not especial or remarkable efforts; for the preacher, at that time, was in the habit of preaching eight or ten sermons in every week. Not content with preaching in every part of his large parish, he constantly complied with requests from other towns and places, and we hear of him at Bristol, Cheltenham, Gloucester, Worcester, and London. He was, in fact, “in labours more abundant;" and by the time he was forty-seven years old, he was a broken-down man, who, had he remained at Huddersfield, would have found a grave before he had passed his fiftieth year.

Such were some of the agents employed by the Holy Spirit of God to lift England out of the gulf of worldliness and unbelief, in which, in the middle of the eighteenth century, it had unquestionably been sunk. They performed the work for which they had been raised up ;- but now it remains for us to scan and to estimate the results which followed.

The universal law of the human race is, Deterioration. At all times, and in all countries, we find an Abraham followed by an Isaac, and an Isaac by a Jacob, and Jacob by a Reuben, and a Simeon and Levi. David is succeeded by Solomon, and Solomon by Rehoboam. Such seems to be the unvarying rule. And so, carrying our eyes along the line, we find it here. Whitfield and Rowlands, and Venn and Grimshawe, were succeeded by Newton, and Scott, and Cecil ;-good men, sound in the faith, and constant in their labours. Of each we may say, “He was more honourable than the thirty, but he attained not unto the first three.” (2 Sam. xxiii. 23.) A little later came Simeon and Robinson and Daniel Wilson; and, when they departed, the present generation arose. Of it we must not say much. It differs from the cluster of heroes of whom Mr. Ryle has spoken, in several important respects. Each of them might have taken up the apostle's words, “Having food and raiment, let us be therewith content." Each of them could preach, if pulpits were open to him, eight or ten times a week; and could preach sermons which brought hundreds to their knees. Each of them will present himself, at last, to the Master, saying, “Behold I and the children which God hath given me," and will be attended by hundreds or thousands of those “whose hearts God had opened” under their ministry. But the progress of deterioration has been unceasing, until, now, followers (in doctrine) of Grimshawe and Romaine will sometimes refuse posts of usefulness, if the endowment is less than £500 a year; will compose, with difficulty, one sermon a week, and, if a second is required, will be driven to reproduce an old one; and, as one natural consequence, are wholly undisturbed by the visits of men crying out, “What must I do to be saved ?" This change is quite evident: we see it on every side. Is it wise, is it right, to disregard it, or to keep silence on the subject ?

A remarkable feature of the case is this: The cleansing process has gone on, and is still going on; while the cleansing power, so far as the pulpit is concerned, has almost disappeared. A century ago, the distance between a Whitfield or a Grimshawe, and the mass of the people, was prodigious. It was like the distance between Elijah and the people who gazed wonderingly upon him in Mount Carmel. But the leaven then “hid” has so worked, that the mass has been leavened, and now, little new leaven is to be found. The immense distance between prophet and people has disappeared; and both prophet and people appear as one ;--all “cleansed,” but few sayed; all “religious,” but few Christian.

Look back to the middle of the last century, as we see it in the pictures of Hogarth, and in the writings of Sterne, Fielding, and Smollett. The very name of the first of these three novelists speaks volumes. For the idea of the publication of such books as those of Sterne, by a clergyman of the Church of England, in the year 1869, will strike every one as morally impossible ; and the reception of such a writer as a favourite in society, after such publication, as a thing wholly inconceiv. able. We thus see, at a glance, the progress of English society in this cleansing, during the century which has elapsed since Laurence Sterne's death.

But if we have now no Sternes, neither have we a Whitfield, or a Rowlands, or a Grimshawe. The people, generally, have advanced, in a moral sense ; but their teachers have not the power which a few chosen “stars” (Rev. i. 20) had a hundred years ago. The two classes, the teachers and the taught, have come nearer to each other; the vast gap which once separated them has nearly disappeared.

In some cases it has more than disappeared. In London especially, there are many congregations which contain, each of them, several men of more talent, learning, and critical acumen, than the teacher who occupies the pulpit.* One result is natural, though it is deplorable. Some of these men of intellect grow impatient, and give expression to their impatience in letters to the Spectator, the Saturday Review, and the Pall Mall Gazette. And these publications have access to the best houses and the best families in all parts of the kingdom, and are eagerly devoured by the rising youth of both sexes. The consequence is, a growing and widening belief among our educated classes, that the religion now taught is deficient-has been “ found out," and is soon to be succeeded by something better. Thus, Tennyson sighs for “the Christ that is to be ;" and thus the last Broad-church volume speaks of the religion of the future” as something to be shortly expected to appeara religion in which the Bible is only to be "an old Jewish record,” and in which neither heaven nor hell is to have any place!

Multitudes of Christians are mourning at this state of things; but not many of them trace it to its real source—the decline of the power of the pulpit. No one would ever have talked to Whitfield, or Venn, or Grimshawe, about a “religion of the future;" he would have felt and known that the phrase was sheer folly. It comes into use, now, because men feel the ineptitude of much of the preaching of the day; and after listening to inconclusive, pointless sentences, heartlessly read from a manuscript, for some five and twenty minutes, sigh out, “There must be something better than this; or, if not, why, sad and hopeless are the prospects of man !”

