteem him 
 the more highly by knowing that his earliest at- 
 tentions are given to those in the lowliest walks 
 of life. If they estimate his character properly, 
 they will expect to find him the most frequently 
 where his services are the most needed. He is 
 governed by none of those distinctions in society 
 that are so wont to obtain. He is equally the 
 honored guest of education, opulence, and power; 
 though yesterday, like Doctor Clarke, he dined on 
 potatoes in a mud hut with one of his delighted 
 parishioners. Here is he furnished with a pecu- 
 liar and unconfined power of usefulness. 
 
 Nor do we mean, by pastoral visiting, those 
 hasty professional calls made by some, and which 
 pass under that name. We have known some 
 preachers whose object seemed to be to see how 
 many families they could call upon in the short- 
 est given time possible* One young brother 
 
194: HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 
 
 boasted to us once that he had made ten pas- 
 toral visits in an hour, and prayed in every 
 house. We have no confidence in such a course. 
 Such visits are mere ofiicial and dead, wanting 
 in the living freshness of a sympathetic heart, 
 and can do but little good. Nothing is more 
 inappropriate or rude than an undue haste in the 
 discharge of so holy a duty. But it may be ob- 
 jected that great haste is necessary, or but few 
 families can be visited. The answer to this ob- 
 jection is, attach the importance to the work 
 which it demands, commence in time. Visit a 
 few families daily, and you will soon have the 
 privilege of saying of your flock, " My sheep 
 know my voice." 
 
 Most especially should the pastor avail him 
 self of special occasions to be present in the fam 
 ilies of his parishioners. Has some misfortune, 
 befallen one of them ? Let him be the first to 
 tender condolence and sympathy, and suitable 
 lessons of submission. Sickness, it may be, with 
 her wan countenance, her sunken, sallow eye, 
 her skeleton frame, her nights of restlessness 
 and painful vigils, her bitter herbs and pungent 
 agonies, may have become the dread inmate of 
 a family. Its head, perhaps, may be slowly 
 sinking into the grave, or some favorite son, to 
 
PASTORAL VISITING. 
 
 195 
 
 whom health seemed almost guaranteed, may 
 have been suddenly smitten down by a dire ail- 
 ment ; or a lovely daughter, the pride and hope of 
 the family, may have become a victim of that 
 slow, but certain slaughterer of worth and beauty, 
 the consumption. Here is a household of heavy 
 hearts, a house whose rooms are dark at noon, 
 and, over whose threshold the foot learns to 
 fall with lightened tread. Here a fond mother 
 strives to suppress her grief by the side of pain 
 and pining love, but hastens away to her closet 
 to weep and to pray. Now right here it is that 
 the preacher should hear the voice once spoken 
 to the Saviour, Behold, he whom thou lovest 
 is sick." And, like that precious Saviour, he 
 should hasten in due time to mingle the tears of 
 his sympathy with grief and bereavement. It 
 was over a scene of sickness and death that it is 
 recorded of Jesus, " He wept." Good seed may 
 be sown here with a most sanguine hope of a 
 fruitful harvest. There is nothing like the loss 
 of health to make one feel the worthlessness of 
 the world. Men will look up when drowning. 
 There is no cordial to the sick like that of the 
 frequent attention of a beloved friend. In this 
 dark day his heart is to be won, and the preacher 
 who cares both for my soul and body, who, 
 
196 HELPS TO THE PBOMOTTON OF REVIVALS. 
 
 Christ-like, is touched with the feelings of my 
 infirmities, will exert over me an omnipotent 
 power. How easily and appropriately, too, can 
 that pastor, when acquainted with the wants of 
 that sick family, bring their cases before God in 
 his prayers in the pulpit, and thus bend the 
 whole social heavens of the neighborhood in 
 sympathy over them. What efi^ect will such at- 
 tentions have upon a wayward son of that fam- 
 ily ? Long will the remembrance of it linger 
 like the fragrance of grace in the memories of 
 the survivors of that family after the pastor is 
 gone. If visiting the sick is written by inspira- 
 tion as a fruit of pure and undefiled religion on 
 the part of Christians in common, what is to be 
 thought of the pastor who would not make a 
 special exertion to pray by the bedside of the 
 sick, and to be ranked among the most active 
 sympathizers ? It may sometimes happen that 
 bread literally, as well as bread spiritually, is 
 needed at the house of the sick. Few can make 
 these delicate discoveries better than the faithful 
 pastor; and if it be not in his immediate power 
 to supply the want, he possesses special ability 
 to influence the action of others. It is scarcely 
 less necessary at times to win souls to Christ by 
 loaves and fishes than by expostulations and pray- 
 
PASTORAL VISITING. 
 
