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REVIEW.

Lectures on Revivals of Religion; by W. B. Sprague, D. D. with an Introductory Essay; by Leonard Woods, D. D. 8vo. pp. 484. Albany, 1832.

The Christian Church, according to the prediction of her founder, has gone steadily onward in the work of subduing the earth unto herself; idol after idol has been cast 'to the moles and to the bats,' and no hand, raised against her, hath prospered. Persecution came from without,-and she has endured it; envy and strife from within, and she has survived them. Like her Divine Head, she has had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings; yea, moreover, of bonds and imprisonment; yet unchecked by man's errors and his frailties, and urged on by an agency higher and more majestic than his, the little stone, cut out without hands, has become a great mountain, which crushes every obstacle into dust, and will never cease to expand until it fills the earth. As in every thing else, so also in the manner of her progress, Christianity is distinguished from all the forms of false religion. These reach a certain height, more or less quickly, and then decline: and indifference on the part of their followers, the first and sure mark of decline, is also the first and sure mark of decay. History does not furnish us with an instance, wherein, a false system of religion, having reached this point, has afterwards been able to advance a single step, or even to regain the ground which it had lost. On the other hand, the course of the Christian religion has been marked by alternate successions of lukewarmness and energy, or rather of spiritual deadness and spiritual life. There is a time, as in the first ages, and at the Reformation, when the church seems instinct with life, and the Spirit raises up earnest and laborious men, full of zeal and love, and thousands are added to the church daily of such as shall be saved. Then the churches have rest; and rest (except in a chosen few, whom God reserves to himself as the salt of the earth) gives rise to slackness of effort, ending in a slumber nigh unto death. It is at this time, which from analogy we should look on as the sure indication of decay, that the Angel of the Lord descends upon the pool, and its waters rise, and swell out into a wider and yet a wider circle. It is indeed a humbling, but an enspiriting and comforting thought, that God has wrought so wondrously for his own cause, and that we have done so little; while, alas! we have done so much to thwart and to oppose it. Amidst the passions and the prejudices, the faint-heartedness, the intolerance, and the selfish and worldly spirit of its builders, the temple of the Lord has arisen, far more glorious than the house wherein he dwelt of old, springing up, like it,

without the sound of the hammer, or any tool of iron, and by its graceful proportions, shewing to the astonished nations that it was made and fashioned by the finger of God.'

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Believing that we are fast speeding on to the final triumph of our holy religion, and believing also, that we live in one of those epochs, when, after a long and a deadly slumber, the church is to receive from on high another onward impulse (shall we not say the last?)-it is right, and it is most interesting, to try whether we can discern in the signs of the times the leadings of God's providence; lest not discerning them, we be found striving against God. It is impossible for any one to look back on the last forty or fifty years, without being struck with the new aspect which the church bears to those that are without. There has been a marked revival of the Missionary spirit, and, as it were, a new recognition of our duty in regard to the souls of our brethren. Bible and Missionary societies multiply around us; pious and zealous labourers have gone forth into the harvest; wealth and intelligence are ready to support and to direct them, and prayer is exerting its mighty energies in their behalf. And this new state of things has been brought about without any apparent cause; it has not been set in motion, neither has it been urged forward by men of high and commanding talents; or by the princes and great ones of the earth. The prevailing stream of literature and public opinion, in our land at least, is decidedly opposed to it; and yet, almost without our knowing how, we find ourselves in the midst of a machinery, the vastness of whose operations surprises, while it delights our hearts. Foremost in this work of faith, and labour of love, are the two great nations of England and America, the van of civilization, and the hope of knowledge and of freedom. Their ships are in every sea, their Missionaries in every land, and their praises in the mouths of all the saints. Through their means, there is scarce a tribe on the earth, that may not read the Book of Life in its own tongue; and many, many who now shine as stars in the kingdom of heaven, but for them, would have died, as they lived, in the darkness. Much indeed remains to be done; but the same God, who put it into their hearts to make use of the means, will not leave those means without his blessing. They have been employed but for a short time, and the result is yet as nothing; but it is not a new thing which they have to effect. They have to combat again with their old and often conquered enemies, Superstition and Infidelity, and worldly-mindedness. Greater and wiser, and more warlike nations than any which now remain without the bounds of the Church of Christ, have already bowed before them; and the Lord's arm is not shortened, nor is his love to his creatures less.

