the triumph of any political idea, of any specific system of ecclesiastical organization, of any favorite plan in which their personal vanity was interested: the salvation of human souls was their only passion, and their only object. They looked upon themselves as humble servants commissioned to remind men of promises which they had forgotten--of promises of salvation by faith in Jesus. "The stir of the reaction," one of themselves has said, "bore impressed upon it the character of youth, or even of childhood. {164} The humblest pastor on his circuit became a missionary; his transit was regarded almost like that of a meteor. On the instant an assembly was convoked, it numbered twenty, thirty, fifty, a hundred, two hundred persons, collected to listen joyfully, as if it were a great novelty or miracle, to that Gospel which we know by heart;--alas! which we know by heart far more than we have it in the heart!" [Footnote 24] [Footnote 24: Mémoires pouvant servir à l'histoire du réveil religieux des églises protestantes de la Suisse et de la France, par A. Bost, (1854,) t. 1, p. 240.] Who could mistake, on hearing such sentiments and such language, the really Christian character of the reaction? Never-ending weakness of man's nature, and inevitable imperfection of man's work, even when man is walking in the ways of God! In the midst of awakening Christianity, and of this fervent return to the faith of the Gospel, reappeared some of the ancient pretensions of theology, and among others the pretension to penetrate the decrees of God and to define the terms of man's salvation. {165}