ness. So Paul, contemplating the Spirit in believers under the figure of an air-medium, common, or present, both to the divine mind and to ours, says, "the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God." Like some breath of wind, which has passed through fragrant trees and banks of flowers, searching them and bringing grateful flavors of them; so the all-present Spirit ever wafts upon us the deep things, the hidden fragrance and the treasured sweetness of the divine nature.

The doctrine of divine agency in men amounts, then, to this, that God is present to men, according to what they are and his purposes in them, just as he is present to material natures, according to what they are and what he will do with them. No man who believes in the divine omnipresence, the universal act and sway of God, can reasonably question the work of the Spirit in men. So far from being any presumptuous claim in us, to think, that God works in us to will and to do, that he may mold us unto himself, it is rather presumptuous to question it. To believe, that God is present in act and sway to the vital functions of a finger, and not to a mind, or the character and welfare of a mind, is to reverse all notion of justness and real dignity in the divine counsels.

If these reasonings concerning the doctrine of divine agency are somewhat dry and abstruse to the general reader, it is yet hoped, that such as are more practiced in questions of this sort, will have a higher estimate of their importance. They enable us to enter on the spiritual economy of revivals at a great advantage, and from ground high enough to command the whole field.

It is too readily conceded, indeed it is often stoutly insisted on, even by those who may be called extreme revivalists, that everything of a periodical or temporary nature in religion, is, of course, dishonorable and suspicious. The adversaries of revivals are ready, as in duty bound, to coincide. Further, they are specially offended, when it is claimed, that God exercises any temporary or periodical influence on men. In their view it is nothing but a weak conceit, or a wild enthusiasm, when God is supposed to be specially operative, in the conversion of men at any particular time and place, or in any single community.

But if a periodical agency be so derogatory to God's honor, what shall be thought of the seasons, the intervals of drought and rain, and all the revolving cycles of outward change? If the adversaries of revivals believe in God's omnipresence, is there not a presence of act in all these things according to their nature and his purpose in them, as there is supposed to be in the

spiritual changes which affect communities? On their principle, nature ought to perfect her growths in the scorchings of an eternal sun, or in the drenchings of an everlasting rain. The flowers ought to stand from age to age changeless as petrifactions. They ought to see, from year to year, the same clouds in the same shapes glued fast upon the sky, and the same wind everlastingly exact to a degree of their thermometer, ought to blow upon them. But no, nature is multiform and various on every side. She is never doing exactly the same thing at one time which she has done at another. She brings forth all her bounties by inconstant applications and cherishments endlessly varied. A single thought extended in this direction, were enough, it would seem, to show us, that while God is unchangeable, he is yet infinitely various,―unchangeable in his purposes, various in his

means.

Is it said, that God however acts in nature by general laws? So doubtless he does in the periodical and various cultivation of his Spirit. All God's works and agencies are embraced and wrought into one comprehensive system by laws. But he is no less the author of variety, that he produces variety by system.

It is said, that God produces the changes of nature by second causes? Is it meant, we ask in reply, to deny God's omnipresence? Having instituted second causes to manage for him, has the divine nature gone upon a journey, or is it, peradventure, asleep? Or is God still present, (present, remember, by act and sway,) inhabiting all changes? The notion of a second cause in nature, consistent with the divine omnipresence,meaning anything by the term, it is somewhat difficult to frame.

But we pass on. And it is instructing to advert in this connection, also, to the various and periodical changes of temperament which affect men in other matters than religion. Sometimes one subject has a peculiar interest to the mind, sometimes another. Sometimes the feelings chime with music, which at others is not agreeable. Society of a given tone is shunned to-day though eagerly sought yesterday. These fluctuations are epidemical, too, extending to whole communities, and infecting them with an ephemeral interest in various subjects, which afterwards they wonder at themselves, and can no way recall. No public speaker of observation ever failed to be convinced, that man is a being, mentally, of moods and phases, which it were as vain to attempt the control of, as to push aside stars. These fluctuations, or mental tides, are due, perhaps, to physical changes, and perhaps not. They roll round the earth

like invisible waves, and the chemist and physician tax their skill in vain to find the subtle powers that sway us. We only know, that God is present to these fluctuations, whatever their real nature, and that they are all inhabited by the divine power. Is it incredible, then, that this same divine power should produce periodical influences in the matter of religion,-times of peculiar, various, and periodical interest? For ourselves we are obliged to confess, that we strongly suspect that sort of religion which boasts of no excitements, no temporary and changing states: for we observe, that it is only towards nothing, or about nothing, that we have always the same feeling.

