(From the Times.)

Otago Daily Times, Issue 4166, 25 June 1875, Page 3

(From the Times.)

Reviva 7s;are not 'A- novelty; '"arid 'havo |not always proved im the end satisfactory, attlrl a - great part of the public arc not a. little anxious .to know what is the'kind of influence which j has been collecting congregations of many : thousands, and, as is said, iiitlueiiciug for good a great proportion of them, iv the Northern j towns. On the latter point; indeed, the ! baiauce of favourable testimony is veiy eoni.siderable; ami if ouly it be true that Messrs S Moody and Sankey have roused numbers of I people to a more moral and more elevated J life, mere criticism of their methods i.s somewhat ungenerous aud out of place. But the world is suspicious of religious enthusiasm, Reasonably, perhsps, with respect to ' some modern instances of it, but certainly unreasonably on tlie whole. It is mainly by great fermentations of faith and zeal that the world itself has- been lifted to its present level—a level, low as it may be, far higher than that of the past. Still, tliere are such things as spurious kinds of excitement, and when the Loudon clergy were invited a little time ago to meet Mr Moody in a conference, they were, iiotumiatmally, rather irresponsive. Mr Moody surprised them ou that occasion by taking for granted their .sympathy with the purpose of his mission, and discussing the plan of operations. He is, at all events, » man who takes his own line, and leaves you to follow or not, just as you please. What the majority of the audience are conssious of is that they are being told some very home truths by a very simple and earnest man, and that he i.s perfectly confident he is showing them the means of becoming better men and women, and of having a better hope in this world and the next. As the preacher hu.t night, who was- not Mr Moody, put it very well, if you wake a man out of sleep and make him aware there is a fire in his honse, it is a time for using the first fire-escape you may bring him, not for discussing which kind of fire-escape is the best. Mr Moody tells his hearers that most of them need to be " saved," and that all of them cau be saved if they will believe iv a Saviour whom he proclaims. A vast number among them know that the first part of this statement is perfecty true, whatever may be its praise theological interpretation. They are very ill satisfied with themselves at heart, and would be thankful to be assured of a, means of becoming better. What wonder if they listen eagerly to a, man who tells them that he has found this "Salvation," and who impresses upon them the conviction that he knows what he means, and is speaking out of a real experience? In the dim twilight through which an immense number of men and women are groping their way through life, not without many falls and much selfdistrust, it is inevitable that a strong clear voice, however strange its tones, should attract confidence and win a, following. Mr Moody calls unhesitatingly to this struggling, confused mass to follow him, and to follow him in a direction which, on the whole, is guaranteed by an ancient and sacred experience, and he is obeyed. Tf there are those who are rather inclined to exhort Mr Moody's hearers to caution than to give bim encouragement, let them ask themselves one or two broad and simple questions. By all means let them lie cautious in controlling and directing the results of such a movement, aud do their utmost to obviate that worst of illusions, that all the work of a, new life is done when a man is " converted." But, in the first place, is any Christian Church in this metropolis in a. position to say that it can afford to dispense with any vigorous effort to rouse the mass of our people to tt. more Christian life ? The congregations who are to be seen in our •-■' lurches and chapels are but a fraction ofthe hundreds of thousands around them, of whom multitudes are living a little better than mere animal existence. If any considerable proportion of them can he roused tothe mere desire of something higher, an immense step is gained ; and if the churches are really a higher influence still, Air Moody will at least have prepared them a better material to work upon. (.FiOhilhc Dtt'dii Tchymph.) People in the metropolis will .soon judge for themselves how far tlie provinces have been justified in their emotion at the revivalists from across the Atlantic. It takes a great deal to move Londoners in any such manner, and many here will abruptly dispose of the whole business by the familiar phi use " religious hysteria." This success, however, appears rather too complex, and, we may add, socially useful, to be explained so easily by the phrases of mad doctors, materialists, or cynics. Wherever those people come, they seem to effect at once that which archbishops and rural deans and curates from the universities cannot do—they "convince ] ico] >lc of sin;" they wake hundreds of thousands of hearts to the consideration of "righteousness, temperance, ami judgment to come." Unless, then, we are to call all religious feeling hysteria and mania; unless St Paul preaching ou Mars Hill and Dr Vaughan in the Temple are equally appealing to the excitable nervous systems of automata, we cannot clearly see why the churches should be scandalised at the work done by the two revivalists. No doubt it depends upon the faculty which large bodies of men and women exhibit to thrill with a common emotion which reacts upon the 'individual, and produces remarkable elevations of character. But if the orator, the general, the stage-player, the musician, and the advocate work—a.s they all do—witli this magnetic influence of sympathy, why should "those be charlatans who employ it to raise and quicken the spiritual side of life to which it naturally belongs? We cannot find any reasonable answer to this in the slipshod explanations given of such religious movements by people who call themselves scientific, and yet leave the region of the emotions aud aspirations of man out of their anthropology. It rather seems to us that when Moody and Sankey come to London, the dignitaries and ministers of all the churches would do well to go and see what amazing things real genius and unselfish ardour can accomplish even in the present age. They will hear—people say —some "piecis" spoken about this life, anil tlie next, wliich, delivered with a nasal twang or not, go to the souls of people straighter than any sermon bought in Paternoster-row. They will see —if Londoii reproduces wdiat Dublin and Liverpool have witnessed—congregations stirred with the " old story " told newly, as the seas are raised by storm-winds. And notwithstanding all the easy talk about hysteria, epidemics, magnetism, nervous systems, and the like, the philosophers aud divines have yet to explain to us why it is a had thing for these Yankee itinerants to turn people by the thousand to right and virtuous lives, and a good thing when a bishop or a cardinal manages to convert half-a-dozen.