labours! The
conversion of his hearers has been the culminating point of a thousand
appliances, and, in the vast majority of cases, it has been reached by
degrees. The glorious summit has been attained, not by a leap from the
valley, but after many preparatory steps. The light of life has not
flashed out of darkness, but has dawned by imperceptible degrees,
until the glory of God was seen in the face of Christ Jesus. If the
new life itself has been suddenly experienced, yet let us not overlook
the preparatory work of the shaking of the dry bones, then of the bone
coming to its bone, and, finally, the flesh and skin covering the
skeleton, and so preparing a home in which the living spirit could
dwell and act. We cannot use language strong enough to express our
conviction of the blessing which, as an ordinary rule, is sure to
follow from the Lord on the faithful and prayerful labour of a pious
parent, Sabbath-school teacher, or pastor. Let nothing be said in
favour of wide-spread and sudden revivals to discourage these hopes! A
true revival, we believe, shall ever, in God's own time, attend such
labours. This is emphatically true regarding the work of the ministry.
We believe that the ministry is of God as much as the Bible is--one of
the most precious gifts obtained for the Church by the risen Saviour;
and that now, as ever, the preaching of the Word by ministers duly
prepared and regularly called and ordained by the Christian Church, is
the grand means for converting sinners; that this power never grows
old or loses its adaptation to the wants of man amidst the constant
changes of society, any more than a lens does in transmitting the rays
of the sun from age to age.

Yet, with all these admissions, and with profound veneration for the
ordinary calm and methodical means of grace, we can nevertheless
believe in wide-spread sudden "conversions," and that too through
other instrumentalities, and in circumstances which leave no doubt of
their being caused by what has been termed an extraordinary outpouring
of God's Spirit. For let us beware of dogmatising irreverently as to
when and how that living Spirit shall operate on the souls of men,
who worketh according to His own counsel of unerring and inscrutable
wisdom. "Who hath known the mind of the Lord, and who hath been his
counsellor, that he should instruct _him_?" As a Person, He acts as
"He wills," and in every case with perfect wisdom and perfect
love. And it is in k