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 UNITED STATES OF AMEEICA. 
 
 
 
 
THE 
 
 REVIVAL SYSTEM 
 
 AND 
 
 THE PARACLETE 
 
 A SERIES OF ARTICLES 
 
 tire Church iwol. 
 
 NEW YOEK: 
 DANIEL DANA, JR., 381 BROADWAY. 
 
 1858. 
 
 &4fsfr^?~^ i&e-J'.^a- 
 
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 Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1858, 
 
 By Daniel Dana, Jr., 
 
 In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern 
 District of New York. 
 
 NEW YORK : 
 
 BILLIN AND BROTHER, PRINTERS, 
 
 XX, NORTH WILLIAM ST. 
 
 V 
 
 "•» \\ 
 

 P B E F A C E 
 
 The series of articles that appeared in The 
 Church Journal, during the progress of the late 
 Revival, attracted such general attention, and so 
 many applications have been made for them from 
 many parts of the country, that they are here 
 placed before the public, unaltered, in a more per- 
 manent form. 
 
 The Editors <:>f the Church Journal. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 
 
 PAGB 
 
 A Revival of Preaching 7 
 
 The Revivals 16 
 
 The Necessity of the Revival Principle in the Church. 23 
 
 The" Church Revival System. . . , 31 
 
 High-Church Neology 41 
 
 What is a Pentecostal Revival? 48 
 
 The Breaking of Bread and Prayers 57 
 
 Political Preaching and the Revival 60 
 
 " Neology " again 63 
 
 THE PARACLETE. 
 
 Spiritual Gifts 70 
 
 Montanism 78 
 
 The Paraclete 84 
 
THE 
 
 REVIVAL SYSTEM 
 
 A REVIVAL OF PREACHING. 
 
 Martin Luther, rather coarsely, compared human 
 nature to a drunken man on horseback. "If," said 
 he, " he lurches down on one side, and you prop him 
 up, he is immediately down quite as low upon the 
 other. To keep him upright is impossible." There is 
 no small contempt implied in this simile ; and to one 
 of a cynical turn of mind, it would not be easy to pre- 
 sent any view of our poor fallen human nature in which 
 the contempt would not seem to be deserved. We pre- 
 fer another comparison, however, as the more correct 
 for the illustration of the zig-zag line in which human 
 progress advances — a comparison which involves no 
 cynical contempt for that which the Creator has evi- 
 dently ordained. As man himself, individually, is so 
 formed, that in moving onward he must use one foot 
 first, then the other ; and that each in turn shall be 
 first in advance, and then be left, by the motion of the 
 body, in arrear again : so is it also with the advance 
 of the race. The microcosm explains the macrocosm. 
 And as the ever-changing present is ever folding itself 
 
8 THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 
 
 away into the changelessness of history, the mighty 
 range and change of opinion, swinging slowly but surely 
 from one extreme to the other, is the vast pendulum 
 that regulates the advancing march of the ages through 
 the onward-moving realms of time. 
 
 In nothing is this alternate motion more visible than 
 in the progress of the Church, whether in the course 
 of error, or in the more permanent line of light and 
 truth. Truth is infinite ; the mind of man is -finite. 
 And among the many minds in an age, the few lead ; 
 the many only follow ; therefore the one step of pro- 
 gress — which is generally the most that can be made 
 in one generation of men — is deeply marked by the 
 limited and one-sided peculiarities of the few whose 
 dominant energy gave it birth. 
 
 To go no further than the bounds of our own com- 
 munion, and within the memory of some men yet liv- 
 ing, w r e shall find it easy to exemplify the principles of 
 which we are speaking. After the general deadness 
 of the eighteenth century, the evangelical leaders were 
 foremost in rousing the Church to new life. The pulpit 
 they found to be their great instrument in the prosecu- 
 tion of this work, With a sacred eloquence, fervid, 
 earnest, fully charged with the living lightning of the 
 soul, they broke through the crust of dry and dusty 
 platitudes, which sleepy preachers had long been dron- 
 ing into the ears of sleeping congregations, dotting thinly 
 here and there the frigid emptiness of churches filled 
 with high-backed pews. Their new earnestness wrought 
 as it always works upon the minds of men. It drew. 
 Converts were made. Ridicule was turned against the 
 movement ; but in vain, for again and again those who 
 came to laugh remained to pray. Persecution — such 
 
THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 9 
 
 as is now often meant by that word — was tried against 
 them, but with no success except that of building up 
 the faster those whom such devices never can put down. 
 Thus the revival of vital, personal religion went on, the 
 great means, from first to last, being the Word of the 
 Lord coming warm from the heart and lips of the living 
 preacher. Extemporary preaching, and the singing of 
 hymns, formed of course, as they always do, prominent 
 features of this revival, throughout its whole course ; 
 and without using both these, it is certain that no reli- 
 gious movement can ever become general, or penetrate 
 deeply into the main body and lower strata of any pop- 
 ulation. 
 
 Fishermen in olden time, we read in the Prophets, 
 burned incense to their net, and to their drag. So was 
 it with the Evangelicals. Preaching was their net, their 
 drag ; and they burned incense unto it. They came too 
 much to consider it as the all in all of religion. This 
 was not so much the fault of the leaders. They gave a 
 much more prominent place, both in theory and in 
 practice, to the Sacraments, than was done by their fol- 
 lowers and successors. And the reason is, that the 
 second generation of leaders in any such movement is 
 commonly a very different thing from the first. Strong 
 men instinctively surround themselves with those who 
 are more likely to receive an impression, than to make 
 any independent demonstration of individual character 
 themselves. Two leaders of distinguished power may 
 begin together ; but they almost inevitably quarrel be- 
 fore they have gone far. Paul and Barnabas parted, 
 not very peaceably. Wesley and Whitefield quarrelled, 
 and came no more together. Even John Wesley and 
 his brother Charles, could not walk wholly together 
 1* 
 
10 THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 
 
 during their own lives. And in our own day, Newman 
 and Pusey are farther apart than any other couple we 
 have mentioned. When the leaders disappear, those 
 who first take their places cannot fill them, for they are 
 smaller men. They cannot preserve so much of breadth 
 in the practical system, because they are more narrow- 
 minded. They cannot originate new and compensating 
 discoveries ; for they are receptive minds, not creative, 
 and their whole energy is concentrated upon the lead- 
 ing ideas of the system into which they were trained, 
 which is endeared to them by all that is great and glo- 
 rious in their own personal experience, and which is 
 naturally to them the ne plus ultra of perfection. Un- 
 der their management, therefore, the finer and broader 
 features are all omitted ; the salient points only ai*e 
 kept ; and these are, by an irresistible tendency, ex- 
 aggerated in order to make up for that which has been 
 unconsciously dropped altogether. Thus the system 
 comes to be, not the perfect image of what its zealous 
 founders intended — not a true copy, but a copy with 
 the finer strokes omitted, and the stronger points ex- 
 aggerated — that is to say, a caricature. 
 
 It is when this stage of a movement has been reached, 
 that the reaction begins. When the need of personal 
 living faith had degenerated into making the doctrine 
 of "justification by faith" a mere party shibboleth, by 
 which the loud profession of holding the dogma was 
 accepted as all-sufficient, in place of that true faith 
 itself working by love ; and when, in order to ensure 
 the honor due to the preaching of the Word, all the 
 other means of grace — especially the sacraments and 
 the authority and ordinances of the Church — were stu- 
 diously depreciated and decried ; when the Bible alone, 
 
THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 11 
 
 as each man understands it for himself, was boasted as 
 the sole rule of faith for true Protestants, and the Bible 
 Society was exalted as the great means for accomplish- 
 ing the work which the Lord Jesus committed to His 
 Church : when all this, and much more, marked the 
 degeneracy of the Evangelical school, the pendulum 
 had reached its utmost limit, and began to return back 
 upon its course. 
 
 The Church movement then arose ; and, from the first, 
 its tendency was to replace and exalt all that the Evan- 
 gelicals were so conscientiously determined to ignore. 
 The divine authority of the Church, and of its ministers, 
 especially the inherent and inalienable rights of the 
 Bishops ; the continuousness and unity of the life of the 
 Church in all ages ; its sanctity, apostolicity, and cath- 
 olicity ; its liturgical worship, its sacraments, and the 
 grace which they are the appointed channels to con- 
 vey ; and with these, all that concerned the building, 
 and restoring, and adorning of the visible sanctuary, 
 the filling out the framework of its machinery by the 
 establishment of Church schools, the restoration of cate- 
 chizings, the founding of Church homes, hospitals, houses 
 of mercy, and the like, — all these have been wonder- 
 fully supplied since the Church movement began. The 
 increase of the Episcopate, to the extent of doubling the 
 number of bishops in the Anglican communion through- 
 out the world, has, together with all the rest, given a 
 healthy and well-proportioned vigor, such as has been 
 known in no other portion of Christendom for a thou- 
 sand years. 
 
 But with all this, as was natural, there has been in 
 England largely (though less among us) a decided ten- 
 dency to depreciate unduly the importance of preach- 
 
12 THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 
 
 ing. All attention was given to architecture and litur- 
 gies, to rubrics and services : but sermons were brief, 
 quiet in tone, and more than merely quiet in delivery. 
 Keenly alive to the necessity of rendering the house of 
 God attractive by other means, a horror of cant and 
 methodistical ranting has produced too generally a 
 style of preaching very well calculated, indeed, to 
 convey sound and solid instruction to willing and at- 
 tentive heads, but very little likely to touch the care- 
 less or pierce the callous heart. Extemporary preach- 
 ing has been avoided as unchurchlike. Gesture was 
 forsworn. Moving appeals, and every rise and fall in 
 the wondrous scale and compass of revelation, were 
 read from manuscript, with eyes fixed on the paper, 
 and the arms and hands hanging motionless by the side, 
 except when used to turn over the leaves. There has 
 been also a strong disposition to treat the hymns with 
 contempt and neglect, and to discourage all kinds of 
 music except the chanting of the Psalms of David not 
 in metre. 
 
 Now, there is no doubt of the immense momentum 
 given by the Church movement to the progress of true 
 religion throughout our whole communion, and very 
 largely, too, throughout other parts of Christendom. 
 There is, however, just as little doubt, that its strength 
 has been crippled precisely in the degree to which it 
 has neglected the use of those means which had been 
 so powerful in the hands of the Evangelicals, and with- 
 out which no movement of any kind is likely ever to 
 pervade the middle and lower classes. Their tastes 
 are not critical enough to appreciate the delicate beau- 
 ties of classic style or quiet reading. Their musical 
 feeling is not flexible enough to be thoroughly at home 
 
THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 13 
 
 in the chant or the Psalter. The fervor and fire, the 
 kindling eye, the impassioned gesture, the loud appeal, 
 of the extemporary orator, these are what they can feel. 
 The metrical hymn, fastening itself readily in their 
 memory by the hooks of rhyme, and sung to a measured 
 tune, the rhythm of which is so simple that it cannot 
 be mistaken, — these are the demands of the million. 
 These appeal to them in a way they can always under- 
 stand. These enter in at the eye, and the ear, and 
 march on their conquering way straight to the heart. 
 Without these the people never will, they never ccm, be 
 won. 
 
 As it is the bounden duty of the Church to preach 
 the Gospel to the poor, therefore it is her bounden duty 
 to use especially these two great means, of popular 
 preaching and the singing of pjopular hymns. And she 
 is beginning to find it out. The reaction is already, in 
 many places, splendidly apparent. In England, courses 
 of sermons, serial preachings, especially for the working 
 classes, have become one of the leading features of the 
 day ; ' and in a very large degree these sermons are, as 
 they ought to be, extemporaneous (by which, of course, 
 we mean unvrritten only, — by no means unprepared). 
 Singing, too, is receiving more and more of attention 
 from day to day, and is becoming rapidly more and 
 more truly congregational. And everywhere, the ef- 
 fect has been found fertilizing in the highest degree, 
 and at once productive of abundant fruits from pre- 
 cisely those classes which it ought to be our chiefest 
 aim to reach. 
 
 There is one other point upon which we are begin- 
 ning to learn wisdom. It has long been a leading test 
 of good churchmanship to denounce the "revival sys- 
 
14 THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 
 
 tern," as it is called. And rightly, too ; for the degree 
 to which it has been abused has sown the land broad- 
 cast with the seeds of infidelity. But the singular suc- 
 cess of the system in gaining converts, ought of itself, 
 to have taught us a wiser course than that. In every 
 popular error, there is some truth, or something at least 
 of practical philosophy, from which the children of 
 light may learn wisdom ; just as the bee sucks honey 
 even from the poisonous flower. The revival extreme, 
 as largely carried out among dissenters, made a season 
 of extraordinary excitement to produce a stock of re- 
 ligion, which, practically, was relied upon to last for 
 one, two, or three years, — or until the next " time of 
 refreshing" should come. The Church movement on the 
 contrary, rightly took the Daily Morning and Evening 
 Prayer as its type, and attempted to carry out this uni- 
 form measure throughout the whole year. But there 
 has been too great a neglect of the evident intention of 
 the Church to make Advent and Lent, as well as several 
 other and minor occasions during the year, seasons of 
 special devotion, and more earnest and specific prayer. 
 The ancient custom of the Church was also to employ 
 Advent and Lent, but specially the latter, as the great 
 preaching seasons of the year. Thus the Church system, 
 rightly apprehended and acted on, includes the true 
 revival system in itself. And this only needs to be 
 vigorously and wisely acted on, to produce its richest 
 and ripest fruits. 
 
 For the rest of the Church year is so arranged as to 
 preserve what may be gained at these special seasons. 
 It is not left, as with the denominations, to run to waste 
 again, like water poured abundantly into a leaky ves- 
 sel, — a broken cistern that can hold no water ; but the 
 
THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 15 
 
 pastoral system of the Church, its frequent communions, 
 its set times for the full presentation of all the great 
 doctrines of the faith, its continuous, sober, and health- 
 ful Life of the Body. — these give a preserving power 
 which cannot be found elsewhere. 
 
 We know that in many of our city parishes a very 
 full series of Lent preachings is carried out, and that in 
 aJh more is done than at other seasons, and much more 
 than in former times. But still, there is room for a fur- 
 ther advance. The highest mark of spiritual fervor can 
 never be realized on a large scale, except with daily 
 efforts, continued for some time. And we would re- 
 spectfully suggest whether it would not be well, at least 
 during the last two, or still better, the last three weeks 
 of Lent, to have service every evening, with stirring 
 sermons and a good portion of congregational singing: 
 and that, too, at several churches in different parts of 
 the city, at one and the same time. 
 
 Suppose that St. Paul's. St. Thomas's, Ascension, 
 Trinity Chapel, St. George's, and St. Peter's — or at least 
 some of them — should be opened for continuous night 
 services and sermons, for the two or three weeks pre- 
 ceding Easter, seats free^ with popular preaching and 
 singing: who can measure the amount of sober yet 
 fervent good that might result ! The time is propitious. 
 The very atmosphere seems full of spiritual movement. 
 The harvest is fully ripe for the sickle of the Church. 
 There are clergymen enough in and near the city to 
 divide among them the additional pulpit labor requi- 
 site, without burdening any too heavily. Shall the op- 
 portunity be lost, for the want of sufficient energy and 
 enterprise to make the effort \ 
 
16 THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 
 
 THE REVIVALS. 
 
 As we gather from the papers, both secular and re- 
 ligious, the whole country is once more in the flood- 
 tide of a great " revival of religion." 
 
 This phenomenon, common enough in the religious his- 
 tory of mankind, and especially so within these United 
 States, deserves serious consideration, whenever and un- 
 der whatever form it may from time to time reappear. 
 In itself it is simply an awakening of that profound re- 
 ligious instinct, which, disguise it and smother it as men 
 may, is very part and parcel of our common humanity. 
 Man is in his essence a religious creature. To feel af- 
 ter God is as natural to the heart, as it is to feel at all. 
 Sense grovels, reason gropes, faith soars^ towards God. 
 The consciousness, that in some way or other He is near 
 to every one of us, may indeed slumber for a while, 
 but it is sure to awaken ; it may be deadened for a 
 moment, but it is certain to revive. By no effort can 
 we escape it, or dislodge it altogether. Beneath the ra- 
 tionalism, and materialism, the worldliness and self- 
 seeking of a pleasure-loving, and money-loving age, 
 there is ever, as it were, a worm that dieth not, a fire 
 that is not quenched, an unsatisfied and insatiable long- 
 ing, which, awakening at times, sends an unearthly 
 thrill through the frame of social life, and creates a 
 sensation, keen in proportion to the torpor that has gone 
 before. 
 
