itself. On New Year's Day they all clubbed together to get up a grand feast, telling us several days before that they intended to invite us and a number of people from the village. Great was the bustle of preparation. They erected a sort of shed made of bamboos and covered with cocoa-nut branches; this was prettily decorated with wreaths of the beautiful lotus. At the entrance they put up, in large coloured letters, an inscription in English and Oriya; the English ran thus-"We heartily welcome the invited christian guests." On the ground they had spread native mats, on which they sat in groups, and entertained us with singing hymns, accompanied by the native drum, clapping of hands, and ultimately an English fiddle; and though to English ears their music is not very sweet, their bright, happy faces, their warm enthusiasm, and the sweet name of Jesus running through all their hymns, made up for every deficiency.

It is very cheering to those who are working far away from their native land, in the midst of a heathen and degraded population, to know that there are many around them who are true christians, following humbly and faithfully in the footsteps of Him who shed His own precious blood for all the nations of the earth. Last Sunday, though several of our people were away itinerating with the brethren in the district, the school-room was so full that had not many of the women sat in the verandah we should not have had room for all. The chapel work is again progressing, and we are longing for the day when we can take possession. Not many yards from where it is being built, I saw a man measuring his way to Pooree by the length of his body; as he lay down he kissed the ground, and with his arms stretched out as far as he could reach, made a mark with a piece of wood he had in his hand, then getting up he walked to the mark and lay flat down again, repeating the same thing, and so pursued his weary way. Such men are regarded as very holy; they take neither money nor food with them, but are well cared for by the people as they pass along. The one I saw certainly looked as if he had wanted for nothing. But one turns away from such a scene with mingled feelings of sorrow and disgust, longing for the time when all nations shall be brought into the one fold of the true Shepherd. Happy English children, who are rejoicing that you were not brought up to worship blocks of wood and stone, will you not pray for those who are sunk in heathen darknesspray that God may put it into the hearts of earnest, good men and women to come and teach their dark fellow-creatures the way to the better land.

Received on account of the General Baptist Missionary Society from

Subscriptions and Donations in aid of the General Baptist Missionary Society will be thankfully received by T. HILL, Esq., Baker Street, Nottingham, Treasurer; and by the Rev. J. C. PIKE, Secretary, Leicester, from whom also Missionary Boxes, Collecting Books and Cards may be obtained.

It will oblige if Post Office Orders for the Secretary be made payable at the "KING RICHARD'S ROAD" Office, Leicester.

THE

GENERAL BAPTIST MAGAZINE.

MAY, 1875.

LESSONS FOR THE CHURCHES FROM THE REVIVAL.

Now the revival movement is actually in our midst, and the work of Messrs. Moody and Sankey at the Agricultural Hall is before us in some of its results, it is possible to discover and register a few of the best proved lessons which the church of the Lord Jesus may learn from an awakening whose enormous magnitude is attracting the attention of the whole country. The ultimate effects on the religious life of the nation, -the possibilities of serious reaction, are known only to the Head of the church. We speak not of them, further than to say that they will depend largely upon the attitude taken by the churches generally toward this work, and the means adopted to mature and perfect the results placed within their reach. Certainly there are sheaves of corn brought to our very doors in sufficient quantity to enable us to judge of the character of the work being done by these God-sent husbandmen, and to profit, if we will, by their way of doing their work.

This religious awakening is a real quickening of spiritual emotion, not a passing sensationalism, or a fitful excitement dependent upon unworthy manoeuvres and questionable methods of activity. Making all necessary deductions for hero-worship, which is abundant in most persons; for the love of being in a crowd, which is a metropolitan passion; and for the operation of inferior motives, which is a general weakness; still there is a large residue of good, in no way whatever connected with revivalistic galvanism or American eccentricity. Messrs. Moody and Sankey tell "the old, old story;" believe in and employ the power of prayer; adopt many of the methods of work consecrated by "the use and wont" of centuries; adhere to the most fundamental truths of the gospel; and steer clear of the Shibboleths of party and sect. They aim to utilize to the utmost all the latent forces in our Christian communities; seek to reduce the evils of an inevitable denominationalism to their smallest limits; preach the necessity and obligation of every Christian to speak to his neighbour about the salvation of his soul; and in many other ways keep to the lines on which the church in Britain has been working for the last half century at least.

In what, then, do these American evangelists differ from other Christian workers, and where are the permanent lessons for men anxious to gain the utmost advantage from the course of the revival movement? VOL. LXXVII.-NEW SERIES, No. 65.