 197 
 
 ers. The two must often go together. As taught 
 in our Discipline, and indicated in our love- 
 feasts, the Church should take care of her poor ; 
 and pastoral visitation is essential to the dis- 
 charge of this duty. Let the preacher, then, 
 who would slowly but surely accumulate a re- 
 vival force in his flock ; who would combine all 
 those elements of force into one glorious whole, 
 and win a victory to his Lord, study well the 
 momentous duty of pastoral visiting ; study it 
 in its principles and in its details ; study well 
 when and how these visits will be Inade the most 
 effectual, remembering that man's extremity is 
 God's opportunity. 
 
 A death in a family is a voice from eternity. 
 There is no grief so utterly annihilating as that 
 of funeral grief By the side of the grave of 
 buried love, one feels as he can feel nowhere 
 else how like a frail bubble upon the billow are 
 the fairest of human hopes. The hardest heart 
 becomes as water when taking the last look at 
 the cofhn at the bottom of the grave, and listen- 
 ing to those leaden sounds which arise on the ear 
 w^ien the first clods of the valley drop upon 
 mortality's narrow house. It is said of^aflSic- 
 tions, tliat they are to us as the darkness of the 
 night, and that we would see no stars, and be 
 
198 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 
 
 ignorant of the majesty and magnificence of the 
 heavens over us, but for such darkness. It is 
 from out of the gloom of funeral sadness, that 
 the mo^t thoughtless can be induced to look up. 
 Amid such emergences, then, let the pastor be 
 present to point to the Star of Bethlehem. We 
 have viewed with grief and surprise, a growing 
 indifference among some of our ministers to 
 preaching at funerals. This is owing, in part, to 
 a w^ant of a due appreciation of the golden op- 
 portunities w^hich they furnish to the pastor, and, 
 in part, to an abuse of the institution. He who 
 feels it his duty to preach an elaborate discourse 
 of seventy minutes' length on every funeral occa- 
 sion, is sadly wanting in a sense of the appro- 
 priate, and with such a preacher, preaching 
 at funerals will soon become irksome. Not so, 
 w^e trust, w^ith him who can always speak on such 
 occasions, from fifteen to thirty minutes, and 
 speak such thoughts as the inspiration of the 
 occasion naturally suggests, and to a reflecting 
 mind, will suggest in almost infinite variety. 
 
 In pastoral visiting, w^e would not have the 
 preacher overlook, or treat with recklessness, the 
 customs and proprieties of life. It may not be 
 equally proper for him to call upon the family 
 at all hours of the day, and it may so happep 
 
PASTORAL TISITING. 
 
 199 
 
 that he may call at times when he finds the 
 family not in a fitting condition to receive him. 
 The family may have been thrown into some 
 confusion or hurry. Some of its members may 
 be just on the eve of leaving, and it may be 
 within a few minutes of car time, etc., etc. In 
 such cases, let him not be obtrusive. Let him 
 greatly modify his mission, or wave it altogether . 
 Good sense, good taste, good manners, and deep 
 piety, are the leading characteristics of a good 
 pastor. 
 
300 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIIL 
 
 EXCITEMENT. 
 
 METHODISTS NOT ALARMED — -EXCITEMENT FEARED BECAUSE IT 
 CONFLICTS WITH A CREED — SELDOM SUCCESSFULLY GUARDED 
 AGAINST — -DEFINITION OF METHODISM — EXTRAVAGANCES DEP- 
 RECATED — EXCITEMENT ANALYZED — FOUR CARDINAL SOURCES 
 OF EMOTION — RELIGIOUS^EXCITEMENT ALWAYS WHOLESOME. 
 
 Much is said about the danger of undue excite- 
 ment in revivals of religion. With some, it is 
 feared as the sin of witchcraft. As Methodists, 
 we have never been as fearful and unbelieving 
 on this subject as some of our neighbors. We 
 have always believed that excitement is essential 
 to revivals, and have not, from our experience, 
 been induced to be so very apprehensive as to 
 its consequences. The case might be very differ- 
 ent, were we like many of our neighbors, em- 
 barrassed by our creed in the case. If we be- 
 lieved that no one was converted, only the 
 "elect," and that when it pleased God, in his 
 eternal sovereignty, to touch a heart by his 
 Spirit, that a work was commenced, whicii 
 would continue by an absolute certainty, and 
 
EXCITEMENT. 
 