THE EEYIYAL SYSTEM. 17 
 
 Such occasional awakenings are somewhat loosely 
 called "revivals of religion." They are revivals of re- 
 ligious feeling. But religious feeling in fallen human 
 nature being a blind and senseless thing, which may be 
 drawn towards God, but which, under a bad direction, 
 may with equal ease be led to grovel before a fetish, or 
 to go wild with excitement over the juggling wonders 
 of table-tipping, its revival in a community is not ne- 
 cessarily a revival of religion. Religion, in any true 
 or desirable sense of the word, is grounded upon truth. 
 Truth is the sanctifying element — as it is written, 
 " Sanctify them by Thy word, Thy word is truth" — 
 without which the excitement of religious sensibility 
 leads merely to that oarruptio ojptimi. which a wise 
 heathen declares to be the worst form of corruption. 
 To a serious mind, therefore, these popular " revivals" 
 are suggestive of fear, fully as much as of hope, for the 
 cause of true religion. In the early Church, M< ~>ntanism 
 was hatched in the heat of a great revival. In the 
 middle ages the Crusades, whether against the Moham- 
 medans in Asia, or the Waldenses and Albigenses in 
 Europe, were started and kept alive by a similar ex- 
 citement. In the Protestant part of the modern re- 
 ligious world, hundreds of wretched isms have sprung 
 from the same prolific source ; some of them hardly 
 equalled by the greediness with which in Roman Cath- 
 olic countries the multitude have, under the same 
 stimulus, run after the gross delusions of false miracles 
 and relics. In all countries, and all times, human na- 
 ture is the same. The craving for religion exists everv- 
 where, but everywhere, unhappily, it loves its drink, 
 so to speak, better than its meat. Delighting in mere 
 intoxication, it is always ready to barter a loaf for a 
 
18 THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 
 
 dram. And it requires but a little indulgence of the 
 morbid appetite to do away with religion altogether as 
 the daily food of life, and to make it instead a mere 
 periodical vibration from hot to cold, the feverish ex- 
 citement of one day being succeeded as a matter of 
 course by a reaction into utter chilliness and indiffer- 
 ence. 
 
 Indeed this state of things has become so normal in 
 our day, that the phrase, to " get religion" is used much 
 in the same sense, and the " getting" is gone about in 
 much the same way, as when men seek to be inoculated 
 for a prevalent disease. We hear little of men seeking 
 the truth. On the contrary, in seasons and places of 
 revival, tl controverted questions" — that is, in plain 
 English, such questions as " What is truth ?" — are stu- 
 diously kept out of view, or expressly forbidden. In 
 the same w^ay we hear little of any earnest condemna- 
 tion and rejection of the real and crying sins of the re- 
 ligion of the day. There are more frequent " prayer- 
 meetings," to be sure ; and however irregular and 
 spasmodic these assemblages may be, we hail them as 
 an instinctive protest against that mere Sabbath-day 
 devotion, which is peculiar to modern times, and which 
 disgraces Protestantism in the eyes of every religion 
 upon earth. The house of prayer, closed six days out 
 of seven, is a " novelty" of an undevout age. The daily 
 prayer-meeting, then, held as has lately been the cus- 
 tom in the height of the work-day, and in the midst of 
 the whirl and roar of the work-day world, is preaching 
 from the house-tops a lesson which we Churchmen have 
 been endeavoring to whisper politely in men's ears, but 
 so far, we confess, without any very striking visible ef- 
 fect. We shall rejoice, if the louder voices of some 
 
THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 19 
 
 who follow not with us should make the lesson better 
 heard. Christ may be preached effectually, even of 
 contention. On the same principle, the readiness of 
 Christ to meet daily with the two or three who are 
 willing to come together to meet Him, may be com- 
 mended to men's hearts in more ways than one. We 
 suspect, however, that the daily prayer-meeting will 
 not outlast the particular occasion that has called it 
 forth. Men easily forget that to keep religion requires 
 as much of prayerful labor, as it does to " get" it. They 
 do not reflect, that every day Satan is going about; that 
 every day the world and the flesh are pressing sore 
 upon the spirit ; that every day men are dying, and 
 souls perishing, and the gates of hell open, even though 
 church doors be shut ; that every day, in short, is an 
 " accepted time" of prayer, a " day of salvation" for 
 "such as should be saved." If in this matter, how- 
 ever, our forebodings should be falsified by the event ; 
 if the "noons" so earnestly revived now-a-days by 
 some of the religious denominations of this city should 
 prove, not a spasmodic excitement, but a step towards 
 the universal restoration of the daily sacrifice of prayer, 
 the phrase " revival of religion" may turn out less of 
 a misnomer, than from experience of former move- 
 ments we are disposed to regard it now. 
 
 But towards this desirable consummation many other 
 things are needed, which the religious public are prone 
 to overlook. There is a stern accusation against God's 
 people, in the book of the Prophet Malachi, which for 
 all we can see is just as true, just as forcible, just as 
 worthy of consideration to us Christians now, in this 
 enlightened age and this luxurious metropolis, as it 
 ever was to the carnal Jews in the davs of old. 4 ' Ye 
 
20 THE KEVIVAL SYSTEM. 
 
 have robbed Me," saith the Lord, " in tithes and offer- 
 ings ; ye have robbed Me, even this whole nation" A 
 silly story has been going the rounds of the daily papers, 
 entitled the " conversion of one of the Forty Thieves." 
 If the withholding of its just dues from the cause of 
 religion be, indeed, as the prophet represents it, a rob- 
 bery of God, what a den of thieves the Church of our 
 day is becoming, and what a conversion is needed to 
 make the present " revival" a true and real thing ! 
 
 It is equally manifest, that wherever the fault may 
 lie, and however difficult it may be to find a remedy 
 for the disorder, schism is among the crying evils of 
 the day. Our Lord prayed on earth, and at the right 
 hand of the Father still prays, that His followers may 
 be one, in order that the world may believe. But His 
 followers are not one. Consequently the world does 
 not believe. Nay, — however we may disguise or shut 
 our eyes to the fact, — it is becoming daily more apparent, 
 that so long as this state of disunion among Christians 
 continues, the world is not going to believe. It is even 
 more than we can do to make Christians believe. For 
 every convert made from heathenism by all our mis- 
 sionary and Bible-society labors, we venture to say that 
 there are at least two baptized Christians who practi- 
 cally become heathen. At all events, the loss to Chris- 
 tianity is, in proportion to the increase of the earth's 
 population, greater than its gain. In any true "revival 
 of religion," these things should be taken to heart. If 
 the repentance preached among us touches not this 
 great and flagrant evil, it is hardly skin deep. 
 
 In short, the present revival, like many similar move- 
 ments that have gone before it, is not necessarily good 
 in itself ; on the other hand, it is not necessarily evil. 
 
THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 21 
 
 [t is simply an awakening of religious sensibility. As 
 such it underlies all denominational distinctions, all 
 party differences, all controversies, all questions about 
 truth, all systems of devotion. It is simply a breaking 
 up of the soil of our common humanity, a thawing of 
 the ground, as favorable for one kind of seed as for an- 
 other. The good sow^er avails himself of such oppor- 
 tunities to sow good seed. The enemy, we may be sure, 
 is not behindhand on such occasions in scattering tares.- 
 Moreover, it is a favorite device of the devil to make 
 openings for good suspected, by standing in them, and 
 casting over them the black shadow of his wings. He 
 gives a thing a bad name, or artfully envelops it in bad 
 odor, and so driving sober folks away, gets it all into 
 his own power. One instrument of good is dropped 
 because it is called Popish ; another because it is Pusey- 
 itish ; another because it is supposed to have a twang 
 of Methodism in it. Revivals labor under all these 
 disadvantages. They are eminently Popish — the Jes- 
 uits particularly having made a science of them. They 
 are profoundly Methodistic. There is not a folly of 
 which human nature is capable in its lowest degrada- 
 tion, not an antic which Satan can inspire in his most 
 malignant humor, that has not at some time or other 
 been connected with revivals. Yet it does not follow 
 that these movements should be ignored by wise and 
 earnest men ; much less, that they should be censured 
 with wholesale condemnation. In themselves they are 
 simply facts, simply phenomena, simply occasions. 
 They are opportunities — opportunities of good to the 
 good, opportunities of evil to the evil. And whenever 
 such opportunities occur, that cause will on the w T hole 
 profit most by them which shall be most watchful, 
 
22 THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 
 
 most laborious, most diligent and abundant in the use 
 of means, sowing beside all waters, laboring with the 
 ox or with the ass as occasion shall best serve, spread- 
 ing the nets widely in deep waters and in shoal, instant 
 in season and out of season to commend the truth to 
 every man's conscience as in the sight of God. 
 
THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 28 
 
 THE NECESSITY OF THE REVIVAL PRINCIPLE 
 IN THE CHURCH. 
 
 The Church is a net, enclosing in her vast sweep fishes 
 both bad and good. She is a field, in which both wheat 
 and tares grow together until the harvest. She con- 
 tains at all times in her bosom great numbers of bap- 
 tized persons who live in practical neglect — more or 
 less — of their baptismal vows ; confirmed, who wrap 
 the seven-fold gift of the Spirit in a napkin and bury it 
 in the sordid life of earth ; communicants, who show 
 forth no true communion with Christ in their daily life, 
 but who w r ould fain be at the same time, partakers of 
 the table of the Lord, and the table of devils. In a 
 few of these cases, the result is already reached, per- 
 haps, of that judicial hardness and invincible blindness, 
 which is sure to blight the latter end of those who live 
 in the midst of the warmth of Divine love, and yet will 
 not melt. They harden in the fire : and after that, the 
 Spirit of God, wounded and grieved, departs and visits 
 them no more. But these cases are very few. They 
 are marked by that complete and perfect callousness 
 which is destitute of the least trace of religious sensi- 
 bility. So long as any thing of sorrow, or desire, or 
 yearning, or secret drawing is felt in the heart, at 
 times, the Spirit still is calling ; and the sinner still 
 retains the pow T er, because God gives unto him the 
 grace to return. 
 
24 THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 
 
 There is another — also a very small — class of persons, 
 who have so far progressed in the spiritual life, that 
 they have reached that highest degree of earthly ad- 
 vance, called in Scripture, the " walking with God." 
 In the climax of spiritual growth, as given by the evan- 
 gelical prophet Isaiah, this appears as the last and per- 
 fect form of Christian life — so far as earth may attain 
 perfection. It is for the neophytes, — the young and 
 extatic converts, — to " mount up with wings as eagles." 
 It is for those who yet retain some portion of that 
 youthful and spasmodic energy, to " run, and not be 
 weary." But it is only the old, steady, well-tried veter- 
 ans in the Christian warfare, who can " walk, and not 
 faint." The eagle who is now soaring far up into the 
 skies, with his eyes fixed upon the noon-day sun, until 
 we almost lose sight of him, is very apt to be seen, not 
 long after, pouncing down at lightning speed, to strike 
 his talons into some tempting prey, crawling upon the 
 surface of the earth. The runner is wont to spend a 
 long time in preparation before he is ready to begin 
 his race : and a still longer time is lost after it is over, 
 in order to compensate for the violence of his exertion, 
 by the irresistible temptation to repose. But he who 
 walks, — who advances without the soaring flight of 
 wings, — who presses on without the excitements of the 
 race, — who simply and steadily sets one foot before 
 another, with the firmness of a cool, deliberate will, 
 strong because free from passion, unwearying because 
 no longer spurred on by impatience, — one in whom no 
 place is found for idleness or neglect or sloth, and in 
 whom nevertheless patience hath had and still keeps 
 on its perfect w r ork ; — such an one as this needs no re- 
 vival. He is above it. He hath climbed up along the 
 
THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 25 
 
 beautiful mountains far beyond the regions of clouds 
 and storms, and enjoys the calmness of perpetual sun- 
 shine in the kingdom of peace. These are few, — very 
 few. For them the Church has her Order of Daily 
 Morning and Evening Prayer throughout the year, — 
 a course as calm, as steady, as unexciting, as un- 
 changing, as faithful, as their own daily life. 
 
 It is granted, at once, that as this is the highest type 
 of the Christian life here below, so it is the most worthy 
 of attempts to reach it. But, because it is the highest, 
 it can not well be a sign of wisdom to provide no other. 
 What shall be done for the immense majority in the 
 Church itself, who do not yet know how to move at 
 all, except they have the mighty eagles' wings of ex- 
 citement on which to rise ( — who may be spurred into 
 the brief and stimulating race, but are yet of a will 
 too infirm to undertake the life-long, unvarying walk ? 
 Our fault, hitherto, has been, that we have forgotten 
 the infirmities of the weaker brethren, in our exclusive 
 admiration for those who follow after the more excel- 
 lent way. And the consequence has been, the main- 
 tenance of the Daily Morning and Evening Prayer of 
 the Church in many places, while yet the amount and 
 character of the preaching, the style and quantity of 
 the singing, the frequency of the communions, have 
 been of a similar monotonous excellency, scarcely be- 
 traying any perceptible change from Advent to Christ- 
 mas-tide, or from Epiphany to Lent, or from Holy 
 Week to Easter ; or from rapturous AYhitsuntide to the 
 quiet Sundays after Trinity. 
 
 Xow this is all wrong ; and a deeper and truer sym- 
 pathy with, and yearning after, the weaker and world- 
 lier and more wayward brethren, would make u&fed 
 
26 THE KEVIVAL SYSTEM. 
 
 that it is all wrong. They are in a condition which is 
 itself, indeed, a visitation for past sins of omission and 
 commission. No grace can be unused, no calling of 
 God can be unheeded, without leaving a growing in- 
 capacity, a greater deadness of sensibility, behind it. 
 And as. this inertness and unwillingness increases, the 
 power of the world grows stronger. As the voice of 
 the Bride falls faint and fainter upon the wandering 
 ear, the roar of the world's turmoil waxes louder and 
 louder. The sluggard who has not awaked at the first 
 warning, nor the second, nor the third, can sleep on un- 
 moved, at last, through a storm of lightning and thun- 
 der. And business, and pleasure, and politics, — all the 
 innumerable thoughts and cares and absorbing trifles 
 of earth, — fill up the heart, and the time, until no place 
 is left in which the ordinary Sunday service can find a 
 lodgment long enough to produce any change for the 
 better. How many such are there, in every parish in 
 the land, who are regular at Sunday morning service, 
 perhaps even twice on Sunday ; who give, also, a " re- 
 spectable" amount whenever called on ; but who will 
 not attend week-day services ; who find Daily Prayer 
 cold and unattractive ; who do not take interest enough 
 in the "Word of God to relish the Bible class ; who will 
 not partake of frequent communions even when they 
 have the chance ; who are more likely to grumble at 
 plain preaching on Sunday than to profit by it ; who 
 will take no regular part in the practical work of the 
 parish ; and who seem to stick fast at their low grade 
 of the Christian life ; — or rather, grow harder and more 
 hopeless every year, as the crust of worldliness thickens 
 more and more upon their mammonized or pleasure- 
 seeking souls. 
 
THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 27 
 
 Now what shall be done for such as these ? Personal 
 intercourse at their houses may accomplish a little here 
 and there : but a Christian in that state is harder to 
 get at than most persons would believe until they try 
 it. Several calls may be made before any good oppor- 
 tunity occurs for conversation so deep and searching. 
 It is easy, with the best intentions, to wound a sensi- 
 bility which is very ready to take offence, in order to 
 afford an excuse for warding off a probing, which it 
 instinctively shrinks from as so unpleasant. To con- 
 quer individually all such persons, or even to attempt 
 it, would leave time for little else : for each case, taken 
 by itself, is touchy, tough, and obstinate. And the de- 
 liberate coldness in which the attempt must he made, in 
 this way of private conversation, is fatal to its general 
 success. When sensibility has been, excited by public 
 services, private conversation can accomplish much in 
 a little while : but as a means of creating that sensi- 
 bility itself, no one who has ever tried it extensively 
 can be persuaded that it is worthy of much reliance. 
 
