A Revival Needed by Editor

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 19, 1861

A Revival Needed

By Editor

SUCH is the cry that is beginning to be raised in various parts of the land. As we hear it, we are led to inquire, What has become of the recent revival of 1858 which was claimed to be so unprecedented in its power and extent? Where are now its effects? We cannot wonder that they are nowhere to be seen, and that the state of things described below is fast following in its wake, when we reflect that in that religious movement the great national sin of this country, the villainy of slaveholding, was made a forbidden topic of prayer or exhortation. A revival truly is needed, but not of that sickly, hollow-hearted kind that will suffer its lips to be sealed at the beck of any class of sinners however high their influence or position, and become dumb at their bidding to any sin in the land. The following under the head of "A Revival Needed," we extract from an article in the American Missionary, of February, 1861:

"In no period of this country's history, or the history of the church in this land, was there more need of a general and thorough revival of religion than at the present time. Impiety stalks abroad with its brazen front; disunion boldly proclaims its treasonable schemes; the advocates and apologists of slavery utter from Southern, and even from Northern pulpits, their unscriptural and inhuman arguments; professors of religion applaud and circulate extensively pro-slavery discourses, and even apply to a Jewish Rabbi, to expound to a Christian community the Old Testament, in favor of slavery; the Sabbath is desecrated throughout the country; the religious press contains a deplorable amount of uncharitableness and error; civil war is openly threatened, by an influential portion of the South; the whole nation is assuming a warlike attitude, while the government is criminally supine. Strenuous efforts are made, for the sake of gain, an inglorious peace, and the perpetuation of the Union, on unrighteous principles, to hush the swelling voice of freedom, make suicidal compromises, give full sway to the iniquitous practice of slaveholding, to set at naught the 'higher law'—the law of God—and establish the 'lower law,' or the law of human expediency—of selfishness—and to deliver over this whole people to the dominion of the god of this world."