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 consideration 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 entertain, yet are we compelled to entertain it. We live in a day when the obstacles to the spread of a spiritual and experimental Christianity 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 contempt for the Church, its services and its ordinances. 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

realize the great fact of all history--that religion and worship of some sort are but the cropping out of man's strongest instincts; and seeing that human nature was not made to do without some such things, they are not destructionists 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 rendezvous of a large representation of the social circles; (though everybody affects to despise aristocracy and fashion, yet are they really always and ever the idol of the popular heart;) resorts

where the socially esthetic, chastened and refined by the sacred, finds a ready and free indulgence. 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, filibustering expeditions against her. Their reasonings, instincts, memories, all yet bind them to the Church. Why, then, has not the Church more power over them? Why the genuine phenomena 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 membership on the part of any of the evangelical branches of the Church family. In particular localities such diminutions are not uncommon; but, as a whole, statistics 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

at Pentecost, there is an immense and lamentable 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 foretells the storm, while the golden, hazy light of the softest calm sheds beauty over the landscape, and the balmy zephyrs do not turn aside the butterfly in his flight, so every deeply-spiritual 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 external 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 consist in the gorgeousness of her temple (a splendor 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,

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 sinner? 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 masculine 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 respects, 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, because the obstacles to be overcome are stronger; but here we anticipate the question, which we will again ask, and then answer: Why are not conversions more frequent? Why are not mani