The following preface is an award called Lectures on Revival of Religion by Ministers of Scotland, 1840. The author of this preface is William Hetherington. It's probably one of the best things I've ever read on an introduction to the term revival and what a solid revival is and the cautions that should be employed and the recommendations that he gives. Preface. The very term revival of religion, we are perfectly aware, causes some persons to recoil with a species of instinctive antipathy, as if it inevitably brought before their minds nothing but images of wild and extravagant fanaticism. In such a state of mental antipathy, it is manifestly impossible that they can be benefited by the perusal of writings, on a subject a mere designation of which arouses at once within them such a formidable array of hostile and stubborn prejudices. Yet this is equally unnecessary. and unfair. It is unjust at once to the subject and to themselves. It would be surely more becoming to suspend their judgment till they had attempted to obtain somewhat of a more clear and accurate conception of the matter, discarding prejudice and listening to reason. It would be well that they would ask themselves what the phrase really means, whether in itself or in its common application, before allowing a mere name to startle them from their propriety. The phrase may not be very happily chosen, but the true question is, what meaning is it intended to convey? Unquestionably, it seems to imply, by the very terms, the awakening into a more active and living energy those religious feelings, habits, and principles which previously existed, but which had sunk into comparative dormancy. But this is not all of its meaning. It is employed also to indicate the conversion of sinners who were previously in a state of irreligion altogether. The word revival is not certainly applicable in a strict etymological import to the conversion of a sinner. And so far as technical use, so to speak, has a tendency to mislead or at least to leave unexpressed a portion of what is meant. when a single sinner is brought under the power of divine grace. In conversion, or a saving change takes place in him which may be known to no person except his immediate relations, and the pastor whose ministrations he attends, this can, of course, attract no attention, and if it did, would not be called a revival, but if, on the other hand, One who had formerly been soul-converted, but had relapsed into a careless state, and in a great measure resumed his worldly habits, should be awakened out of this dangerous situation of the soul, quickened and renewed in the spirit of its mind. Neither would this be called a revival, although it actually was so. in the strict meaning of the term, but if many of either or both of such cases should occur in one vicinity and about the same time, so as to become evident to public observation, this would be termed a revival in the common acceptation of that phrase, when therefore men use or hear the term. A revival of religion, it ought to be understood to mean an unusual manifestation of the power of the grace of God in convincing and converting careless sinners, and in quickening and increasing the faith and piety of believers. It will at once be seen that a revival thus defined may be viewed in two distinctly different aspects, as manifested in these two different classes of people. while its own essential character is one and the same in both. It is a life-giving, light-imparting, quickening, regenerating and sanctifying energy of the Holy Spirit, converting the hardened sinner and reclaiming the backsliding or dormant Christian. No one who deserves the name of a Christian will deny that these are the operations peculiarly ascribed in the scriptures to the agency of the Holy Spirit. and that it is a duty of all to pray for, and a privilege of all to expect them an answer to earnest believing prayer, nay, that there cannot be Christianity without them, and that they have taken place and are taking place in an innumerable individual instances. Why then should one who admits so much shrink back appalled from the occurrence of that in many contemporaneous instances which he hails and believes with joy when individually experienced? Besides, when we turn to the Bible itself, We read of some very memorable instances of even thousands converted simultaneously. Surely a sufficient warrant for us to believe that such events are perfectly consistent with the economy of salvation. And not only so, but even the most guarded and cautious interpretation of the language of prophecy leads us to expect a still more glorious effusion of the Holy Spirit in the latter days, so that all Scripture gives a most direct and authoritative countenance to revivals of religion. understood as above, defined according to their true scriptural import. But many of these so-styled revivals are either altogether unreal or are so mingled with errors and lead to such abuses that it is very dangerous to give them any countenance. This is a language very often used by those who would rather discourage than openly oppose them. No person, Who knows what he is doing can wish to encourage a fatal delusion. No person who wishes to see centers converted and believers quickened can possibly wish anything to take place which could only tend to harden the center and lull the backslider into irreclaimable security. But what is the chaff to the wheat? Why discourage a real revival unless you should encourage a counterfeit? Why not rather study the subject thoroughly by the teaching of God's Word, and record the experience of God's servants till you are able to distinguish between the real and the counterfeit, and enact according to your better knowledge in promoting the true, and checking the delusive? This certainly ought to be the procedure adopted by all wise and honest men, in a manner of such vital importance to the interests