 201 
 
 that all others, who might give similar evidence 
 of a disposition to fly from the wrath to come, 
 if they apostatized, never had anything to apos- 
 tatize from — we say, if we labored under this 
 embarrassing creed, we should be very wary of 
 excitement, and rather than to have the kingdom 
 of heaven taken by violence, we would, like 
 our brethren alluded to, desire to have it taken 
 possession of in silence ; for it is really not a 
 little embarrassing to those who hold to the 
 creed, once in grace, always in grace, to witness 
 publicly a number of conversions, and to witness 
 these persons for a considerable length of time, 
 giving precisely the same evidence of their con- 
 version, exhibiting precisely the same spiritual 
 phenomena, and yet, when a portion of them 
 shall fall back into the world, to tell the world 
 that these persons never had any religion, and 
 that all the evidence they gave of the fact was 
 deceptive, that they were either self-deceived, 
 or, as hypocrites, they were deceiving others. 
 Such declarations are apt to cause reflecting men 
 of the world to come to some strange conclu- 
 sions. They are apt to say, how, then, do we 
 know that anybody is converted ? Our Calvin- 
 istic friends, however, who would guard against 
 excitement in revivals as if it were an epilepsy, 
 
202 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF KEYIVALS. 
 
 have not been always able to do so. With 
 nature and their creed at variance, the former 
 has often triumphed, and revivals with sobs of 
 distress, groans of anguish, and even shouts of 
 joy, have richly favored their sanctuaries. 
 Sometimes, the fearful and fastidious preacher 
 has become alarmed, at other times angry, but 
 much oftener has he melted under the Divine ^ 
 visitation, and flowed with the flood. 
 
 So far as it concerns the compactness, the 
 emphasis, the out-spokenness, and the social 
 warmth and adhesiveness of Methodism, it is no 
 more than regenerated human nature acting it- 
 self out naturally. We put on it no Procrustean 
 trammel to conform it to a creed, nor does our 
 sense of the befitting — our views of etiquette — 
 close its lips to the loud " roaring" of penitential 
 sorrow, or exultant shouting, when pardon brings 
 relief. We view religion as an exciting theme, 
 as one of the most exciting in the universe ; and 
 to yield to men, without let or censure, the priv- 
 ilege of becoming exceedingly excited on minor 
 topics of the day, and to contend for the ab- 
 sence of excitement on the all-momentous topics 
 of religion, seems to us an absurdity. But it 
 may be asked, whether extremes or extravagan- 
 ces have not occurred under such a system. 
 
EXCITEMENT. 
 
 203 
 
 Well, in reply, we say, singular as it may seem, 
 extremes and extravagances have occurred 
 among our neighbors, just about as often, in pro- 
 portion to the powerful revivals they have had, 
 as among ourselves. They are probably, then, 
 unavoidable, even with the exercise of the most 
 prudent foresight. We honestly confess to their 
 frequent existence, and have never seen a con- 
 vulsed body under religious excitement, without 
 more or less pain or apprehension. It has often 
 turned out, however, much better than our 
 fears, while the good that has resulted from re- 
 vivals, even where these extravagances have 
 been prominent, has so far exceeded the 
 evil, that we have looked upon the latter, as 
 spots on the sun. We would not, however, dis- 
 courage the exercise of a prudent discipline 
 here. There has, probably, been among us the 
 workings of a superstitious fear. We have 
 feared to curtail extravagances, lest we quench 
 the Spirit. 
 
 But is there not something peculiar to great 
 excitement in revivals, which, in its ultimate 
 results, endangers greatly the interests of relig- 
 ion? We have never deemed, or seen any- 
 thing peculiar about it. We think a rational 
 analysis of the whole matter will allay all 
 
204 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 
 
 rational fears. We know of but four cardinal 
 sources of emotion in the human heart, namely : 
 joy, sorrow, anger, appetite. Well, now, if 
 there be so much danger, as some tell us, of in- 
 flaming the passions, in seasons of revival, and 
 being carried away with a tempest of animal 
 fervor, to which of these great arteries of feeling 
 is the exciting appeal made ? Certainly not to 
 appetite, under which may be ranged epi- 
 cureanism, lust, sensuality, etc., etc. Nor does 
 it dangerously arouse, we think, the second great 
 leopard of our nature. It does not make people 
 hate one another. It does not instigate to wrath 
 or prompt men to assault each other's persons. 
 Anger and appetite, then, with all their numerous 
 brood, are passions not excited in religious ex- 
 citement. True, it does beget sorrow, profound 
 sorrow, a " godly sorrow, that worketh repent- 
 ance not to be repented of." This sorrow is a 
 most healthy one. It arises from the discoveries 
 which the sinner has made of himself. He ]s 
 sorry for his sins, his depravity, and for having 
 grieved so great grace. His sorrow may be very 
 profound, and manifest itself in very liigli 
 emotion. 
 