 There remain then only the public services of the 
 Church. And these, in order to produce an impression 
 beyond that which is ordinary, must manifestly be of a 
 character more or less extraordinary. And this special 
 character must be given them, both in their frequency, 
 and in the tone which marks them, — the latter change 
 being effected partly through the subject matter of the 
 preaching, and partly through the quality and quantity 
 of the singing and other devotions in which the people 
 are themselves to take part. Electricity is latent in 
 every kind of solid substance whatever. Friction is 
 needed to bring it out. Eapid and repeated rubbing 
 develops the hidden power, and the first manifestation 
 
28 THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 
 
 of its presence is, that it now attracts what it did not 
 attract before. When no longer needed for use, we 
 have but to let the thing lie still awhile, and the elec- 
 tricity quietly disappears again. Crowds will every- 
 where attend a definite and limited series of special ser- 
 vices, when no persuasion or entreaty will get them to 
 come to Daily Prayer throughout the year, or even at- 
 tend a Bible class. The presence of numbers has, of 
 itself, a tendency to intensify and multiply the power 
 in the bosom of each. Individuals, each in his own 
 house, are like plates of zinc and copper scattered 
 about in disorder, and no one touching another. Indi- 
 viduals, in the great congregation, are like those same 
 pieces of metal orderly built up into the Voltaic pile, 
 which you cannot touch that it does not thrill through 
 every nerve in the body. The multitude laughs with 
 wonderfully greater ease than the individual ; it weeps 
 freely, when the individual would listen with dry eyes 
 and a heart utterly unmoved. The power of nmnbers, 
 therefore, is an immense power, and, like that of fric- 
 tion, it is great in proportion to the frequency and 
 rapidity with which it is exerted. 
 
 The first sign of its presence is, that it attracts. The 
 opening service maybe attended but by few. The sec- 
 ond will bring together more. The next increases still 
 further ; and so the ball, once in motion, gathers bulk 
 spontaneously as it rolls along from day to day. An- 
 other peculiarity is, the warmth that results. The soul 
 kindled on Sunday must commonly wait till the San- 
 day after for an increase. But the six days are long, 
 especially for a weak soul, and one which has given but 
 a cold reception in former times to the heavenly fire. 
 Monday somewhat cools the unwanted fervor; Tues- 
 
THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 29 
 
 day finds it falling down to lukewammess ; and, ten 
 to one, before the next Sunday morning arrives, even 
 the live coal from the altar lies dead in its own ashes ; 
 the poor heart is stone-cold again ; and all the work 
 must be begun once more at the beginning. But when 
 Monday helps the work of the Lord's day, by heaping 
 fresh fuel on the kindled fire ; — when Tuesday still adds 
 more ; — and, day after day, strong heavenly breathings 
 fan the rising flame, hundreds will soon begin to come, 
 and rejoice in the light, and glow in the heat, and be 
 melted, and purified, and come forth like gold and sil- 
 ver from the furnace, freed from the dross that obscured 
 them before, and reflecting faithfully the image of the 
 Sun of Righteousness. 
 
 We have thus demonstrated the necessity of the 
 Revival System, not because there is any thing new 
 in the analysis, or in the argument ; but only because 
 Churchmen have been too apt to shut their eyes to the 
 whole subject, from their disgust at the gross and re- 
 volting abuses which, under the name of "revivals of 
 religion," have devastated whole regions of this our 
 favored land. The electricity has been recklessly ac- 
 cumulated, until it was no longer the gentle principle 
 of life in a body of health, but the sulphurous lightning 
 flash, blasting with ruin and death. The fire has been, 
 not the spiritual and unscorching flame that rested 
 with cloven tongues on the heads of the apostles of old, 
 but a roaring conflagration, which swept up every green 
 thing as well as dry, and left behind it the blackness 
 of spiritual darkness and desolation. But Churchmen 
 hold, as their fundamental principle in all such mat- 
 ters, that the abuse, no matter how fearful, does not 
 condemn the right use : but rather that, in the right 
 
30 THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 
 
 and lawful use of that which is needed by mankind in 
 some form or other, we shall find our true and only re- 
 liable safeguard against excesses. • 
 
 How the Church system, administered in the true 
 Churchly spirit, gives full range for the proper working 
 of the revival element, and at the same time furnishes 
 all requisite safeguards against the mischiefs of excess, 
 we shall consider in our next. Her Catholicity and 
 her moderation — when viewed in contrast with the nar- 
 rowness and violence of all merely hilman systems — 
 are equally wonderful. 
 
THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 31 
 
 THE CHURCH REVIVAL SYSTEM. 
 
 The essential principle of the Kevival System, as is 
 the case in many other things, shows the singular pow- 
 er of truth, in wringing an unconscious confession even 
 from the m.ouths of her enemies. One of the " supersti- 
 tions," for which several of the leading sects felt them- 
 selves bound in conscience to separate from the Church, 
 was the fact that she observed special seasons, and 
 required more of devotion at one time than another. 
 This they repudiated. All week days were to them 
 alike, and they undertook to regard all Sabbath days 
 also as alike, without any set difference between them 
 from year's end to year's end. This plan, faithfully 
 carried out, led them to a degree of dryness which was 
 unendurable. The Revival System therefore gradually 
 grew up and spread throughout the land everywhere, 
 being greedily welcomed by perhaps the majority of 
 nearly all the " evangelical denominations ;" and it was, 
 moreover, sympathized in by those Churchmen espe- 
 cially, who observed the Church seasons as little, and 
 fraternized with the denominations as much as possible. 
 These revivals have, from the first, and in more ways 
 than one, avenged the truth with wonderful power upon 
 her opponents, and that, too, by means only of their own 
 tongues and their own acts. 
 
 But while enough has thus been done to show the 
 utter unreasonableness of the old objection against the 
 
32 THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 
 
 Church, more than enough has also been done to show 
 that our earnest revivalists among the denominations 
 have not attained unto " a more excellent way." If it 
 be assumed, that the prevailing influence of the Holy- 
 Spirit upon the hearts of men, is only given at rare and 
 remote intervals of time ; that there is no principle in 
 its bestowal but that of an almighty and uncontrollable 
 caprice ; that at times, He descends upon earth like the 
 thunder storm, sweeping through the land with light- 
 ning and great rain ; while at all other times He is as 
 inaccessible to His suppliants, — as deaf to all entreaty, — 
 as was Baal of old to his prophets on Mount Carmel : — 
 if, we say, this be assumed as the normal idea of the 
 mode in which the Holy Spirit acts upon the hearts of 
 men, then the Revival System, as hitherto proclaimed 
 among the denominations around us, is all right, and 
 much better than that of the Church. Its root is in 
 old Calvinism ; — that God's grace comes, not by any 
 regular system or through regular means, but at 
 uncertain times and in extraordinary measures ; and 
 that whenever it comes it is irresistible. All that any 
 man could do, therefore, was to wait quietly — no mat- 
 ter how long — until some angel should come down to 
 trouble the waters ; forgetting that the Holy Spirit is 
 the Spirit of Christ, sent by Him to be an abiding pow- 
 er with His Church ; and that as, when on earth, He 
 needed not to wait for the angel to trouble the waters, 
 but said on the spot, " Arise, take up thy bed and go 
 to thine house :" so the perpetual law to His Church is 
 u JVow is the accepted time, now is the day of salvation ;" 
 u To-day, if ye will hear His voice, harden not your 
 hearts." 
 
 Experience proves that the revival theory as com- 
 
THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. S3 
 
 monly understood, is very unreliable in practice. It 
 often leaves whole regions of country destitute for years 
 together. Yery seldom does it lead to a refreshing sea- 
 son more than once a year. The exercises are naturally 
 violent, when they once begin, in proportion to the 
 length of the previous drought and dearth : and again, 
 the number of backsliders afterwards is in proportion 
 to the violence of the outpouring ; and so also is the 
 length of the succeeding interval of inaction, until the 
 waters shall be troubled once more. 
 
 All this is irregular, spasmodic, irrational ; grievously 
 overdone in seasons of activity, and as grievously fall- 
 ing short in the seasons of deadness intervening. It 
 only remains to look for the remedy. 
 
 Notwithstanding the apparent and theoretic spon- 
 taneousness of these movements (so far as man is con- 
 cerned) it has been found, by the most experienced 
 masters of that mode of operation, that a revival can 
 be procured whenever the proper means are used. When 
 it is desired to " get up a revival" — (the very phrase 
 proves how purely human is the instrumentality) — the 
 services of one or more revival preachers are secured, 
 the day is appointed, the congregation come together, 
 and the services begin, continuing until the managers 
 of it are satisfied that they have gathered in all that can 
 be gained at that time ; or — as is more common — until 
 the specific number of days or weeks has elapsed, for 
 which the services of the revival preachers were en- 
 gaged. Now all this is based, by unavoidable impli- 
 cation, upon a denial of the supposed fundamental prin- 
 ciple of the irregular system : for it proceeds — not upon 
 Calvinistical notions of the operation of the Holy Spirit, 
 — but upon the correct Scriptural and Church idea, 
 2* 
 
34 THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 
 
 that the Holy Spirit is always ready, waiting, willing, 
 striving with men, that they may be drawn unto God. 
 It is not men that need to wait for Him, therefore, until 
 He shall please, at length, to descend, and lead them 
 unto life : but it is He who is kept so long waiting by 
 our carelessness, coldness, and unbelief. At all times 
 the command holds true, " Ask, and ye shall receive ; 
 seek, and ye shall find ; knock, and it shall be opened 
 unto you.' 5 
 
 Another Church principle is involved with equal 
 clearness, namely, that God blesses such asking and 
 seeking and knocking, when united in at times of purely 
 human app&intment. We never heard yet of men 
 waiting for a special revelation from heaven to tell 
 them when the Holy Spirit would be ready and willing 
 to attend on a revival. But it very often happens that 
 if the popular preacher is not ready, or has other engage- 
 ments, the revival and all its spiritual blessings are 
 postponed for a week or two, or even some months, or 
 a year. So far, then, from being any objection to such 
 special occasions, it is simply a matter of course, that 
 they should be of purely human appointment. 
 
 One thing more. It is universally accepted by all 
 advocates of revival measures, that the movement is 
 most likely to be deep and permanent, and may most 
 certainly be regarded as a true work of the Spirit, 
 when it is wide-spread. A local excitement may be 
 due only to local causes, and may therefore command 
 less confidence. But if the movement be felt through- 
 out the land, or through any large portion of the country, 
 at one and the same time, the faith of all is wonderfully 
 strengthened. In the present remarkable Revival, for 
 instance, with what exultation of confidence are the ac- 
 
THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 35 
 
 counts published, of what is simultaneously going on 
 in all parts of the country! And justly, too, — -justly, 
 and truly, and Churchly. For so it is also, always, 
 with the set seasons of the Church, and so it has been 
 from the beginning. This is precisely the reason why 
 they w^ere appointed. 
 
 This same true-hearted love of union, and holy confi- 
 dence in union, is shown also in the monthly concert 
 of prayer, and concerted days and seasons of prayer for 
 missions, and prayer for the increase of the ministry ; all 
 of which are united in, to a considerable extent, by 
 quite a number of the denominations, on the same day ; 
 and all those who join with them derive great comfort 
 and increase of faith from the thought that there are so 
 many others, in so many places, all praying for the 
 same thing at the same time. And they always base 
 this their union upon our Lord's gracious promise, that 
 whatsoever His disciples agree together to ask for in 
 prayer, according to His will, shall be granted. 
 
 But all this, as may easily be shown, is embodied, — 
 only much better in every way — in the Church system. 
 
 There are only two great motives which can be le- 
 gitimately presented to the minds of men, as of power 
 to produce a revival of religion. The one is based on 
 \h&tfear of God, which is the beginning of wisdom, — 
 and which is awakened by enforcing upon the sinner 
 the certainty of death, the uncertainty of the time of 
 that death, and the hopelessness of retrieving, in a 
 future life, the wilful contempt or neglect of the means 
 of grace vouchsafed us here. As death finds us, so we 
 shall stand at the judgment-seat of God. Death, there- 
 fore, is to every man the Second Coming of the Lord 
 Jesus to him. Now the Church has devoted her whole 
 
36 THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 
 
 season of Advent, — name and thing, — to this specific 
 branch of soul-preparation for the coming of Christ; 
 setting forth also the Scripture as the Word of God, and 
 the ministry of the Church as the preachers of that 
 Word, calling men, in its power, to repentance. The 
 services of the whole season tell us plainly that none 
 can rightly or with true joy celebrate the festival of the 
 Birth of Jesus at Bethlehem, who has not also made 
 himself ready for the Second Coming at midnight, when 
 the Bridegroom shall go in to the Wedding. This, then, 
 is the first revival season of the Church. It begins the 
 Church year. It is set in the forefront of the winter, 
 to hallow all the active business portion of the twelve- 
 month. It lasts four full weeks, during which daily, 
 morning and evening, the voice of the faithful Bride 
 calls upon God for grace that her children may put 
 away the works of darkness, and put on the armor of 
 light-, now, in the time of this mortal life, that at Christ's 
 Second Coming they may rise to the life immortal. 
 This, then, is the Church's first yearly revival season, 
 its leading idea being the fear of God, which is the be- 
 ginning of wisdom, and leadeth sinful man to repent- 
 ance. 
 
 The other great revival motive is, the love of God, as 
 drawn forth by the gift of His dear Son, to be a Man 
 of Sorrows and acquainted with grief, to bleed and die 
 for our sins, and rise again for our justification. This 
 is wider, deeper, and more searching than the other, 
 and therefore the Church hath given to it her longer 
 and greater season of Lent, lasting forty days : thus, in 
 the very number of the days, teaching her children 
 that Christ must be their pattern as well as their Saviour, 
 and that if they would be cleansed by His Blood, they 
 
THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 37 
 
 must learn to walk in His steps. Throughout the whole 
 season of Lent are our Saviour's life, and teachings, and 
 miracles, and parables — all that is needed for the full 
 building up of the spiritual man — kept continually be- 
 fore us, deepened in its penetrating power by fastings 
 and prayers ; and in Holy Week His agony and Death 
 of unutterable love becomes the one absorbing theme 
 that concentrates upon itself all the strength of mind 
 and heart : and the grief of the true penitent is not sent 
 away mourning and comfortless, but is made to tarry 
 until the brightness of the joy of Easter morning has 
 crowned the gloom with glory. This, then, is the second, 
 and greater, revival season of the Church, — a season 
 which ushers in the Spring and Summer, but always 
 yields a rich spiritual harvest to the Church, before the 
 fields of earth are yet so much as sown. 
 
 The whole ground of revivals is thus thoroughly, 
 completely, and systematically embodied in the Church 
 system, with a just proportion as to length of time, and 
 season of the year, and an admirable climax and cul- 
 mination of spiritual power ; all of which are as won- 
 derfully superior to the hap-hazard of the denomina- 
 tional practice, as a regularly trained and disciplined 
 " army with banners," is better than an undisciplined, 
 ungeneraled mob. 
 