And here is to be found the real cause of the success of Satan's two chief devices of the present day-superstition and unbelief, under their disguises of Ritualism and Rationalism. A certain amount of “religion” has been introduced into our social system. The young are carried to a certain length; and then they begin to read the Spectator and the Saturday Review on the Saturday, and to listen to a cold, heartless "essay on a text of Scripture” on the Sunday. The brilliant journalist carries the day. But they do not throw off all religion—they merely say, “ This sort of thing won't do." And then, physical constitution decides their course. Some of them have “the organ of veneration” largely developed ;—these go to St. Alban's, to All Saints' in Margaret-street, and to other churches where a gorgeous ritual is to be found. Fine music, fine “vestments," and much parade, becomes their “religion.” But a larger class goes off to scepticism in various forms and degrees. Thousands still go to church, but plainly avow, in conversation, that “they are no believers in the infallibility of the Bible ; and hold the idea of eternal punishment in utter abhorrence.” The Ritualists delude themselves with the notion, that the larger portion of the community is coming over to them. But they are frightfully mistaken. From several different sources of information have we heard very recently, and from men who had peculiar means of knowing what they asserted—that the spread of loose, indefinite, but radically-sceptical notions, among men and women of the higher classes, is just now going on at a fearfully rapid rate.

Yet it is nothing new, even among ourselves. We have been

often reminded, that just before the advent of the Whitfield and Wesley revival, Bishop Butler wrote, in these deplorable terms, of the state of religion which he then saw around him :

" It is come, I know not how, to be taken for granted by many persons, that Christianity is not so much as a subject of inquiry; but that it is now at length discovered to be fictitious. And, accordingly, they treat it as if, in the present age, this were an agreed point among all people of discernment, and as if nothing remained, but to set it up as a principal subject of mirth and ridicule ; as it were by way of reprisal, for its having so long interrupted the pleasures of this world.”

We have not yet fallen back to this point; but there is, at least, too much reason to fear that our present progress is quite in that direction.

And surely this ought to lead to two things-self-examination, and calling upon God. But of this we do not see much. A recent writer* has forcibly observed —

“ The people of God, taken generally, are slumbering and sleeping. The exceptions are so few, that, in Scripture language, they are 'men wondered at.' .... The Church still sleeps on, while the warning language of our Lord receives its awful accomplishment,-that, 'While men slept, the enemy came, and sowed tares among the wheat.' .... We have now come to a great crisis in the spiritual world. Everywhere we perceive a spring-tide of Romanism and Infidelity setting in on the world, which bids fair to sweep before it every half-hearted professing Christian. . . . . But how unfit is the Church of God to enter this last great battle-field! How divided, disorganized, distracted !”

The same writer admits the existence of “cheering signs in some parts of the vineyard; in the spirit of missionary and evangelistic enterprise at home and abroad; in education of all kinds and among all classes, extending to many hitherto regarded as the mere outcasts of society.” But then, reverting to the main point, he asks, with earnestness, “Why are so few souls in our day turned to the Lord ?” And the only answer he finds is, “ The slumbering state of the Church of God.” He cites the dying charge of Paul to his beloved son Timothy, and proceeds :

“But where a church with its minister is asleep—this charge is practically forgotten. Every Sabbath, many souls go to such a sanctuary, requiring the voice of a son of thunder in heart-thrilling tones to awaken them to their tremendous danger;—but how often do they return without having heard one single disturbing word ? Others-sinking to ruin in self-deception or backsliding-require vigorous, searching, arousing words--sharper than a two-edged sword—to arrest their downward course, but, in such places, they

* The Present Crisis of the Church of God. By E. Cornwall. London, 1868.

hear then not. Others may go to the sanctuary, anxious about their soul's salvation (by the blessing of God on other means), earnestly hoping to hear the Jailer's question plainly answered — the way of peace with God clearly set forth. They hear it not. But, in place of the heartfelt truths suited to these urgent requirements, there may be a sermon addressed to a large congregation, in which, too probably even in the judgment of charity, there are a great number of unconverted and therefore perishing souls, as if, with scarce an exception, they were all good Christians; and discussing, with some degree of learning and ingenuity, an appropriate text of Scripture, or speculative point of doctrine! Oh! the day of judgment will make fearful disclosures of the real causes, both direct and indirect, why many souls have gone down to destruction!

“It is in vain for such preachers to protest that when they style all the congregation indiscriminately their Christian friends,' they only mean—the people of God. The question is not—what they mean ?--but what do their habitual words manifestly imply ? And when the unconverted, perishing part of the congregation, hear themselves, without any discrimination, styled Christians,' are they not too ready to comfort their hearts with the delusive, flattering words, and sink into still deeper self-deception? Did John the Baptist thus deceive his unconverted hearers ? No. For when he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees come to his baptism, he exclaimed in plainest language, 'O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come ?' And if we follow out the ministry of our blessed Lord and His apostles, we perceive the same uncompromising, faithful, yet loving arraignment before God, of every unconverted soul, as even then living in rebellion, and every instant exposed to eternal destruction."

His conclusion is natural,—we might say, inevitable. What the Church needs is an awakening. But this is not in her own power. All the concentrated strength of all the Universities and clerical colleges would not suffice to produce one George Whitfield or Daniel Rowlands. But Scripture points out, in divers places, what the Church could do. And the first thing, evidently, is, to understand her own position, and no longer to go on, crying, "I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing." And the next as plainly is, to “cry mightily unto God:” “ 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."

And surely this might be done, not slightly, or casually, or occasionally. “Turn ye unto me, saith the Lord, with all your heart; and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning. Rend your hearts, and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your God.” “ Gather the people, sanctify the congregation, assemble the elders ;-let the priests, the ministers of the