 But can there be anything dangerous m 
 such a class of emotions? The rather, do they 
 
EXCITEMENT. 
 
 205 
 
 not embody everything that is hopeful ? A sor- 
 row, too, that need not, under proper instruc- 
 tion, be of long continuance. It is a false view 
 of the philosophy of conversion, to suppose that 
 it must necessarily be preceded by a long season 
 of legal agony. Christ has made an atonement 
 for our sins, and he invites us to come im- 
 mediately to him, and demands of us no sor- 
 row by way of penance. It is to see our sins, 
 our guilt, our danger, and to feel our need of 
 him, believe, and he is our Saviour. The smitten 
 sinner merges from the profoundest grief, into 
 the sweetest joy known to human nature, ''peace 
 with God, through our Lord Jesus Christ," and 
 possessing the hope of eternal glory. Now, in 
 all this, is it at all surprising if tears, and sobs, 
 and shouts, and sighs, groans, and exultations, 
 should become the natural language of the oc- 
 casion ? But is there anything in all this class 
 of emotions calculated to fill one with appre- 
 hension in view of the excitement which char- 
 acterizes revivals ? We think not. 
 
 But there is another large stream of emotions 
 that flow here, whose fountain we have not 
 traced. There can be no joy where there is not 
 love, and with love to God, arises an increased 
 love for our fellows, and especially for kinsmen 
 
206 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 
 
 according to the flesh. The converted wife im- 
 mediately feels a solicitude for her husband, too 
 deep, it may be, for concealment. The converted 
 child becomes at once a missionary to the parent. 
 The converted sister is found at once praying 
 and weeping for her wayward brother, and thus 
 it is that all the loves of kindred are made to 
 receive a powerful impulse. But is there any- 
 thing to be apprehended from such an excite- 
 ment as this, an excitement in which one dear 
 relation is induced ardently to seek the best, 
 highest, and holiest interest of another? Ex- 
 citement in revivals ! Yes, there is always ex 
 citement present, the best, most wholesome of 
 all excitement. If we could have a revival on 
 earth without excitement, we could do more than 
 the angels in heaven, for they rejoice over every 
 sinner that repenteth. And as if their views of 
 the matter harmonized precisely with ours and 
 our experience, their solicitudes for the time 
 being would forget a whole Church, and con- 
 centrate upon one repenting, struggling sinner. 
 
 say unto you, that joy shall be in heaven 
 over one sinner that repenteth, more than over 
 ninety and nine just persons that need no repent- 
 ance." O blessed revival excitement! that calls 
 into vigorous activity none but the noblest emo- 
 
EXCITEMENT. 
 
 20T 
 
 tions of our nature, and while it thrills the Church 
 on earth with gladness and rapture, it has such 
 an affinity for the skies, such a congenialitj'' for 
 the atmosphere of the angels' home, that it adds 
 to their joys also. 
 
208 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF KEVIVALS. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 HAVE FAITH IN REVIVALS. 
 
 REVIVALS SCRIPTURAL — THEIR SPIRIT FLOWS IN THE PRAYERS OF 
 THE BIBLE, IN THE PROPHECIES OP THE BIBLE, IN THE PROMISES 
 OF THE BIBLE, AND IN BIBLE HISTORY — SECULAR HISTORY OF 
 REVIVALS — REVIVALS AND METHODISM — A SOLECISM. 
 
 The word revival implies its beginning-place. 
 It intimates the existence of some religion, and 
 the means of its promotion. It intimates the ex- 
 istence of spiritual things, though they may be 
 ready to die. It intimates that the revival must 
 commence in the Church, and may exist even 
 without resulting in the conversion of souls. 
 The word is Scriptural. And yet there are those 
 who look upon revivals as not a necessity, view 
 them as a kind of abnormal condition. Such 
 brethren do exceedingly err, and they w^ill be 
 seldom favored with revivals for their want of 
 faith in them. We would, if it were possible in 
 this chapter, say something that would increase 
 the confidence of all in revivals, and that would 
 induce Christians continually to work for them, 
 to work out not merely their own salvation, but, 
 
 I * 
 
HAVE FAITH IN REVIVALS. 
 
