will, but their fault, that it should be so.

While the church at Ephesus lost its first love, and that at
Pergamos permitted false doctrine to creep into it and be a stumbling
block, and that at Thyatira suffered Jezebel to seduce Christ's
servants, and that at Sardis did not have her works found perfect
before God, and that of Laodicea had become lukewarm; yet the church
at Smyrna, with all her tribulation and poverty and persecution,
remained rich and faithful in the sight of God, and that at
Philadelphia had kept the Word of God's patience, and her enemies were
to know that God loved her. While the former five were censured, the
latter two were approved. The former might have remained as faithful
as the latter. It was their own fault and sin that the former needed a
revival. The latter needed none. Which were the better off?

We believe that where there is a sound, faithful and earnest
pastor, and a docile, sincere, earnest, united and active people, many
will grow up in their baptismal covenant; and among those who wander
more or less therefrom, there will be frequent conversions, under the
faithful use of the ordinary services and ordinances of the Church.
Such, we believe, were the pastorates of Richard Baxter, at
Kidderminster; of Ludwig Harms, at Hermansburg; of Oberlin, at
Steinthal; and of our late lamented Dr. Greenwald, at Easton and
Lancaster. None of these churches, after their pastors were fairly
established in them, needed revivals. And such, doubtless, have been
thousands of quiet, faithful pastorates, some known to the world, and
others known only to God. Blessed are those churches in which the work
of Grace is constantly and effectively going on, according to God's
Way of Salvation.

CHAPTER XXIV.

MODERN REVIVALS.

We have shown that it ought to be the great aim and object of the
Church to preclude the necessity of occasional religious excitements.
We also showed, by example from Scripture and from Church history,
that it is possible to attain this end. If parents did but understand
and do their duty in the family, teachers in the Sunday-school and
pastors in the catechetical class and pulpit, children would very
generally grow up in their baptismal covenant; and a church made up of
such members would not depend for its growth and life on periodic
religious revivals.

But--alas, that _but_!--parents, teachers and