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lose, to a considerable extent, the power, if not the life, of godliness. The spiritual and eternal become subordinate to the worldly and temporal. The blight of spiritual declension settles down and attaches itself with increasing persistency year by year. Such has been the history of Christian churches everywhere. This being the testimony of universal experience to the proneness of human nature to decline from the spirit and the power of godliness, how, it is asked, is this tendency to be checked ? Obviously the true and only effective and appropriate remedy for a season of spiritual declension is a season of spiritual revival. Such a season, by whatever agencies or instrumentalities brought about, by whatever adjuncts of questionable propriety it may be accompanied, and of greater or less extent, may properly be termed " a revival of religion." These manifestations, moreover, are to be regarded as a result of a special and peculiar effusion of the Holy Spirit. All spiritual life, all progress in the divine life, whether in the individual or in the community, in the church or in the nation, is the Spirit of God. The whole period of grace, from the Day of Pentecost to the final judgment, is properly termed " the dispensation of the Holy Spirit." Every true convert is begotten of the Spirit, and so becomes a child of God. The Spirit is always in and with the Church, carrying forward the work of redemption.

11. Early Revivals: Mention, moreover, is made in the Scriptures of special dispensations of the Holy Spirit, of copious effusions of the Spirit of particular times of refreshing from the

x. In Bib- presence of the Lord: " It shall come to lical Times. pass afterward, that I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh." The fulfilment of this prediction of the prophet Joel began, as the Apostle Peter testifies, on the Day of Pentecost next following the crucifixion of our Lord. So great and so efficacious was this outpouring of the Spirit, that about 3,000 souls were that day made partakers of the divine nature by regeneration. And this was only the initial of a marvelous dispensation and display of divine grace in the renewal and sanctification of a great multitude of souls extending through a continued series of years, whereby the Christian Church was planted, took root, and filled the land of Israel with its blessed fruits. It was a great and glorious revival of religion. This was but the first great revival in the history of the Christian Church. Times without number, at particular periods, in peculiar exigencies God has interposed for the redemption of the Church and for the triumphant advancement of the Gospel of Christ. After a season of spiritual declension, when iniquity had come in, and rolled over the whole land like a desolating flood, a wave of renewing and sanctifying grace has spread itself over a whole region of country, whereby the attention of the multitude has been aroused, great numbers of the careless and thoughtless have been brought under saving conviction, and converts by thousands have been brought into the Church of such as should be saved. Marvelous changes have thus been wrought in the aspect of large communities, affecting most favorably the character and the

results of the preaching of the Word, the devotions of the closet, the family, and the sanctuary, and the interest taken by the multitude in spiritual and external concerns, resulting in an extraordinary quickening of religious affections, a general stimulus of Christian graces, and the divine renewal of souls that were dead in trespasses and sins. Not only at Jerusalem, but everywhere in all the region round about where the apostles and apostolic men preached in those days, and far away among the Gentiles, such scenes were witnessed. So many and so mighty were those special manifestations of divine power and grace in the Gospel, by reason of such effusions of the Holy Spirit, that Tertullian could say at the beginning of the third century, in his appeal to the civil authorities, " We have filled all places of your dominions,-cities, islands, corporations, councils, armies, tribes, the senate, the palace, the court of judicature." " So mightily grew the work of God, and prevailed."

Passing over the intervening centuries, it may well be asked, What was the Protestant Reformation, that, beginning in the fourteenth century under Wyclif, and continuing under Huss in the fifteenth,

at length culminated in the sixteenth a. Protes- under Luther and Calvin and a host of tant kindred spirits? It was a special dis-

minds of men everywhere in Christian lands were turned toward the utterances of the divine word, the errors of the papacy were discovered and renounced, the truth as it is in Jesus was apprehended and embraced by multitudes, and the churches were built up in the faith of the Gospel. It was a great and general revival of religion, whereby converts by tens of thousands were born of the Spirit of God. So thorough and wide-spread were those conversions, that the fires of persecution were kindled in vain. In spite of princes and prelates, converts to the pure faith of the Gospel were made all over Germany, Switzerland, France, Holland, and Great Britain, and not a few in Spain and Italy. It was the greatest revival of religion that the world had witnessed, and the Church enjoyed, since the days of Constantine. From that day, all along the centuries, the annals of the Church abound in testimonies to the reality and efficacy of these special effusions of the Spirit. The Church of Scotland was born anew in the great revival under Knox and his brethren. " The whole nation," says Kirkton, " was converted by lump." Near the close of the sixteenth century, under the ministry of such divines as Wishart, Cooper, and Welsh, all Scotland was visited by an extraordinary effusion of the Holy Spirit. So mightily were men affected, that the whole general assembly, 400 ministers and elders, while renewing their solemn league and covenant, with sighs and groans and tears, were swayed by the Spirit, as the leaves of the forest by the " rushing of the wind " of the driving tempest. Similar scenes were further witnessed in Scotland, beginning in 1625, at Stewarton; extending through the land and into the north of Ireland, and eventuating in that remarkable display of divine grace in the Kirk of Scotland, where in June, 1630, under the preaching of Bruce and Livingston, " near 500 "