First, we may mention the special directness of aim so eminently characteristic of these, and indeed of all effective men. They mean one thing. They aim at one result. Napoleon did not seek with more directness the gains of conquest than these workers toil for the immediate salvation of souls. Thought and feeling, heart and soul, song and speech and prayer are gathered and concentrated by one intense and absorbing passion, and then directed straight to the one goal of awakening Christians and bringing to instant and avowed decision all who know of, but do not savingly trust in the Lord Jesus. There is no indiscriminate hitting; no drawing the bow at a venture; no vacillating purpose; no wavering weakness of policy; no hesitation as to means and ends; but, like Paul, preacher and singer say, "One thing I do." Nothing decoys them from their steadfastness. Not criticism, however severe; not slander, however base; not success, however unprecedented. The one idea rules them with kingly force, and their work is crowned with a kingly efficiency. Little souls will think to get the same crown by repeating their anecdotes, singing their hymns, adopting Americanisms, asking people to stand up and be prayed for, and the imitation of other accidental features of the movement, altogether blind to the springs of power hidden in the almost fierce and irresistible directness with which these workers aim to compass the supreme desire of their hearts.

The second necessity of the religious life of the nation made apparent in these services is, greater elasticity in our Christian worship, and a more complete adaptation of means to ends. Generally speaking our occasions of public worship are suffered to become a weariness to flesh and spirit by the persistent sameness and dull monotony reigning throughout. The dominion of order and regularity of procedure is becoming intolerable. We sing and pray and read and preach by the clock. Everything has to be shaped to the demands of the inexorable timekeeper. A variation is an offence. Prayers have a tendency to become stereotyped, impersonal, oratorical, and powerless; singing to be artistic and cold; preaching to take the mould of carefully prepared essays, and to become strongly soporific. It is to be hoped that there are few cases now where the congregation has to submit to see a text treated with the regularity of stroke that distinguishes the butcher as he cuts up a sheep; and behold it set out in three main divisions, each having three subdivisions of exactly equal length, and the whole concluding with an application to "three sorts of persons." But still we are the victims of monotony to a fearful extent. If a man wishes to call the attention of the people to an important subject, he must go through the hollow farce of reading a text, which he dexterously leaves altogether as soon as he can. And if the pastor, however much he may wish it, cannot, being ill, either call the attention of the people to a text, or to a subject, still the pulpit must be filled with a man of the preaching profession; and not even for once may the voice of a Christian brother be heard bearing witness for the Lord Jesus as a help in the sanctification of business, and a victor in the conflict with covetousness, before the great congregation.

These, and similar evils, receive a severe rebuke in this awakening. Here are neither gowns nor bands, reverends nor "locals," deans nor bishops, but there is life, earnestness and power, even the power of God,

FROM THE REVIVAL.

163 and they secure an attention to the claims of the gospel all the consecrated priests and ordained ministers of Christendom could not have obtained. Here are services, not ornate or æsthetic, not gorgeously imposing or impressively operatic, but marked with freshness and change, elastic and saturated with life, and thus made marvellously strong for the pulling down of the strongholds of sin. The sermons are not elaborate arguments, and yet there is a real logic pervading them; they are not drily doctrinal, but still they are full of Biblical instruction; their style is not classic but colloquial, and so they come to men's hearts and consciences with the witness of the Spirit of God. Were we always to ask ourselves, what is the end to be gained by this song, and that prayer, this reading and that sermon, and, in a word, by the whole service, changes would be much more frequent, weariness less felt, and efficiency greatly increased.

A third lesson for ministers and office-bearers, for young and old, taught by this revival, is the necessity for a thoroughgoing realism in all religious work and worship, in every effort to win the lost to Christ, and to raise to a higher devotion and larger unselfishness those who already know and love the Saviour. The air of unreality has no space left for it in these services. Every part of it is charged to overflowing with reality. The singer's heart is in every tone. The preacher's voice rings with the accent of conviction. You feel the reality of the whole scene, and of every part of the service.

