"Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another, and the Lord hearkened and heard it; and a book of remembrance was written before 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 subject, 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.

CHAPTER VIII.

REVIVALS A WANT OF OUR NATURE AND A NECESSITY OF THE CHURCH.

DEFINITION OF REVIVALS-ALL HISTORY ILLUSTRATES THEIR NECESSITY 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 REVIVAL 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 extraordinary, 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 exodus to the "day of Pentecost," and from thence to Luther or Whitefield and Wesley, and from Wesley to the days of the Tennetts and Edwardses of New-England "to this present," that such religious states and religious social conditions occurring frequently, or at longer intervals, have

been indispensable to the Church's spiritual progress, 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 subject 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 revival 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 be, 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,

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 excitement 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, individually, or the Church in the aggregate, would present nothing but the manifestation of the same unvarying monotony. Nature herself, 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.

Some such religious phenomena, then, as revivals, 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 governed disproportionately by emotion and feeling, there being little intelligence and faith present. 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 matrimonial days, meetings and greetings, which lift the heart of home afresh into third-heaven visions, and open the tear fountain as if the