 Nor are other occasions wanting, although, as expe- 
 rience proves, two seasons of protracted special services 
 are as much as human nature can judiciously use in a 
 year. Two of the Ember weeks, — weeks of special 
 prayer for the increase and effectiveness of the ministry, 
 — occur in the midst of the two great revival seasons 
 of Advent and Lent. The other two — making four in 
 all — occur at proper intervals, making, as it were, con- 
 
38 THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 
 
 venient stepping-stones, whereby to aid us through the 
 remainder of the year. And in all these, we have every 
 advantage enjoyed by our brethren outside, with much 
 more. Is the union of many at the same time worth 
 having ? Then we have : it for these two great revival 
 seasons are kept at the same time by the Church all 
 the world over ; and the Ember seasons are likewise 
 observed with equal universality, compared with which, 
 the limited and imperfect attempt at union among a 
 few of the denominations of this one country deserves 
 not even to be mentioned, except as a proof of the de- 
 gree to which hearts that are at all touched with the 
 power of Christianity, cannot help yearning and la- 
 boring for that which has been, from the first, the royal 
 heritage of the Church. For the Church is simply the 
 full cmd complete historical embodiment of the reality 
 of Christianity itself. All Christian bodies, other than 
 the Church, are fragmentary, imperfect, and, even by 
 what they have, demonstrating unanswerably their need 
 of, and longing for, that which, by separation, they 
 have lost 
 
 We do not pretend either to disguise or ignore the 
 fact that Churchmen have, for a long while, suffered 
 these revival seasons of the Church to pass by, more 
 or less unimproved. The weeks of Advent have often 
 been marked by no services more frequent or more 
 earnest than on the Sundays after Trinity which pre- 
 ceded them. Lent, indeed, has been much better ob- 
 served, and its observance has been for some years 
 steadily improving in every respect, and always with 
 the most marked benefit. Many a time the Church 
 services in Lent have stirred up the denominations 
 themselves to a revival, by way of counter attraction : 
 
THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 39 
 
 and there is no doubt on our own mind that not a little 
 of the moderation and quiet depth, — the singular free- 
 dom from physical phenomena, and from extravagance 
 of every description, which distinguishes this revival 
 from all the great movements ever known before in 
 this country, — is in a large measure due to the more 
 extended influence of Church feeling in the community. 
 In architecture, in music, in the tendency to a love for 
 ritual, in the higher cultivation and the more refined 
 tastes, in the growing preference for kneeling in prayer, 
 and the feeling of a need of greater reverence in the 
 public worship of God, — in all these points, and others, 
 also, the influence of the Church has been largely felt, 
 even by those who are the last to acknowledge it, or 
 even to be themselves at all conscious of it. 
 
 But in returning to the fulness of duty among our- 
 selves, it is necessary that we should understand where 
 we ought to look, in order to discover what is needed 
 for repairing our deficiencies. And it is evident, from 
 all that we have said, that our own system supplies us 
 with all we need. It was only because that system 
 was allowed to rust into rest, instead of being kept 
 bright and busy by vigorous use, that the occasion 
 was given for the formation of sects and schisms. It 
 was by running into extremes upon those points where 
 Church practice had fallen short, that the denomina- 
 tions have attempted to cure the evil : and their own 
 bitter experience has proved, that such a remedy is, in 
 the long run, worse than the disease. And as for those 
 few benighted brethren among ourselves, who are so 
 dead to the meaning and power of the true Church 
 system, as to think that all we need is to borrow some- 
 thing from the sects; — who are persuaded that we 
 
40 THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 
 
 ought to adorn the wrought gold in which the King's 
 Daughter is clothed, with a few ragged shreds stolen 
 from the garments in which the prodigal son returned 
 from feeding on husks : such men need to be sent to 
 school once more, to learn the very first elements of 
 true Ohurchmanship. Let them try their plan, if they 
 will. The new wine will not taste w r ell, after the old. 
 The new patches upon the old garments will only 
 make the rents worse. Church revivals can he carried 
 out only in the Church way. And in that way, they 
 are so frequent, that they cannot become violent ; nor 
 can there be any long drought between ; nor is there 
 room for individual excitement to run away with com- 
 mon sense, while our glorious liturgical worship gives 
 the key-note of the sacred song, and modulates its sober 
 compass so as to be wdthin the easy and safe reach of 
 all. Kor only so, but the full and true system follows 
 up the sowing and the springing of the seed, with that 
 careful, conscientious, and never-ceasing tilth, by which 
 the Husbandman prepares the golden grain, in the 
 fields of the Church, — not to be a prey to the hurricane, 
 or the drought — but to be gathered hereafter, full-ripe, 
 into the garner. 
 
THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 41 
 
 HIGH-CHURCH NEOLOGY. 
 
 Under this strange heading, the Christian Intelli- 
 gencer thus quotes and comments on some words of 
 ours : — 
 
 " One of the so-called ' Church presses' recently had a leader of two 
 columns on the revival now pervading the country, of which it says, 
 * it is simply an awakening of religious sensibility ;' and in the whole 
 article made no mention whatever of the Holy Spirit of God. Such an 
 ignoring of the heavenly Paraclete reminds one of those disciples whom 
 Paul found at Ephesus, and who said to the Apostle, ' We have not so 
 much as heard whether there be any Holy Ghost.' " 
 
 The Intelligencer seems to forget, that " those disci- 
 ples whom Paul found at Ephesus" had themselves 
 been the subjects of a most genuine revival — of that 
 true revival, namely, which had accompanied the 
 preaching of John the Baptist. Under John's exhort- 
 ations their "religious sensibility" had been awakened ; 
 under John's teaching they had been converted ; " unto 
 John's baptism" they had been baptized ; following 
 John's lead they had believed in the Lamb of God, 
 which taketh away the sins of the world. Yet the 
 Apostle, whether from "High-Church Xeology" or 
 from whatever view of their case, did not scruple to 
 ask them, Have ye received the Holy Ghost since ye Re- 
 lieved f He knew they had believed, he knew they 
 had been converted, he knew they had been the sub- 
 jects of one of the most extraordinary awakenings re- 
 
42 THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 
 
 corded in history ; yet he did not take for granted, on 
 this account, that they had received " the Holy Spirit 
 of God." Whether they had received Him or not, was 
 still in every way an open question, a question to be 
 determined irrespectively of the fact of their conversion, 
 or of any particular experience whatsoever. 
 
 Now, as S. Paul seems to have regarded the case of 
 these disciples at Ephesus, we are disposed to regard 
 the case of what are popularly called revivals, and of 
 subjects of revivals in general. Such movements, as 
 we have said, are at best an " awakening of religious 
 sensibility ;" and that such awakening is a good thing 
 as far as it goes, and must, therefore, be ascribed to 
 Him, " from whom all holy desires, all good counsels, 
 and all just works do proceed," is a truth too obvious 
 to Churchmen to need any special argument to enforce 
 it. "With all this, however, the gift and office of " the 
 heavenly Paraclete" is not in any special way con- 
 nected with revivals. His particular work belongs to 
 a higher sphere of religious life. As God revealed 
 Himself to the prophet, not in the earthquake, not in 
 the tempest, not in the raging fire, but in the still small 
 voice that followed these great commotions, so is it also 
 with the special ministrations of the Spirit. He, says 
 our Lord, is the Spirit of Truth : He shall guide into 
 all truth. But the question of truth is little thought of, 
 little heeded, amid the first tumult of the " awakening 
 of religious sensibility." It is after the excitement 
 subsides, that men begin to discriminate between truth 
 and error. As long as it lasts, they are blown hither 
 and thither by every wind of doctrine, from whatever 
 quarter it may come. They are ready to welcome 
 " every spirit." So that, whether they shall receive 
 
THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 43 
 
 the Holy Spirit of God, or become the victims of some 
 spirit of delusion, depends entirely, under God, upon 
 the kind of discipline with which the work of revival 
 is afterwards followed up. 
 
 And if our charitable contemporary, the Intelli- 
 gencer, instead of calling us hard names, would only 
 study the case of " those disciples at Ephesus," whom 
 he compares us with, he might derive from it a useful 
 hint or two, as to the w T ay inf which the proper gift of 
 the Paraclete is commonly bestowed. 
 
 " When they heard this, they were baptized in the 
 Name of the Lord Jesus. And when Paul had laid his 
 hands upon them, the Holy Ghost came on them." 
 
 The same had been the case in Jerusalem ; the same 
 at Samaria ; the same in every instance of which we 
 have any record in the Scriptures. First comes the 
 awakening of religious feeling, then the pricked con- 
 science, then the question, what shall we do ? then the 
 plain dogmatic answer from the authorized teacher, 
 then the baptism, then the laying on of hands, and so, 
 finally, the gift of the Holy Ghost. This is the order 
 of the Bible. This is the Church order. By which, 
 of course, we do not understand, that the Spirit is ab- 
 sent from the first "awakening of religious sensibility," 
 or from any other motion towards good, however feeble 
 and imperfect. He goes before as well as follows after ; 
 He prevents as well as furthers. We understand merely, 
 that it does not please Him to identify Himself with 
 the troubled preliminary stages of religious experience. 
 In a certain sense He may be in the earthquake, He 
 may be in the storm, He may be in all the fervid ex- 
 citement of the most tempestuous " revival." But He 
 does not exercise in these His particular office. He 
 
44 THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 
 
 prefers the still small voice. He chooses as His em- 
 blem the air which men breathe, and by which they 
 live, with hardly a consciousness that they really 
 breathe it ; and to prevent our relying too much upon 
 excited feelings, rapturous experiences, and fervid, 
 emotions — affections, under the pressure of which, the 
 multitude shout " hosannah" one day, without being a 
 whit the less ready to cry "crucify Him" tl>e next, — He 
 connects His coming into the soul with things indiffer- 
 ent in themselves, things which "revivalists" utterly 
 despise, namely, the "mere ceremonies," the quiet, 
 feeble, and, except so far as they are commanded, in- 
 significant, acts of baptism, and the laying on of hands. 
 " Repent and be baptized, and ye shall receive the gift 
 of the Holy Ghost." " Then laid they their hands on 
 them, and they received the Holy Ghost." 
 
 In other words, the Holy Paraclete is especially 
 present in the quiet, and normal, rather than in the 
 noisy and abnormal, stages of religious progress. He 
 was promised, and according to the promise comes, to 
 the Church as a Teacher and Sanctifier. He teaches 
 the truth, and sanctifies through the truth. He comes, 
 moreover, as a Spirit of order, of unity, of love, joy, 
 peace. Now, the work of teaching hardly commences 
 at revivals. Not God's truth, but man's experience is 
 most in request at those scenes. Young persons full of 
 excitement, and "compassed about with sparks of their 
 own kindling," which they mistake for celestial light ; 
 old hardened sinners, suddenly awakened by what is 
 sometimes merely the phosphorescent glow of their own 
 corruption, and eager to be teachers before they have 
 begun to be taught; these, and such-like, are often 
 most prominent at " revivals," and exert a greater in- 
 
THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 45 
 
 fluence by far than the long-tried pastor or teacher. 
 There are also others, we grant, of a very different 
 sort. There are quiet, thoughtful persons, male and 
 female, who sit with aching hearts, and brains utterly 
 bewildered, upon " the anxious benches,'' waiting for 
 an " acceptance," which Christ, if they would be taught 
 by Him, would tell them, is freely granted to them ere 
 it is asked ; not to be sought for in the height, or in the 
 deep, but within them, in their hearts and in their 
 mouths ; for with the heart man believeth unto right- 
 eousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto 
 salvation. But the quiet " mourners," who sit and 
 wait, and wait long in proportion to their humility and 
 honesty of mind, are only passive parties in scenes of 
 revival. The noisy, the demonstrative, the self-confi- 
 dent, get the upper hand there. There is an intense 
 craving for excitement, and those persons or things 
 that minister to excitement are most in demand. Xaa- 
 man's notion is the doctrine most in vogue ; and to the 
 crowd prepossessed with the idea, that to cleanse their 
 spiritual leprosy, religion must " come out to them, 
 and stand, and call on the name of the Lord, and strike 
 her hand over the place," and in short make a great 
 ado about it, the simple " wash and be clean" of Bible 
 and Church teaching seems utterly powerless and in- 
 sipid. Hence, even in the moderate revivalism that is 
 now going on in this city, " young men and youths" are 
 particularly requested and encouraged to take a promi- 
 nent part in the exercises. Hence, even women forget 
 the modesty of their sex, and discover that they have a 
 gift for public speaking. Hence, " boy-revivals," — a 
 phenomenon analogous to the boy-crusades of the mid- 
 dle ages — begin to make their appearance, and school- 
 
46 THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 
 
 boys meet together, and exhort and edify one another, 
 without having "the spirit grieved," or "quenched," 
 by the presence of such inveterate legalists, as parents, 
 sponsors, spiritual pastors, and masters. 
 
 "With such facts in view — and the present revival, it 
 should be remembered, is only as yet in " the green' 
 tree" — we are fully warranted by experience in saying, 
 that teaching, in any true sense of the word, belongs 
 not to the occasion. It is felt, by those concerned, to 
 be out of place. The copious learning of S. Paul, the 
 tranquil wisdom of S. John, the holy severity of S. 
 James, if they could all be enlisted in the service, 
 would operate merely as a damper, perhaps an ex- 
 tinguisher, upon the whole proceedings. Teaching 
 comes, if at all, at a later and more orderly period. As 
 Solomon says, " the words of the wise are heard in 
 quiet." But, when teaching comes, then is the time 
 for the great Teacher. Then begins the proper work 
 of the Paraclete ; and, accordingly, we see a profound 
 and practical significance in the fact, that in Holy 
 Scripture " the gift of the Spirit" is coupled, not with 
 excitement, not with noisy demonstration, not with 
 new-hatched experiences, eager to run about before 
 they are sufficiently fledged to steer themselves aright, 
 but with the steady, sober, divinely appointed, sacra- 
 mental order of the Church. 
 
 Revivals, indeed, are sometimes occasions of good, 
 and so far occasions of the Spirit. On this latter point 
 our creed extends to the full breadth of that large say- 
 ing of S. Paul; "no man can say that Jesus is the 
 Lord but by the Holy Ghost." But it must also be 
 granted even by the Intelligencer, that they are often 
 the occasions of evil. If the good in any particular in- 
 
THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 47 
 
 stance should be found to preponderate, we are ready 
 to acknowledge it ; though we ascribe it in such cases, 
 not to the employment of revivals as a means, but as 
 an occasion for the more vigorous use of those means, — 
 namely, the "Word, the ministry, the sacraments with 
 prayer, the line upon line of patient discipline and in- 
 struction, — which are the appointed instruments of the 
 Spirit, through which He always works, and through 
 which alone He works effectually to the solid building 
 up of the Church of God. 
 
48 THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 
 
 WHAT IS A PENTECOSTAL REVIVAL? 
 
 The earnest efforts, by united and intercessory prayer, 
 which are now being made to obtain from God the 
 awakening and conversion of those who have grown 
 up in sin, cannot be regarded by Christian men with 
 any other feeling than that of the warmest sympathy, 
 and this we have repeatedly expressed. 
 
 We are not bound, however, because we entertain 
 this feeling, to look upon the present religious move- 
 ment as the result of the personal agency of the Spirit 
 of God. It is not a Pentecost. A Pentecost takes place 
 but once in the world's history. 
 
 A Pentecost is the trophy of a Crucifixion, a Resur- 
 rection, and an Ascension. A modern revival needs no 
 such mysteries to bring it forth ; it can be obtained 
 whenever men are willing to pray for it. It is the result 
 of man's prayer to God, not of God's sovereign inter- 
 position in human affairs. 
 
 There is a strong human element in it, a human ele- 
 ment moved by God's Spirit doubtless, but not neces- 
 sarily controlled thereby. It is quite a mistake — though 
 a very natural one — to suppose that in every case of 
 religious interest, of general and earnest seeking after 
 the things that concern salvation, the Spirit of God is 
 to be regarded as the prime mover and the controlling 
 power. But such cases are too varied, too contradic* 
 
THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 49 
 
 toiy the one to the other, too extravagant, to admit of 
 such an hypothesis. 
 
 What, for instance, are we to say of the scenes which 
 are described in the following statement? An English 
 clergyman, the Rev. Mr. Meyrick, is giving an account 
 of a revival in the Roman Catholic Church in Malaga : 
 
 " We have just had a Mission here. The missionaries were four 
 Capuchins. On Sunday, and for the next fourteen days, two of them 
 preached at the same hour at two of the parish churches. The pur- 
 pose of the sermons was to preach repentance, and bring the people to 
 the confessional. 
 
 "Their ways of preaching are very different from ours, and some of 
 them very striking ; the preacher, for example, wishing to impress upon 
 them the reality that they must die, made them repeat after him ten 
 times, very slowly, ' He de morir' — ' I have to die.' 
 
