and yet be no pattern whatever for those, who with design and calculation call in the device of "decision acts,' 99 as they are termed, to create a similar show of power. Whitfield and Edwards needed no new measures, to make themselves felt.*. They were genuine men of God, who had strength from heaven in themselves. They were no quacks.

The system of New Measures then is to be deprecated, as furnishing a refuge for weakness and sloth in the work of the ministry, and in this way holding out a temptation, which, so far as it prevails, leads ministers to undervalue and neglect the cultivation of that true inward strength, without which no measures can be at last of much account. This is a great evil.

* Whitefield and Edwards! exclaim the champions of the Bench; they were both thorough going New Measure men, and it is a slander upon their names, to speak of them as belonging to the opposite interest. Now it is not said here, that they tolerated no new things in the worship of God; but only that they needed nothing of this sort, to make themselves felt. What was new, in their case, was not sought; it came of itself, the free natural result of the power it represented. Whitefield had recourse to new methods himself, to some extent, and Edwards carried his toleration of such things far, in favor of others; but in neither instance could it be said, that any value was attached to what was thus out of the common way, for its own sake, or as something to be aimed at with care and design beforehand. The judgment of Edwards in this case moreover, it should be remembered, as given in his Thoughts on the revival in New England, had respect to the particular things it sanctions, not in a general way, but as related to an extraordinary work of God, of great extent and long continuance, most amply authenticated on other grounds. It is a widely different case, when we are required to accept such things, on their own credit, as the evidence of a revival, or as the power by which it is to be secured.

It is a vastly more easy thing to carry forward the work of religion in this way, than it is to be steadily and diligently true to the details of ministerial duty, as prescribed by the apostle Paul. To be "vigilant, sober and of good behavior""not self willed, not soon angry"—"just, holy, temperate"-"one that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity"-holding fast the faithful word, in such sort "that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and convince the gainsayers;" to "follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, meekness," so as to be "an example of the believers, in word, in conversation, in charity, in spirit, in faith, in purity;" to be "gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient, in meekness instructing those that oppose themselves;" to meditate on divine things, and to be wholly given to them, so as to be continually profiting in the view of all; to "endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ ;" to be a scribe well instructed in the law, a workman that need not to be ashamed, able to bring forth from the treasury of God's word things new and old, as they may be wanted; to preach week after week, so as to instruct and edify the souls of men; to be earnest, faithful, pungent, in the lecture room and catechetical class; to be known in the family visitation, in the sick chamber, in the dwelling places of poverty and sorrow, as the faithful pastor, "watching for souls," whose very presence serves to remind men of holiness and heaven, not at certain seasons only, but

from month to month, from one year always to another; all this is something great and difficult, and not to be compassed without a large amount of inward spiritual strength. But it calls for comparatively little power, for a man to distinguish himself as a leader in periodical religious excitements, where zeal has room for outward display, and wholesale action is employed to discharge within a month the claims of a year. It is not asserted that a minister must be destitute of the qualifications that are required to make a regularly faithful and efficient pastor, in order that he may be fitted to make himself conspicuous in this way; but most assuredly such may be the case. A man may be mighty in the use of new measures, preaching every day if need be for three weeks to crowded congregations, excited all the time; he may have the anxious bench filled at the close of each service, and the whole house thrown into disorder; he may have groaning, shouting, clapping, screaming, a very bedlam of passion, all around the altar; and as the result of all, he may be able to report a hundred converts or more, translated by the process, according to his own account, from darkness into God's marvellous light. He may be able to act the same part in similar scenes, at different places, in the course of a winter; and, for the time being, his name may be familiar to the lips of men, as a revivalist, whose citizenship might be supposed to hold in the third heavens. All this may be, where to an attentive observer it shall soon be painfully evi

dent, at the same time, that the true and proper strength of a man of God is wholly wanting. A man may so distinguish himself, and yet have no power to study, think or teach. He may be crude, chaotic, without cultivation or discipline. He may be too lazy to read or write. There may be no power whatever in his ordinary walk or conversation, to enforce the claims of religion. Meet him in common secular connections, and you find him in a great measure unfelt, in the stream of worldliness with which he is surrounded. Often he is covetous; often vain; often without a particle of humility or meekness. His zeal too seems to exhaust itself in each spasmodic "awakening," through which it is called to pass. The man who appeared to be all on fire for the salvation of souls, and ready to storm even the common proprieties of life for the sake of the gospel, shows himself now marvellously apathetic towards the whole interest. He has no heart to seize common opportunities, in the house or by the way, to say a word in favor of religion. It is well indeed if he be not found relaxing altogether his ministerial activity, both in the pulpit and from house to house. The truth is, he has no capacity, no inward sufficiency, for the ordinary processes of evangelical labor. Much is required to be a faithful minister of the New Testament; whilst small resources in comparison are needed for that semblance of power, to which a man may attain by the successful use of the system now in view.

Here then is a strong temptation presented to.

ministers. They are in danger of being seduced, by the appeals which this system makes to their selfishness and sloth. It offers to their view, a "short method of doing God's great work, and a sort of "royal road," at the same time, to ministerial reputation. How easy, in these circumstances, for even a good man, to have his judgment warped and his practice disturbed. And how natural, that weakness, under every form, should rejoice to take refuge, in the shelter thus brought within its reach.

It should be considered a calamity in any community, or in any religious denomination, to have this system in fashionable and popular use. Let the idea prevail, that those who employ new measures in the gospel work, are the friends preeminently of serious heart religion, and of all evangelical interests; whilst such as frown upon them are to be regarded with suspicion, as at best but half awake in the service of Christ. Let it be counted enough to authenticate the power of a pastor's ministrations, that he shall be able to furnish, from winter to winter, a flaming report of some three weeks' awakening in his charge, in the course of which scores of sinners have been drawn to the anxious bench, and immediately afterwards hurried to the Lord's table. Let some religious paper, known as the organ of the Church, herald these reports, from week to week, without inquiry or discrimination, as "revival intelligence," proclaiming them worthy of all confidence, and glorifying both the measures and the men concerned in the tri