and laboriously during a course of years,--then we also believe this,
and cordially admit it. Nay, we would have all "friends of revivals"
keenly alive to the danger of so expressing themselves as to seem even
to disparage such earnest painstaking, and we would have them to
avoid seeking to attain by a summary process what thousands strive to
attain, and actually do attain, only by a prayerful diligence, which
begins with sowing the seed in childhood, and never ceases until there
is the blade and the full ear ending in the golden harvest. We feel
assured that the faithful minister who has seen many souls born to God
under his teaching, will acknowledge that these results were connected
not so much, or probably not at all, with any sudden change, from some
striking sermon he had preached, but from a series of impressions
made by pious parents in their home-training, or by himself in his
congregational class, or by the whole tone and tenor of his public
ministrations, &c. How often has it thus happened that others have
laboured, and that he has but entered into their labours! The
conversion of his hearers has been the culminating point of a thousand
appliances, and, in the vast majority of cases, it has been reached by
degrees. The glorious summit has been attained, not by a leap from the
valley, but after many preparatory steps. The light of life has not
flashed out of darkness, but has dawned by imperceptible degrees,
until the glory of God was seen in the face of Christ Jesus. If the
new life itself has been suddenly experienced, yet let us not overlook
the preparatory work of the shaking of the dry bones, then of the bone
coming to its bone, and, finally, the flesh and skin covering the
skeleton, and so preparing a home in which the living spirit could
dwell and act. We cannot use language strong enough to express our
conviction of the blessing which, as an ordinary rule, is sure to
follow from the Lord on the faithful and prayerful labour of a pious
parent, Sabbath-school teacher, or pastor. Let nothing be said in