 " The first sermon I heard was on the danger of putting off repent- 
 ance. At the end the speaker took down the crucifix that hung at the 
 back of the pulpit, and addressed the latter part of his sermon in the 
 form of an impassioned prayer to it, crying bitterly for himself and the 
 people, and covering the crucifix with kisses. This was the signal for 
 all to be on their knees, and the women broke out throughout the 
 church into sobs and cries, like those of children. Then followed a 
 hymn, the burden of which was known to the people, and consisted of 
 ' Woe is me — it is I that have sinned, and Thou that hast suffered, O 
 my God.' 
 
 "The next sermon I heard was on the great judgment — the sobbing 
 and crying followed as before. Indeed, Spanish women, on these occa- 
 sions, come to church with the full determination to have a good cry, 
 and would not be satisfied without it. 
 
 " The most moving part was when the preacher described the sin- 
 ner's parting from the Virgin Mary on the day of judgment. This 
 they all felt; for she is to them all in all. The nerves of the people 
 were so worked up that they were ready to cry about any thing or 
 nothing; and one woman by my side actually howled so as to make it 
 difficult for me to hear. 
 
 " How many confessions there have been cannot yet be told ; for when 
 once the people began to confess, it was like an epidemic. In one 
 church a thousand people confessed in one day, and many of them 
 3 
 
50 THE KEVIVAL SYSTEM. 
 
 were the first confessions of middle-aged and elderly people, who had 
 lived all their lires in the neglect of the ordinances of religion." 
 
 What shall we say of these converts to the confes- 
 sion-box, and to the worship of the Virgin Mary ? "Was 
 this a ' Pentecost' ? 
 
 Now let us look upon another scene — a scene at 
 home — described by the late Dr. Alexander, a distin- 
 guished Presbyterian clergyman, and long a professor 
 in Princeton Theological Seminary. It will be seen 
 that one and the same power, one and the same spirit, 
 was at work in the two cases : — 
 
 " Hearing that there was to be a great meeting and a good work in 
 progress, I determined to attend. The sermon was really striking and 
 impressive. The people were generally attentive — many tenderly 
 affected — except that in the extreme part of the house, where I sat, 
 some old tobacco-planters kept up a continual conversation, in a low 
 tone, about tobacco-plants, seasons, etc. 
 
 " When the preacher came to the application of his discourse, he 
 became exceedingly vehement and boisterous ; and I could hear some 
 sounds in the centre of the house which indicated strong emotion. At 
 length a female voice was heard in a piercing cry, which thrilled 
 through me, and affected the whole audience. In a few seconds one 
 and another rose in different parts of the house, in extreme and visible 
 agitation. Casting off bonnets and caps, and raising their folded hands, 
 they shouted to the utmost extent of their voice ; and in a few seconds 
 more the whole audience was agitated, as a forest shaken by a mighty 
 wind. The sympathetic wave, commencing at the centre, extended to 
 the extremities ; and at length it reached our corner, and I felt the 
 conscious effort of resistance as necessary as if I had been exposed to 
 the violence of a storm. I saw few persons through the whole .house 
 who escaped the prevailing influence ; even careless boys seemed to be 
 arrested, and joined in the general outcry. But what astonished me 
 most of all, was that the old tobacco-planters whom I have mentioned, 
 and who, I am persuaded, had not heard one word of the sermon, were 
 violently agitated. Every muscle in their brawny faces appeared to be 
 in a tremendous motion, and the big tears chased one another down 
 
THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 51 
 
 their wrinkled cheeks. Here I saw the power of sympathy. The feel- 
 ing was real, and was propagated from person to person by mere 
 sound. The feelings expressed were different ; for while some uttered 
 the cry of poignant anguish, others shouted in the accents of triumph* 
 " The speaker's voice was soon silenced, and he sat down and gazed 
 on the scene with a- complacent smile. When this tumult had lasted a 
 few minutes, another preacher began to sing a soothing yet lively tune, 
 and was quickly joined by some strong female voices near him ; and in 
 less than two minutes the storm was hushed, and there was a great 
 calm. I experienced the most sensible relief to my own feelings from 
 the appropriate music, for I could not hear the words sung. The di- 
 shevelled hair was put in order, the peculiarities of the dress adjusted, 
 and no one seemed conscious of any impropriety. Indeed, there is a 
 peculiar luxury in such excitements, especially when tears are shed 
 copiously, as was the case here." 
 
 And what is the judgment to be pronounced on this 
 transaction ? Was it the spirit of truth and soberness 
 which moved over this assemblage ? Was this a Divine 
 visitation ? 
 
 There has been very little, however, of this sort of 
 excitement in the present movement — in this city at 
 least. We indicate it only as one of the phases of the 
 Revival System considered as a whole. 
 
 But has there not been an unsafe, not to say an un- 
 sound, theological opinion lying at the basis of much 
 of the revival teaching, not only of the past, but of the 
 present, hour? 
 
 Let us look at the case of that unfortunately notori- 
 ous man, Orville Gardner. He thus tells his expe- 
 rience : — 
 
 " After I had my dinner I resolved that I would seek the Lord that 
 night. I made a strong resolution ; I felt where I stood that perhaps 
 it was the last time the Lord would strive with me. Saturday night 
 the invitation was given to come forward to the altar — on my should- 
 ers my load of sins — up I went with them, the cross of Clmst upon my 
 
52 THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 
 
 back. I got up and threw my sins down by the altar. I tried as hard 
 as a man ever did, and I got no religion. 
 
 " Sunday night I attended with a like result. That night I could not 
 sleep, my sins looked so bad ; they came up on every hand and looked 
 at me ; all the sins of my life crowded upon me, many I should never 
 have thought of, had not the devil brought them before me. I could 
 not sleep ; I wiggled and waggled around the bed all night; the Lord 
 was striving with me. Monday morning I got up and prayed ; I did 
 the best I could ; I asked the Lord to take away the weight that bore 
 me down so. There was a friend came to me that day, and said he 
 was going over to White Plains, and I could go with him. Knowing I 
 would be in good company, I concluded to go, thinking he might do 
 me some good. There was little said on the way, but he told me to 
 keep looking for the Saviour ; that I was trying to get religion, and 
 had let everybody know it ; the Lord was willing to bless me at any 
 time or any where. I was riding along, singing a hymn, and in an in- 
 stant I felt as though I was blessed. I am sure I gave up my soul and 
 body. The first thing I knew, God spoke peace to my soul. It came 
 like a shot — it came like lightning, when I was not anticipating it, and 
 the first thing I said, " Glory ! God bless me." My friend said he knew 
 it; he felt the shock too. "We rode against a stone fence two or three 
 times, and came near tumbling on the ground. The change was sur- 
 prising ; the trees looked as if they had been blessed ; every thing ap- 
 peared to have been blessed, even the horse and wagon. I felt strong. 
 I could almost fly. Glory to God, this religion is good !" 
 
 This story, with all its ludicrous features, is yet a 
 touching one. But we cannot help contrasting it with 
 that of Saul of Tarsus. Did Saul, when convinced of 
 sin, agonize in this way to "get religion?" Does he 
 describe any such result in his case? How did he 
 "find Christ," and wash away his sins? Christ said 
 to him " Go into the city, and it shall be told thee 
 what thou must do ;" and when he had obeyed, Christ 
 sent to him Ananias, who said, " And now why tarriest 
 thou ? Arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, 
 calling upon the name of the Lord?" This was the 
 way in which S. Paul " got religion " — if by this phrase 
 
THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 53 
 
 is meant the assurance of the remission of sins. Nor 
 was his case an individual one. Those three thousand 
 converted men of the day of Pentecost — whose history 
 is pleaded as the great justification of the Revival Sys- 
 tem — asked, " Men and brethren, what shall we do ?" 
 And S. Peter answered: — "Repent and be baptized, 
 every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, for the 
 remission of sins, and ye shall 'receive the gift of the 
 Holy Ghost" This was the way in which they re- 
 ceived the " blessing " and " the Spirit." So again the 
 jailor and the eunuch had no need to look long, and 
 wait indefinitely for "religion." "See, here is water; 
 what doth hinder me to be baptized ?" They were bap- 
 tized, and went on their way "rejoicing." But their 
 rejoicing was based upon an altogether different fact 
 from that which makes the modern convert feel "good." 
 It is very true that the case under consideration is an 
 extreme one in some of its features. But in its main 
 principles it accords, we fear, with the popular idea of 
 the manner in which men are to "find Christ." Mr. 
 Beecher — many of whose sayings on this subject have 
 been excellent — gives the following as the notion which 
 men entertain : — 
 
 " Now I suppose I must be three or four days serious, and then I sup- 
 pose there is about a week's time in which I shall be very anxious ; then 
 I shall go through Hell-gate, and come out into a safe anchorage having 
 a Christian hope" 
 
 This is Orville Gardner's history over again ; and, 
 singularly enough, Mr. Beecher — while sympathizing 
 with the conviction that God is ready to receive all who 
 do turn to Him, without keeping them in this agony 
 of suspense — yet has not a word to say against the idea 
 
54 THE KEVIVAL SYSTEM. 
 
 which makes all the mischief; the idea, viz., that this 
 " Christian hope" in other words, the internal sense of 
 acceptance, is what a man is to seek for. And, what 
 is still more remarkable, he expressly discourages " the 
 impression that the work of grace requires the inter- 
 position of some official instruction," or of any official 
 personage. Isow it is undoubtedly true that God does 
 speak peace to the soul, independently of sacramental 
 acts. But it is also most true, that the Scripture directs 
 those " under conviction of sin" who are seeking Christ, 
 to the appointed "official" ordinances ', viz., Baptism and 
 the Holy Communion — in which, they who seek Christ, 
 shall always find Sim. 
 
 When men who are penitent and feel the burden of 
 their sins, who believe in Christ and are seeking Him, 
 are not directed to the very " official acts" which Christ 
 Himself has appointed as " pledges to assure" them of 
 His forgiveness, they will necessarily seek some inward 
 assurance, and agonize and suffer till they secure the 
 " Christian hope," — and they will often spend many 
 sad days before they attain to it. "We believe in free 
 grace, free salvation, justification by faith — we believe 
 that the sinner who comes to Christ can bring nothing 
 in his hand wherewith to purchase acceptance. We 
 believe, too, in an immediate acceptance. We believe 
 in a Divinely-given assurance of forgiveness. But we 
 find all this, not in any man's " Christian hope," but in 
 the official act whereby the minister of Christ says to 
 the pe?iitent and believing sinner what Ananias said to 
 Saul. 
 
 But the other idea is the popular one — not only 
 among the Methodists, but among others also. The 
 phrases " Christian hope," "hopefully converted," "find- 
 
THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 00 
 
 ing Christ," all look towards this notion of the accept- 
 ance of the Christian. These words may be otherwise 
 interpreted,' doubtless, and are often used in a different 
 sense. But it is still true, we fear, that many men who 
 are truly seeking Christ, are disheartened and turned 
 back because this " sense of forgiveness" — which is no 
 part of the requirements of the Gospel, be it remembered 
 — is a thing which they cannot obtain. And the peculi- 
 arity and advantage of a revival season is, that it stim- 
 ulates the feelings, and makes it somehow easier for a 
 man to obtain this assurance. Excitement brings on a 
 premature birth. We are not saying that there is any 
 undue excitement prevailing generally at the present 
 moment, or that quiet prayer meetings are to be con- 
 founded with boisterous camp-meetings. But we say 
 that whenever the soul is nervously and improperly 
 excited in spiritual things, it acts more or less hyster- 
 ically. It passes suddenly from tears to laughter. 
 Bowed down at one moment with the burden of sin, it 
 is liable, with the most amazing suddenness, to spring 
 from the depths of grief to the transport of joy. Every 
 soul thus excited has the great fact before it that Christ 
 died for sins. This fact, at least, effects a lodgment, 
 and peace and transport are the necessary results. 
 These feelings do not, indeed, come at once. But as a 
 thought for which we are seeking does not come at our 
 call, and yet often does come, suddenly, when we are 
 not expecting, so is it with the sense of God's forgive- 
 ness. Sooner or later, in a greater or less degree, every 
 one who believes in Christ will have the " witness in 
 himself." And the heat of a revival, like a hotbed, 
 forces the growth and maturity of the spiritual plants. 
 But this " witness," or " assurance," or "religion," 
 
56 THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 
 
 when " got," — does it make a man a whit more con- 
 scientious than he was before ? Does it change a " sin- 
 ner" into a "Christian"? Does it mark the actual 
 period of man's acceptance by God ? No, nothing of 
 the sort. Scripture makes no such statement. The 
 true conversion of a man takes place at the moment 
 when, in faith and penitence, he sets his face stead- 
 fastly to God's will ; and when he pledges himself to 
 Christ in Christ's own sacrament of baptism, Christ 
 gives him the assurance of the remission of his sins, and 
 bestows upon him the Holy Ghost. This, at least, is 
 what S. Peter tells us at the great Pentecostal Re- 
 vival : — 
 
 " Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the 
 name of Jesus Christ, and ye shall receive the gift of 
 the Holy Ghost ; for the promise is unto you and youx* 
 children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as 
 the Lord our God shall call." 
 
THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 57 
 
 BREAKING OF BREAD AND PRAYERS. 
 
 The Sacramental character of the Pentecostal Revival 
 is very noticeable. We have already alluded to the 
 prominence of baptism. We must also direct attention 
 to the frequency with which the Lord's Supper seems 
 to have been administered during the first glow of 
 Christian feeling. After mentioning that, on the very 
 day of Pentecost, three thousand were baptized, S. 
 Luke adds, "And they continued steadfastly in the 
 Apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of 
 bread and in prayers." Nor is this a mere passing allu- 
 sion to a service celebrated at great intervals. For in 
 the very fourth verse following, the Evangelist is at 
 pains to reiterate and enlarge his statement: "And 
 they, continuing daily, with one accord, in the temple 
 and breaking bread from house to house," etc. 
 
 We breathe here — with all due respect be it said — 
 a different atmosphere from that of a modern revival. 
 There is a calmness, a subduing power, in a devout 
 Communion, which is the very needed element of 
 safety, the counteracting influence to an undue excite- 
 ment. 
 
 Prayers, sermons, hymns, are all legitimate instru- 
 mentalities. Christians may, and must, use these eager- 
 ly, if they are anxious to win souls. There are times 
 when they must enlarge their zeal, and add prayer to 
 prayer, sermon to sermon, and hymn to hymn. All 
 3* 
 
58 THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 
 
 earnest men agree on this point. But is the Holy Com- 
 munion — the highest service of our religion, the near- 
 est approach to Christ — to be forgotten, when we are 
 most anxious to draw nigh to Him, and to reap the 
 harvest of which His Passion is the seed ? 
 
 And yet we know not of a single instance — except 
 in the case of one whose name is thrown out by many 
 as evil — in which the Holy Communion has been re- 
 peatedly celebrated in modern times during any effort 
 to secure a revival of religion. In speaking of the 
 long series of religious services, which were held at the 
 time of the opening of a new church at Leeds, Dr. 
 Pusey says that there was nothing new in the plan. 
 "It was but the employment," he writes, " of the daily 
 services of our Church, daily communion, frequent 
 sermons, so as to occupy the minds of those who had 
 leisure in a series of prayers, hearing of Holy Scripture, 
 meditation on solemn subjects, and the great act of 
 Christian worship and communion, at intervals through 
 the day. Thus, by the dew of His blessing, might, it 
 was hoped, both the faithful grow and sinners be con- 
 verted. Private intercession, on the part of the clergy 
 engaged, could not but form a part of the plan ; and 
 the prayers of distant friends were asked and obtained. 
 More than they asked, they had, through the mercy of 
 their God, and the Christian love of their brethren." 
 And then he adds, " Courses of sermons on special 
 subjects have been in the Church a great instrument in 
 the revival of religion in the United States. The writer 
 was much impressed many years ago by some accounts 
 given by Bishop Mcllvaine. He mentioned that, on 
 such occasions, the only external attraction used, was a 
 public notice of a course of sermons specially relating 
 
THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 59 
 
 to some class, — as ' On the Duties of Young Men.' Of 
 s eighty converts at one such season, two only, many 
 years afterwards, had apparently gone back.' " 
 
 And the writer continues, speaking of the services at 
 Leeds : " On the late occasion, God did bless very visi- 
 bly the solemn services. There seemed, so to say, an 
 atmosphere of blessing hanging around and over the 
 church. How should not one hope it, when, beside 
 those gathered there, many were praying Him in 
 "Whose hands are the hearts of men, and "Who turneth 
 not away the face of those who seek Him. It was the 
 very feeling of those engaged, that God was graciously, 
 in a heavenly manner, present there. He seemed amid 
 the solemn stillness of those services to speak in silence 
 to the soul of each ; and many hearts were there, by 
 His secret call and through the Holy Eucharist, (which 
 we were permitted daily to celebrate,) stirred, to more 
 resolute, devoted service. To Him be the praise, 
 Whose was the gift." 
 
