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crowned with signal success. Wher. ever he went, the spirit of God seemed to accompany his preaching. His brethren in the ministry, witnessing the success of his labors, were of opinion that he ought at least to delay the execution of his purpose to leave the country. In deference to their opinion he consented to delay; and as his labors became increasingly successful, his brethren became more and more convinced, that God had called him to labor as an evangelist at home. Still, he never entirely abandoned the idea of a foreign mission until his health failed in 1822." p. 49.

During these first ten or eleven years of his public life, while the Great Master gave him health, and enabled him to labor abundantly and with unparalleled success, Mr. Nettleton performed the great and peculiar work for which God raised him up, and on account of which he became so extensively known and endeared to Christ's ministers and churches. Nearly all this time, the man of God was seen hastening with the ardor and energy of a husbandman in harvest, from one white field to another, and the Lord of the harvest gave him strength to labor night and day with tears amid the most heart-stirring scenes. To himself, it was almost literally one long, powerful, delightful revival. Near the beginning of this golden period of his life, our eyes first saw him. It was at an evening meeting in a small destitute parish of Connecticut, and he was plainly in his element, surrounded by a breathless throng who had come flocking from the highways and hedges to the gospel feast. Nor is the fact with out interest that his reverend biographer, then in his youth, sat by the side of young Mr. Nettleton that evening, and was the preacher.

Soon after this, we had several interviews with him in his next field of labor, and we found his whole soul in the great work of his life. Vol. III.

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He seemed alike dead to the common topics of the day, and the unholy ambition of some young candidates for the ministry. Instead of seeking great things for himself, his worthier ambition was to seek good things-the best things for deathless souls, with as many gems as possible for the Savior's crown. While some other candidates of popular talents seemed to be making inquiry for wealthy and intelligent parishes, he appeared to prefer places beneath their notice

not anxious for ordinary compensation, but ready to enter the most humble field of usefulness, and there spend all his strength in winning souls to Christ. Our position ever afterwards, was favorable to mark his conspicuous movements through the period now under review. The Memoir specifies forty revivals in which he labored successfully within the ten years prior to his prostrating sickness in 1822; and we distinctly remember the fame of him at the time in most of these places. Some of the larger churches received not less than two hundred members each, as the fruits of these seasons of refreshing. We should like to give some specimens from the volume, of the solemn and thrilling scenes in these revivals; but our prescribed limits will only admit of a few extracts from the testimonials of sundry pastors of churches, where he labored in this main work of his life.

The venerable Dr. Chapin of Rocky Hill says, "During the greater part of several months, he was indefatigable, laboring in season and out of season, to the full extent of his health and strength." "In an important sense brother Nettleton's talent was one. In the cultivation and improvement of that one, he was unwearied. By the concentration of study always directed to the most useful point, which is practical piety, that talent had risen to the first order. Hence the depth and

exactness of his knowledge in true experience, and the things which are essential to salvation. Hence too, the quickness of discernment relative to the specific instruction, and the manner of imparting instruction, that every mind needed with which he came in contact. He had a quick and precise perception of the sources whence objectors and cavilers draw their difficulties. In replies, showing the true answer and the only remedy, he was ready and appropriate, generally silencing and not rarely convincing. In the whole of his intercourse he was exempla ry." pp. 97, 8.

Dr. Tenney, in his account of a revival in Wethersfield, 1821, first published in the Religious Intelligencer, remarks: "Previous to the revival, our church consisted of about two hundred and sixty members. As its fruits, precisely two hundred have been added. Of this addition, seventy-nine are heads of families." "Peculiar are our obligations to the Rev. Asahel Nettleton, who was much with us, and whose labors were blessed eminently and extensively. To us and the churches in this region he has been of as great use as were to ancient Israel their chariots and horsemen. Though in this work there has been the strong. est coincidence between the means used and the success, and between the prayerfulness of Christians, and the conviction and conversion of sinners, yet God has displayed his glo. rious sovereignty in the work which is emphatically His. To Him all the glory is due. To Him let it be given now and evermore." pp. 135 -7. In a letter of recent date from Dr. Tenney is the following language: "My particular acquaintance with Dr. Nettleton commenced in 1818, while he was laboring in a revival in Rocky Hill, a parish in Wethersfield. My acquaintance became intimate during nearly three months of his labors with me in a great revival, in the winter of 1820

-21. I have felt that he was a remarkable man-fitted to draw forth the often repeated saying of a venerable president of a distinguished college, respecting him-' a wonderfully wise man!" "The word of God in his hands was indeed a sharp two-edged sword that pierced, and was a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. His preaching was emphatically in demonstration of the spirit and with power.' There was not the least attempt at display. He was always hidden behind his subject, and he would present that so clearly, and naturally, and justly, and strikingly, that his hearers were filled with the light of truth, rather than admiration of the man. He addressed the reason and consciences of men in a way not to excite their animal passions, or any outbreak of feeling; but to reach, and search, and move the deepest sensibilities of their souls. This did, under him, as it does in every case, secure the utmost stillness, the most fixed and almost breathless attention, and the most profound solemnity. His was the eloquence of thought, of truth, of living, burning truth from the living God. In such eloquence I have never known him surpassed-seldom equalled. The Spirit of God was in it. His preaching seemed in perfect harmony with the word of God, and with the influences of the Spirit upon the minds of men.' pp. 357-60.

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Dr. Porter of Farmington, in the appendix of Dr. Sprague's Lectures on Revivals, thus speaks of Dr. Nettleton. "To his labors, so far as human instrumentality was directly concerned, the progress of the revival must be chiefly ascribed. The topics on which he principally dwelt, were the unchangeable obligations of the divine law, the deceitful and entirely depraved character of the natural heart, the free indiscriminate offers of the gospel, the reasonableness and necessity of immediate repentance, the variety of those ex

cuses to which awakened sinners are accustomed to resort, and the manner, guilt and danger of slight ing, resisting, and opposing the operations of the Holy Spirit. His addresses were not formal discussions, first of one and then of another of these subjects, but a free declaration of the truth of God concerning them all, just as they lie in the course of spiritual experience, and would best subserve the particular end which he was laboring at the time to gain. They were too plain to be misunderstood, too fervent to be unheeded, and too searching and convincing to be treated with indifference. On the first Sabbath in June, a hundred and fifteen were added to the church, and at subsequent periods, a hundred and twenty besides. Of these a few have since been rejected, and others have declined from their first love. But I have not perceived that a greater proportion of hopeful conversions in this revival, than in others previous or subsequent to it, have proved unsound. Many have died, and many have removed from our immediate connection, but those who remain, now constitute the chief strength of the church." pp. 143, 4. The following statement is from the Rev. Dr. Shepard of Lenox. "His labors consisted principally in preaching the word. He sometimes appointed what was called an inquiry meeting. At such meetings, he manifested an almost instinctive discernment of character; and his remarks, in accordance with it, were sometimes attended with a powerful effect. In his preaching, his humility was apparent to all. He was, I believe, eminently a man of prayer. That he entered the pulpit or the inquiry meeting directly from the *mount of communion' with his Maker, no one would readily doubt, who was witness of the holy calm, the indescribable, the almost unearthly solemnity and earnestness of manDer. His countenance was peculiarly expressive, his demeanor was

