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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