Where there is no reverence, there is no godliness. Where seriousness and holy awe are in feeble exercise, there the “powers of the world to come” are feebly operative. But how deplorable are the examples presented every week of the absence of this sentiment from the pulpit. We can hardly believe the types which thus spell out for us in the newspapers the words of irreverence and of flippant nonsense which are substituted for the gospel of Jesus Christ in some of the pulpits of our land. The great reform so needful now-a-days must begin at the altars of God. Let the priests cease to offer strange and unhallowed fire. Let them cultivate in their own experience and speech that reverence which their people must feel if they are to be spiritually elevated. And we apprehend that the shortest road to reverence will be found in a more scrupulous adherence to Bible truths. Let the pulpit be occupied with important themes; let sin, righteousness, and a Judgment to come fill the mind of the preacher, and we shall read of no laughter, no applause. Let substantial doctrines be preached, and we shall not be shamed by reading in the Monday papers such dreary columns of politics, personalities, and things bordering on the profane. Bats fly at night because the light is gone. Frivolity fills the mind because reverence is not there. Would it were possible to bring the shadow of God’s presence over the mind of every popular preacher. We should soon see the effects in a better type of godliness throughout the church. “Let us have grace whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear.”—The Presbyterian.