of religion. Nor can any truly candid and intelligent man long permit his mind to be biased by such a fallacious and sophistical mode of reasoning as that which would condemn the use of anything because it is liable to abuse. Everything is so, but chiefly, if not solely, because man is a fallen and depraved being prone to pervert and abuse to his own ruin, the most precious gift of God. So that, in fact, the sophistical argument employed against revivals amounts to this absurdity, that man should not seek a revival just because he needs it. It cannot be necessary to waste time in further refutation of a fallacy which refutes itself. In most cases men can readily separate the abuses from the uses of anything, and by it arrive at somewhat of a true estimate of its real value. But the subject of revivals is generally thought to be so mysterious that no such discriminating process can be followed and therefore no such estimate obtained. This too is a fallacious notion. A revival, rightly understood, is essentially the same as conversion in one of its aspects and recalling a backslider in another, and these are in their essence of necessity identical. Be the vital principle in man what it may, restoration from disease or lethargy can be nothing else but the same vital principle awakened into renewed healthful energy. And, as conversion is the work of the Holy Spirit. calling the soul from the death of sin into the life of holiness. So reclaiming the lapsed converts can be nothing else but a repetition of the same vivifying call, raising the soul from its dangerous lethargy and evoking anew the holy energies of regenerated life. There is, therefore, in reality exactly the same mysteriousness and a revival which there is in conversion. Each is the work of the Holy Spirit, convincing, converting, and sanctifying the soul of man according to his own infinite wisdom. and almighty power, and in a manner inscrutable to human reason. When we have reached this point of the investigation, we are compelled to stop, to bend reverently, and to adore the wonder-working and unsearchable God. But whatsoever either in a conversion or a revival is comparatively adventitious, whatever may be viewed as merely adjunctive, tending naturally either to retard, bias, or promote the effects, whatever belongs essentially to human nature, and may be explained or reasoned upon according to the known laws of mental phenomena. These fall legitimately within the province of inquiry, and may, without profanity, be made the subject of animate version, if done with becoming gravity in seriousness of spirit, admitting then conversion and revival to be essentially the same as regards the divine agent, the effect intended In the final result, the first and the chief distinction between them consists in the revival being a manifestation, to an unusual degree, of power and extent, of the converting energy of the Holy Spirit. When this takes place in any district, it is not strange that men should feel their souls overawed. It's in the more than unusual manifestation of the presence of the Lord God Almighty Not strange that the conscious stricken sinner should crouch in trembling terror as in the near view of his omniscient judge. Not strange that the cold and worldly formalist, who had been permitting the deadening lethargy of sin to lull him into a fatal repose, should start appalled as if he had heard a voice saying to him, Awake, O sleeper, and call upon your God. Not strange if, in each and of all these cases, the minds of men should be shaken by a sudden and strong excitement, impelling them to much which could not have been caused by a single unobserved conversion. A considerable degree of excitement in such circumstances is perfectly inevitable, and yet it must be evident. that it is not essential either to the conversion of a sinner or to the reawakening of a dormant believer, but has its source chiefly, if not entirely, in the sympathetic principle of human nature, which is so powerful in producing, increasing, and extending emotions of every kind. The existence of excitement, therefore, is no proof whatever of the genuineness of conversion. or of a revival, and remains fairly within the province of human reason to inquire into its cause, to ascertain its nature, and to guide, modify, or check its progress without in the very slightest degree presuming to intermeddle with the sacred and mysterious work of the Holy Spirit. At the same time, the existence of excitement furnishes no just ground of distrusting the reality of conversion. For it is scarcely possible to imagine so great a change effected within the soul as that termed in Scripture being born anew, called from death to life, from darkness into marvelous light, without producing in a person by whom it is experienced a thrill of new, strange, and rapturous emotion throughout its entire frame, such as no words can ever adequately describe. The only thing, therefore, to be determined is whether the emotion or excitement, be that arising from so great a change or that produced by witnessing the emotion of others, whether it be the excitement of conversion or of mere sympathy. And when that has been as accurately ascertained as possible, it is our duty either to reverently own the Spirit's work or prudently to guide and control what is as yet merely human in its origin and operations. We said what is, as yet, merely human, because we have no wish to conceal or undervalue the influence of sympathy, not only in deepening a good impression but even tending to produce it. It is well known that to assume the attitude, the gestures, and the general aspect of any passion or emotion merely in semblance, has a great tendency to produce, and often does produce, a reality. And as God influences and moves the mind of man according to its nature, it is at least possible that he may employ the sympathetic principle to awaken. mollify