on ought to be a time of
refreshing. What an auspicious opportunity is here offered for special
sermons to precede the Holy Communion, for recalling the wanderer,
awaking the drowsy, stirring up the languid, instructing the
inquiring, and establishing the doubting! What pastor, who has a
Christ-like interest in the spiritual welfare of his people, and who
has used his communion seasons to this end, has not often realized
that they are indeed _times of refreshing from the Lord_?

These communion seasons become still more effective and valuable
when they come, as they generally do in our Lutheran Church, in
connection with our great Church Festivals. Our Church has wisely held
on to these great historic feasts. They have from the earliest times
been the Church's true revival seasons. Church historians inform us
that during the age immediately succeeding the time of the Apostles,
when the Church was still comparatively pure and fervently devout,
these Festival Seasons were the real high-days, the crowning days of
the year. On these occasions the Word was preached with more than
ordinary power, and the Sacraments were dispensed with unusual
solemnity. Then the churches were filled to overflowing. A solemn
stillness reigned over city and country. Worldly cares and pleasures
were laid aside, and the great saving facts of the Gospel then
commemorated were the all-absorbing theme. At such times, even the
worldly and careless felt an almost irresistible impulse to follow the
happy Christian to the house of God. Multitudes of sinners were
converted and gathered into the Church of Jesus Christ, while saints
were strengthened and built up in their holy faith.

Thus these festival communion seasons were true revival seasons.
And why should it not be so still? What can be more inspiring and
impressive than these great facts which our church festivals
commemorate? If the solemn warnings of the Advent season, the glad
tidings of the Christmas season, the touching and searching lessons of
the Lenten season, the holy, inspiring joyousness of the Easter
season, or the instructive admonitions of the Pentecostal season, will
not attract and move and edify the hearts of men, what will?

What has the radical part of the Church gained by setting aside
these seasons, hallowed by the use of Christ, His apostles and
martyrs, the Church Fathers and Reformers? Is the modern revival
system and the Week of Prayer arrangement an impr