As a natural consequence of Mr. Beecher's intense application to the sacred mission of preaching to dying and sinful men the eternal love of God as revealed in Jesus Christ, Plymouth Church has been blessed with an unusually large number of powerful and deep-toned revivals. As we have already seen, Mr. Beecher is a strong believer in the genuineness and profitableness of religious awakenings. His teaching is that the Church needs them just as much as the world at large. The tendency of all institutions is to formalism, and formalism is death. The Church, it would seem, is more inclined to be indolent and inactive than any other organisation known to us. Again and again does it need to shake itself from the dust and be revived. Again and again is it necessary to infuse into its veins fresh and purer blood, that it may awake to a sense of its heavy responsibilities and be strengthened for the performance of its arduous duties. Revivals affect the Church just as April showers do the earth. They fertilize it. They call into action its latent forces. They intone and elevate the character of its spirituality. Moreover, revivals in the Church never stop in it. They very soon make themselves felt for good in the community outside. It is incontrovertible, that whenever a new moral impulse, a fresh baptism of the Holy Spirit, and a nobler conception of the true significance of life are perceptible in the Church, the general tone of morality begins to improve in the world. And it is for the purification and uplifting of society that the church exists. It should be a representative of Christ upon the earth. Having known and experienced the saving and forgiving mercy of God itself, it is its imperative duty to offer the same knowledge and experience to those who are as yet in the darkness of ignorance and sin. The whole world would have been saved ere now had Christian people been wide-awake and ready to do their part. The Church has shamefully neglected the commission it so solemnly received from its Divine founder. It is by jerks only that our very best Christian organisations do their work, and those jerks, those seasons of activity, we dignify by calling them revivals. Plymouth Church stands much higher in this regard than our average churches. It has had a

revival almost every year since it began to exist. Indeed, one might almost say that Plymouth Church has been a model society. Its revivals have been of great power and long continuance—not sudden flashes illuminating the sky for a brief moment, but rays of pure light shining steadily and continuously into the hearts of men. Mr. Beecher believes that such revivals are always possible, and that they never fail to come when the requisite conditions meet. The means of grace are in our hands, and whenever we make the proper use of them, the Lord does not withhold the promised blessing. Mr. Beecher assures us that he has never been disappointed. Surely the wonderful history of his church is a lesson to all churches. Mighty have been the results of its earnest activities. Think of its enormous membership of three thousand people! Consider the thousands upon thousands that have gone out of it to be instruments of blessing throughout America and the world. Certainly such a church does not exist in vain. The Lord Jesus Christ has been magnified and glorified in all its ministrations.

Let us gaze a moment upon a most interesting and impressive scene that occurred some twenty years ago. It was on a Communion Sabbath in the month of June. The whole of the winter had been a time of extraordinary seriousness in the congregation. The immense audiences attending the Sabbath services had been all along giving evidence of profound earnestness and anxiety, and the successive occasions of public worship had been steadily growing more and more solemn and impressive. At the close of the evening sermons Mr. Beecher had been in the habit of inviting those unconverted persons in the congregation who desired to be prayed for, or who were anxious about their souls, to rise in their seats, and hundreds had availed themselves of the opportunity. At last the Communion Sabbath came, when nearly two hundred persons were to be received into the fellowship of the Church. It was a Sabbath never to be forgotten. The church was densely crowded in every part-aisles, passages, doorways, vestibule, and pulpit steps being occupied by eager spectators and listeners. The pulpit was beautifully decorated with fragrant flowers, and in it sat the venerable old patriarch, Dr. Lyman Beecher,

Mr.