 We are sure that some of our readers will thank us 
 for this extract. We hope that some may thereby be 
 induced to believe that " a good thing may come out 
 of Nazareth" Without disparaging the wine of other 
 festivals, we may say that this last wine*, this revival in 
 our own Church, is better. It is, at the least, more in 
 accordance with the Apostolic sample that the " break- 
 ing of bread" should accompany the " prayers." 
 
60 THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 
 
 POLITICAL PREACHING AND THE REVIVAL. 
 
 The Revival Tribune Extra, in its leading editorial, 
 comes ingeniously and boldly to the rescue of its 
 staunch friends, the ministers who preach politics. It 
 
 says : — - 
 
 " It is well known that for several years preceding the religious re- 
 vival now in progress, the Churches, especially in the northern states, 
 seemed generally to have come to a stand-still. In many parts of the 
 country, formerly the most religious, they even seemed to be dwind- 
 ling away. This condition of things was tauntingly pointed out by 
 the Observer, Herald, Journal of Commerce, and other advocates of 
 slaveholding Christianity, as proof that northern ministers and Church 
 members, in allowing their attention to be drawn off from theological 
 dogmas to great social questions, had been guilty — at least, in a religi- 
 ous point of view — of a most serious error. They alleged that the 
 preaching of politics, as those journals choose to call it, had set a fatal 
 stumbling-block in the progress of personal and vital religion. They 
 urged repeatedly, and with much unction, that until ministers and 
 Churches ceased to agitate the slavery question, or to intermeddle in 
 any way with politics, it would be in vain to expect that a season of 
 spiritual refreshing or of re-edification for the dilapidated Churches 
 could ever return. 
 
 " To all these maledictions heaped upon the heads of so-called polit- 
 ical ministers ; to all these exhortations addressed to the Churches, to 
 let politics, and slaveholding, and such worldly questions alone, and to 
 restrict themselves entirely to points of dogmatic theology; to all 
 prognostications of a protracted and increasing spiritual decline, only 
 to be arrested by Church members withdrawing themselves within the 
 four walls of their respective churches, and there, in light dim as well 
 as religious, with doors shut and windows closed, and all the noise and 
 turmoil of the external world carefully excluded, giving themselves up 
 to sleep and meditation — to this entire theory of conservative Christi- 
 anity, as it calls itself, as to the causes and cure of past spiritual decline, 
 what is at this moment going on every where around us affords a com- 
 
THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 61 
 
 plete and most overwhelming refutation. Simultaneously with the 
 deep interest felt and expressed by the great body of the religious men 
 of the north in the attempt to save Kansas from the evils and horrors 
 of slavery, and in the midst of renewed efforts on the part of the Ob- 
 server, the Herald, the Journal of Commerce, the Washington Union, 
 and other affiliated prints, to bring odium and contempt upon the in- 
 termixture of religion and politics, we see a revival breaking out and 
 extending over the country quite unprecedented in its character, and 
 which promises to restore to the Churches all they have lost during the 
 past years of decrepitude and decline. 
 
 This is a very bold and very adroit use of the logical 
 fallacy, Post hoc, ergo propter hoc. But it will not do. 
 The facts of the case, rightly considered, are all the 
 other way. The Tribune admits that the religious de- 
 cline had been going on for several years. It will not 
 deny that during these same years the political preach- 
 ing had gone on steadily increasing. The people were 
 evidently getting starved religiously, on a surfeit polit- 
 ically ; and we grant that the present revival is, in 
 some measure, the result of that starvation. But how ? 
 
 Let us see. Was it the great Kansas and anti-slav- 
 ery preachers w T ho began this revival ? ISTo. Was it 
 the ministers and preachers who took the lead in the 
 movement in any way? No. They were too much 
 absorbed in Kansas to think of any such thing. And 
 it was because the people had thus and therefore lost 
 confidence in their ministers, that this revival has been 
 distinguished from all that ever went before it by one 
 most remarkable feature, and that is, it was begun by 
 the people, and has been carried on by the people, 
 almost entirely, without even the occasional aid of a 
 minister, until within a fortnight or three weeks. So 
 tiie political preachers did not, directly, have any thing 
 to do with bringing it about. 
 
62 THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 
 
 And anti-slavery feeling had just as little. All con- 
 troverted topics — and if slavery is not one of them we 
 know not where any can be found — were expressly to he 
 avoided. So rigidly was this construed, that it was 
 very generally considered an infringement of the rule, 
 even to request prayers for a poor fugitive slave : and 
 the " colored people" who were moved in spirit, and 
 wished to take part in the spiritual exercises, were 
 separated from the " white folks," and shown up to a 
 garret where they could hold prayer-meetings by them- 
 selves. Nay, on the very same page with that editorial, 
 the Tribune gives us a trenchant article from Dr. 
 Cheever, who is a political preacher, and who is boiling 
 over with indignation that this revival and the revival 
 of the slave-trade, as he calls it, are both going on together: 
 "With such facts, and such accompaniments, the modest 
 assurance that can claim the revival as the legitimate 
 work of political preaching, borders upon the sublimities 
 of impudence. 
 
 One other fact, and we have done. The revival — as 
 it is called — has been somewhat felt within the Church. 
 It is the only part of the movement which has been 
 entirely conducted by the clergy : and the explanation of 
 it is, that the clergy of the Church, as a body, have kept 
 themselves wholly free from political preaching, and 
 therefore they alone have not forfeited the confidence 
 of their people. It is no wonder, however, that the 
 denominations around us, when religion is to be revived, 
 are at length compelled to take it wholly out of the 
 hands of the preachers, and get the people to attend to 
 it in their own way, by themselves. If that is done, the 
 revival prospers. If it be not done, the revival dies. 
 
THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 63 
 
 "NEOLOGY" AGAIN 
 
 Lsr a rejoinder to our defence against the charge of 
 neology, lately brought against im by the Christian 
 Intelligencer, that journal opens upon us in the following 
 cavalier fashion : 
 
 " In the bulk of the article, our contemporary seems to argue on both 
 sides of the question, admitting in one place what he denies in another. 
 When he has made up his mind to a definite statement, ice shall consider it." 
 
 If it be really true, that we " argue on both sides of 
 the question," what would be easier than for the Intelli- 
 gencer to approve what we say on one side, and to refute 
 what we urge on the other ? On the one side, we have 
 affirmed, that the Spirit goes before all motions towards 
 God, however blind and feeble they may be, and under 
 whatever circumstances, or by whatever means, they 
 may be brought about. On the other side, we have 
 contended that the Spirit, in His proper office of Para- 
 clete, the promised teacher of the Church, and guide 
 into all truth, " is not in any special way connected with 
 what are popularly called revivals;" the "gift of the 
 Holy Ghost" being coupled in Holy Writ with baptism 
 and the laying on of hands, and His sanctifying power 
 being exerted through the Truth. Now, of course, the 
 Intelligencer, if he believes this latter position to be 
 antagonistic to the former, is at liberty to say so, and to 
 prove his assertion by the best arguments he can. It is a 
 simple question of truth, to be settled, not by vilification, 
 
64 THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 
 
 but by reason and authority of Holy Scripture. In this 
 spirit we have met the vague charges of the Intelligencer. 
 But when the latter replies in an entirely different spirit; 
 when, having gratuitously accused us of gross heresy, he 
 refuses even to " consider" our arguments in answer ; 
 but merely repeats the accusation, adding to it an in- 
 sinuated charge of the unpardonable sin of blasphemy 
 against the Holy Ghost he is pursuing a course which 
 can be justified neither by charity, love of truth, nor 
 by the ordinary maxims of fair dealing among men. 
 
 Having received such treatment at the hands of the 
 Intelligence? , with regard to "the bulk" of our two 
 articles, we might well afford to let the question drop ; 
 consoling ourselves with the reflection, that when an 
 assailant attacks only the outskirts of an argument, 
 leaving the bulk of it untouched, it is generally because 
 he finds the bulk more unmanageable than he is willing 
 to acknowledge. 
 
 And if any thing were needed to strengthen us iji 
 this conclusion, we should find it in a long article in 
 the Episcopal Recorder, in which, after a garbled state- 
 ment of our position, accompanied with the admission, 
 that "there are indeed expressions used which, taken 
 apart from their connection, would indicate the holding 
 of a different view" he goes on to combat the man of 
 straw thus manufactured, and to prove a number of 
 things, which we have in no way denied. " There are 
 indeed expressions used, which .... would in- 
 dicate the holding of a different view !" Why, then, 
 does not the Recorder give those expressions? They 
 are expressions which we used for the very purpose of 
 qualifying and defining our general statements. To 
 guard against misconception, they are repeated, or im- 
 
THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 65 
 
 plied, in almost every paragraph of our article. Why, 
 then, are they omitted from what professes to be a 
 "summary" of our remarks? Whatever may have 
 been the motive of the Recorder in this particular in- 
 stance, there can be no question that such omissions 
 spring generally from a desire of cheap victory ; and 
 no victory is easier or more cheap, than that which is 
 gained by refuting one's own misconceptions, or per- 
 versions, of another's meaning. 
 
 But while the Recorder misrepresents, and the In- 
 telligencer passes by, " the bulk" of our article, we are 
 indebted to the latter for a statement, which more than 
 justifies all we have said as to the agency of the Spirit 
 in so-called revivals. 
 
 " Spurious revivals may be gotten up by men ; a sort of excitement 
 about religious things may be manufactured to order." 
 
 There are, then, " spurious revivals;" there are ex- 
 citements about religious things, " manufactured to 
 order." If so, then, of course, we can not say of " re- 
 vivals" in general, what the Intelligencer says, namely, 
 that they are " the results of the Spirit, the fruit of His 
 direct agency." If Ave affirm any thing of the sort, we 
 must affirm it only of genuine revivals. But what are 
 genuine revivals ? The Intelligencer answers, in con- 
 tinuation of the sentence last quoted, that they are " re- 
 vivals in that sense of the word, which is authorized by 
 Scripture and the use of the Church. 
 
 In other words, the Intelligencer makes substantially 
 the same distinction that we made in our first article 
 on the subject, and that we have kept in view in all 
 we have said since. In our first article we spoke of 
 revivals in gerteral — of those great movements, namely, 
 
66 THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 
 
 which take place from time to time, irrespectively of 
 particular creeds, or sects, and which, being good or 
 evil according to the direction given to. them, we de- 
 fined as merely " an awakening of religious sensibility.'^ 
 We did not call them " spurious." We did not say, 
 and in truth we do not believe, that such excitements 
 about religious things may be manufactured to order. 
 Under all circumstances there is a mystery about them 
 which lies deep in human nature, and in that spiritual 
 world which human nature touches. We were content, 
 therefore, to say, that revivals of religious sensibility 
 are not necessarily revivals of true religion. They are 
 not necessarily "revivals in that sense of the word, 
 which is authorized by Scripture, and the use of the 
 Church." Accordingly, we went on to show, in the 
 latter part of our first article, that a " revival of relig- 
 ion" in the true sense of the word, implies a revival of 
 the love of truth, of the desire of unity, of zeal and self 
 devotion in the service of God, and of many other vir- 
 tues in which the religion of our day is grievously de- 
 ficient. 
 
 In precisely the same spirit, varying only in some 
 points of detail, the Intelligencer distinguishes a genuine 
 from a spurious revival. 
 
 " Whenever God's people are particularly refreshed and strengthened 
 in His service ; whenever they are made more humble, meek, prayerful, 
 earnest, and heavenly-minded ; whenever their Christian graces shine 
 out with increased lustre ; and when, in consequence of this, careless 
 worldly men are brought to reflection, are led to seek God by prayer 
 and by studying His Word, and in not a few cases are made believers 
 in the Lord Jesus Christ, then there is a revival of religion. Such a 
 revival comes and can come only from the Holy Ghost." 
 
 But, does the Intelligencer, or the Recorder, pretend 
 
THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 67 
 
 to say, that we have denied the agency of "the Heav- 
 enly Paraclete" in revivals of this sort? Can it be 
 honestly inferred from any thing we have said, that 
 " when God's people are refreshed and strengthened in 
 His service, or are made more humble, meek, prayerful, 
 earnest, and heavenly-minded," we attribute such an 
 improvement to mere natural causes ? Yet the Intelli- 
 gencer does not scruple to insinuate as much. Gliding 
 off from genuine revivals in general to the present re- 
 vival in particular, and by a logical sleight of hand, 
 substituting the one for the other, he goes on to ex- 
 claim : — 
 
 " That a Christian journalist, looking over the great awakening which 
 has been effected through the length and breadth of the land, seeing 
 the ample proof of its (so to speak) spontaneous character, hearing cred- 
 ible evidence of the wondrous transformations which it has wrought, 
 knowing that editors, pastors, and even prelates of its own denomina- 
 tion have publicly testified to its godly and spiritual character as far 
 as their own observation extended ; that such a journalist should dis- 
 cuss the whole matter at length, and never even name the Holy Ghost 
 in connection with it, fills us with inexpressible amazement. " Ne- 
 ology" may seem to some a "hard name" for such a course, but in 
 our view it is a very mild one. We all know what our blessed Lord 
 said of those who attributed His mighty works to Beelzebub. There is 
 an approximation to the same sin when the mighty work of the Spirit, 
 in convincing the world of sin, and turning men from darkness to light, 
 is attributed to mere earthly, human causes. Let our right hand forget 
 its cunning, let our tongue cleave to the roof of our mouth, before we 
 do such dishonor to the Spirit of all grace." 
 
 Now, all this we account as a mere argumentum ad 
 invidiam — a species of " cunning" in religious contro- 
 versy which the Intelligencers " right hand" would 
 do well to "forget." Upon the present "revival" we 
 have said little, and in what we have said have passed 
 no judgment whatever. And why ? Simply because, 
 
68 THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 
 
 on our own principles, and equally on principles avowed 
 by the Intelligencer, we have had as yet no sufficient 
 data for a deliberate judgment. The present move- 
 ment is as yet only in the green tree. It has put forth 
 buds and blossoms, but has had no sufficient time to 
 ripen such fruit as even the Intelligencer demands. Has 
 it "made God's people," for example, "more humble, 
 more meek ?" Really we do not know ; though, if we 
 permitted ourselves to judge from the temper of some 
 leading advocates of the revival, we should rather sup- 
 pose not. Or has it made them " more prayerful, earn- 
 est, and heavenly-minded ?" This, also, is a question for 
 time to answer. We sincerely hope that such will be 
 in the main the result of the movement ; and we doubt 
 not, that in some cases such has been the result. But the 
 Intelligencer, in his eagerness to condemn us, passes by 
 such proofs of the genuineness of the revival — though 
 they are proofs of his own suggesting — and seems to 
 appeal rather to " its (so to speak) spontaneous char- 
 acter." Why, are not weeds as spontaneous as flowers, 
 the bramble-bush as spontaneous as the vine, the growth 
 of tares as spontaneous as that of wheat ? Some of the 
 most pernicious movements that have ever taken place 
 — Montanism, for example, in the early Church, and in 
 our own day Spiritualism, of the table-tipping kind — 
 have been singularly marked by spontaneousness of 
 origin, and by the simultaneousness of their outbreak 
 in different places. We can not accept, then, the spon- 
 taneity of the present "revival" as proof of the direct 
 agency of the Holy Spirit. We are content to w T ait for 
 more solid proofs. In the mean time, we will not with- 
 hold our conviction, that the movement, whatever its 
 character may ultimately prove, will gain credit in the 
 
THE REVIVAL SYSTEM. 69 
 
 ejes of sober men, in proportion as its advocates refrain 
 from railing accusations of blasphemy against the Holy 
 Ghost, and cultivate that spirit of charity, which of all 
 the Christian graces has most need to be revived at the 
 present day. 
 