and prepare the mind for the great and real change of conversion. This we would regard as the use of sympathy and the excitement which it causes. But the utmost effect of sympathy, the highest degree of excitement which it could produce, is not conversion and could never of itself effect or even approach conversion. Debt is a divine work which a Holy Spirit can alone accomplish. It is therefore erroneous and dangerous in the extreme to mistake mere sympathetic excitement, assuming a semblance, and even giving rise to some of the results of conversion. For conversion itself, debt, is the abuse of religious sympathy. And as religious sympathy and the excitement which it produces necessarily accompany a revival, and yet are adventitious adjuncts belonging essentially to human nature and inexplicable by its laws, we regard them as entirely within the promise of human reason to be approved. or disapproved, regulated, or checked, according to the dictates of a sound judgment, guided by the word of God in a light of experience. In this point all men, and peculiarly young men, are prone to err. Because a genuine revival generally produces and almost necessarily must produce some or even considerable excitement, they rationally conclude that it is essential to a revival, and therefore they too often attempt to produce a revival by taking every possible means likely to produce excitement. Into this air they would not be so liable to fall if they would more closely investigate the matter, both in its own nature, to ascertain what is truly essential and what is merely adventitious, and according to what is recorded of it in the Bible, where they will find no warrant for making mechanical arrangements calculated to awaken sympathetic excitement in the mind. with a view of producing conversion. Undoubtedly, it is possible to awaken a very high degree of excitement, which sympathy will speedily heighten and extend incalculably. But a well-concerted arrangement, and by the use of fervid declamation on topics of a peculiarly arousing character, and it is possible that religious impressions may be made then, which it may please God to ripen into genuine conversion. But it is only what ought to be expected, if an attempt founded upon a principle so defective and conductive, on a scheme so erroneous, should be productive of many glaring abuses, calculated to grieve the Christian and delight the scoffer, and should rarely be honoured as instrumental in promoting the interests of pure and undefiled religion. Yet all such abuses prove nothing. except that those by whom they were planned and executed were grievously ignorant of the true nature and essential principles of a genuine revival. It ought to be distinctly understood and constantly held in remembrance that excitement is not of the essence of conversion, and therefore not of the essence of a revival. These being essentially identical, that excitement may be the consequence of conversion, but cannot be the cause, that it cannot with propriety be considered as even predisposing to conversion in any higher sense, than is instrumental in removing that callous indifference of heart and mind, which is one of the main preventatives of any serious and beneficial impressions made by the ordinary means of religious instruction. Yet the closest relation it can hold is that of a concomitant. That, in short. That, in short. Excitement is of a secondary and non-essential character, when viewed in connection either with the conversion of an individual or with that more unusual and large manifestation of saving grace called a revival. and cannot be regarded, received, encouraged, and acted upon as primary and essential without giving rise to errors and disorders of multitudinous form and character. If a physician were so little acquainted with the true nature of the human frame, and the diseases to which it is liable, as constantly to mistake secondary symptoms for primary maladies, and regulate his treatment of patients accordingly. Every intelligent person would certainly regard him as an ignorant empiric and would place no confidence in his opinions and directions, in like manner the man who so far mistakes the nature of conversion or of a revival. Its more extended and simultaneous developed form is to imagine excitement to be of its very essence and should, accordingly, in a sincere desire to promote the best interests of mankind and the extension of the Redeemer's kingdom, direct his whole efforts to the production of an intense religious excitement. He also might justly be regarded as one who, however zealous, was still deplorably ignorant of the true nature of conversion. until God might, by His sovereign power, overrule, and in His great mercy and for His own namesake, forgive all that was erroneous and bless whatever was sound and right. Any honest, though ill-informed and erring zeal of such a man yet. As a wheat thus sown would bear but a small proportion to the tares, so the result would inevitably be a cleaning only of what was truly good, with a large proportion of what was absolutely pernicious. It is because our American brethren have so frequently mistaken what is at most only concomitant or merely adjunct or consequent for what is essential to conversion that they have fallen into such multifarious errors and abuses in their zealous attempts to get up and conduct revivals. There is something offensive to the mind of a sincere and humble Christian in the language commonly used respecting revivals. When we hear of or read directions, quote, how to produce or promote a revival, end quote, and how to conduct a revival, we're apt to feel as if there was of necessity something profane, if not positively impious in such language. It seems as if man were presuming to attempt by his own devices and arrangements to originate and guide the operations of the Holy Spirit. or entirely to supersede them. And indeed the