Sad and fatal mistake!

lennium near at hand. 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 Archimedes, favored with the fulcrum of modern discovery, 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 intellectual; now the intellectual controls the emotional. Not that the laws of sympathy have changed, but the intellect, dependent upon different laws and circumstances for its growth, has been placed under those circumstances that have developed its power. Not that true earnestness is any less appreciated, or less essential. Not that in the storming of the city of Mansoul, (to use a thought of that incomparable dreamer of Bedford jail,) Mr. Wet-eyes is any less needed; but

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 forefathers, 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 evidences 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 Malakoff 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 enthusiasm that disdains the appropriate means, on the one hand, and from that self-sufficiency which forgets that it is "Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord," on the other.

CHAPTER V.

HINDERANCES TO REVIVALS-PLAN OF RESISTANCE PROPOSED.

GERMAN RATIONALISM- THE EMIGRATION OF ERROR SPIRITUALISM AND ITS COGNATES DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE ETHICAL AND THE DOCTRINALA DEFECT IN THE PULPITAN ILLUSTRATION 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 formidable obstacle in the way of revivals, a growing 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 Reformation on the European continent, were insidious, diffusive, 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 popularly ignored. And as the spiritual life ap

proached the mysterious, outsiders were willing to give to "mystics," to "fanaticism," to "grayheaded orthodoxy, and superannuated old age,' the full monopoly of these things. The mysticism 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 conversion to sanctification, as described by such writers as Professors Upham and Mahan, Madame 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

for Gospel spirituality, the Church and the 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 experimental 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 between 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 technical, we mean, that it is wont to content itself by quoting some of the language of the "twentyfive articles," the standard authorities, and appropriate passages of Scripture. This, after all, we apprehend, to the popular mind, is neither explaining nor expounding. It is well enough,