Need we say, again, that progress, which is the law of all God's works and agencies, necessarily involves variety and change. Spring, for example, is the first stage of a progress. The newness, therefore, of spring, the first beginnings of growth, must wax old and change their habit. So it is impossible, that the first feelings of religious interest in the heart should remain. There is a degree of excitation in the strangeness of new feelings, and so likewise in the early scenes of a revival of religion, which belongs to their novelty, and which is by no means inconsiderable or improper. Such is human nature, that it could not be otherwise. In fact, there is no reason to doubt, that God, in framing the plan or system of his spiritual agencies, ordained fluctuations and changing types of spiritual exercise, that he might take advantage, at intervals, of novelty in arresting and swaying the minds of men. These are the spring-times of his truth, otherwise in danger of uniform staleness. Thus he rouses the spiritual lethargy of men and communities, and sways their will to himself by aid of scenes and manifestations, not ordinary or familiar. Nor is it anything derogatory to the divine agency in the case, that the spiritual spring cannot remain perpetual; for there is a progress in God's works, and he goes on through change and multiform culture to ripen his ends. Doubtless, too, there may be a degree of sound feeling, apart from all novelty in a revival of religion, which human nature is incompetent permanently to sustain; just as one may have a degree of intellectual excitement and intensity of operation, which he cannot sustain, but which is nevertheless a sound and healthy activity. In writing a sermon, for example, every minister draws on a fund of excitability which he knows cannot be kept up beyond a certain bound, and this without any derogation from his proper sanity.

But we come to a stage in the subject, where the advantage of our doctrine of spiritual agency is to be more manifest. God VOL. X.

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has a given purpose to execute, we have said, in those who have entered on the religious life, viz., to produce character in them. To this end he dwells in them, and this is the object of his spiritual culture. And here he meets, at the very beginning, this grand truth, that varieties of experience and exercise are necessary to the religious character. How then shall he adjust the scale of his action, if not to produce all such varieties as are necessary for his object? We have just remarked on the changes of temperament in men and communities, by which now one now another theme is brought to find a responsive note of interest. What is the end of this? Obviously it is, that we may be practiced in all the many colored varieties of feeling, and led over a wide empire of experience. Were it not for this,—or if men were to live on, from childhood to the grave, in the same mood of feeling, and holding fast to the same unvarying topic of interest, they would grow to be little more than animals of one thought. To prevent which, and ripen what we call natural character to extension and maturity, God is ever leading us round and round invisibly, by new successions of providence and new affinities of feeling. Precisely the same necessity requires, that religious character be trained up under varieties of experience, and shaped on all sides by manifold workings of the Spirit. Now excitements must be applied to kindle, now checks to inspire caution or invigorate dependence. Now the intellect must be fed by a season of study and reflection; now the affections freshened by a season of social and glowing ardor. By one means bad habits are to be broken up, by another good habits consolidated. Love, it is true, must reign in the heart through all such varieties; but the principle of supreme love is one, that can subsist in a thousand different connections of interest and temperaments of feeling. At one time it demands for its music a chorus of swelling voices, to bear aloft its exulting testimony of praise; at another it may chime rather with the soft and melancholy wail just dying on its ear. And so, in like manner, it needs a diversity of times, exercises, duties, and holy pleasures. It needs, and for that reason it has not only revivals and times of tranquillity, but every sort of revival, every sort of tranquillity. Sometimes we are revived individually, sometimes as churches, sometimes as a whole people, and we have all degrees of excitation, all manner of incidents. Our more tranquil periods are sometimes specially occupied, or ought to be, in the correction of evil habits; or we are particularly interested in the study of religious doctrines necessary to the vigor of our growth and use

fulness; or we are interested to acquire useful knowledge of a more general nature, in order to our public influence, and the efficient discharge of our offices. In revivals we generally prefer the more social spheres of religious exercise; so now the more private and solitary experiences may be cultivated. Such is the various travail which God has given to the sons of men to be exercised therewith.

Another end prosecuted by the Spirit, in his work, is the empowering of the christian body, and the extension of good through them and otherwise to the hearts of others. Here also there is no doubt, that changes and seasons of various exercise, like those called revivals, add to the real power of the faith. We are so prone to think nothing of that which always wears exactly the same color and look, that holiness itself needs to change its habit and voice to command notice or impress itself on the attention. The power too, of the christian body, rests, in the main, on its appearing to the world to be inhabited and swayed by a power above nature. And this can never appear, except by means of changes and periodical exaltations in them. Nature would make no manifestation of him who dwells in her forms, if all stood motionless; if the sun stood fast and clear in everlasting noon; if there were no births, decays, explosions, surprises. Nature is called the garment of the Almighty, but if there were no motion under the garment, it would seem a shroud rather than a garment of life. God is manifested in nature by the wheeling spheres, light, shade, tranquillity, storm, all the beauties and terrors of time. So the Spirit will reveal his divine presence through the church, by times of holy excitement, times of reflection, times of solitary communion, times of patient hope. A church standing always in the same exact posture and mold of aspect, would be only a pillar of salt in the eyes of men, it would attract no attention, reveal no inhabitation of God's power. But suppose, that now, in a period of no social excitement, it is seen to be growing in attachment to the bible and the house of God, storing itself with divine or useful knowledge, manifesting a heavenly-minded habit in the midst of a general rage for gain, devising plans of charity to the poor and afflicted, reforming offensive habits, chastening bosom sins, suppose, in short, that principles adopted in a former revival are seen to hold fast as principles, to prove their reality and unfold their beauty, when there is no longer any excitement to sustain them,-here the worth and reality of religious principles are established. And now let the Spirit move this solid enginery once more into glowing activity, let the