Decline of Religion, and its Causes. By Evan M. Johnson [pp. 588-596]

Decline of Religion.
and drink no wine as long as I live (excepting at the sacra mental table), that I may discourage the use of that which is
every day destroying the lives, the character, and the useful ness of thousands."
For ourselves, we are not ashamed of such a principle or
practice as this. We can have-no doubt that intemperance is
a more fearful destroyer than sword, famine and pestilence
combined. We have quite as little doubt that in this im mense field of reform, so infinitely important to our children,
and to all the best interests of society, according to the
old homnely proverb, "an ounce of prevention is worth a
pound of cure;" and it appears to us that, in this field, the
church, precious as her agency is, cannot, by her disci pline, accomplish all that it is desirable and important to have
done. In these circumstances, to frown on the agency of
voluntary societies, when they attempt to do what the church
never did attempt, is not now doing, and cannot possibly do,
is something worse than ungracious. When such societies
are arrogant, let us reprove them; when they become extra vagant, let us restrain and rebuke them; but let us not refuse
to accept their services because their mode of rendering them
is marked with human irmperfection.
Mr.'Johnson further alleges, that "the revival system
has done injury to the cause of religion." We have no
doubt that there is much foundation for this charge. Some
of those who have vaunted themselves as the peculiar friends
and only skilful promoters of revivals of religion, have, un questionably, disgraced the cause which they professed. to
honour, and have done more to promote fanaticism than real
religion., Yet we are quite sure that those who denounce
the most sober, scriptural and benign effusions of the Holy
Spirit which have ever adorned the church of God, and deny
much of what enters essentially into the evangelical system,
are at least as unfriendly to the great interests of pure and
undefiled religion as those whom our author stigmatizes with
so much severity. On this whole subject we think Mr.
Johnson might derive profit from reading an excellent letter
on Revivals of Religion, written by a minister of his own
church, once a brother rector at Brooklyn, and now bishop
of the Protestant Episcopal church in Ohio. He will find
this letter, the eleventh in order, in the Appendix to Dr.
Sprague's admirable " Lectures on Revivals of Religion."
We recommend it to his careful and serious perusal.
[OCTOBER
594