REVIVALS,
Mr. Black says: "Happy the ministers thus privileged to be instruments in God's hand. Happy the souls who plentifully partake of this extraordinary grace! And it is well worth remembering how beautifully this mode of dealing with men is adapted to the wants and weaknesses of the race.
"Not only do spiritual affections become languid and require to be freshened with new life, but even the very ideas and impressions of a spiritual and eternal world wax dim upon the soul through the lapse of time, and the influence of the world and something extraordinary is required to renew these—some fresh testimony that there is a God and an eternity.
"It must be familiar to all, how events and appearances, however stupendous in themselves, lose their impressions by such regular recurrence as renders them familiar to our minds. What, for instance, can present a more magnificent spectacle than the passage of the sun through the heavens on a clear summer day? Yet so familiar are we with the spectacle that we scarcely think of it. It is a part of the regular operations of nature and passes unobserved.
"But suppose some day that the sun should appear of double size, or that another sun of equal brilliancy were to traverse the heavens from north to south, then all would be struck and filled with amazement—it may be with alarm—for then it would appear that there is some power superior to nature that can interfere with its regular course when he will. God would thus be brought near.
"So it is in spiritual things; however mightily the work of God might be carried on, men would soon begin to forget God in it, and to attribute the deep and earnest religious feelings prevailing to natural causes, and so something higher still would be needed to prove that the work was of God. Much more is this needed in a time of comparative indifference to bring palpably before men's minds that there is a God and a spiritual world. Men require something uncommon to stir them up from to time. Our private devotions would be more ready to sink into coldness and apathy were they not quickened by the public services of the sanctuary, and the Sabbath services would also degenerate, were we not stirred up by the occasional occurrence of Sacramental services. So God's ordinary dealings require the aid of these seasons of revival."