ivals are looked up to and supported as the strong arm
of religion. It is not only the ignorant or the foolish, but the
enlightened and the educated also, who support and encourage them,
either from a consideration of their utility, or from that fear, so
universal in the United States, of expressing an opinion contrary to the
majority. How otherwise could they be introduced once or twice a year
into all the colleges, the professors of which are surely most of them
men of education and strong mind? Yet such is the fact. It is
announced that some minister, peculiarly gifted to work in revivals, is
to come on a certain day. Books are thrown on one side, study is
abandoned, and ten days perhaps are spent in religious exercises of the
most violent and exciting character. It is a scene of strange
confusion, some praying, some pretending to pray, some scoffing. Day
after day it is carried on, until the excitement is at its height, as
the exhortations and the denunciations of the preacher are poured into
their ears. A young American who was at one of the colleges, and gave
me a full detail of what had occurred, told me that on one occasion a
poor lad, frightened out of his senses, and anxious to pray, as the
vengeance and wrath of the Almighty was poured out by the minister, sunk
down upon his knees and commenced his prayer with "Almighty and
_diabolical_ God!" No misnomer, if what the preacher had thundered out
was the _truth_.

As an example of the interference of the laity, and of the description
of people who may be so authorised, the same gentleman told me that at
one revival a deacon said to him previous to the meeting, "Now, Mr --,
if you don't take advantage of this here revival and lay up a little
salvation for your soul, all I can say is, that you ought to have your
(something) confoundedly well kicked."

What I have already said on this subject will, I think, establish two
points, first, that the voluntary system does not work well for society;
and secondly, that the ministers of the churches are treated with such
tyranny and contumely, as to warrant the assertion, that in a country,
like the United States, where a man may, in any other profession, become
independent in a few years, the number of those who enter into the
ministry must decrease at the very time that the population and demand
for them will increase.

We have now another question to be examined, and a very important one,
which is:--Are those