nessing the scene with inexpressible gladness. echer could hardly contain himself. He smiled and ed alternately and often simultaneously. Had not the rd blessed him beyond his most sanguine expectations? is was indeed the Lord's Day. After the usual invocan and singing, the long list of names of persons propounded r membership was read; and as soon as the ceremony of mission was over and a hymn was sung, Mr. Beecher livered a very impressive and appropriate sermon, from hich we make the following quotation: "This church is it eleven years old. It has been blessed with five seasons peculiar religious growth. They have not been at the xpense of intermediate seasons. Much has lately been id of revivals, and many have derided them as rare and ccasional freshets of feeling in churches that ordinarily ave none. That this is sometimes the fact is indisputable. But it need not be. A revival of religion is not an bnormal state. It is based upon natural laws. Like all ther true states, it will be sound and beneficial, or imperfect nd mischievous, according to the knowledge and skill with which men employ the great and stated agencies of truth. "Five revivals have been experienced in eleven years in his church. Not only has this not been the case because the intermediate periods were unspiritual and declining, but there has been a continual growth in the spirituality of the church, and every revival has lifted the church higher. And when the special social religious element has subsided, it has not left the church cold, insensitive, and fruitless. For, if you except the communion season which follows the pastoral vacation, there has been scarcely a communion season in this church for years at which persons have not been received from the world. And there have been awakenings and conversions more or less frequent during every year, and during every month from year to year. Eleven years ago this month this church was formed with twenty-five members. To-day it stands up to praise God with the grateful hearts of 1377; and of this great company 673 have been received from the world, and upon good evidence of conversion. You must not uncharitably regard this as boasting. I have no time for that; I have a higher end in view.

"I wish it to be remembered that this church has had its whole life and development during a very critical period of American history. The gospel of Christ in every age has a new work to perform, a new growth to develop, new applications to the ever-changing phases of society to make. I need not tell you through what a memorable and eventful series of changes God has brought this nation. In preaching the gospel to you I have taken it for granted that my duty was to preach a living gospel to living men about living questions. I have not confined my attention to one subject. I have preached Christ as the fountain-head of all spiritual life, and the perfect exemplar. I have taught you that a deep, inward spiritual life, begun by God's Spirit and daily nourished by God's personal presence, is the foundation of all true Christian morals. I have taught you that love to God and to man is the characteristic element of all true Christian reformatory labour. And you will bear me witness that I have anxiously, and ten times—yes, a hundred times more than anything else— taught, laboured, and besought that you prepare yourselves for all external work by faith in Jesus Christ, by humility, by zeal tempered with discretion, by fervent sympathy with each other and with the whole brotherhood of mankind. And I have incessantly stimulated you to work in an atmosphere of love. Thus prepared, I have sought to inspire you with higher ideals of life in every one of its elements; with a higher notion of personal character; with a nobler sense of true manhood; with a purer and deeper way of personal living; with a richer and higher idea of the family state; with more noble habits of secular life. I have searched the family, the store, the shop, the office, the street, the ship, the farm, with the lighted candle of the gospel, and sought to develop in your mind the idea of a symmetrical Christian character, both contemplative and executive, both spiritual and philanthropic, both domestic and public. I have not forgotten things personal in things domestic, nor things secular in domestic truths, nor your public duties by any over-scrupulous ecclesiastical and church relationship. And in the fulfilment of this work you know very well that I

have neither neglected public questions nor yet intruded them so often as to give them disproportionate importance. I have called you to believe the deep and fundamental truth of Christ's atonement, on the human side of it— namely, that men are unspeakably precious, and valuable beyond all estimation before God. I have said that the meanest and lowest creature on the globe is of transcendent dignity, and has rights sacred as the throne of God. For what shall measure the worth of a creature for whose salvation Christ would die? One drop of Christ's blood is worth a globe, though it were one orbicular diamond. Souls are the jewels of God, not metals or stones. I have therefore taken hearty and earnest part in the struggles of our day for the great Christian doctrine of human liberty, and I have led no unwilling church into the conflict. In this matter (pardon me if I speak of myself) I have determined to have no interests, no reputation, and no position or influence, aside from these great truths. I have committed my soul to God's keeping, and have never asked nor cared what men might think, or say, or do. Too thankful to live in such a day and to work in such a field, I have only feared that my sight might grow dull, my heart grow feeble, and my hand become weak in this work so dear to the heart of Christ. As Christ has embraced the human soul in His own, so hath He taught me to call all men my brethren. And I have preached, lectured, written, and gone forth unhesitatingly and before the whole people, to bear witness to the great gospel of Christ in the one pre-eminent and transcendent application of it to the great pulsating living interest of this age and nation.

"Now, why have I said all this? For two reasons. First, because God has raised up this church as seal and testimony. It stands before the nation as a church consecrated to Christ, not only in a general way, but as a church that bears unfaltering witness to Christian reform. It stands before the world for temperance; for liberty, and against slavery; for humanity, and against all oppression in trade, in commerce, or in civil relations. And what has been God's testimony? Has this been a church split and divided by intestine quarrels? For eleven years your church