If religious declension is stealing imperceptibly into the fountains of our theological literature, causing preaching to be less and less systematic, searching, and efficient, prostrating the standard, and nullifying the practice of ecclesiastical discipline, and diluting the character of revivals, as many fear, there must be other facts to confirm these fears. Ecclesiastical declensions, like these, come not alone. What, then, are the facts?

Have our statesmen become partisans rather than patriots? Has the Washington, alike with the Puritan age, passed away? Have the elements of slavery and oppression so crept into, as to sway the government of the country? Do public interests give place to private ends?

Is popular literature becoming superficial and corrupt? Have sacred persons, and sacred things, lost a portion of their influence in restraining irreligion and vice ? Are religious and civil institutions assailed or neglected? Is the Sabbath secularized, profaned, and shorn of its strict and devout religious observance?

Is evangelism lowering in tone, and seeking alliances with semi-evangelism ? Are radical errors, vices, and crime increasing, and infidelity and skepticism becoming rampant? If these things are so, it is doubtless time to be alarmed.