what had been well nurtured. Volcanoes have sent forth their long-restrained fires, and the lava-stream has flowed over many a happy field. But there have come into play those healing forces which are as little within the grasp of human power as the destructive ones. Bright, fruitful sunbeams have announced the dawn of a new age, and a Higher Voice than that of man has called out of the chaos new creations, whose germ could scarcely have been imagined in the preceding centuries."[1]
So Dr. John Cairns, in his essay on Unbelief in the Eighteenth Century:—
"Not only was the Deistic wave rolled back by the dikes opposed to it, but by a higher influence was made to fertilize the recovered soil. The beleaguered fortress was not only set free, but in its lowest depths was opened a spring of living water. . . . Christianity has not been saved to us in Great Britain mainly by the arguments of Butler and Sherlock, but by the slow yet sure revival that began to spread over the whole English-speaking world; nor was Germany rescued from rationalism, in so far as it has been, merely by professors and theologians meeting negative criticism, but by the return of visible Christianity, and by the calling forth of prayer which has power with God. Here, as everywhere, faith has brought victory; and who that contrasts the fortunes and prospects of Christianity almost anywhere in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, with what they were in the eighteenth, can deny that Christianity has not only survived but overcome?"[2]
As unanimous as is the testimony to the increasing corruption and desolation of the Church up to the middle of the last century, so unanimous is the testimony to the amendment and revivification during the century now past. And if Bengel should inquire of us what time the sick man began to amend, the answer would be remarkable: it could be no other than, "Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him."[3] The seventh hour with the Jews was the hour past
- ↑ Vol. ii. p. 2.
- ↑ Pages 87, 191.
- ↑ John iv. 52.