rash expressions employed by ardent but injudicious friends of revivals give too much room for an idea so revolting. Yet there is no real ground for such an idea if the manner we're viewed and the light in which we have been endeavoring to present it. If those who talk of the Beth methods of promoting or conducting a revival were to be asked to explain their meaning in the simplest and most direct terms, and were to do so, it would be found either that they were totally ignorant of its true and essential nature, regarding it as nothing more than excitement deepened and diffused by sympathy, which of course they might succeed in producing and conducting, or that while they held conversions to be the exclusive prerogative of the Holy Spirit, and totally beyond the reach of man to originate or direct, they were anxious to make the wisest and most energetic use of all the means of grace within their reach, hoping and most earnestly praying that the Holy Spirit would bless such instrumentality, and render it effectual in his own hand to promote the salvation of perishing sinners. In his latter view, there is nothing necessarily objectionable. No sane and intelligent Christian will deny that even in the economy of grace, the result is not to be expected without the employment of the means. But the question arises, what means are to be employed? And perhaps also, how much value is to be ascribed to the use of means? To the question, what means are to be employed? The direct answer is, those means which God himself has enjoined, and the sincere and faithful use of which he has promised to bless and render effectual. In every point of essential importance, the only safe directory is the Word of God. Never can it be very safe to adopt any method, not expressly commanded, or at least indirectly and by fair inference, sanctioned in the Holy Scriptures, while to follow any measure opposed to or condemned by that standard can be productive of nothing but the most baneful consequences. Were this rule adopted and rigidly adhered to, it would at once put an end to very many of the extravagant and offensive proceedings which have tended to cast an injurious shade of suspicion over the very name of revivals. We cannot afford space to follow up this rule and show its application to a number of questionable cases, and fortunately it is not necessary, both because every attentive and prayerful reader of the Bible may, without much risk of error do it for himself, because there are several very valuable and judicious treatises written expressly for the purpose of giving directions concerning the means to be employed during periods of revival. Of these, it is impossible to name any that so powerfully demand the attention of the candid and thoughtful readers. the work on religious affections by Jonathan Edwards, and the one entitled A Narrative of the Revival of Religion in New England, with thoughts on that revival by the same great author, and William Sprague's lectures on revivals of religion. At a time like the present, when the attention of the public is strongly directed to the subject of revivals of religion, it is of unspeakable importance to be able to refer to the writings of such a man as Jonathan Edwards. equally distinguished as a preeminent philosopher, a profound theologian, and a sincerely and practically pious Christian. The statements and the reasonings of such a manner alike suitable for the perusal of those who oppose and those who advocate the cause of revivals of religion. The known integrity of his character places his statements beyond the reach of being lightly rejected. It's unworthy of serious attention, and his celebrity as a mental philosopher makes it equally impossible for any man who values his own reputation to dream of dismissing with a sneer the clear and strong arguments brought forward by such a man. Those, therefore, who were opposed to revivals of religion, regarded the whole as merely a peculiar phase of enthusiasm, would do themselves but justice in some credit to say nothing at present of the subject. If they would carefully and solemnly peruse and re-peruse the above-named works of this great and good man, they might find themselves constrained to admit, to the very least, that there was more in the manner than had hitherto met the eyes of their philosophy. On the other hand, those who admit to realities of revival of religion are little acquainted with their true nature and consequently feel themselves unable either to defend them in argument or to aid in promoting them when they appear to be in operation. or to distinguish between a reality and a counterfeit, should lose no time in making themselves thoroughly acquainted with these inestimable works. Instead, therefore, of attempting to exhibit specific cases with suitable rules and applications, we refer every candid and anxious inquirer to these truly philosophical and scriptural works, with a certainty that they will there obtain the very information which they need. For though a considerable period is alive since these works were first produced, their applicability to similar cases has not diminished. The nature of man may indeed assume aspects of one period somewhat different from those which it bore at another, but its elements remain always the same, and time itself will grow old before the writings of Jonathan Edwards become obsolete. The lectures on revivals of religion by William Sprague may also be consulted with great advantage by those who are earnestly asking the question, what means are to be employed? Tis calm, judicious, and well-timed work, written by a man of no little ability, and thoroughly conversant with the subject of which he treats, we regard as second to the corresponding treatise of Jonathan Edwards alone, and decidedly superior to every other similar production which has yet appeared. It is indeed a work of great value, written in a clear