 209 
 
 as it were, the salvation of the Church, and 
 others. If we glance at the history of revivals, 
 we will find them of Bible origin, and that they 
 breathe in the prayers of the Church ; that they 
 murmur among the strings of the prophets' lyres, 
 and make up a large portion of the burden of 
 Bible promises. What means such praying as 
 this? "Turn us, O God of our salvation, and cause 
 thine anger toward us to cease. Wilt thou not 
 revive us again, that thy people may rejoice in 
 thee ? Show us thy mercy, O Lord, and grant 
 us thy salvation." Again : ''Return, we beseech 
 thee, O God of hosts ; look down from heaven, 
 and behold and visit this vine and the vineyard 
 which thy right hand hath planted, and the 
 branch that thou madest strong for thyself." 
 Again, hear the prophet Habakkuk : " O Lord, 
 revive thy work. In the midst of the years 
 make known ; in wrath remember mercy." 
 
 Now, let us consult the prophets of the Bible 
 concerning revivals. If we talk with these holy 
 men, they will tell us stories of revival transform- 
 ation, and rise before us in revival transport. 
 Here is a description from Joel, of Pentecost, 
 eight hundred years before it occurred : ''And it 
 shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out 
 
 my Spirit upon all flesh ; and your sons and 
 14 
 
210 HELPS TO THE PKOMOTION OF REVIVALS. 
 
 your daughters shall prophesy, your old men 
 shall dream dreams, your young men shall see 
 visions: and also upon the servants and upon 
 the handmaids in those days will I pour out my 
 Spirit." 
 
 Witli all this the promises of the Bible har- 
 monize. The wilderness and the solitary place 
 shall be glad for them : and the desert shall re- 
 joice, and blossom as the rose. It shall blossom 
 abundantly, and rejoice, even with joy and sing- 
 ing : the glory of Lebanon shall be given imto 
 it, the excellency of Carmel and Sharon, they 
 shall see the glory of the Lord, and the excel- 
 lency of our God. Strengthen ye the weak 
 hands, and confirm the feeble knees. Say to 
 them that are of a fearful heart. Be strong, fear 
 not: behold, your God will come with ven- 
 geance, even God with a recompense ; he will 
 come and save you. Then the eyes of the blind 
 shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall 
 be unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap 
 as a hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing; for 
 in the wilderness shall waters break out, and 
 streams in the desert. And the parched ground 
 shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs 
 of water; in the habitation of dragons, where 
 each lay, shall be grass with reeds and rushes. 
 
HAVE FAITH IN REVIVALS. 211 
 
 And a highway shall be there, and a way, and 
 it shall be called, The way of holiness ; the un- 
 clean shall not pass over it ; but it shall be for 
 those : the wayfaring man, though a fool, shall 
 not err therein. No lion shall be there, nor any 
 ravenous beast shall go up thereon ; it shall not 
 be found there; but the redeemed shall walk 
 there. And the ransomed of the Lord shall re- 
 turn, and come to Zion with songs and everlast- 
 ing joy upon their heads : they shall obtain joy 
 and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee 
 away." 
 
 The above glowing description of revival tri- 
 umphs has, in all probability, been as yet but 
 imperfectly realized. And from its teachings 
 we may be justified in the inference that in- 
 finitely greater revivals are yet to occur in the 
 Church before the millennium, than ever have 
 yet occurred. We are encouraged, then, at the 
 beginning of every revival, to expect great 
 things. Brethren, let us have faith in revivals. 
 
 If we consult the Bible historically^ we will 
 find many striking instances of revival manifes- 
 tation and reformation. Reference might be had 
 to the reigns of David and Solomon, Asa and 
 Jehoshaphat, Hezekiah and Josiah. Look, also, 
 at that great revival under Ezra, and then, again, 
 
212 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REVIVALS. 
 
 under John the Baptist. Then, again, at the re- 
 vival at Pentecost, in which no less than three 
 thousand the first day, and two the second, w^ere 
 converted to God. The holy fire then caught 
 in Samaria, and upon the dispersion of the disci- 
 ples, after the martyrdom of Stephen, revivals 
 broke out in the remoter parts of Judea, extend- 
 ing as far as the territories of Greece. Indeed, 
 the dawn of the Church's progress, as revealed in 
 the Bible, seems to have been by means of re- 
 vivals. Has it not been so ever since ? No fact 
 is more easy of demonstration. The Church has 
 always progressed, as it were, by revival steps. 
 Especially true is this of the Methodist Episco- 
 pal Church. Take away that part of her history 
 which appertains to revivals, and you have about 
 annihilated her history. Methodism moves for- 
 ward by revivals with as stern a necessitj^, if not 
 in as strict order, as doth the husbandman ac- 
 quire his wealth by preparing for and then gath- 
 ering his harvest in its season. Methodism with- 
 out revivals ! Methodist preachers who do not 
 believe in revivals ! Both are solecisms. 
 