THE 
 
 PARACLETE, 
 
 SPIRITUAL GIFTS. 
 
 When our blessed Lord, on the eve of His departure 
 from the earth, promised His disciples another Comforter 
 who should abide with them for ever, He made the ful- 
 filment of the promise dependent on His going away 
 from them / thus implying that the Spirit, in the fulness 
 at least of His gracious and life-giving ministry, had 
 not been given before. The promise, in other words, 
 afterwards referred to by S. Peter as " the gift of the 
 Holy Ghost," implied a peculiar presence and indwell- 
 ing of the Spirit. 
 
 But in what, it may be asked, did this peculiarity 
 consist ? In what sense was the Holy Ghost to be 
 more of a Guide, and Paraclete, and Gift, in the ab- 
 sence of our Lord, than during the blessed time of 
 His visible ministry and presence ? 
 
 It is sometimes said, and we have seen it stated re- 
 cently in the columns of a Church contemporary, that 
 the peculiarity of the " gift of the Holy Ghost" consisted 
 merely in the effusion of supernatural and wonder- 
 working powers ; that " the gift" promised upon bap- 
 
THE PARACLETE. 71 
 
 tisin, or " the Holy Ghost" conferred " by the laying on 
 of hands," was nothing more than the charismata or 
 " spiritual gifts," so often mentioned in the Acts, and 
 the Epistles of S. Paul. 
 
 But to say nothing of the difference in meaning be- 
 tween " the gift" — dorean — and " the gifts" charismata^ 
 — such a theory would confine the benefit of the prom- 
 ised boon to a single generation of believers ; whereas 
 S. Peter said expressly to the Jews, on the Day of 
 Pentecost, "the promise" — namely, "ye shall receive 
 the gift of the Holy Ghost" — "is to you, and to your 
 children .... even as many as the Lord our God shall 
 callP In accordance with which, sound interpreters 
 in all ages have maintained, that " the Comforter" 
 promised by our Lord, or " the gift of the Holy Ghost" 
 heralded by S. Peter, is accessible to believers in all 
 times and places ; the presence or absence of miracu- 
 lous demonstrations affecting the outward aspect only, 
 not the reality of the gift. 
 
 And besides all this : the Holy Spirit, as a wonder- 
 working power, is not by any means peculiar to the 
 Christian dispensation. As we say in the Creed, He 
 spake by the prophets. From the age of Enoch to the 
 days of John the Baptist, holy men of God spake, as 
 they were moved by the Holy Ghost. The Spirit rested 
 as manifestly, though not perhaps with so varied a de- 
 monstration of spiritual gifts, upon the Seventy gath- 
 ered around Moses in the wilderness, as upon the hun- 
 dred and twenty, who met in the upper chamber in 
 Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost. Even the artisans, 
 who wrought in the fine work of the tabernacle, were 
 specially gifted by the Spirit. To come to later times, 
 the Apostles and disciples performed miracles, before 
 
72 THE PARACLETE. 
 
 as well as after the sending of the Comforter. To 
 make, then, the peculiarity of the promised " gift of the 
 Holy Ghost" to consist merely in the charismata, or 
 wonder-working powers possessed by some of the first 
 generation of believers, is to ignore the constant and 
 oft-repeated testimony of sacred history. 
 
 Yet these charismata were so prominent a feature of 
 the Pentecostal age of the Church, and were at that 
 time so intimately connected with "the gift of the 
 Holy Ghost," that to understand the import of this lat- 
 ter, a preliminary consideration of their force and 
 meaning is absolutely indispensable. 
 
 What, then, were the charismata, the miraculous 
 endowments of the Pentecostal Church ? They were 
 manifestly, as the very name implies, largesses or free 
 gifts, scattered with lavish hand from the triumphal 
 chariot of the King of Glory, as He ascended up on high 
 leading captivity captive, and making an open show of 
 the principalities He had spoiled. More briefly, they 
 were visible demonstrations of an invisible victory over 
 the powers of Death and Hell. As such they were not 
 "the gift of the Holy Ghost:" they were "signs" of that 
 unspeakable gift. They were not the promised Para- 
 clete : they were evidences or tokens of His coming, 
 who, being in His own person invisible, and inscrutable, 
 was to be nevertheless a substitute, and more than 
 substitute, for the visible presence of the Incarnate 
 Word Himself. Accordingly, when fiery tongues set- 
 tled upon each of the Apostles, it was a sufficient proof 
 that the promised Spirit had alighted upon each. When 
 Cornelius and his household spake with tongues, it was 
 a sensible demonstration that to them also the Paraclete 
 had come. And so, when by the laying on of hands 
 
THE PAKACLETE. 
 
 "73 
 
 the Apostles gave the power to do wonders of any kind, 
 it was a manifest token, which even Simon Magus could 
 understand, that "by the laying on of hands the Holy 
 Ghost was given." The miraculous "gifts," in short, 
 were "signs" of the one great Gift, of which they sever- 
 ally, or collectively, were but partial manifestations. 
 Their effusion upon the Church has been rightly called, 
 therefore, the blossoming of the Tree of Life. In grace, 
 as in nature, the flower precedes the fruit. As the fruit 
 begins to grow the flower disappears, though destined 
 to revive again, and to have as it were a glorious resur- 
 rection, in the sweetness and glowing beauty of the 
 ripened harvest. Such is the law of growth in every 
 plant of God's planting. First "glory," then "virtue:" 
 then at the latter end virtue crowned with glory. The 
 Pentecostal age was the blossoming of glory. The long 
 ages since are the growth and seasoning of the fruit. In 
 the meanwhile we cherish the remembrance of that 
 blossoming season of the Spirit, not for its own sake, for 
 it was transitory in its very nature, but because it was 
 a " sign " of the ever-abiding Gift ; a visible " demon- 
 stration" of that spiritual power, invisible, intangible, 
 inscrutable, and indescribable, which inhabits, inspires, 
 and secretly invigorates the body of the faithful, en- 
 abling them to bear solid fruit, and destined at the last 
 to crown that fruit with a supernatural glory infinitely 
 greater in kind, and higher in degree, than was wit- 
 nessed at the beginning. 
 
 And this view of the "gifts" of the Pentecostal age 
 enables us to discern a common ground of error be- 
 tween two systems of our day, which at first sight seem 
 diametrically and irreconcilably opposed to one another. 
 
 There are the ultra-spiritualists— the Gnostics of our 
 4 
 
74 THE PARACLETE. 
 
 times, the " neologists" as they are sometimes vaguely 
 called, — of whom the historian Neander is one of the 
 ablest, and most amiable, representatives. Such men 
 are averse to all " sensible " manifestations of the Spirit. 
 Miraculous signs especially they try to explain away, 
 as inconsistent with their notion of a religion of spirit 
 and of truth. Hence, ISTeander does not scruple to ac- 
 count for the events of the Day of Pentecost by a the- 
 ory, substantially the same as that of the Jews on the 
 same occasion. " These men," he reasons, " w r ere not 
 indeed ' full of new wine ; - they were intoxicated with 
 the excitement of their own teeming hopes and expec- 
 tations. Under the influence of a psychical hallucina- 
 tion of this kind they mistook natural, though somewhat 
 extraordinary phenomena, for a miraculous disturbance 
 of the laws of nature." Yet Neander does not deny 
 that the Spirit truly came. He only thinks it more 
 probable, that the Mighty. One — the Spirit of all truth 
 — should signalize His coming by imposing upon the 
 senses, and unsettling the sober judgment of simple 
 men, than by showing a real control over the ^lemente 
 of nature ! 
 
 On the other hand, there are the revivalists of our 
 day, who to do them justice are averse to rationalistic 
 speculations, and receive the miracles of Pentecost ac- 
 cording to the letter. They believe, that in the Pente- 
 costal age men spoke in divers tongues by a super- 
 natural gift. But yet, they do not hesitate to run a 
 strict parallel between the miraculous demonstrations 
 recorded in the Acts, and the emotional phenomena of 
 modern revivalism. Thus they play most effectually, 
 though unintentionally, into the hands of the neologists. 
 For if the phenomena of excited religious feelings are 
 
THE PARACLETE. 75 
 
 to be attributed now-a-days to a direct agency of the 
 Spirit ; if He works now through such disturbance of 
 the faculties as is witnessed often in American camp- 
 rneetings ; why may not the same have been the case 
 on the Day of Pentecost ? Why may we not suppose 
 that the Apostles on that occasion were in just such an 
 ecstatic state, as Xeander so ingeniously describes ? 
 But if they were so carried away with their feelings ; 
 if they were in a condition at all analogous to what is 
 often brought about by the appliances of the modern 
 " anxious bench ;" if, in short, their minds were in that 
 frame, which we have seen described in some of the 
 " experiences'' of sensible conversions, what assurance 
 can we have, that what they thought they saw and heard 
 might not have been, as Xeander suggests, " only a 
 perception of the predominant inward mental state, a 
 sensuous objectiveness of what was operating inwardly 
 with Divine power V % 
 
 Much as we abhor such explanations of the plainly 
 recorded facts of Holy Writ, — and we abhor them on 
 philosophical as well as religious grounds, — yet we 
 cannot see how they can be avoided, if the parallel 
 between modern revivalism, and the phenomena of the 
 Pentecostal season, is founded upon truth. 
 
 But in truth no such parallel can be established. 
 "When the Comforter came, it was necessary, or at all 
 events proper, that His coming should be attended by 
 a " sign." The sign, moreover, should be of an indis- 
 putable character ; such as could not be accounted for, 
 without the acknowledgment of the working of an Al- 
 mighty agent. Hence, miracles were wrought. Hence 
 miraculous " gifts' 3 largely accompanied "the gift of 
 the Holy Ghost" — the unseen reality of the latter being 
 
76 THE PAKACLETE. 
 
 demonstrated to the senses by the visible reality of the 
 former. Hence also, to warrant the confidence we 
 now feel in the testimony of early disciples and eye- 
 witnesses, the religious experience of those men was, so 
 far as we can learn, singularly free from all appearance 
 of emotional excitement. In the whole of the New 
 Testament there is not a single record of an " experi- 
 ence" in the modern sense of the word. The nearest 
 approach to one is that of the blind man in the Gospel 
 of S. John. He had been converted as well as restored 
 to sight ; yet all the account he could give of the matter 
 was, " A man that is called Jesus made clay, and an- 
 ointed mine eyes, and said unto me, Go to the pool of 
 Siloam and wash : and I went and washed, and received 
 sight" And so it was in all other cases. Certain facts, 
 certain truths, supported by evidence addressed to rea- 
 son and the senses, were brought before the mind. 
 Not what we have felt by " a perception of the pre- 
 dominant inward mental state;" not what we have 
 " experienced" in the way of internal emotions ; but 
 " that w^hich we have heard, which we have seen with 
 our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands 
 have handled, of the "Word of Life," was the burden of 
 their testimony. And men believed this testimony, 
 some slowly on reflection, some with sudden conviction : 
 as the case might be. Their "belief was followed in- 
 stantaneously by the sober, matter-of-fact question, 
 "What shall we do?" They were instructed what to- 
 do. They forthwith did it. And that was ordinarily 
 the beginning, the middle, and the end of a conversion, 
 which we firmly believe the Holy Ghost wrought, but 
 in which His dirrect agency was as invisible and in- 
 
THE PARACLETE. 77 
 
 scrutable, as is the mysterious act of the will which 
 moves a finger or an arm. 
 
 Miraculous " gifts," then — not emotional experiences, 
 which are too easily brought about to prove the direct 
 agency of a Divine worker, but " gifts," the supernat- 
 ural character of which was beyond dispute — were the 
 evidence afforded to the world of the actual arrival of 
 the Spirit. The fact, that the promise was fulfilled, 
 that the Holy Ghost had truly come, and that He was 
 ordinarily given to believers in baptism and the laying 
 on of hands, being once for all established, there was 
 no further need of the miraculous demonstration. Ac- 
 cordingly it soon ceased. Of most of the charismata 
 the names alone remained on the sacred record : the 
 gifts themselves vanished with the Apostolic times. 
 
 It was natural, however, that men should still con- 
 tinue to crave some sensible evidence of the Spirit's 
 operation. It was equally natural, that external signs 
 having ceased, they should imagine an internal proof 
 of His agency in the various forms of the phenomenon 
 called ecstacy — a phenomenon common to all religions, 
 and leading in many cases to religious insanity, but 
 which enthusiasts are none the less apt to foster as some- 
 thing peculiarly Divine. 
 
 How this gained ground in the early Church, and 
 how it led, to one of the most powerful and influential 
 of early heresies, it will be instructive, and we hope 
 not uninteresting, to consider in another article. 
 
78 THE PARACLETE. 
 
 MONTANISM. 
 
 Among the idolatrous nations of civilized antiquity, 
 the Phrygians were particularly distinguished for that 
 proneness to ungovernable transports of enthusiasm, 
 which S. Paul justly lays to the charge of heathenism 
 in general. " Ye know," says he to the Corinthians, 
 " that ye were Gentiles, carried avxty unto these dumb 
 idols, even as ye were led." To be carried away, trans- 
 ported, ravished, or in short to be beside one's self — 
 which latter phrase conveys the precise meaning of the 
 term ekstasis, or ecstasy — was, among the heathen gen- 
 erally, a sure mark of religious inspiration. The Phry- 
 gians were noted for a particular propensity that way. 
 At certain seasons the whole population, male and fe- 
 male — especially the latter — were seized with a sudden 
 access of Corybantic phrensy, under the influence of 
 which they exhibited those singular contortions of the 
 body, accompanied with yells, and shrieks, and subsid- 
 ing not unfrequently into deathlike trances, of which 
 those acquainted with the forms of religion most popular 
 among the colored population of the southern states, or 
 who have ever witnessed the somewhat more orderly 
 spectacle of a camp-meeting in the north, or west, need 
 no particular description. 
 
 "When the Phrygians were converted to Christianity, 
 the evil spirit, by which they were annually transported, 
 seems to have departed from them for a season. The 
 Gospel gave food for the mind, as well as a grateful 
 
THE PARACLETE. 79 
 
 stimulus to the heart and soul. "While it sought to 
 transform men into something entirely different from 
 their former selves, it aimed at this result only by the 
 slow and gradual process of a daily renewal in the spirit 
 of the mind. It stimulated only so far as stimulation 
 was absolutely needed. It sought rather to feed, to 
 nourish, to strengthen, to build up, to cause to grow. 
 Doctrine and discipline, with a worship whose sobriety 
 and simplicity were admirably shadowed forth in the 
 expression " the breaking of bread," were its principal 
 instruments of power. In short, it inspired a reason- 
 able, as well as a religious hope ; it demanded a reason- 
 able sacrifice ; and the Spirit which it gave to men was 
 not like the spirit of the Oorybantic worship, a substitute 
 for reason, or intended in any way to deprive reason of 
 its just influence and control, but rather, as the word 
 Paraclete implies, a Divine power called in to stand by 
 reason, to counsel, to inspire, to comfort, to strengthen, 
 to refine, — to guide, in short, into a full understanding 
 of the truth. 
 
 Accordingly, so far as Christianity was really em- 
 braced by the Phrygians, it tended among them, as 
 among the other nations, to transform the wild irregu- 
 larity of religious enthusiasm into the sobriety and order 
 of religious life. Society was not only cleansed : it was 
 clothed, as it were, and restored to its right mind. 
 
 But about the middle of the second century, symp- 
 toms of the old malady began to appear again in the 
 Phrygian congregations. At first, individuals, here and 
 there, were carried away by the fervor of their feelings ; 
 and occasional swoons and trances, with distempered 
 utterances, began to disturb the quiet of public worship. 
 These, however, were but the few big drops, which 
 
80 THE PARACLETE. 
 
 herald the approaching storm. The religious mind is 
 intensely sympathetic, and of all epidemics none spread 
 so rapidly, or break out in different places with such 
 spontaneous and simultaneous effect, as those which 
 arise from a morbid or unregulated state of the spiritual 
 affections. The Phrygian fever sped like wildfire from 
 one congregation to another. The influence of the more 
 sober part of the clergy could do little to check it. Sy- 
 nods were held everywhere, and judgment pronounced 
 against it, in vain. In less than half a century it had 
 swept through the East and the "West, with a rapidity 
 which was plausibly compared to the successes of Pen- 
 tecostal times, with a display of strange emotional phe- 
 nomena which weak minds regarded as little less than 
 miraculous, and with a general appearance of increased 
 earnestness, sobriety, and strictness of life, such as the 
 strongest minds found it difficult to account for on any 
 other theory, than that of a new demonstration and 
 outpouring of the Holy Spirit. 
 
