The pastoral labors of these ministers were abounding.  Two and sometimes three services on the Sabbath, and a weekly lecture, were only the beginning of their labors.  Multitudes of them held circuit meetings, to the number of two or three a week, in the outskirts of their parishes; besides which they labored conversationally from house to house with individuals.

Gradual, indefinite, insensible amelioration of character was not by any means the only or the highest aim of their preaching.  They sought to make religion as definite and as real to men as their daily affairs, and to bring them, as respects their spiritual history, to crises as marked and decided as those to which men are brought in temporal matters.  They must become Christians now, today; the change must be immediate, all-pervading, thorough.

Such a style of preaching, from men of such power, could not be without corresponding results, especially as it was based always upon strong logical appeals to the understanding.  From it resulted, from time to time, periods which are marked in these narratives as revivals of religion,—­seasons in which the cumulative force of the instructions and power of the pastor, recognized by that gracious assistance on which he always depended, reached a point of outward development that affected the whole social atmosphere, and brought him into intimate and confidential knowledge of the spiritual struggles of his flock.  The preaching of the pastor was then attuned and modified to these disclosures, and his metaphysical system shaped and adapted to what he perceived to be the real wants and weaknesses of the soul.  Hence arose modifications of theology,—­often interfering with received theory, just as a judicious physician’s clinical practice varies from the book.  Many of the theological disputes which have agitated New England have arisen in the honest effort to reconcile accepted forms of faith with the observed phenomena and real needs of the soul in its struggles heavenward.

* * * * *

A BRIEF REVIEW OF THE KANSAS USURPATION.

If it had been the avowed intention of the dominant party in this country to disgust the people by a long and systematic course of wrong-doing,—­if it had wished to prove that it was indissolubly wedded to injustice, inconsistency, and error, it could not have chosen a better method of doing so than it has actually pursued, in the entire management of the Kansas question.  From the beginning to the end, that has been both a blunder and a crime.  Nothing more atrocious,—­nothing more perverse,—­nothing more foolish, as a matter of policy,—­and we might add, but for the seriousness of the subject, nothing more ludicrous,—­has occurred in our history, than the attempt, which has now been persisted in for several years, to force the evils of Slavery upon a people who cannot and will not endure them.