 Were we to glance at the history of revivals 
 since the great one under Luther, we would find 
 that the pure faith of the Gospel caught in 
 France, Denmark, Holland, Switzerland, the Low 
 
HAVE FAITH IN KEYIYALS. 
 
 213 
 
 Countries, the mountains of Scotland, and north 
 of Ireland, and in Britain by the revival law. 
 A nd such has continued to be the fact in these 
 countries ever since. At an early day, in this 
 country, under the ministrations of Whitefield, 
 Coke, and Asbury, and their coadjutors ; also, 
 Brainerd, the Edwardses, Davies, and the Ten- 
 nents, the Church was saved from all the icy 
 horrors of formalism by means of revivals. And 
 but for the revivals that have characterized the 
 first half of the present century, w^here had been 
 the evangelism of America ? Could Methodism 
 spare the moral wealth, the spiritual spoils, 
 which she has gathered in revivals the last half 
 century? Take them from her, and she would 
 have nothing left. And when Methodism seeks 
 not, by the most direct means, the promotion of 
 revivals, when her attention shall be so directed 
 to the externals of the Church, the mere scaf- 
 folding, as to forget these weightier matters of 
 the law, then is Ichabod written upon her walls. 
 Her glory is departed and given to another. 
 Yes, we say, given to another. For Methodism 
 in some form, and under some name, will con- 
 tinue to exist, if it be true that the millennium 
 is to come. 
 
214 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF EEVIVALS. 
 
 CHAPTEE XXV. 
 
 HOLINESS. 
 
 DISTINCTIONS AND DEFINITIONS — THE THING AND NOT THE 
 
 MODE TO BE INVESTIGATED AGREEMENT AS IT RESPECTS THE 
 
 THING IN ESSENCE DEFINITION GIVEN — TRUE STANDARD 
 
 AROUND WHICH WE CAN HARMONIZE QUESTIONS WHICH LIE 
 
 BEYOND PROFITABLE INVESTIGATION THE THEORISTS SPE- 
 CIAL MEETINGS TO SEEK FOR CHRISTIAN HOLINESS THE 
 
 GRAND PECULIARITY — ADVANCING FROM THE " HOPE SO TO 
 THE " KNOW SO ^' HOLINESS UNDER THE DIFFERENT DISPENSA- 
 TIONS HOLINESS THE BIBLE's LAST DEMAND UPON THE WORLD. 
 
 The words holiness, sanctification, perfection, 
 etc., are used in Scripture in various shades of 
 meaning. With Methodists we believe they 
 mean a death to sin ; the death of indwelling 
 sin ; a resurrection to righteousness, accompanied 
 with a consciousness of loving God with all the 
 heart. Certain distinctions, however, have been 
 set up, occasioning among us much dispute, such 
 as the difference between regeneration and sanc- 
 tification, where and when the latter begins, and 
 what is implied in its completion. These and 
 other distinctions have led to as many defini- 
 tions as definers, and it is seldom that two writ- 
 
HOLINESS. 
 
 215 
 
 ers agree on the subject of Christian holiness, 
 where the mode of the thing's progress, rather 
 than the thing itself, has been tlie subject of dis- 
 cussion. Disputers have waxed warm, and even 
 parties and sectional organizations have been 
 temporarily created. Perhaps all will agree with 
 us, that very little has been done by these dis- 
 cussions to harmonize the views of the Church, 
 while, in some instances, the Christian's spiritu- 
 ality has been endangered. May it not be pos- 
 sible that we exceedingly err in attempting to 
 map out the process by w^hich the justified sin- 
 ner is advanced from incipient grace to perfect 
 holiness in the fear of the Lord? Not more than 
 a millionth part of what is to be known of the 
 mysterious laws of electricity is yet, perhaps, 
 known. Animal and vegetable chemistry, the 
 science of crystallization, are all yet unexplored 
 Africas in human thonglit. "Why should we be 
 so ready, then, to trace the way of the Eternal 
 Spirit in its contact with our own souls, about 
 which we have no knowledge whatever, beyond 
 a consciousness of being? Like little headlands 
 far off in the ocean, that lift their rocky or sandy 
 summits just above the surface, we know they 
 are there, but what mysterious line of submarine 
 Alps they may indicate, we may never know 
 
216 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF REYIYALS. 
 
