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8.  To  spend   six  or  seven   days  together,   once  a  year,   when   most convenient, wholly
               and only on spiritual accounts.



               Such was the way in which he set about personal and ministerial revival. Let us take an
               example from him. If he needed it much, we need it more.



               In the fifth and sixth centuries, Gildas and Salvian arose to alarm and arouse a careless church
               and a formal ministry. In the sixteenth, such was the task which devolved on the Reformers.
               In the seventeenth, Baxter, among others, took a prominent part in stimulating the languid
               piety and dormant energies of his fellow ministers. In the eighteenth, God raised up

               some choice and noble men to awaken the church and lead the way to a higher and bolder
               career of ministerial duty. The present century stands no less in need of some such
               stimulating influence. We have experienced many symptoms of life, but still the mass is not
               quickened.  We require some  new  Baxter  to  arouse  us  by  his  voice  and  his  example.  It
               is melancholy to see the amount of ministerial languor and inefficiency that still overspreads
               our land. How long, 0 Lord, how long!



               The infusion of new life into the ministry ought to be the object of more direct and special
               effort, as well as of more united and fervent prayer. The prayers of Christians  ought to he
               more largely directed to the students, the preachers, the ministers of the Christian church. It is
               a living ministry that our country needs; and without such a ministry it can not long expect to
               escape the judgments  of God. We need men that will spend and be spent—that will labor and
               pray—that will watch and weep for souls.



               In the life of Myconius, the friend of Luther, as given by Melchior Adam, we have the
               following beautiful and striking account of an event which proved the turning point in his
               history and led him to devote his energies to the cause of Christ. The first night that he
               entered the monastery, intending  to become  a monk,  he dreamed;  and it seemed  as if he
               was ranging a vast wilderness alone. Suddenly a guide appeared and led him onwards to a
               most lovely vale, watered by a pleasant stream of which he was not permitted to taste, and
               then to a marble fountain of pure water. He tried to kneel and drink, when, lo! a crucified
               Saviour stood forth to view, from whose wounds gushed the copious stream. In a moment his
               guide flung him into the fountain.  His mouth met the flowing  wounds and he drank most
               sweetly, never to thirst again! No sooner was he refreshed himself than he was led away by
               his guide to be taught what great  things  he  was  yet  to  do  for  the  crucified  One  whose
               precious wounds had poured the living water into his soul. He came to a wide stretching plain
               covered with waving grain. His guide ordered him to reap. He excused himself by saying that
               he was wholly unskilled in such labor. "What you know not you shall learn," was the reply.
               They came nearer, and he saw a solitary reaper toiling at the sickle with such prodigious
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