and dispassionate yet earnest and impressive manner based upon and pervaded throughout by the principles and rules of the Bible, and therefore peculiarly fitted to direct the inquirer to the only safe rules of direction, to share oracles of the living God. The letters appended to the volume are also well-deserving of perusal, though not all of equal merit. And then we have the testimony of twenty witnesses, ministers of six different denominations, all unhesitatingly asserting the reality of religious revivals. However, they may be accompanied by or mixed with manner of a more questionable character, in the very censure which they express as some of the measures that have been adopted by less judicious men. not only tends rather to confirm than diminish our confidence in their testimony, but also at the same time furnishes some very striking exemplifications of the important truth that the only means which can be safely and effectually employed, either is tending to produce or to promote a religious revival, those which God himself has enjoined. In the sincere and faithful use of which he has promised to bless and render effectual, To the question, how much value is to be ascribed to the use of means? The answer is equally direct. Means are in themselves of no absolute value whatever. Neither is he that plants anything, nor he that waters, but God that gives the increase. Nonetheless, on that account, however, is it the bounden duty of every man to make the most strenuous use of every means placed within his power, and commanded or sanctioned by the word of God. The employment of the means which God has commanded and has promised to bless appears at least to indicate an obedient will and a trusting heart. Now the very essence of the fall consists in the rebelliousness of the will and in the evil heart of unbelief. To whatever extent, therefore, men employ the means appointed by God with sincere obedience of the will and simple and honest integrity of heart, they are to that extent either already on the path that leads to Zion, or at least with their faith is thitherward. They are, so far as we can judge, faithfully using the appointed means and humbly waiting for the promise of the Father. Such an attitude, even human reason may see, is one naturally suitable for the reception of the promised blessing. not as an efficient cause tending of itself to produce that blessing, but as an indispensable condition required by God becoming in man to which the blessing has been graciously promised, in which the Holy Spirit condescends to produce in the soul of man, with or without his consciousness, and to employing as conversion, to means having themselves no positive virtue, No absolute value, no efficient power, but the use of them is commanded by God. It has, therefore, the appearance, may have the reality of an act of obedience if rendered with genuine integrity of will and heart, and not in a deceitful spirit of self-righteousness. But the mighty working of God's Holy Spirit has alone the efficient cause of conversion. This view rightly understood and constantly felt would tend to rescue men from the folly and the danger of attaching too much value to the use of means, and even to the instrumentality of able, earnest, and devoted men, whose efforts we are too prone to overestimate, sometimes even to idolize, till God, even in mercy, breaks or casts aside the instrument that he may rescue us from such a dangerous delusion. and compel us to feel and own that all our wellsprings are in Him, that no created thing possesses or can possess any inherent value, and that all virtue, all power, and all glory belong to Him alone and forever. Keep in these explanatory observations in view. and acting in their spirit, it would be comparatively easy and harmless to discuss such questions as, what is the best method of promoting or of conducting a revival? For, thus understood, those questions mean nothing more than, what is the best method of commencing or of continuing the use of the religious ordinances appointed by God? Such a question, it is obvious, would involve nothing of a profane or impious nature, and not only might be, but ought to be both asked and answered by every man who wishes to be obedient to the laws of his Creator, and to aid in promoting the kingdom of the Redeemer, but would have lost that aspect of mystery which renders it so attractive in the eyes of many. and which also is the main cause of those abuses into which men are so prone to fall. When attempting to promote, they know not well what, by the use of any means which may, they know not how, have that tendency, instead of rashly devising all manner of new measures. However extravagant, and vainly indulging all the fantasies of a heated imagination, men ought steadily to direct their attention to the law and the testimony, and make these in all respects their standard and their guide. And for those who may not have the faculty of readily apprehending what is the teaching of God in the Scriptures with reference to such manners, We would again with great confidence recommend the studious perusal of the works already mentioned, namely Jonathan Edwards' On the Religious Affections, Thoughts on the Present Revival of Religion, William Sprague's Lectures, and Distinguishing Marks of a Work of the Spirit of God. Notwithstanding that we have taken some pains to make our remarks as plain and intelligible as we could, there may be some to whom they will convey no definite meaning. We have endeavored to point out the precise and essential identity of conversion and revival, but no person who has not been himself the subject of that great change, no unconverted man, can possibly understand what is meant by conversion. Consequently, he cannot understand what is meant by a revival of religion. We make this remark because the arguments used by those who oppose revivals are very generally either directed