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dignified, and his voice was at times very melodious. The joy with which his heart seemed to be filled, by a contemplation of the love of Jesus, in giving his life a ransom for sinners, marked his preaching, and imparted an unction and uncommon energy to his eloquence. When he spake of the glories of heaven, it was almost as if he had been there himself. When he made his appeals to the sinner, he made them with a directness which placed before him, as in a mirror, his utterly lost state. It seemed at times as if he was about to uncover the bottomless pit, and to invite the ungodly to come and listen to the groans of the damned; and then, drinking deeply of the spirit of his Master, when he wept over Jerusalem, to urge them to flee from the wrath to come, with an expression of countenance which it is not in my power to describe.. Many who came with a skeptical and caviling spirit to hear him, had their attention arrested at once to the great truths communicated by him, and, at the close of the meeting, were anxiously inquiring what they should do to be saved. The success attending his preaching, seemed, in short, to be a plain and clear illustration of all the distinguishing doctrines of the gospel, by a humble, devout, praying, unpretending man, constrained to his duty by the love of Christ.

"The influence of the revival upon the interests of the church in this and other places, was very happy, and is plainly to be seen, especially in regard to the faith once delivered to the saints, up to this time. The tendency of Dr. N.'s preaching, and indeed of all his labors, here and elsewhere, as far as I have learned in regard to them, has been to establish the churches in the faith and order of the gospel, and to strengthen the hands of every clergyman with whom he labored. I never heard that any minister, among whose people Dr. N. labored, ever

expressed any regret that he had been with them. On the contrary, when I at any time meet with a min ister, who formerly had assistance from Dr. N., especially in a season of revival, he never fails to express great respect for him, and unfeigned gratitude, for the benefit derived to him and his people from his labors." pp. 154-156.

For a more full and formal delineation of Dr. Nettleton's character and manner of labor in revivals of religion, we refer our readers to the able statement of his biographer, and of President Humphrey, at the close of the Memoir.

Such was the ten years' work of Dr. Nettleton-the great work of his life, to which the Memoir, as well as our review, has given a marked prominence. Nor was it strange, if this greatest promoter of pure and powerful revivals, in his time, should have imitators, and if some of these, with less of the spirit of Christ, less of sound doctrine, less discernment of character, less practical wisdom, less, in fact, of every qualification, should soon begin to exhibit spurious religious excitements, and, to some extent, should even bring into discredit the very name of revival. But this sorrowful fact ought not to render doubtful the purity of those revivals which were connected with Mr. Nettleton's high mission, of which purity the volume before us furnishes more than sufficient evidence of the best kind-intelligent witnesses at the time, and careful observers in subsequent years of the happy and durable fruit. As the appearance of counterfeit coin may well make a community more cautious to distinguish the spurious from the genuine, so false revivals should carefully be distinguished from the

true.

In both cases, however, the existence of a spurious article, so far from discrediting the genuine, is good evidence of its reality and its sterling worth. By the aid of a good "detector," the real difference be

tween the two is often made as clear and broad, as was the contrast in early time between the true miracles by the hand of Moses, and the juggleries of the magicians; and one valuable service to the church of Christ, which Mr. Nettleton, after the failure of his health, was for many years enabled to render, may have been the use of his rare skill and large experience in separating the precious from the vile in revivals.

While we most fully believe the inspired declaration," Not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts," we at the same time acknowledge the action of a great mind in Mr. Nettleton. His new and successful course, which for the time filled with amazement, and struck with a sort of religious awe the highest order of human intellect, was emphatically his own. God plainly raised him up to go before the ministers and churches of his native state, and of other states, in the promotion of genuine revivals. While pastors of the first rank were accustomed to sit as learners before him, and to notice carefully his wisdom in winning souls to Christ, with a view to shape their own course the better, the humble originator of this extensively approved method called no man master. In recollection of these well known facts, we were pleased to find, on page 393, this opinion of President Humphrey: "In my estimation, Dr. Nettleton was a great man-not great merely as he was good, but great in the common meaning of the term."

How far his superior ability, as developed in the main work of his life, might have been owing to the solemn consecration of his "whole spirit, and soul, and body," to this one business; how far his greatness, as the admitted master-spirit among human agents through a wide circle, as to the best mode of addressing sleepy Christians and dead sinners, was the result of this con

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