unreasonable that a concern so vast as the soul's salvation, and, especially, so opposite to the general habits and tempers of mankind as religion, should become a public sentiment—should affect a whole society with a strong and simultaneous sensation; nay, should create a public passion? All great interests, all public concerns, have this effect, though they are far less important than religion. What is the effect, when a nation is agitated by the spirit of war? The enthusiasm descends even to children; the theme resounds in the songs of the milk-maid and shepherd-in the conversation of the peasant and plough-boy. What if the inhabitants of an entire county, or province, were about to remove from one kingdom to another; a general sentiment would be awakened, and it would become the topic of public conversation and attention-of animation and enthusiasm.

Where great numbers embrace religion at one time, it is a true and real emigration, and one infinitely more important than a removal to India: "They are translated out of the kingdom of Satan into the kingdom of God's dear Son." Is it wonderful, if it should excite strong and lively sensations? and would it not be more wonderful, if it should not incorporate with it the natural passions of the mind, and sometimes be marked with enthusiasm. Dr. Young says, "an undevout astronomer is mad:" but, it is easier to study astronomy without devotion, than it is to feel religion without passion.

We are not required to love our neighbour better than ourselves; but the great apostle of the gentiles declares, "if we are beside ourselves, it is for your sakes." If an apostle could be beside himself, could almost lose the command of his reason for others, surely it is not to be wondered at, nor faulted, if men are overwhelmed with fear, elevated with hope, enraptured with joy, in contemplation of the amazing destinies of their own souls.

I fear that these nice objections to religious revivals originate from wrong views of religion itself; they seem evidently to spring from a disgust at the sight of great numbers seeking for salvation at once. They want people should keep still, and say nothing about their hopes or fears of futurity. They are not at all disgusted at the strong passions, and enthusiastic feelings,

often manifested at horse races, in theatres, at concerts of mu sic, in assemblies where great events are celebrated, and in the field of battle. Man, it seems, may be impassioned about every thing but religion; there he must be cold as marble, unfeeling as clay, dull as lead. He must, by all means, have the forms of religion, and that with as much pomp, splendour, and cere mony as you please; but he must go through those forms with as little ardour, and as lifeless a monotony, as the moonlight shadows of the churchyard move over the congregation of the dead.

Whether the revivals of religion in this country have been productive of good, which, at least, would be evidence in their favour, I leave those who possess the means to judge for themselves; and, in the silent hour of calm reflection, they will judge justly. In the heat of controversy, and under the painful stimulus of contradiction, good men err in judgment by overlooking the evidence of facts; but when these casual clouds are past over, the sun breaks forth.

But, wherever reformations are discountenanced and spoken against by public teachers, they are seldom observed to take place; and, I call upon the reader of these numbers, to look around him in this city, and mark in what congregations these appearances have occurred; for, while I mean to cast no reflections, I neither mean to flatter the vanity of men. The truth will bear its own weight, and will approve itself to every man's conscience before God.

The strain of preaching which, in the former series, I have styled triangular, because incessantly urging three grand points, which I consider as erroneous, as far as I have been able to observe, is rarely, if ever, attended with salutary effects: it does not carry conviction to the mind; men's understandings revolt from it. Tell men that they are condemned for a crime they never committed; that they will be punished for what they cannot do; or, that they will be doubly and aggravatedly con demned for not believing in a Saviour who never died for them, and they will feel no conviction. However they may force themselves into an involuntary assent, into an artificial, as I have already said, a kind of technical belief of such propositions,

there will be no conviction of the understanding; for there can be none. They may, indeed, say, and perhaps truly, "my teach er is a great divine, has studied these things, and surely ought to know; and I have nothing to do but to surrender my understanding to his opinions and doctrines." But, alas! the mind drawn up to this tension is like an elastic bow, which owes its figure to the cord which holds it; its strength is overpowered, but not its tendency.

Many of the doctrines of revelation are such, as human reason would never reach, unaided by divine light; but being revealed, there is no doctrine of revelation apparently absurd or repugnant to reason. The three grand points, however, which form the triangle, are not the only ones which, in their conviction on the mind, remind me of the bended bow: their notion of faith is inexplicable, and their idea of justification covered with mist. As for faith, it is not opinion, assent, reason, know ledge, nor love; it is nothing which properly belongs to human perceptions, nor exercises: I have sometimes heard them call it a divine principle, but never could learn what principle was, or wherein it consisted. If I have been able to learn what they mean by justification, it is, that a certain quantity of Christ's righteousness is taken and put into the Christian, on account of which he is justified. The scriptures teach us that Christ has atoned for sin, and the sinner is fully pardoned and freely justified, in consideration of what Christ has done to magnify the law of God: but the notion of a transfer of Christ's righteousness, so as to make it the righteousness of the sinner, is using words without ideas.

