"There have been spurious revivals in my day, and the means of promoting them are the index of their character. In such seasons of excitement, great dependence is placed on the way and means of _getting them up_, and little of the impression [sic] that not a soul will be converted unless it be accomplished by the power of God. Whatever the words of the leaders may profess, their conduct proclaims, 'Mine own arm hath done this!' There is a familiarity, a boldness, an irreverence in their prayers, which ill becomes worms of the dust in approaching him before whom angels veil their faces. A pious and poor woman, in coming out from a religious service thus conducted, once said, 'I cannot think what it is that makes our ministers _swear_ so in their prayers.' They count their converts, and when they survey their work, there is a triumph, a self-reliant exultation over it, which looks like the triumph of the pagan monarch, when he exclaimed, 'Is not this great Babylon which I have built!' And hence it is that so many of the subjects of such a work, after the excitement is over, find that their own hearts have deceived them, that they are no longer affected by solemn preaching and solemn prayers, that _their past emotions were nothing more than the operations of nature, and that when these natural causes have exhausted their power there is no religion left."--Vol. i., p_. 219. Dr. Spring gives a curious illustration of the length to which excitement sometimes carries the poor victims of the revivalists, in the case of a Mrs. Pierson, "around whose lifeless body her husband assembled a company of _believers_, with the assurance that if they prayed in faith, she would be restored to life. Their feelings were greatly excited, their impressions of their success peculiar and strong. They prayed and prayed again, and prayed _in faith_, but they were disappointed," vol. i., p. 229. He is rather free sometimes in his criticisms upon his brother ministers. He listens to a sermon from the Rev. Mr. Finney, a noted revivalist, and says that there was nothing exceptionable in it "except a vulgarity that indicated a want of culture, and a coarseness unbecoming the Christian pulpit." He hears a Mr. Broadway preach at sea, and thus records his impressions: "I must say he is a _John Bull_ of a preacher. What a pity that men who need to be taught what are the first principles of the oracles of God, should undertake to teach others!" We dare say Dr. Spring's judgment of both these gentlemen was sound; but we see no propriety in printing it. He made several voyages to Europe, and travelled through France, Germany, and Great Britain. Respecting the state of Protestantism in France, he makes some significant admissions: