ART. VII. THE RELIGIOUS AWAKENING OF 1858.

THE religious awakening of 1858 is already becoming matter of history. If we may not yet look back upon it, we have at least arrived at a point where all the forces, it is likely to develop, have presented themselves-reached even their culmination where we may therefore begin to make estimate of the result. To such an estimate everything lies open. The influences which have been at work have been those of the most familiar character, and no recondite philosophy is needed to explain to us the scene we have witnessed.

To characterize the revival, from the human side only, we might speak of it as a great, sympathetic, social movement. It has been simply the successful employment, on a great scale, of forces and means of influence, in whose use the church of America has been exercising and strengthening herself for more than a century.

Almost all the great religious movements within the church, in previous centuries, have been closely connected, either as effect or as cause, with some 'new presentation of doctrinal truth, some new form of organized effort, or the appearance of some great leader, who has been at once its prophet and priest. On the contrary, in each of these more recent kindlings, we will not say of religious life, but of missionary activity in the church, there has been, instead of the adoption of any new dogma, or formula of doctrine, rather successive emancipations from old ones,-instead of the mastery of any man, of any name, or of any form of human organization, new proof and recognition of the power of concerted action, of the sympathy of masses-of the strength of great and simple truth.

This process of simplification in applying truth has already indeed proceeded so far that many a scene of gospel preaching, and of the conversion of men during the past winter, has presented but little contrast to that in which Peter preached and won souls for Christ.

In that simplicity, however, both of means and of purpose, which forms the great characteristic of this religious movement, so far from finding evidence of anything narrow or limited in its nature, we have proof rather of the universality of its aim and of the grandeur of the results to which it looks forward. Great truth is always in itself simple. Christianity becomes complicated, in its scheme of doctrine or system of life and polity, only as it adapts itself to the devious windings of human error, and to the perversions of human life, with which it must enter into relation if it would meet and overcome them. The Christianity of the day of Pentecost was thus simple, because the church had not yet come to the consciousness of its relations to the various directions of thought and life which it was ultimately to subdue and to control. The Christianity of this revival is, we would fain believe, thus simple, because the church with us has obtained mastery over all these forces, and is able to use them in conscious subservience to its own purposes.

This passage in the church, however, as in the individual, from the simplicity of the child to the higher simplicity of the matured wisdom of age, has not been made without many an intervening contest and trial. The transition from the one position to that which we shall hope to show to be in so many respects the same, constitutes the history of the church for eighteen centuries. A brief glance at the various phases of activity, within the church, will assist us in illustrating our point. For this return to apostolic simplicity and directness is no bare and naked reproduction of the thought and life of the early church. The stream of history, however devious, never runs backward.

There is a certain sense in which Christianity must conquer humanity before it could conquer men; in which, in other words, it was necessary that Christianity should first overcome, and reduce to its own service, all the great forces of human society, science, philosophy, art, secular and spiritual authority, before it could complete its own equipment for the contest with the world of individual hearts.

Those first waves of influence which rolled forth from the

apostolic Church, flowing from the simple enthusiasm and ardor of the assault, broke the ranks of paganism and extended themselves in a widening circle far beyond the shores of the Mediterranean.

But it was soon found that more ground had been occupied than could be held. It was found that without a theologywithout religious or social institutions more firmly consolidated -it could not maintain its own life, much less successfully meet the yet powerful forces of the decaying classical civilization. Paganism temporarily overcome, but nothing adequately filling its place, the tide rolled back again.

While, therefore, the first attitude of Christianity was in one sense its truest and its highest, that of direct appeal to individual conscience, before it could form a Christian society in its completeness, which it must needs do if it would have permanent existence in the world, it must appropriate to itself and fill with its own power all social forces, which lay some hostile and others indifferent around it. It must clear away Pagan forms of thought and habits of life, as well as social institutions; it must build up those which should be the more natural outgrowth of its own life, and expression of its own spirit. This work of destruction, and of consequent re-construction, gave shape to all the leading movements in the church for many centuries. Hence those ages in which the church, in both offensive and defensive combat, met and conquered successively all the great elements of the new civilization,-and in which both the direction and the methods of church-extension took their character from the ever-changing conditions of the conflict.

