This is, indeed, cause for deep regret, but ought not to be of great surprise. It may be true, that by one supreme exercise of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, the results of a whole life of debauchery can be corrected in a single moment; that impure imaginations and dominant appetites and perverted tastes may all be utterly eradicated, and the degraded slave of many years restored to the normal condition of an uncorrupted child. This may be, for men assert that it has been done; but, most assuredly, it is not so common as to be expected ordinarily. The prodigal who has gone into a far country has a long journey to retrace, and he comes back with many swinish tastes and habits of thought which he masters, if at all, by most persistent, prayerful and painful efforts. The grace of Christ comes in as most stimulating and efficient aid in these efforts; but it comes as aid to effect, and not in the form of accomplished result. What the exact, literal truth may be in the poet-prophet’s prediction, that “a nation shall be born in a day,” we do not know; what new forces may be called into play, or what added efficiency may be given to those now employed, when the kingdom advances with millennial power and celerity, we know not; but as yet, no labor-saving machinery is known to the Church militant. The Gospel has still to be carried by laborious, self-denying effort into the homes of the degraded, and it gains its victories, if surely yet slowly, over the vices and evils of man’s corrupted heart and life, and he comes to the stature of a perfect man in Christ Jesus by a gradual growth. The Sandwich Islands afford the striking illustration of the prophecy to which allusion has been made. But, in this case, the “day” covers more than half a century, and has not yet reached its meridian, and even there deplorable facts prove that the mass of the people might be “born again and again,” as the good colored preacher has it, with advantage. We are told that in the homes of the people are yet to be found many of the fruits of their long degradation—much impurity of life, little of the spiritual strength and elevation of character which the Gospel produces as its ripened fruit.