of reo.ding the heart and of perceiving when worship is rendered to him lrincerely e.nd when feignedly, or the.the does not care which kind of homage he receives, whether adoration ie offered to him really or formally. In the one case he must be considered ae a Being of very limited power and capacity; in the other, as a Being indifferent to the gravest moral distinctions. 'l'o profess loyalty to an earthly monarch without feeling it would be to insult him grossly. How much more to seek to pass such a cheat on the King of heaven I II. •IT IS DEGilADING TO THE CREATURES wmCH HE HAS MADE IN ms OWN IMAGE All falsehood is degrading to those who condescend to it. False pretences, flatteries, insincere professions of love and devotion for the purpose of winning favour and approval from those to whom we address them, are among the basest and most contemptible acts to which a human being can stoop. '!'hey are lies, and lies which have their origin in downright unadulterated selfishness. False professions made to God are also foolish, idiotic lies, which cannot possibly impose on the Being who is the Object of them, and which do not very often impose even on such of our fellow-men as witness them. It was their insincere " lip-service" which caused our Lord to denounce the scribes and Pharisees of his time as "actors," or "hypocrites" (Matt. xv. 7; Mark vii. 6). Vera. 17-24.-ReUgious revivals. It is sometimes supposed that religious revivals are modern inventions, concessions to the weakness of the degenerate man of the nineteenth century; and no doubt there have been features in many so-called" revivals" which have justified this view of them. But, in point of fact, revivals, if we follow out the history of religion, are found to be movements which have belonged to all ages, and without which it appears more than probable that religion in this world would stagnate and lose all vital energy. The subject may be best viewed under three heads. I. REVIVALISM IS A LAW OF NATURE. Not only does Nature annually revive in spring from her winter's trance, but throughout the universe exhaustion is continually occurring at irregular intervals, and recoveries from exhaustion, i.e. revivals, are the only mode by which Nature is recruited and enabled to maintain herself. A. long series of wet and cold seasons produces at any rate the impression that Nature's productive powers are declining and wearing out; when, suddenly, there is a complete inversion of what had come to be regarded as an established order, and a summer of brilliant sun. shine causes an overflowing harvest and an agricultural reaction. The ozone in the atmosphere, so essential to human health, decreases (it may be) for months; then, all at once, thel'e is a revival, and the average of a. century is exceeded. Electrical phenomena are for a time in abeyance, and the earth seems to have "used up" thti power on which her vitality principally depends; whea, lo! the reaction comes, fresh electricity is developed, or conveyed to the earth from without, and electrical phenomena become more frequent and more striking than ever. JI. REVIVALISM IB OONBIBTENT WITH, AND CONDUOIVE TO, A. CONSTANT ADVANCE. A. priori we might have expected that all growth and progress would have been regular and gradual. But the fact is otherwise. In all the fields of human energy, in art, in science, in philosophy, in religion, long periods of comparative deadness and apathy occur, during which there is soarcely any perceptible advance at all, followed by shorter intervals of activity and energy, when progress is made "by leaps and bounds." The scientific energy of the last half-century is a case in point. The artistic revival initiated by Reynolds and Gainsborough, is another. The history of the Church, dis- passionately viewed, shows a manifest progress; but the progress bas been far from uniform. Many centuries have been centuries of stagcntiou. Religion has just kept itself alive, and that has been all. '!'hen some stir has come from within or from without, and a rush of vitality has supervened, which has exercised an influence for good on all later times. Indifference to doctrinal truth was overspreading the world, when the dogmatic revival of the fourth century at once saved the faith, and advanced it. The expansion of the Church, which is a special mark of its life, had almost ceased, when missionary zeal broke out suddenly in the West, and the seventh and eighth QCIIlturiee saw the conversion of Ecglaud, Scotland, Friesland, Batavia, Switzerland, and most of Germany. A general deadness and dulness had come over Christendom between the eighth nod tho eleventh centuries, when the Crusades, which were a political necessity, produced the revival of the twelfth ai.d thirteenth, The gre11,tos$ 4i8 'l'HE BOOK OF THE PROPHE'r ISAIAH. [olr, x:i.Ix. 1-.lM-,.
revirnl of Rll was the Reformntion, which recovered spiritn!l.l religion wheh it seemed, nlm,,st lost, and exerted a purifying influence even on those parts of Ohristendotn which most opposed it.. Lesser revivals have been-in Germany Pietism, iu France .Tansenism, among ourselves Methodism and the Church movement still in progress, It seems scarcely too much to say that, without revivals, religion-even the Ohrietie.n religion-would perish. • III. RETIYALS ARE MOST COMMO~'LY THE RESULT OF CHASTISEMENTS, As it was, with the Jews of "·ho,!11 Isaiah wrote, so in the Christian Church generally, revivals ha~e ?een produced by Judgm~ts. The blasphemies of Arius, and the patronago o[ Ar1amsm by the court, gave rise to the counter-movement of Athnnasius. The con- traction of Christendom in the Ea.st by the conquests of Mohammed and his immediate successors led on to its expansion in the ,vest by renewed missionary effort. The alarming progress of the Saracens and Turks caused the revival connected with the Crusades. The exactions and tyranny of the court. of Rome, being felt as a burden. that could no longer be borne, brought about the Reformation. Among ourselves, the rE"dval which d11.tes from 1830 was due to the loss of ten Irish bishoprics and the other a I tncks made on the Church by her enemies ~t that p~riod. Methodism .is about tho ouly Christian revival not provoked by some manifest calamity,