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1. What it is to break up the fallow ground, in the sense o f the text. 2. How it is to be performed. I. What It Is to Break Up the' Fallow .Ground. To Break, up the fallow ground ,is to break up your hearts —to prepare your' minds to being fo r th ' fruit unto God, . . . . to bring the mind into such a state, that it is fitted to receive the word of God. . . . . It is this softening o f the heart, so as to make it feel the truth, which the prophet calls breaking up your fallow ground. II. How Is the Fallow Ground to Be Broken Up? 1. It is not by any direct efforts to feel. . . . . The feelings o f the mind are not directly under our control. W e can not by willing, or direct volition, call forth religious feelings. . ? . . They natur ally and necessarily exist in the mind under certain circumstances calculated to excite them. But they can be controlled indi rectly ....................W e can command our attention to it, and look at it intently, till the involuntary affections arise. I f you wish to break up the fallow ground o f your hearts, and make your minds feel on the subject o f religion, you must go to work just as you would to feel on any other subject. Instead o f keeping your thoughts on everything else and then imagine that by going to a few meetings you will get your feelings enlisted, go the common sense way to work, as you would on any other subject. I f you would break the fallow ground o f your hearts, you must begin by looking at your hearts—examine and note the state o f your minds and see where you are. To do all this you must set yourselves at work to consider your sins. Self-examination consists in looking at your lives, in considering your actions, in calling up the past, and learning its true character. Take up your individual sins one by one, and look at them. General confession o f sin will never do. Your sins were committed one by one; and as far as you can come at them, they ought to be
Church (Congregational) and another in the Second (Congregational) Church of Oberlin. “ Hi« last day on earth was a quiet Sab- bath7 which he enjoyed ill the midst of his family, walking out with his wife at sunset, to listen to the music at the opening o f the evening service in the church near by, Upon retiring he was ,seized with pains which seemed to indicate some affection of the heart, and after a few hours of suffering, as the morning dawned, he 'died, August 16, 1875, lacking two weeks o f having com pleted his eighty-third year.” ' Etetnity only w ill reveal the wide influ ence which this mighty man o f God exer cised, not merely in his own day and gen eration, but in all the succeeding generations o f the church till the Master comes. He was extreme in some things, but well would 1 it be for the church today if she had many men as extreme as he was in preaching the pure evangel o f Christ; as extreme in urg ing immediate and definite acceptance of Christ as Savior; as extreme as he was in demanding holy living on the part o f pro fessed believers; as extreme as he was in demanding that professed believers be instant in season and out o f season in seek ing to win others to Christ. That our readers may realize something o f Mr. Finney’s searching preaching, we append, in an abridged form, one o f the lectures from his “ Revival Lectures,” to which reference has been made. HOW TO PROMOTE A REV IVAL T ext:—“ Break up your fallow ground; for it is time to seek the Lord, till he come and rain righteousness upon you.”—Hosea 10 : 12 . My design in this lecture is to show how a revival is to be promoted. A revival consists o f two parts: as it respects the church, and as it respects the ungodly. I shall speak tonight o f a revival in the .church. Fallow ground is ground that has once been tilled, but which now lies waste, and needs to be broken up and mellowed, before it is suited to receive grain. I shall show, as it respects a revival in the church.
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