CHAPTER XV. ON ANALYZING AND COMBINING THE ELEMENTS [OF A REVIVAL.-INTERNAL ELEMENTS. In this, as in other subjects, analysis will doubtless be found a direct road to truth and to power. That it must stop with the surface of knowledge, as applied to the operations of that Agent who is like the unseen wind, is no objection against using it, because the result is the same in all matters of investigation. The properties, not the substance or interior nature of things, are alone cognizable to philosophy. In the subject before us, the question is what elements or things are present on those occasions, when the moral power of the church is in a train of most successful exercise? When we have found out what these things are, we shall be able to judge, whether they are within the reach of Christians, at times and in places, when and where this power is not at present in a course of successful exercise. It is by analysis, that the apothecary ascertains how to com bine the ingredients of a given medicine. So, as a genuine revival of religion is the form which the moral and social elements assume, when God is shining out of Zion the perfection of beauty, we must look at the component elements of such a gracious visitation, in order to learn the art of ensuring their presence in places where they do not now exist. Our attempt in a department like this, especially in the narrow limits of a concluding chapter, must necessarily be exceedingly imperfect. It seems a little singular that the manifestations of human nature in this department should have been nearly two thousand years, a matter of history, without eliciting more in the shape of dispassionate philosophic inquiry concerning them. Much as has been written on the manifestations of the intellect and the moral sentiments, the higher qualities of the spiritual nature, in their manifestations as connected with revivals, have rarely been approached by the scrutinies of investigation. Those powerful excitements, connected with the triumph of these qualities over all grosser passions and interests, seem to be ranked with witchcraft, as unfit to trespass on the precincts of science. And yet who can compute the magnitude of the blessing accruing from such occasions? The drunkard forsakes his cups, the profane exchange their oaths for prayers, the Bible succeeds to the romance as the book of delightful entertainment, while either the agony of guilt, the fear of hell and horrors of despair blacken the features; or, the joys of pardon, love and immortal hope beat in every heart or beam in every face. It is true that Edwards and others have given more or less attention to this subject. By scrutinizing the things that go to make up a revival, we shall find them internal and external, relating to the state of the affections, or to outward conduct and measures. The internal, or a revival state of the affections, is that which arises from the fulness of the Holy Spirit. Those excitements, of which there are many, that spring up without this fulness, are mere imitations, which, however they may deceive at the time, leave no permanent blessing behind. They arise from the pride of distinction, from a competition of numbers between different churches, or from some accidental cause of excitement, that spends its force without probing the heart to the bottom, or annihilating its cherished corruptions. Hence, no permanent blessing is left behind, Christians are not improved in the arts of holy living, the repentance that for the moment produced such contortions, needs to be repented of, and the converts, in the end, become seven fold more the children of hell than they were before. Nor can any thing make it otherwise, till those who are active in the work are so purged from their old sins that the Holy Spirit can take up his undisturbed abode in their hearts. 1. Among the manifestations of the Spirit, on such occasions, that of a passion for conversions to holiness, holds a conspicuous place. Without a desire for the salvation of souls, amounting to an absorbing and all controlling passion, there can be no genuine revival. It is this that awakens the agony of prayer, denoted by the expressive figure of travailing pains in Zion, and travailing in birth for souls till Christ be formed in them. As to how this feeling was awakened, whether by means of an alarming death, by fifty days praying as in the Church at Jerusalem, or by other instrumentalities, provided only the thing exist in its depth and its genuineness, is quite immaterial. Measures are not the things to be controverted, so much as the spirit with which we embark in them. There are a thousand specific varieties in them, some of which might be more successful on one occasion, and some on another. For Christians, therefore, to waste their efforts in contending about them, is as irrational as for the divisions of a victorious army, to embark in a war among themselves, because the victory was not achieved by the sword or the bayonet, the musketry or the cannon, or by other modes of warfare, that happened to be favorites with each. The question is not, how a community came by this absorbing sense of the necessity of conversion from sin to holiness, but simply whether it actually exists among them. Now, this passion was a predominant influence with Jesus and his inspired apostles. They presumed not to touch the civil relations of their converts; but taught them subjection to forms of government of the most oppressive character, from which too, their own devotion to the public weal was requited with naught but oppression and cruelty. They even soothed their feelings to the patient endurance of so unnatural a condition as that of slavery, teaching them that they might still be Christ's freemen. The peculiar work of enthroning God in the affections, to which they exclusively devoted themselves, could be accomplished in the most unjust and oppressive forms of civil and social life, not less than in those which embodied more righteous and benignant principles. And where collision with the powers that be was unavoidable, they had no other means of achieving the victories of truth, than that of yielding themselves unresisting victims to the public indignation. 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