only against the abuses which are found in the secondary or non-essential adjuncts or concomitants of revival, or as such as would bear equally against conversion itself, and which therefore awaken in our minds a grave and mournful feeling that those who employ them are themselves still unconverted. This is a painful and a melancholic conclusion. A conclusion the application of which to individual instances we will not and we dare not make. For we remember that it is written, Judge not that you be not judged. But we would most earnestly entreat all the opponents of revivals to look more narrowly into the matter. To ascertain as far as possible in what a revival or conversion really consists, and approve their own selves lest it be found in the great day of decision, that the reason why they opposed the malign delight was shown in the midst of the uncomprehending darkness, was because they were not themselves children of the light, but of the darkness. At the same time, we would no more attempt to explain the precise nature of the mystery of conversion than we would attempt to explain the precise nature of the mystery of creation. We do not indeed hold it to be possible for a created being to comprehend and either explain the one or the other that we regard as one of the prerogatives of the creator himself, of him who spoke the universe into being. Of him who can alone create anew in righteousness and true holiness, might we not say that it is an incommunicable attribute of deity? Yet, as any created being is known to be merely by its existence, so conversion, or the being created anew, can be known to us by no other and no sure criterion. It is known to be by the very fact of its existence. Instead, it manifests that none but those who themselves enjoy that new and spiritual life can possibly know assuredly whether it does or does not exist in others, cannot in fact comprehend its existence at all, for spiritual things are spiritually discerned and not otherwise. A man who has himself been converted may be deceived in forming an opinion of the state of another, for all the external aspects of conversion may be for a time sympathetically superinduced or stimulated, but an unconverted man never can be an accurate judge in a manner, for he wants the faculty, and therefore all of its arguments against his reality and others can prove nothing except that he does not exist in himself. It is painful and pitiable, but not surprising, that unconverted men should misrepresent and oppose that which they cannot understand or appreciate. But their opposition and even their hostility should be mildly and compassionately borne, and every effort made to induce them to lay aside their hostility, to abandon their prejudices, and to come and see whether some good thing may not come out of Natharis. If peradventure delight delights every man, may it shine into their benighted minds and call them from death to life and from their natural darkness into God's marvelous light. So far as we have been able to explain our views and to communicate them to our readers, We would fondly hope that the subject of revivals has been presented in an aspect in which it is little exposed to the assaults of its antagonists and rescued from the injudicious defenses of erring friends. To reiterate, it is seen to be, in its essence, wholly beyond the reach of man, all that human beings can do. Either in attempting to promote, or to retard it, can exercise no influence upon anything except what is merely of a secondary importance, and of a concomitant or sequent position, an adventitious character, that such manners or examples go for the most earnest and strenuous exertions on our part. ground enough for us to entertain feelings of very deep responsibility regarding the manner in which we discharge the obligations resting upon us. Although our strenuous use of the appointed means of grace would never of itself produce conversion, yet men neglect and despise those means. They are manifesting a spirit of determined rebellion against God, and can have no reason to expect His mercy and blessings so long as they retain that spirit. Still more, if they endeavor to cast obstacles in the way of those who are attempting to comply with the injunctions of the scriptures, still God may in mercy arrest and convert them. thereby rendering them the more signal monuments of Almighty Grace, to have no right to look for any such forth-putting of His mercy, but rather that He should cut them off in His wrath, and make them terrible examples of His judgments. There is also most urgent necessity for the exercise of the most sound religious prudence on the part of those who are friendly to the cause of revivals. It is deeply incumbent on all such to give their nights and days to the study of the Word of God. in the spirit of humility and teachableness and prayer, that they may be enabled to discriminate between what is essential and what is secondary and adventitious, between what is real and what is counterfeit, between what belongs to conversion and what to sympathetic excitement, between what is God's and what is man's. Great and irreparable injury may be done by those who intermeddle with manners so sacred without due preparation. Sudden and terrible was the doom of those who ministered strange fire at God's holy altar, and their doom should be a warning to all men not to introduce human schemes into divine institutions. Great faithfulness as well as great tenderness should be exercised towards those who are or appear to be converted in such times of unusual manifestation of divine grace. Last falls hope should be encouraged, spiritual pride awakened, or despair confirmed. Here again, the standard is still the Word of God by which to try every spirit. Much assistance may also be obtained by comparing the cases that come before religious instructors with the recorded experience of mature Christians, who