 until " there shall be no more sea." Like these 
 marine phenomena, we say, are some passages 
 of holy writ. God breathed into the nostrils of 
 Adam, and he became a living soul. Now here 
 is a fact stated, but, like the little island summit 
 of the ocean, it is surrounded by mystery which 
 none may explain. The process of Omnipotence 
 in the production of animal life, is as easily a 
 thing of analysis, as the process of the Spirit in 
 creating in man the newness of the spiritual 
 life. Does not the Saviour place an embargo 
 upon inquiries in this direction? ''The wind 
 bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the 
 sound thereof, but canst not tell whence itcometh, 
 and whither it goeth: so is every one that is 
 born of the Spirit." " Who by searching can 
 find out God ?" " These things are too high for 
 me, I cannot attain unto them." Is it not so 
 dogmatic, so incapable of a demonstration to 
 which all will agree, to attempt to show just 
 how much or how little the Holy Spirit has 
 done for our depravity, at this or that successive 
 step in our spiritual history, that the work must 
 ever be an unprofitable one ? Rather let us speak 
 of the thing, and abandon disputation on the mode. 
 Who ever knew a sharp controversialist on the 
 subject of the mode of Christian holiness, that did 
 
HOLINESS. 
 
 217 
 
 not give evidence, before he got through, that he 
 wrote far less from experience than from theory ? 
 
 But is there no way to define this blessed 
 grace, so that Christians may have an entity to 
 think of, and not be bewildered by those floating, 
 contradictory definitions that have but too often 
 entered into the writings and teachings of indi- 
 viduals of the Church ? There is, thank God. 
 As Methodists, we all agree as to what the 
 grace is in essence. " It is to love God with all 
 thy heart, mind, and strength, and thy neighlor 
 as thyself y Here is Christian holiness, sancti- 
 fication, perfection. Show us a man whose 
 heart habitually glows with emotions so heav- 
 enly, and we care not to ask him how, or when, 
 or where he received the blessing. In minute- 
 ness of detail he may not know himself. In our 
 view, we have no idea that Christians generally 
 do, and yet may they be as conscious of this 
 blessing, as of any other feeling apprehensible 
 by consciousness. Here, then, is a definition of 
 the Saviour. Let us harmonize around it. Let 
 us view it as an ultimate truth, as the ultimatum 
 of our knowledge in the matter. Theories and 
 speculations aside, let us seek to know that 
 God is supremely loved, and then are we 
 supremely blessed. 
 
218 HELPS TO THE PrwOMOTION OF EEVIVALS. 
 
 It we lose sight of the polar star above named, 
 we will find ourselves perpetually involved in 
 questions that only bewilder, and which multiply 
 words without knowledge. May not questions 
 underlie this subject equally profound with 
 many which might be mentioned, the solution 
 of which, good men are willing to wait the dawn 
 of eternity's light? The mystery of the origin 
 of evil, for example. How the immense deluge 
 of moral and physical suffering that surges so 
 indiscriminately in the world, can be harmo- 
 nzied with an all-presiding benevolence ; how 
 Providence can support a kingdom of order in 
 the world, and bring about every event accord- 
 ing to the foreknowledge and counsels of his 
 will, and yet man be absolutely free ; how pre- 
 science can be reconciled with human freedom, 
 are all questions which seem to lie beyond the 
 limits of successful investigation. He who is 
 perpetually puzzling himself about them, to the 
 neglect of the weightier matters of the law, re- 
 sembles the old Jews, who wandered in the des- 
 erts of Arabia with a sunny Canaan, with golden 
 fruit inviting their possession, just at hand. Do 
 not treat the subject of holiness metapbysicall3\ 
 Do not theorize until you become transcendent- 
 al. Do not establish a train of notions of your 
 
HOLINESS. 
 
 219 
 
 own, and defend them until the spirit of bigotry, 
 if not Phariseeism, takes possession of your soul, 
 and you subject yourself to the oft-heard cen- 
 sure, that those who talk most about Christian 
 holiness, seem to be most wanting in the posses- 
 sion of the spirit of it. There are limits to 
 human knowledge, and the circle with the most 
 knowing is very limited. 
 
