nd from no movement in human society do
such lasting and blessed consequences flow, as from a genuine revival of
religion.

But here again, as in reference to the eternal state, there is no
realizing sense. Conviction of sin is not a characteristic of mankind at
large. Men generally will acknowledge in words that they are sinners, but
they wait for some far-distant day to come, when they shall be pricked in
the heart, and feel the truth of what they say. Men generally are not
conscious of the dreadful reality of sin, any more than they are of the
solemn reality of eternity. A deep insensibility, in this respect also,
precludes a practical knowledge of that guilt in the soul, which, if
unpardoned and unremoved, will just as surely ruin it as God lives and
the soul is immortal. Since, then, if man be left to his own inclination,
he never will be convinced of sin, it is plain that some Agent who has
the power must overcome his aversion to self-knowledge, and bring him to
consciousness upon this unwelcome subject. If any one of us, for the
remainder of our days, should be given over to that ordinary indifference
towards sin with which we walk these streets, and transact business, and
enjoy life; if God's truth should never again in this world stab the
conscience, and God's Spirit should never again make us anxious; is it
not infallibly certain that the future would be as the past, and that we
should go through this "accepted time and day of salvation" unconvicted
and therefore unconverted?

But besides this destitution of the experimental sense of sin, another
ground of the need of Divine agency is found in the _blindness_ of the
natural mind. Man's vision of spiritual things, even when they are set
before his eyes, is dim and inadequate. The Christian ministry is greatly
hindered, because it cannot illuminate the human understanding, and
impart the power of a keen spiritual insight. It is compelled to present
the objects of sight, but it cannot give the eye to see them. Vision
depends altogether upon the condition of the organ. The eye sees only
what it brings the means of seeing. The scaled eye of a worldling, or a
debauchee, or a self-righteous man, cannot see that sin of the heart,
that "spiritual wickedness," at which men like Paul and Isaiah stood
aghast. These were men whose character compared with that of the
worldling was saintly; men whose shoes' latchets the worldling is not
worthy to stoop down and unloose. And