"O Lord, revive Thy work in the midst of the years."--HAB. iii. 2.

"Though I walk in the midst of trouble, Thou wilt revive me: Thy
right hand shall save me."--PS. cxxxviii. 7.

"I dwell with him that is of a humble and contrite heart, to revive
the heart of the contrite ones."--ISA. lvii. 15.

"Come, and let us return to the Lord: for He hath torn, and He will
heal us. He will revive us."--HOS. vi. 1, 2.

_The Coming Revival_--one frequently hears the word. There are teachers
not a few who see the tokens of its approach, and confidently herald its
speedy appearance. In the increase of mission interest, in the tidings
of revivals in places where all were dead or cold, in the hosts of our
young gathered into Students' and other Associations or Christian
Endeavour Societies, in doors everywhere opened in the Christian and the
heathen world, in victories already secured in the fields white unto the
harvest, wherever believing, hopeful workers enter, they find the
assurance of a time of power and blessing such as we have not known. The
Church is about to enter on a new era of increasing spirituality and
larger extension.

There are others who, while admitting the truth of some of these facts,
yet fear that the conclusions drawn from them are one-sided and
premature. They see the interest in missions increased, but point out to
how small a circle it is confined, and how utterly out of proportion it
is to what it ought to be. To the great majority of Church members, to
the greater part of the Church, it is as yet anything but a life
question. They remind us of the power of worldliness and formality, of
the increase of the money-making and pleasure-loving spirit among
professing Christians, to the lack of spirituality in so many, many of
our churches, and the continuing and apparently increasing estrangement
of multitudes from God's Day and Word, as proof that the great revival
has certainly not begun, and is hardly thought of by the most. They say
that they do not see the deep humiliation, the intense desire, the
fervent prayer which appear as the forerunners of every true revival.

There are right-hand and left-hand errors which are equally dangerous.
We must seek as much to be kept from the superficial Optimism, which
never is able to gauge the extent of the evil, as from the hopeless
Pessimism which can neither praise God for what He has done, nor trust
Him for what He is ready to do. Th