have themselves been versant in similar scenes. And here again, we cannot help earnestly directing the attention of our readers to the works already specified, and beyond all comparison the most valuable of such writings. As we regard excitement as by no means essential to, though extremely natural, in a revival, we would also suggest the necessity of using all care to temper, guide, and keep it in moderation. This is a more necessary inasmuch as the inexperienced and the warm-hearted are peculiarly liable to regard the excitement as itself to conversion. be elated in proportion as it prevails, and seducted as it abates. Much of the excitement, as we have shown, is purely human, arising from the principle of sympathy, and likely to pass away when the circumstances which called forth are removed or terminate. On it, therefore, no dependence can be placed. But there may also be very considerable excitement caused by the mighty change of passing from death to life, From old things passing away and all things becoming new, should it be of this character, its effects will be permanent. But all of it which was due to the novelty of the work. and of the sensations in first experience within the soul will necessarily abate, and the mind subside in a peaceful and calm serenity. Disabatement, however, may alarm the unconvert, causing him to think he is relapsing into his formal deadness of heart and sereneness of conscience. Such an one should be taught that the natural progress of the divine life and the soul is indicated by the very arrangement of the words of the inspired apostle, joy and peace and believing. Joy. It's a first stage of believing. Its matured result, its peace, this may be easily shown, when a mind has been convinced of its utter sinfulness, of its lost condition both by nature and by its own wickedness, when it has tried every fallacious resource and found no relief from its guilty terror, when something like despair seems darkening down above and all around it. Can the prospect of deliverance be obtained without exciting and eager thrill of hope? and a fervent desire to secure the offered salvation. And when the Holy Spirit frees the soul from the fetters of iniquity, when he takes of the things that are Christ's and shows them to the sinner, when he unites them to the Redeemer and enables him to address God as his Heavenly Father, who may express the unutterable rapture that bursts upon the soul, to rusheth new life and new sensations that pervades the whole being, to glow of conscious immortality that burns within the heart and shoots as living energy through every fiber of the trembling frame. But this condition cannot last, and it were not well that it should, when the whole inner man has experienced a transforming efficacy of the gospel, faith, and promises, when a new direction of all the powers of the mind has obtained the ascendancy so completely as to characterize a general course of thought, word, and action. The soul then began to entertain a rational happiness, a calm delight, a peaceful piety, still more consistent with the spirit of the gospel and of its meek and holy author, than was the troubled joy which poured its impetuous torrent on the heart of the convert when he first was called into new light and life. Let not, then, the young, the excitable, and the imaginative either be exalted over much on account of having enjoyed such raptures, or expect them to continue or be frequently renewed with undiminished vividness. Let them not pine and be depressed because such transports are no longer experienced and enjoyed. Let them rather forget those things that are behind and press forward to those that are before. And let them learn that peace is a proof of a more advanced age in the Christian life than joy, nay, it is a fruit of which joy is only the seed. It's the end to which the other is only the conducting means, but it is not expedient for us to prosecute this line of discussion into the almost innumerable topics which present themselves equally deserving observation. To do so would be to write a treatise on revivals instead of a few remarks. Introductory to a course of lectures in which a whole subject is discussed fully and with great ability, Still, there is one topic to which we must, however, briefly advert. The state and aspect of the times, fraught with the elements of peril and commotion, give a feeling of importance to the subject of revivals of religion which it might otherwise not have been thought to possess. The reality of the importance indeed cannot be increased, but man's perception of it may, and the condition of our country and of the world is such that all men anticipate a period near it end, marked by mighty events and productive changes of incalculable potency for evil and for good. Never probably were such mighty agencies at once in such a state of restless and conflicting action. It seems as if some universal convulsion were on the point of bursting forth to wrench and shake asunder the entire fabric of society throughout the world. and to cast the shattered fragments into the boiling vortex of confusion, that they may be utterly broken to pieces, fused and blended together, preparatory to the formation of a completely new order of things out of the dissevered and chaotic ruins. No principles or laws, civil or political, seem to have any power to avert the dire convulsion. All who think deeply on the subject are alike persuaded, that none but an almighty hand can check the progress of the demoralizing and disassociating principles which are presently working with such fearful energy in the very heart of the community, in the midst of these poor Tentus omens. Nothing could reassure and calm our minds but the cheering hope, the heart confirming belief that God had not utterly forsaken us. And nothing could have given us this assurance of hope but some unusual manifestation of His