 Montanus, a Christian presbyter, and once it is- said 
 a priest of Cybele, had enough of the sympathetic in 
 his composition to make him share in the common delu- 
 sion : at the same time he had the strength and breadth 
 of mind, to qualify him to become its interpreter and 
 director. He had tact, and common sense, and great 
 intellectual resources. In him, as in Mohammed, in 
 Cromwell, and in many other eminent enthusiasts, calm 
 constructive reason brooded over the wild movements 
 of distempered fancy, like the rainbow spanning the 
 cataract, or — to use the comparison of the English poet 
 — like hope watching madness in its cell. Montanus, 
 accordingly, reduced the Phrygian phrensy to a doc- 
 trine and method. 
 
THE PARACLETE. 81 
 
 The doctrine which he invented or adopted, attributed 
 the ecstasies of the Phrygian enthusiasts to the direct 
 agency of the promised Paraclete, who, having come 
 in some of His gracious influences upon the Church at 
 the Day of Pentecost, had reserved the fulness of His 
 presence for the riper developments of later times. This, 
 therefore, became a cardinal point of the Phrygian new 
 lights. Those who attributed the movement to the di- 
 rect operation of the Spirit, were regarded as believers 
 in the Paraclete, and were called spiritual men. Those 
 who doubted, or denied it, were charged with the sin 
 of blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, and were mere 
 carnal Christians. The same epithets were lavishly 
 bestowed on those, who fell short of the severity of 
 Montanistic manners ; a severity, which, to do them 
 justice, presented a striking, and on some points per- 
 haps a praiseworthy, contrast to the laxity of behavior, 
 which was becoming more and more common in the 
 Church. 
 
 In matters of discipline, Montanus completely antici- 
 pated the scheme of John Wesley, or in later times of 
 the Irvingite sect. He acknowledged the calling and 
 mission of the ordinary priesthood. He would merely 
 add to it an extraordinary or prophetic ministry — a 
 ministry, so to speak, of the Holy Ghost. On this the- 
 ory, as is well known, Wesley sent forth his preachers, 
 carefully enjoining upon them to abstain from adminis- 
 tering the sacraments, or encroaching in any way upon 
 priestly functions. In the same way the Irvingites ac- 
 knowledge the mission of the ordinary ministry of the 
 Church. They only pretend to an extraordinary min- 
 istry, over and above the ordinary, consisting of apostles, 
 prophets, evangelists, and the like, sent forth by the 
 4* 
 
82 THE PAKACLETE. 
 
 Holy Ghost, and proving their mission by extraordinary 
 " signs." With a ministry of similar pretensions, the 
 Montanists were not in any haste to withdraw from the 
 communion of the Church. They had conventicles of 
 their own, in which they practised the peculiar exer- 
 cises, by which the ecstatic frame of mind was super- 
 induced — the subjects of this frame being commonly 
 of the weaker sex. They had their trances, and visions, 
 and experiences, and prophecies, in their own assemblies. 
 It does not appear, however, that they had at first any 
 intention of separating from the mass of their Catholic 
 brethren. The separation, as usual in such cases, was 
 brought about by circumstances, or by inherent ten- 
 dencies, beyond the control of either party. 
 
 And as finally they fell off from the Church, they 
 began at the same time to fall apart from one another, 
 and were disintegrated into innumerable petty sects. 
 Some became Aquarii — Cold-water Christians — ab- 
 staining from wine even in the Eucharist. Others an- 
 ticipated the error of the Anti-jpcedo-bajrtists — as the 
 ancients picturesquely expressed it, " killing the little 
 fish by keeping them out of the water." Others distin- 
 guished themselves — especially among the warm-blood- 
 ed races of north Africa — by peculiar dancing move- 
 ments in worship, or by a mystic motion of the fingers, 
 or by other singularities of like sort, too numerous, and, 
 if similar phenomena were not witnessed in every age, 
 too incredible, to mention. 
 
 ISTow the vast brood of errors thus engendered — the 
 parallel to *which may be found, in the religious history 
 of every age, our enlightened century included, — sprang 
 all more or less directly from the one prolific source, a 
 misapprehension, namely, of the proper work, and the 
 
THE PARACLETE. 83 
 
 proper fruits or manifestations, of the Holy Spirit. 
 Men thought they saw proof of His direct agency in 
 emotional phenomena, of a sensuous and natural, 
 though extraordinary kind. Once resigned to this pro- 
 lific error, they found nothing too gross for unrea- 
 soning belief. 
 
 On the other hand rationalistic men, revolting from 
 this delusion, began to look with disfavor upon every 
 doctrine, which asserted the indwelling of the personal 
 Paraclete. Hence in early times, as in modern, the 
 various shades of unitarianism, or simple theism, fol- 
 lowed the extravagances of a sensuous enthusiasm step 
 by step. 
 
 It only remains for us to show, which we shall under- 
 take, God willing, in a concluding article, how the 
 early Church met the wild onset of a sensuous spirit- 
 ualism on one side, and the cold and calm defiance of 
 a bloodless rationalism on the other ; condemning both, 
 with weapons drawn from the armory of Scripture, and 
 bringing out into clearer view that doctrine of the Holy 
 Ghost, and of His mysterious operation in the soul, of 
 which Montanism, with all its high spiritual preten- 
 sions, was a senseless caricature. 
 
84 THE PARACLETE. 
 
 THE PARACLETE. 
 
 The Montanistic controversy, of which we gave some 
 account in our last article on this subject, had the effect 
 of bringing out more distinctly in the mind of the 
 Church certain truths with regard to the operation of 
 the Spirit, of an eminently practical, as well as pro- 
 foundly interesting character. 
 
 In the first place, the distinction was clearly drawn 
 between the operation of the Holy Ghost, and the 
 pseudo-inspiration, which, particularly among the Phry- 
 gians, had so constantly accompanied idol, or Nature, 
 worship. In the latter, it was deemed a mark of the 
 divine afflatus, that the subject of it should be thrown 
 into an ecstasy of some kind or other ; in other words, 
 that he should be put beside himself. Hence the pe- 
 culiar force of the Apostle's censure — " Ye know that 
 ye were Gentiles, carried away unto those dumb idols, 
 even as ye were ledP The temporary abdication of 
 reason and conscience, and the surrender of the mind 
 to a mysterious impulse, deemed irresistible, were 
 every-day phenomena among the heathen, which priest- 
 craft took advantage of, and w^hich it labored to bring 
 about, and foster, in every possible way. That some- 
 thing like modern mesmerism was employed for this 
 purpose can hardly admit of a doubt. The Phrygians 
 especially, and the Montanists, exalted the use of this 
 4angerous weapon into something like a science. What 
 
THE PARACLETE. 85 
 
 is now called spiritualism, with its rappings, table- 
 turnings, and other forms of deviltry still largely prac- 
 tised and advocated in New England towns, was prob- 
 ably not unknown. There is, in fact, a terra incognita 
 in fallen human nature, a sort of debatable land be- 
 tween the natural and supernatural, an obscure realm 
 of mysterious sympathies and affinities, particularly 
 accessible to the influence of the prince of the power 
 of the air, which has always had a fascination for weak 
 minds, and which in the ancient world the most enlight- 
 ened philosophers were as easily drawn into as the 
 superstitious rabble they affected to despise. This bor- 
 der land of a spurious supernaturalism becomes enlarged 
 in proportion as religion is separated from truth, and ' 
 made a matter of mere feeling and emotion. Among 
 the ancients, the sorcerer . and the philosopher were 
 not unfrequently the same. Not silly women merely, 
 but strong-minded, flint-faced, proconsuls of imperial 
 Rome, bowed before the influences of wretches who 
 deserved nothing better than the whipping-post, or 
 pillory, and who, if the wise old Roman laws could 
 have been enforced, would surely have met with their 
 deserts. 
 
 But it is not necessary to appeal to the ancient world 
 for specimens of the power of delusions of this kind. 
 In our own age and country religious sentiment has 
 been largely separated from the maintenance of relig- 
 ious truth. To contend earnestly for the faith once 
 delivered unto the saints, is a duty seldom practised ; 
 and when practised, it is popularly regarded as little 
 else than bigotry. The consequence is, that questions 
 of truth are of little interest to the mass of religionists. 
 What is called "practical Christianity," on the one 
 
86 THE PARACLETE. 
 
 hand, and erhotional Christianity on the other, have 
 displaced doctrinal Christianity from more than half 
 the pulpits of the land. And this, many people think, 
 is just what it should be. There can be no question, 
 however, to any intelligent observer, that the command- 
 ment to love God with all the mind, as well as with 
 all the heart and soul, is becoming practically a nullity. 
 There is no subject of real concernment, to which, on 
 the whole, less mind is given, than to the subject of 
 religion. People hate controversy, they say. In other 
 words, they hate all discussion of the question, What is 
 Truth? Truth, as the bracing and strengthening el- 
 ement of religion, — the "girdle of the loins," so to 
 speak, — can hardly get the attention of the active in- 
 tellect of the country. As a consequence of all which, 
 we are condemned in this enlightened age to see not 
 only an amount of godlessness perfectly appalling, but 
 to behold the old heathenism cropping out in the very 
 blaze of our intellectual light ; so that not silly women 
 merely, but judges, statesmen, and philosophers are car- 
 ried away, as in old pagan Rome, even as they are led, 
 into the grossest and most contemptible delusions. 
 
 In the early struggle of Christianity, first with hea- 
 thenism, then with Gnosticism and Montanism, then 
 with the various forms of a rationalistic spirit, the line 
 of separation between the true indwelling of the Spirit, 
 and the innumerable devices by which this great fact 
 was speciously counterfeited, had to be sharply, clearly, 
 and broadly drawn. 
 
 The line was drawn, in fact, by inspiration itself. S. 
 Paul made spiritual gifts a matter of particular in- 
 struction to the intelligent, but versatile, Corinthians. 
 And what are the marks he gives of a true spiritual 
 
THE PARACLETE. 87 
 
 operation ? There is first, orthodoxy — " no man speak- 
 ing by the Spirit of God calleth Jesus accursed,' 5 etc. 
 There is secondly, order — " if any man speak . . ' . 
 let it be by two, or at the most by three, and that by 
 course," etc. There is thirdly, self-control — " the spirits 
 of the prophets are subject to the prophets," — the re- 
 verse of the heathen notion of the Divine afflatus. 
 Fourthly, there is submission to a duly-appointed eccle- 
 siastical authority — "if a man think himself to be . . 
 . . spiritual, let him acknoioledge that the things that 
 I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord." 
 Finally, there is the phrase so often thrown into the 
 teeth of Churchmen by way of mockery, and which 
 people seem to forget is a Divinely-inspired word — "let 
 all things be done decently and in order." 
 
 "With what power maxims of this kind were quoted 
 and expounded against the extravagances of the Mon- 
 tanistic sects, is sufficiently well known to every diligent 
 reader of Church history. The inference drawn from 
 them may be briefly stated thus : the Holy Ghost, even 
 in His extraordinary manifestations, does not disturb 
 the even balance of the mind. Under the mightiest 
 afflatus, reason sits unshaken on the seat of self-control. 
 But if this be the case with extraordinary manifestations, 
 how much more in the ordinary work of the Spirit ! 
 How eminently true it must be, that the spiritual man 
 is emphatically the reasonable, the sober, the self-poised 
 man ! 
 
 Another inference easily drawn from the same pre- 
 mises was, that all strange and startling exhibitions of 
 religious emotionalism were to be looked upon at least 
 with a certain degree of suspicion. For any departure 
 from sobriety and good sense, scores of different reasons 
 
88 THE PARACLETE. 
 
 may be plausibly assigned. For conformity to sobriety, 
 for soundness and even balance of the moral and intel- 
 lectual faculties, there is but one sufficient cause. And 
 that one cause is, the operation of the Holy Spirit.: 
 "God is not the author of confusion, but of peace" — 
 so S. Paul taught; and he deemed the principle im- 
 portant enough to teach it "in all the churches of the 
 saints." Wherever, then, the proper order of things is 
 even temporarily set aside, as was frequently the case 
 in the Montanistic meetings, and confusion of old rela- 
 tions is brought about, we are at liberty at least to doubt 
 whether the Spirit which maketh men to be at one in 
 an house is really present. 
 
 The same reasoning applies to the introduction of 
 novelties, whether of doctrine or of discipline. The 
 Paraclete was not to " speak of Himself." As our 
 Lord said, " He shall take of mine, and shall show it 
 unto you." • Or again, " He shall bring all things to 
 your remembrance, whatsoever I have spoken unto you." 
 The faith was once for all delivered by our Lord and 
 His Apostles. It is the office, then, of the Holy'Ghost, 
 not to teach a new faith, or establish a new discipline, 
 but simply to guide into the understanding of the faith, 
 and conformity to the discipline, once established. 
 
 These, and many other inferences of a like character, 
 were brought out more distinctly than before in the 
 consciousness of the Church during the prevalence of 
 the Montanistic and other controversies. They are all 
 based upon express words of Scripture. Since the pe- 
 riod when the attention of the Church was first power- 
 fully directed to them, there has never been an age in 
 which they have not had to be repeated, or in which 
 
THE PARACLETE. 89 
 
 they have not been found to be a wholesome medicine 
 for the times. 
 
 And they all rest upon the one great truth, symbol- 
 ically taught by our Lord to Jsicodemus, that the opera- 
 tion of the Holy Ghost is in itself strictly invisible and 
 inscrutable. Let a man be a man in the full sense of 
 the word, and the Holy Ghost is with him. Let him 
 be sober, temperate, truthful, charitable, godly — right- 
 minded, in one word, towards God and man — and we 
 say at once, it is the Holy Ghost that makes him what 
 he is. And why ? Kofc that we see the presence of the 
 Spirit in such a man. Hot that he feels by any sense, 
 or by any mode of consciousness, the inscrutable in- 
 dwelling. . We say that God dwells and works in such 
 a man, simply because that without such an indwelling 
 he coidcl not be what he is. In other words, we infer 
 the presence of the Spirit from the fruits of the Spirit. 
 
 In the same way we infer the gift of the Spirit, not 
 from any peculiar sensation, external or internal, but 
 merely from such signs as God Himself has expressly 
 appointed for the purpose. For the gift of the Spirit 
 must be in itself absolutely inscrutable. 
 
 Resting on such grounds, the doctrine of the gift, the 
 indwelling, and the sacred operation of the Paraclete, 
 can be defended against the shallow doubts of the ra- 
 tionalist, or skeptic. If put upon other grounds ; if His 
 mysterious inworking is confounded with any sort of 
 " sensible experience :" then, the doctrine, as all history 
 shows, is found indefensible. Violated reason asserts 
 her rights, and in the assertion of them becomes irra- 
 tional. Unitarianism and deism are inevitable results 
 of revivalism. The latter may reign, as long as excite- 
 ment lasts. But when sober thought comes, with it 
 
90 
 
 THE PARACLETE. 
 
 comes the feeling that there has been a delusion some- 
 where or other; and it is from such a feeling that 
 rationalism and neology have in all ages derived their 
 strength. 
 
 THE END. 
 
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 of Cheistoph Schmid. With four fine Engravings. 
 ISmo. paper covers, 16 cents muslin 
 
 THE SHEPHERDS OF BETHLEHEM. A Christmas Carol. 
 By the Editors of the Church Journal, per dozen 
 
 THE MIGHTY MEN OF OLD. A Carol for Easter-tide. By 
 one of the Editors of the Church Journal, per dozen 
 
 Most of the volumes in the preceding List may be had in 
 muslin, gilt edges, at an advance of 25 cents upon the jjrices given. 
 
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LJBRARY OF 
 
 CONGRESS 
 
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