In this, the present awakening concurs with every revival the church of God has ever experienced. Essentially, a revival is a protest and an impulse: a protest against the formalism, stagnation, oppressions of routine, and weakness and incapacity that come of trusting to mere mechanism; and an impulse from the ever full fountain of spiritual life and truth to do old work with fresh life, and to begin fresh work with the old truths. Periods of torpor occur in the history of the church with a frequency that is full of warning. They are not the results of a divine fore-ordination: they are not the issues of a blind caprice. Summer and winter, in their ordinary course of divinely arranged change, are not their fit parallels, but the irregular alternations of health and disease in a humanly ordered and ignorantly spent life. Churches are smitten with the paralysis of indolence; the palsy of an unguided activity, or the hot fevers of worldliness and covetousness; and the lips of the prophets are locked, and the kingdom of heaven suffers no violence-no one presses into it. In His mercy God sends a new prophet to electrify the torpid conscience, stir the slumbering emotions, and flood with new life the diseased body. "The law and the prophets were until John." God kept these old servants in their place and doing their work till the forerunner appeared. When the law had become a dead letter, and from very familiarity ceased to reveal the holiness of God, and the spiritual life was rapidly becoming fixed, hard, and inelastic, without spring and without energy, then God raised up the prophets; and as they successively appeared, each one was a voice calling aloud to Zion, and saying, "Awake, awake, put on thy strength!" It is here," Put on thy beautiful garments." They are ready.

All that is typical. Every true revivalist is a prophet, a voice calling us to reality, to thoroughness of faith and love and service. St.

Bernard was the revivalist of the twelfth century. His work was the regeneration of a corrupted monasticism, and led to the founding of the martyr-church of the Waldenses, and so pioneered the great Reformation. Luther, again, was a man with real convictions and real purposes, in an age of torpor and of seething wrongs; and so wisely and divinely did he work, that he not only rebuked the Popes and Princes of the Church, but revived faith in God and in His freely justifying grace. Nevertheless Whitfield and Wesley found the torpor back again; and, inspired of God, they travelled the country fearless of opposing bishops, freely and frankly preaching the gospel of the grace of God, as if it were really good news from a real God to real sinners.

And though on a much less extended scale, yet we were moaning the same gathering supineness, the same leaden propriety, the same fear of the bursting and free energies of the Spirit a few years ago. To quote one striking example out of many, even the successors of John Wesley had, in many parts of the country, become as formal, stiff, and coldly respectable, and as afraid of fire, as was that church out of which. John Wesley came. Indeed it is human nature; and there is a great deal of human nature in the church of Christ. It is the course of life all through; and we are only saved from being utterly destroyed by this tendency to become formal and unreal as we live in perpetual fellowship with Him who changes not, and bathe our minds, day by day, with thoughts concerning Him and His abidingly real work. Thanks be to God who has heard the cry of His servants and sent to the churches a messenger calling us back to a vivid faith in Himself and His gospel, and to an undiluted reality in all word and work, and thus to genuine efficiency and increasing success. Out of His fulness of grace and truth, or reality, may we receive, and grace for grace!

THE TIMES WE LIVE IN.

How the years are passing onwards
In the march and roll of time,
Themes for genius great or lowly,
Simple prose or verse sublime.
Slow and measured were the paces
Of our sires in days of yore-
Time but leaves them far behind us;
Dreams of ages past are o'er.
Onward is the theme inspiring
In each rank and grade of life,
In the world of pride and fashion,
With its spirit all are rife.
Art and science are awakening

Souls that seemed to life as dead,
While religious thought and action
In the van of progress tread.
Men of cultured thought and feeling,
With their learning strive to read
On the passing scroll of ages
What is still the nation's need.

Wealth and knowledge though abounding,
And the cry for learning rife,
Social crime and foul intemperance
Mingle in the daily strife.

Homes there are where one vast evil,
And of Britain's curse, is seen,
Scattering seeds of vice and discord
Where domestic bliss had been.
Leicester.

JOHN CLIFFORD.

Train the early buds and blossoms
In school learning as ye may,
Still their cry is, "Oh! ye sages,
Something more we need to-day."
Spirit vaults and vile casinos

Reared well-nigh in every street;
Say, are these for youthful virtue
And for manhood's safety meet?
For Heaven's sake and for the future,
Wisely for them legislate,
That our own drink-ridden nation
May in moral power be great.
Free her from the unrighteous traffic
Leading souls to lasting death,
And the leprosy it spreadeth
With its ever poisonous breath.
Duty calls us still to labour

In the Temperance battle-field,
For the drink is slaying thousands-
Let us never, never yield.

Be our armour ever brightning,
Flashing as the noon-day sun,
And our hearts be brave and hopeful
Till our task is nobly done.

Ye, our brother Templars, rescue
Soul's from endless ruin's brink;
Not a land enjoys true freedom
Where is rampant England's drink.
GEORGE BURDEN.