But though the frame-work from without be sufficiently imposing, there may be rottenness at the core; and we must

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look within, for a corresponding state of things, ere we pronounce that the church is really awakened from her slumbers. The zeal for proselytism, unless it derive its origin and its progress from a renovation of moral character-a revival of Christian spirit-is at best an equivocal symptom. It is not to be denied, that religion has in a great measure been set aside from the public mind, by the flood of half knowledge suddenly let in on it, by the wars and tumults of ambition, and the fiercer shock of political opinions; yet amidst them all, it has been doing its peaceful work, and we believe, that in Britain there is a great and an increasing spirit of piety, quite sufficient to account for all the external means which have been employed. These, however, have already opened for themselves a wider field than they can fill: and herein is the difficulty. Christian piety will find it easy to keep up what she has done; but the world is open to her. She can send out her soldiers by fifties, but tens of thousands are needed. A work is before her, not too great, if all who love the name of Christ were his followers, but infinitely beyond her means, while things continue as they are. Every day, surer than the morning and the evening sacrifice, knees are bent, and prayers ascend to God, that he would begin this good work among us-that 'he would pour out his Spirit on all flesh. God is the hearer and the answerer of prayer. Will he not hear his people? we are confident that he will, and that speedily.

Perhaps we have unconsciously carried our theory farther than it will bear. It wants but one step to render it complete, and we will not disguise our belief, that, that step has been triumphantly added to it by the Revivals in America. But dropping at present the theoretical for the practical, we shall endeavour to select, chiefly from Dr. Sprague and his coadjutors in the volume now before us, a short but distinct account of the nature of Revivals, their results, and the means generally made use of for effecting them.

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Many, perhaps most of our readers, may have formed their notions of a revival from the caricatures of Mrs. Trollope, or the spirited but somewhat injudicious pages of Mr. Colton and in this they will be but too well borne out by the example of the two leading religious Reviews in our own country; which on the part of the latter at least, is sufficiently out of keeping, since the standard work on the subject, written too by such a writer as Jonathan Edwards, is not at all difficult to be met with. We know that in many cases, at the bare name of Revival, a phantom rises up, of anxious seats, and camp meetings, and shrieks, and swoonings, and all the disgusting mixture of enthusiasm, and hypocrisy, and profaneness, which constitutes a holy fair. We entreat our readers to dismiss all such unworthy pre

judices from their minds, for the simple reason, that they are utterly groundless, and to lend their earnest attention to a work which TWENTY-TWO of the soundest divines of the most shrewd and commonsense people on the globe, here unanimously declare to be the work of God. We beg of them to remember also, that the master-mind of Jonathan Edwards has sounded its depths; and who shall make a farther throw? He has subjected it to the most searching analysis; he has given due weight to every objection; he has tried it, as silver is tried, and this is his conclusion.

"Now if such things are enthusiasm, and the fruits of a distempered brain, let my brain be evermore possessed of that happy distemper! If this be distraction, I pray God that the world of mankind may be all seized with this benign, meek, beneficent, beatifical, glorious distraction. I have had" he continues," opportunity to observe many instances here, and elsewhere, and though there are some instances of great affections, in which there has been a great mixture of nature with grace, and, in some, a sad degenerating of religious affections; yet there is that uniformity observable, which makes it easy to be seen, that in general it is the same Spirit from whence the work in all parts of the land has originated."

Solemn and thoughtful words! and surely now more than ever "glad tidings of great joy" to Christians. Yet however good and beneficial a Revival may be, however backed by great and holy names, ere it commands our exertions and our prayers, we must submit it to the test of the Scriptures.

