slumbering conscience perhaps, is aroused to do its too much, and too long forgotten office. At any rate, the imagination and feelings are wrought upon. And through the influences, partly of real conversion and partly of overwrought passion, it is not strange that many should be thrown into the deepest distress. I have seen men in such an agony, as might easily be mistaken, in its apparent signs, for the remorse of a murderer or the anguish of a convict. This does not, ordinarily, for it cannot, last long. From the very excess and violence of these emotions, there is at length developed a gentler feeling. And I have often suspected that this bare physical emotion has in many cases been mistaken for a real, spiritual change of views and sentiments. In many cases, too, even of this very brief experience, I have no doubt, there is a real, though I could scarcely admit, that it is a radical change. When men have long been taught, erroneously as I believe, that their whole nature is opposed to God and religion,

and have found, on having their minds fixedly bent to these great objects, that they really are capable of loving them, they have felt as if it was a new revelation to them. Their feelings, of course, pass through a very great change, which they not unnaturally liken to a

new creation." They probably take it indeed, for more than it is. It is not a renovation, but an era. They feel, and this is their language, that "old things have passed away, and that all things have become new," but it is not so much in the habits or even the dispositions of their minds, as in the new objects which have been brought distinctly and vividly before their minds.

These of course-whether their experience is merely physical, or whether it arises from a new attitude and posture of the mindare the "Converts," and when this change has passed upon them, they become very important coadjutors in "the work." They go about warning and exhorting their former companions, describing their joys, avowing

their resolutions, and beseeching others to follow them. Those who have not attained to this change, and yet are seeking for it, are usually denominated "the anxious." So that the whole community is divided into the three classes of the converts, the anxious, and the unconcerned. And meetings are appointed for these different descriptions of persons. Indeed this distinction is made the ground of some very reprehensible causes of treatment towards them, which I shall mention when I go into detail.

This is perhaps enough in the general, and for the present. Yet I must tell you one thing more, before I lay down my pen; and that is, what you may have already suspected, that I do not look upon these things altogether as you would have expected me to have done. In short, I must take the credit of being somewhat liberalized by travel. I find good men every where. I begin to think there is a mixture of good with evil, and evil with good, in every thing; not even ex

cepting our own Holy Church. These revivals-but I see that I must defer the topic of the good and the evil till another time.

Adieu, my dear friend,-may the best influences of the Best Religion ever be given to you and me, is the prayer of

Yours most affectionately,

**** *****

LETTER II.

ON THE CAUSES OF REVIVALS.

MY DEAR FRIEND,

MAY 30th, 1827.

I SHALL pursue in this and some other letters, the subject of my last, referring you to H— for notices of my progress, "hair breadth escapes," &c. The steam-boat incident, for these things are too common here to be called accidents, was indeed terrific.-But to leave meaner themes," I go at once to the promised subject.

In truth these Revivals are very extraordinary things and I shall think it worth while to philosophize a little about them. That the body of the people should be thrown into a great periodical excitement, to which their ordinary sobriety must render them previously averse, that they should be thrown into such occasional commotions on a subject of permanent interest, which admits of no exigencies and chances like those of political strife; once more, that they should be thrown into an excitement so dreadful and painful as this is, in the first stages of it, at least, and that all this should be done through the influence or through the countenance of one man,-1 mean the clergyman,—all this is certainly very extraordinary. I say of the clergyman. For it is perfectly evident, that although various circumstances may conspire to produce this state of things, nothing could go on without him: without, that is to say, either his aid or concurrence. So true is this, that I have sometimes observed in a city, where the con