Again, What parish does not stand in need of such a quickening?  Few ministers are encouraged and stimulated to aim at and attain higher measures of good, from the abounding evidences of Christian life among their parishioners.  Many more are tempted, by all they see around them, to wax cold in love, and to lower their standard of personal and ministerial life,—­to become quite satisfied with the every-day, stereotyped formalism of things around them, or to submit to it as if it were a doom.  The very smile of incredulity with which the account of alleged revivals is received,—­the wonder which good men express, if told of many being awakened by the mere preaching of the Word in some congregation or district,—­only indicates how all hope has perished of our people over becoming what the preacher in words urges them to become, or of their ever being delivered from the torpor, the indifference, the death, which in words he tells them are the preludes of coming death eternal.  Is not our hope well-nigh lost regarding many a parish; and what but the quickening and reviving power of God’s Spirit can restore it?

And is there no revival needed in our most living congregations? We may, indeed, have cause to thank God for many signs of genuine life within them, and for such good works as indicate a living spirit in the body.  But in the most encouraging cases we have more cause to deplore the vast extent of the ground where the seed sown has been carried away, withered, or choked with thorns, rather than to rejoice in the small patches which may be bringing forth fruit.  Let any minister, as he surveys his congregation, and as he visits them from house to house, ask himself the question, How many of these really care about Christ, and ever pray to Him, or try to serve Him? and making every allowance for our ignorance of other men’s condition, for the life that may be hidden from the eye, yet will there not be innumerable evidences, forcing upon him the conviction, that if the doctrines he preaches are true, death reigns to a very awful extent even among members of the Church?  We do not wish to exaggerate, or make out a case against pastors or their flocks, but we leave it to every candid man who will dare to look the truth in the face, to deny the existence among us of a, mighty want—­the want of a revival of spiritual religion among both.

Once more, let us look at our missions, and consider whether there is any need of a revival in this department of Church life.  We confess that a mingled feeling of shame and sorrow swells our hearts as we think of the contributions, whether of men or of money, furnished by all Christendom for the conversion of heathendom.  It is not that Protestantism is behind Romanism even in the number of its missionaries, while in quality, and even permanent and holy results, we never will compare these two sections of the Christian Church.  But how can we hope