"No matter," say Dr. Sprague," what else may be said in favour of Revivals; no matter how important they may have been regarded, or how much we may have been accustomed to identify them with the prosperity of Christ's cause; if it can be fairly shown that they are unscriptural, we are bound unhesitatingly to conclude that we have mistaken their true character. God's word is to be our standard in every thing; and whenever we suffer considerations of expediency in reference to this or any other subject, to prevail against that standard, we set up our own wisdom against the wisdom of the Highest, and we are sure thereby to incur his displeasure. To the law and the testimony then be our appeal."

It does not follow from this, that we are to look into the Bible for any express mention of Revivals, or for any details of the means we are to use in promoting them. A Revival of religion being merely the further spread and deeper hold of Christian piety among a community, is in its very nature eminently Scriptural.

"And even were we to admit that what we call a Revival of Religion, so far as human agency and influence are concerned, were not directly required by God's word, nevertheless, if it can be shown that it is consistent with the spirit of God's word, no man has a right to gainsay it, on the ground that it is unscriptural.” ”—p. 29.

We will not follow Dr. Sprague further, though he spends several pages in labouring to prove, that if a work be strongly implied, if not absolutely enjoined, in the word of God, and the measures we make use of to effect it, be in no wise contrary to his word, we may safely conclude that all is, as it ought to be. If Mr. Colton be

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liable to the charge of over-rashness, Dr. Sprague is just as liable to the charge of over-caution. Indeed we require to read their books, before we can rightly appreciate the unapproachable excellence of Edwards, combining more than all the ardour and fervency of the one, with more than all the sober and discriminating spirit of the other. Our business, however, is not with Dr. Sprague's book, but with the subject of which it treats. So long then as a revival will bear the test of Scripture, we need have little fear of any excesses arising from enthusiasm, at least the enthusiasm of religious emotions. " For," says the author of the Natural History of Enthusiasm," the Scriptures-our only safe guide on such points, while they are replete with the language of empassioned devotion, and while they contain a multitude of urgent and explicit exhortations, tending to stimulate fervency of prayer, offer no cautions against any such supposed excesses of piety."

Standing on the sure foundation of Scripture, and ready to bring every thing we meet with to the testimony, we may now safely approach nearer, and look on the process, as it is actually at work. Dr. Sprague thus describes it:

"It is a revival of scriptural knowledge; of vital piety; of practical obedience. The term Revival of Religion has sometimes been objected to, on the ground that a revival of any thing supposes its previous existence; whereas in the renovation of sinners, there is a principle implanted which is entirely new. But though the fact implied in this objection is admitted, the objection itself has no force; because the term is intended to be applied in a general sense, to denote the improved religious state of a congregation, or of some other community. And it is moreover applicable, in a strict sense, to the condition of Christians, who, at such a season, are in a greater or less degree revived; and whose increased zeal is usually rendered instrumental to the conversion of sinners. Wherever then you see religion rising up from a state of comparative depression to a tone of increased vigor and strength; wherever you see professing Christians becoming more faithful to their obligations, and behold the strength of the church increased by fresh accessions of piety from the world; there is a state of things which you need not hesitate to denominate a Revival of Religion."

Without entering on the long list of explanations and provisos, by which he has fenced and guarded this definition, we shall have recourse to the graphic and faithful pages of Edwards for a fuller description of a revival. The only difference between his time and ours is, that the influence, and the appearances, of which he makes mention, now present themselves on a far grander and more magnificent scale, embracing every denomination of Christians, and scattering amongst them all the rich graces of a Father's love.

"Whatever imprudences there have been, and whatever sinful irregularities; whatever vehemence of the passions, and heats of the imagination, transports, and ecstacies; whatever error in judgment, and indiscreet zeal; and whatever outcries, faintings, and agitations of body; yet it is manifest that there has been of late a very uncommon influence upon the minds of a

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