THE universal deadness of the nominal churches has been the subject of many and severe comments by men of her own communion, who being unable to overlook the fact have been free to acknowledge and deplore it in the plainest terms. They have puzzled their brains to ascertain the cause of this state of things, forgetting that it is impossible for any church at any time, which refuses to keep pace with the unfolding truth of God, to still retain the power of vital godliness. If they stop, God moves on without them. The popular churches have stopped. They have rejected as plain a message as need be given to the world, and in consequence of that rejection it has been recorded against them, Babylon is fallen! The Louisville Recorder thus speaks:— "Though we have (at least among Protestants) no human priest or sacrificial altar, yet among us the social element and power of the Church has become cramped, ice-bound, or entirely destroyed. We have become an assembly, not of living actors, but of silent, passive hearers. The Church has become mere listeners to preachers—a roll of names baptized, permitted to take the Lord's Supper, and expected to enjoy good preaching. Like the door on the hinges, they come and they go. They are prayed for, and sung to, and preached to; and often sung and preached to sleep, if not to death. Thus, year after year, is this continuous round, this dead flat, over which not a breath of emotion passes to disturb the dull and decent monotony. The minister seeks not, and the Church strives not, to 'grow up into Him in all things, which is the head, even Christ, from whom the whole body fitly joined and compacted by that which every joint supplieth according to the effectual working in the measure of every part, maketh increase of the body unto the edifying of itself in love.' But relying on the preacher—when he is gone all is gone—the glory has departed."