have climbed, and sawing off the very
bough to which they cling.

Duty, honour, love, self-sacrifice--these are the fruits of The Spirit;
unknown to, and unobeyed by, the savage, or by the civilized man who--as
has too often happened--as is happening now in too many lands, on both
sides of the Atlantic, is sinking back into inward savagery, amid an
outward and material civilization.

Moreover--and this appears to us a fair experimental proof that our old-
fashioned belief in A Spirit of God, which acts upon the spirit of man,
is a true belief--moreover, I say: It is a patent fact, that wherever and
whenever there has been a revival of the Christian religion; whenever,
that is, amid whatsoever confusions and errors, men have begun to feel
the need of the Holy Spirit of God, and to pray for that Spirit, a moral
revival has accompanied the religious one. Men and women have not only
become better themselves; and that often suddenly and in very truth
miraculously better: but the yearning has awoke in them to make others
better likewise. The grace of God, as they have called it, has made them
gracious to their fellow-creatures; and duty, honour, love,
self-sacrifice, call it by what name we will, has said to them, with a
still small voice more potent than all the thunders of the law: Go, and
seek and save that which is lost.

In no case has this instinctive tendency to practical benevolence been
more striking, than in the case of that great religious revival
throughout England at the beginning of this century, which issued in the
rise of the Evangelical school: a school rightly so called, because its
members did try to obey the precepts of the Gospel, according to their
understanding of them, in spirit and in truth.

The doctrines which they held are a matter not for us, but for God and
their own souls. The deeds which they did are matter for us, and for all
England; for they have left their mark on the length and breadth of the
land. They were inspired--cultivated, highborn, and wealthy folk many of
them--with a strange new instinct that God had bidden them to feed the
hungry, to clothe the naked, to visit the prisoner and the sick, to bind
up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and to preach
good tidings to the meek. A strange new instinct: and from what cause,
save from the same cause as that which Isaiah assigned to his own like
deeds?--Because "The Spirit of the Lord was upon him."

Yes, i