Opposition to the doctrines which have almost uniformly marked the course of reformations in this country, and, in the hands of God, have been the cause of those reformations, can be regarded in no other light than as a deadly aim at reformation itself. He who strikes at the cause, strikes with a bolder hand, and with higher aim, than he who strikes at the effect. He who proves that a reformation, so called, is but an excitement of natural passion, and that its subjects may apostatize from their profession, proves little; at least, but a local fact: but he who makes war on that strain of preaching and scheme

of doctrine, which has been followed by nearly all the revivals of religion in a nation, if he succeed, will not be troubled with apostacies, for be will see no reformations; he will have the pleasure, if it may be called a pleasure, of seeing people go carelessly on through life, with no troublesome anxieties about religion, or the life to come: he will tell them, from sabbath to sabbath, that "Christ died for none but the elect; that he died for them, because they were the elect; and that when he makes known to them their election, then they ought to love and obey him :" they will make their own improvement, "that all anxieties about salvation are useless and vain. Why should we borrow trouble, or anticipate evil? Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die. If he has died for us, he will make it known to us in time; if not, then we owe him no gratitude; and as we were all condemned in Adam, we have nothing on our own account to regret."

That people will quiet their consciences, and repose calmly, and sleep soundly on this triangular bed, is as sure as that the sun rises and sets. This triple, nay, quadruple thraldom, in which their own voluntary agency is in no way implicated, soothes their slumber, and not a little gratifies their pride; still more so does the soporific dose "descend into their bowels like water, and like oil into their bones," when a religion is held up before them which is no business of theirs; which gives them a happy passiveness, and is every whit, and in all respects, as distinct from their moral feelings and powers, as the state to which it offers a remedy is without their accountability or blame. As they had nothing to do in bringing themselves into sin; nothing to do in getting themselves out of it, so they are highly satisfied to learn, that they have nothing to do when fairly out of it. As for faith, which is the body of their religion, it is no exercise of theirs, and has no connexion with their moral exercises in its origin, nature, or object, for it is neither perception nor volition, knowledge nor love. They have no virtue, for there is no such thing; and, in fine, they seem to be allowed to have nothing on earth, properly to be called theirs, but a little selfishness.

Such a strain of preaching will scarcely be followed by a spirit of reformation. The process of conversion and of Chris

tianizing under these tenets will, indeed, make little noise: a person goes to his minister, and tells him he has some thoughts about religion. The clergyman asks him, "Do you verily believe that all men are justly condemned for the sin of Adam?" "Yes." "Do you acknowledge yourself worthy of endless misery for what he did?" "Yes." "Do you believe yourself totally incapacitated to obey God, or do any thing which he requires ?" "Yes." "And can you not love Christ, who has been so good as to die for you, and has done, and will do every thing for you, and will carry you to heaven, and make you eternally happy there?" "O yes, I should be very ungrateful not to love one who died for me, and will save me." "Very well! you have nothing to do but confirm yourself in these sentiments; you had better join the church; there is reason to believe you are one of the elect."

Let it not be understood that I here pretend to give all the words that pass between the catechist and his catechumen, but I give the great features, and the leading points. Enough more words are used; but as he is never made to feel the true blame of his condition, he never feels a proper repentance, neither can he have just conceptions of the nature or application of the remedy. These convictions are sufficiently silent for the most fastidious, and are followed by conversions to a selfish, opinionated, intolerant temper and character; even, sometimes, to that degree, that a candid observer is at a loss whether such a conversion is more the subject of felicitation than of regret. If not twofold more a child of hell, he is, at least, twofold more a child of prejudice, bigotry, and persecution.

If some men shall flutter and flounce remarkably in reading these remarks, let them see to it, lest they confirm the suspicion that they are the "wounded birds."

As this Number is an appeal to the eye of the public respecting the usefulness and importance of revivals of religion, I deplore that I am compelled to add, that the instances which have come under the inspection of this city, are mournfully few. Look into those large congregations whose fame has been