 Revival preaching should insist on Christian 
 holiness. It should set up the standard we have 
 named. It should insist upon the definition of 
 Jesus. It should neither ask nor want any better. 
 Its vocabulary should be Scriptural. Away here 
 with human inventions ; such words and phrases 
 as "entire consecration," seeking the ''second 
 blessing," etc., etc. We have been often asked 
 our views in reference to the propriety of hold- 
 ing meetings specially for Christian holiness. 
 They may not have been without their use. In 
 our view, however, they are generally of doubt- 
 ful propriety. We should seek to promote Chris- 
 tian holiness at every meeting. Besides, there is 
 a kind of solecism of language here. A meeting 
 to seek for Christian holiness cannot, when 
 justly analyzed, be any other than a meeting in 
 which Christians are seeking more religion, for 
 Christian holiness is the sum of all religion, 
 
220 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF PvEVIYALS. 
 
 generic of the whole thing. But as this defi- 
 nition would give such a meeting no marked 
 character, it will generally be found that those 
 circles of brethren who hold such meetings, 
 have some particular theory to support. They 
 are in possession of some new view upon this 
 subject, in contradistinction to their brethren. 
 They reduce the subject of Christian holiness, 
 which is generic to something which is specific. 
 They proceed in the wrong direction. In the 
 place of advancing from species to genera, they 
 proceed from genera to species. The results are 
 seldom satisfactory. Besides, why not hold 
 special meetings for an increase of faith, hu- 
 mility, etc. ? 
 
 We off*er the above remarks on this delicate 
 subject, with the profoundest deference to the 
 judgments and more extended experiences of our 
 brethren. "While we are opposed to singleizing 
 or technicalizing this blessed doctrine among us, 
 after some of the modes above liinted at, we 
 nevertheless believe in giving it marked promi- 
 nence in all our worship and religious teachings. 
 If the doctrine be not peculiar to Methodists, we 
 have always held it peculiarly. In theory, our 
 neighbors may believe in the possibility of lov- 
 ing God with all the heart, but, in bondage to 
 
HOLINESS. 
 
 221 
 
 their creeds, they will not assume to confess it. 
 With them conversions are "hopeful." They 
 " hope that they have obtained a hope." They 
 hope that God is supreme in their affections, but 
 will not trust to the evidence of consciousness 
 and good works, to advance them to any further 
 belief, to the perfect freedom of the sons of God. 
 Methodists have advanced here from the hope 
 so to the hnow so. Here is our grand peculiar- 
 ity, and it should be ever held up before our 
 people. Holiness, this has always been our 
 watcliword ; to spread it over all lands, our ob- 
 ject. In this, we do no more than act Scriptur- 
 ally. If we look into the old dispensation, we 
 will find holiness, or moral purity, among the 
 first inculcations of God. A hundred physical 
 objects that met the Jewish eye almost daily, 
 had a tongue to speak to him of holiness. The 
 furniture of the tabernacle, and the vessels of the 
 sanctuary, were eloquent with the theme. Proph- 
 ecy speaks of its diffusion, and points to that 
 period in its triumphs when "holiness to the 
 Lord" would be stamped upon the bells of the 
 herd. The Son of man came down from heaven, 
 and among the first words of his mission were, 
 "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall 
 see God." The great apostle to the Gentiles 
 
222 HELPS TO THE PROMOTION OF KEVIVAL8. 
 
 takes up the blessed burden, and sends it rever- 
 berating along the centuries. " The very God 
 of peace sanctify you wholly ; and I pray God 
 your whole spirit, and soul, and body, be pre- 
 served blameless unto the coming of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ." And at the closing up of revela- 
 tion, the sealing up of the days of vision, a door 
 is opened in heaven. The jasper- walled and 
 golden-streeted Jerusalem is revealed, the me- 
 tropolis of the saints ; and the closing w^ords of 
 the Bible are uttered down to the world from its 
 entrance gates: "And there shall in no wise 
 enter into it anything that defileth." Holiness! 
 it is the ark of the Lord among our doctrinal 
 ideas. It is not the shibboleth of a sect, the 
 dogma of a denomination, but it is " Christ in us 
 the hope of glory." It is the very essence of our 
 spiritual life, the vital artery of our whole sys- 
 tem. It is the central sun around which the 
 satellites all revolve in harmony, rejoicing in its 
 broad, warm, genial, life-imparting smile. O, 
 for holiness individually in the membership! 
 O, for a holy ministry ! Together, they make 
 an omnipotent Church. " Yerily I say unto 
 you, if ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, 
 ye shall say unto this mountain, Kemove hence 
 to yonder place ; and it shall remove ; and noth- 
 
HOLINESS. 
 
 223 
 
 ing shall be impossible unto you." We have 
 often known revivals of religion to commence 
 under the preaching of holiness, and though 
 there are a diversity of operations, and the offi- 
 ciating minister must be the judge of what is 
 most fitting in the case, yet we have always 
 considered it a safe place to begins 
 
 THE END.