The Sun.
London, England, 1866-02-19 00:00:00

Revivals in the United States.

In the United States of America where no relig,ison
is sustained or protected by the Government, but
where all denominations of worshippers are equally
free to labour and pray for the spead of their doc-
trines and practices among men, it is natural that
there should be seasons of special attention to reli-
gious subjects. For there the mind is free, and it
is peculiarly necessary that the mind should work
freely if you would have it work religiously. In no
department of thought are men so easy to be per-
suaded, if right means are employed, and so hard
to be coerced, as in matters of religion. The very
nature of religion, which is in all men the most
exalted and enthusiastic devotion of the soul to its
supreme ideal of excellence—implies that it must be
a free-will offering, and that all attempts to govern,
limit, or force its growth are as futile as the effort
to guide the wind or prescribe the pattern for a
flower. But it is because religion free there that
seasons of special interest and widespread conver-
sion are natural ; for revival, labour, and repose in
religion correspond to enterprise, toil, and. rest in
the business of life, and to growth, power, and de-
cay in nature. It is a law of the soul as of the body,
that it cannot continue long in any one sphere of
action or enjoyment ; but that as rest succeeds
labour, so coldness shall ensue upon passion, and
emotion, if moderate, shall give place to contempla-
tion, or if immoderate and too long sustained, to
indifference, or even slumber. This is specially true
of religious emotion and thought. Seasons of indif-
ference to religion involve consequences which in
themselves afford the strongest argument for Chris-
tian revivals. Under the power of these arguments,
as they have been brought home by preachers like
Edwards, Wesley, Whitefield, or Spurgeon, who
were inspired by an undoubting faith in the truth
of all they uttered, the tide of thought has been at
times turned so exclusively to matters of religious
concern that the business of this life became subor-
dinate to that of the eternal life, and the whole
topic and burden of men's thoughts were the con-
cerns of the soul. But this condition of religious
exaltation must necessarily be highly emotional in
its character, and, like all emotional states, it must
be transient in its duration though permanent in
many of its effects. Nothing is more sensible than
that men and communities should at times neglect
their ordinary business and pleasures to devote
their soul's best energies to the consideration of inte-
rests which are so vastly more important and en-
during. Nor is anything more in harmony with the
laws of God than that, having complied with this
outreaching of the soul after the Infinite One, they
should return to the humble duties of life, as did
the disciples from the Mount of Transfiguration,
bringing with them not the rapt of glory of the
vision, but those subdued and permanent effects,
which shall be

" Not too good
For human nature's daily food,"

and which they can carry with them into every
walk of life. Because Christian revivals are seasons
of emotion, like all emotional periods, like the sor-
row of bereavement, the joy of the bridal, the en-
thusiasm of a great success, or the shame of a sore
defeat, or whatever moves us to tears or deeply stirs
the fountains of the soul, they must, like all these,
by the limits of the soul's capacities be both tran-
sient in their immediate duration, and permanent in
their softened, subdued, and secondary effects.
Extravagances have attended the most powerful re-
vival in past times, and are doubtless incident to all
emotional seasons, which extend to all classes of
minds. But these argue nothing against revivals
which the eccentricities of emotion would not argue,
with equal force, against all displays of feeling.
Where emotion is called for, no want of grace or
good taste in the manner of displaying it is so in-
excusable as the utter want of it, manifested in
heartlessness or insensibility. Whether the present
religious interest in the United States will extend
into the entire community and become such a gene-
ral awakening as marked the periods to which we
have referred, or whether its benefits will be very
limited, is still in the future. In some respects the
time seems opportune. Great religious awakenings
have generally followed closely upon great political
revolutions or financial revulsions. As with the in-
dividual, so with the community, when the heart is
lifted up with success it is filled with the pride of
life, but when thousands of homes are desolated by
affliction, and millions of hearts are oppressed by
financial revulsion and disaster, when, as now, a
whole land has been swept over by the sword which
is the effect and embodiment of human passion and
lwatrs
theref
be
crime, and—when the effects of national and indi-
vidual wickedness come home with force to the
hearts and consciences of men—at such times the
thespirit
soul,
is waonndt tt ohebrwooordd ovgoeresthfeortroubled

Itisstated
in the
Columbus, Georgia
papers tthata
in that State, tog
colony o
is
to
Mexico. Judge William G. Swan, lately of Tennessee,
and ex-member of the Confederate Congress from the
Knoxville district, is the head of it.
being organisedombu

The planters of South Carolina, like
Louisiana, aro taking active measure to prevent h
alltose of
leasing
of land to negroes. A resolution lately adopted at a meet-
ing of landowners says :
er ro
oe renting
th nmg
tf
rheaet
farnoym
tahned oe
ow; "It is the sense of this meeting
l
self or some responsible agent,
and to negroes, to be worked
is, in the present condition
of the negroes of this district,
pursuing a c • course ruinous to them and highly detrimental
to the
peace of the community and the interests of the
whites ; that we bind ourselves not to infringe the letter
and spirit of these resolutions, and to discourage the in-
fringement by others as far as our influence extends."
California produced, in 1860, 7,500,000 bushels
of wheat. The State produces more barley than all the
balance of the Union, and has an annual surplus of about
5,000,000 bushels.
DUTIES UNDER. THE RECIPROCITY TREATY. —A
Washington letter says it has been ascertained that dur-
ing 1864 and 1865 840,000,000 worth of goods wore im-
ported into the United States free of duty, of which
$27,000,000 came from British North America. It has also
been found that in the last two years the Government has
lost $12,000,000 of revenue by the reciprocity treaty.
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