gracious presence, such as He has been pleased to grant by reviving His work in the midst of the years. and in wrath, remembering mercy. By the Church of Scotland especially should this glorious event, this time of refreshing from the presence of the Lord, be held with the deepest gratitude. And holy love is peculiarly a token for good. Surrounded by fierce enemies, and half forsaken by cold alienated friends, it seemed indeed to her a day of gloom spread on the mountains. But God has visited her in the day of her depression. She has not been permitted under the fear of man to rend with her own hand a solemn covenant died in the blood of her martyred sons of other days. She has been divinely enabled to maintain and reassert the undivided supremacy of Christ, her only head and King and Lord. And he has not forsaken her, nor will forsake those days of darker gloom. She'll over the storms of fiercer peril rage around her. The shout of her king is again heard in the midst of her holy places, and while her sons are still girt in their defensive panoply, her daughters are beginning to raise their grateful songs of deliverance. Yet let us join trembling with our gladness the storm has not spent, has not even, we apprehend, yet mustered all of its might. The revival which God has been pleased to grant to our earnest prayers may be intended to convey to us a twofold message, both a pledge of final victory and a warning to prepare for a sterner conflict. It may be that the furnace into which we are about to cast will be heated seven times more than it was wont to be heated, and therefore has an unusual manifestation of the presence and the power of our Savior been vouchsafed to prepare us for and to preserve us during the fiery trial. Therefore, would we earnestly urge all to receive with open heart and willing mind the message of the Lord in all the fullness of its import, to take to them the whole armor of God, and to stand watchful and prepared to avail themselves of the spiritual nourishment now so offered timely as if they heard a voice saying to them as they did the angel to Elijah, Eat. because a journey is too great for you and us to go forward, ready alike for the vineyard or the wilderness, fearing the Lord, and void of all other fear. Our readers will readily perceive that the topic to which we have last adverted his special reverence to the recent remarkable manifestation of divine grace. the work of the Holy Spirit at Killsite. Most of them will also know that in consequence of the very deep interest excited in the public mind respecting a time of refreshing with which that favored portion of the Lord's Vineyard had been visited. It was thought expedient that a course of lecture should be delivered in Glasgow on the subject of revivals of religion for the purpose of communicating right views and removing prejudices on that all-important. topic. The volume now produced in a collected form is a result of that determination, and when it is remembered with what deep interest crowded audiences listened to these lectures, and how extensively they have been circulated as they issued in a periodical form from the press, it cannot be doubted that they have been already instrumental in dispelling error. In conveying truth to the minds of many, to the thoughtful and inquiring reader, the work will be found one of great and varied interest and information, embracing a wide range of religious views connected with the subject of revivals, and presenting these in the all-pleasing diversities of style employed by so many different authors. The lectures indeed exhibit almost a system of theology specifically adapted to a peculiar aspect of the community and state of religion among professing Christians. And we cannot well imagine that any person perusing them with due attention, without feeling often compelled to put it to his own soul, such searching questions as these, am not I also guilty in this manner? Do not I also need in this respect a great revival? Have I felt and acted on these points as I ought to have done? If thus our own hearts condemn us, what shall we answer to him who searches the heart and who alone can fully know its deceitfulness and desperate wickedness? Surely, surely, each and all ministers and private Christians alike, must feel it to be their urgent and paramount duty to pray without ceasing, if peradventure God will yet return and look upon this vine which his own right hand had planted, and water it abundantly, and ask his day of merciful and gracious visitation. It will not be expected that the writer of these preliminary remarks should presume to express any opinion concerning the respective merits of these lectures. Of that, every reader will best judge for himself. And some will be disappointed. Many will doubtless turn with warmest interest to that of Mr. William Chalmers Burns of Killscythe, in consequence of his personal connection with the remarkable revival which was the originating cause of these valuable productions. To those who cannot readily dissociate the idea of excessive excitement from that of a revival of religion, the perusal of the above-named candid, calm, and judicious lecture will, we trust, prove highly beneficial and may tend to relieve their mental vision from some of those most blinding or distorting prejudices. But, enough. The main object of these introductory remarks was to attempt to reduce the complex term revival of religion to its simplest element, that all parties might understand as clearly as possible what it really was which they were either presuming to assail or preparing to defend. If that has been in any tolerable measure accomplished, our present task is done, and the reader will be somewhat the better prepared to commence the perusal of the instructive, convincing, and excellent series of lectures on the revival of religion to which he is thus here introduced. William M. Hetherington you