good reason for believing, that the most influential men in the American churches, are, as much as we can be, abhorrent of every pretence to religion which will not endure the examination of the most rigorous reason, enlightened by the word of inspiration. All enthusiastic assuming, all exaltation of feelings without principle, all belief of acceptance with God without the evidence of holiness, all artificial methods of excitement, all working upon nervous irritability; all means, in a word, of promoting religion, and all characteristics of the religion that is promoted, which are not in accordance with the "truth and soberness" of Scriptural Christianity-are earnestly discountenanced. That some improprieties have occurred in phraseology, in means employed for affecting the mind, in making discriminations of character, and in the arrangements of time and place, -is admitted; and those evils, or tendencies to evil, have been frankly acknowledged, condemned, and opposed. This is all that we have a right to require. The argument from abuses is always a sophism. The great body of the wise and good are not to be confounded in a common censure, with any small number with whom they may be associated, and whose want of judgment and prudence they have faithfully, and successfully too, laboured to correct. The efforts to correct improprieties, and the descriptions, the analysis of mental phenomena, and the elucidation of Scripture declarations, which those efforts involve, are of unspeakable utility. They collect the facts, they classify them, they detect the sources of error and misguidance, and they lead to the establishment of general truths, principles of permanent and universal application, which will serve all future generations. It is a singular blessing for us that this object has been anticipated near a century ago, in the following NARRATIVE AND THOUGHTS ON THE REVIVAL OF RELIGION IN NEW ENGLAND, which took place about the year 1734. This important labour was the product of that great master-mind, JONATHAN EDWARDS; whose close-sighted observation, clear judgment, and unbending faithfulness, were of the very highest order. A recent author has recorded his "high sense of the genius and the worth of this remarkable man;"-that his doctrines " left upon his mind no sentiments that were not gentle and charitable;"-that " there is a poetry and grandeur in some of his passages, which show a moral sublimity of genius;"-and that his character was that of " a very primitive, self-mortified, simple, and amiable man, and affords a strong proof of the power of genuine Christian piety upon the heart." That writer also says: "Mr. Edwards comes nearer Bishop Butler, as a philosophical divine, than any other theologian with whom we are acquainted. His style, like Butler's, is very much that of a man thinking aloud. In both these authors, the train of thinking in their own minds is more clearly exhibited to us, than perhaps by any other writer; while they show us, with great truth and distinctness, what their notions are, and how they came by them, with very little concern about the form of expression in which they are brought out."* * Life of Edwards, by the Rev. Robert Morehead, in the 'Supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica, Vol. iv. Part i. It is a real misfortune, that the only British edition of the "Thoughts," printed many years ago at Edinburgh, has been long extremely rare. To the public it has been, for forty years, almost an unattainable treasure. Yet, in the circumstances of our time, the wide diffusion of a Treatise so judicious and comprehensive, which is at the same time equally plain and luminous, is not merely seasonable, but it is needed, desired, demanded, by the most urgent considerations. The impulse which the religious spirit among us is now receiving, cannot leave behind it slight effects: its results are likely, we might say inevitably necessary, to be of an importance most deep, and all but indelible. If the movement be ill directed, if it be indulged in deviations, however plausible, from the doctrines, precepts, and warnings of the heavenly word; the generation of bad consequences will not be slow nor small. Ignorance and radical disbelief of the divine testimony; self-will in forming notions of doctrine and fanciful modes, rather than strict rules of conduct; morbid sensitiveness to wild and romantic emotions about religion, but coldness and torpor with regard to the pure and undefiled religion of the Bible; the affectation of singularity, selfrighteousness under the most high-sounding phrases of evangelism, spiritual pride, breakings out of immorality, are but a part of the catalogue of mischiefs which will become rife: and the victims of enthusiasm will be, some immovably wedged in the confidence of a safe condition, without any evidence from Scripture, or sense, or reason, or conscience; and others dashed down the precipice of irreclaimable infidelity. But, let the conviction be dominant, that every attempt must be made and persevered in SCRIPTURALLY; that all experience, enjoyment, and action, must be regulated by the genuine sense and inflexible authority of the sacred word; that every pretence, which is not according to this rule, must unsparingly be cut off; that religion is but the pure and perfect state of reason; that all the subtilties of self must be dethroned; and that Christ alone must be exalted in his holiness and his grace: then will our revivals of religion be worthy of their name, healthful, vigorous, and productive; and they will answer to the delineations of inspired prayer, that we may " be filled with the knowledge of his will, in all wisdom and spiritual understanding: walking worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in the knowledge of God; our love abounding yet more and more in knowledge and in all judgment" (correct perception, just spiritual taste); " that we may approve the things that are excellent; that we may be sincere and without offence till the day of Christ, being filled with the fruits of righteousness, which are by Jesus Christ unto the glory and praise of God." If In proportion as this state of things is advanced, must some enormous evils among us give way. we presume to mention one or two, let them be taken as representatives, each of its own class of " stumbling-blocks" which must be taken away, if we would "prepare the way of the Lord, and make straight in the desert a highway for our God." Pauperism must be rooted out. The condition usually understood by that name, involves a state of mind and habits with which true religion can find no congeniality. Indolence and indulgence alternating with want and misery; wasting the little, while murmuring that it is not much; sullen recollection of mis-spent advantages; recklessness of the future; pride and insolence matched with rags and dirtiness; children abandoned to ignorance and crime; the Lord's day forgotten, or marked only by more loathsome eruptions of filthy laziness, and boisterous brutality:-in a state like this, can meek, orderly, considerate religion receive entertainment? Justly, but in colours not too strong, has Dr. Chalmers portrayed this great plague, this gangrene of our country's strength. It is not poverty, nor the necessary attendant of poverty; but it is moral perverseness united with physical wretchedness, the former in the larger proportion. This vast and dreary morass must be drained; or the trees of righteousness will not flourish in it, if they can ever at all be planted. The poor must learn economy; the economy of their time and strength, of their wages and provisions. Christian instruction must be attended with the diffusion of useful knowledge of every appropriate kind. The powers of natural good must be put into action, for the aid of moral means. Pauperism will always rear its hydra head against true religion; for true religion is the friend of order, cleanliness, and decency; nor can it ever be on terms of reconciliation with thoughtlessness and imprudence. Religion, therefore, with its noble array of "knowledge and discretion, the instruction of wisdom, justice, and judgment, and equity," must vanquish pauperism. But, on this momentous sub |