Brought into constant collision with the philosophical sects of the early centuries, it was led to adopt its weapons, as well of defense as of assault, from the schools of learning and of science, with which it contended. Allied with the governments by which it had once been persecuted, it received into its service the implements of secular warfare, till its bounds became coincident with those of the empire. When the infidel took possession of the holy land, and of the holy places, political united to religious fanaticism led it for centuries to pour forth blood and treasure for their recovery, till at last,

debauched by taking into its service its early foes-philosophy, secular power, and superstition-we find it, after the twelfth century, compelled to turn and concentrate all its forces both of edification and attack upon itself. Then within its own bosom came the great conflicts with hierarchy and despotism, with dogma and authority, in which through the succeeding centuries, it has fought its way from victory to freedom-till it is almost eighteen centuries from the death of its founder, before we find it, after all these phases of contending life, returning in simplicity, in one single portion of its domain, to its great work-once more, after all these partial, one-sided and single handed combats with particular foes, to take up the problem in all its breadth and in all its fullness.

We would by no means imply that the struggle in any one of these particular directions which we have considered, is ended. Doctrinal bigotry, ecclesiasticism, the usurpation both of spiritual and temporal power, still defraud the greater part of Christendom of the legitimate fruits of its faith. Even among ourselves, they are far from being exterminated. But both the contest and the victory are examples which need not to be repeated. Like a discovery or an invention once made, they are made for all and for ever. The great battle has in the case of each been fought, and whatever fighting may here and there remain to complete the victory, it can nowhere again become absorbing and critical to Christianity-can never again give character to any great religious movement throughout Christendom.

In thus characterizing the active forces of the revival, we have of necessity been characterizing that broad stream of Christian life in the church, of which this revival movement is but one of the topmost waves. There has been of course, during all these periods of the church, more or less direct missionary activity and application of the gospel to individual conscience. As each of the great weapons of the church has been taken from the forge of the ages, burnished and mounted as an arni for the service-it has received its baptism of fire, been tested and tried in battle. Yet this has been for the most part trial service, and as it were for the sake of the experiment. There may have been skirmishes on the part

of advanced detachments, but nowhere a general engagement, in which the great object at stake has been fairly or fully brought into view. In such a general engagement, we conceive ourselves, now, to have taken part. It has been no mere discipline of forces, testing of ordinance, or struggle for open field. Theological position, doctrinal forms, intellectual and spiritual freedom-which have been the characteristic aims of most former great movements within the church-do not exhaust the meaning of this. These results of former conflicts form the implements and conditions of ours.

The product and results of this last movement are characteristically, souls renewed in love. To this result all other activities in the church have been preparatory. Into its broad stream they pour themselves, as the separate rills which it bears to the ocean.

We have thus endeavored to show this religious movement to be, in its nature, apostolic, or an adaptation of the spirit of the early church to the circumstances of our own. The statement is its own sufficient justification. Here indeed there is but little difference of opinion. That the spiritual attitude assumed in this movement is a right one; that the truths it proclaims, and the motives by which they are enforced are legitimate; that the results it proposes, and has so largely accomplished, are the characteristic results of Christianity; there can be, and is no discussion among those by whom that Christianity is received, and prized in its distinctive features.

On its formal side, however-in the multiplication of religious services, the excited activity, the somewhat special and extraordinary character of means and effort, and in the altogether critical character given to the whole period-both in the preaching and in the efforts of men to secure personal part in the salvation offered in the gospel-in all, in short, which constitutes the peculiar workings of an American revival, it has not yet received sufficiently general acceptance and confidence in our churches, to secure to those means that full efficiency, in which, in our view, they are destined yet to bring us their greatest results.