REVIVALISM IN NEW YORK.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXX, Issue 4462, 8 July 1875, Page 3

REVIVALISM IN NEW YORK.

The following is from a recent issue of the New York Sun : Twenty thousand persons filled every seat in the Hippodrome, under the auspices of an active Young Men’s Committee,; which borrowed the great building from Mivßarnum, all comfortably heated and brilliantly lighted. In the large area enclosed by the racing-track a platform was erected near the western end, neatly draped and carpeted, and on this the Young Men’s Committee had put tho Rev. Mr. Vafley, of London, and a cornet band. All around this rostrum were arranged chairs, thousands in number, and long before tho hour for the opening of the service every one of them was occupied, and police were directing the crowds that surged in at every entrance to the less desirable seats ip the spectators’ gallery.- First tho long rows along the sides of tho vast ellipse were chosen —the seats from which the best view of the immense building and the mighty mass of men could be obtained—the seats for which Mr. Barnum charges front Idol, to Idol. 50 cents, and which are well.upholstered and cushioned.' When these,* too, were crowded, the police again turned the throngs away, and they reluctantly passed into tho meagre, hard benches at the

ends of the long track, where seats even in the ■full tide of a flourishing season can be secured for 50 cents. These two ends, the last to be filled, were the first to be vacated, for one of them was directly back of the speaker and the band, so that its occupants could hear and see little of either, and the other, though directly in the face of Mr. Varley, was so far distant that only occasional words of the sermon and discordant notes of the band reached to the ears of those who occupied its seats. At half-past 7 o’clock, when Mr. Varley stepped to the front of the platform to announce the opening hymn, the scene was a striking one. The bright colors of the frescoed walls, the light of the many chandeliers, the trapezes, and rings, and ladders drawn to one side and tied to the posts, the tier after tier of bright faces in the galleries, were only what might be seen on any gala night under a different management; but the thousands of persons seated in the arena, looking with curiosity at the plainly dressed, large-featured man who had just come before them, was a change, and a vivid one, from the spectacle of Peking and Fairyland, ami the contests of horses that have usually filled the racecourse. The ushers had freely-distributed handbills containing the hymns selected for the evening service, and when Mr. Varley asked the audience to follow the lead of the band in singing the first hymn, every bill rustled, and in their number the combined sounds resembled the sharp pattering of a thunder storm on the root ; then the cornet gave the note, the leader stepped to the front, and adapting his movements and beats to the vast size of the building, stretched his arms and swayed his body as far as equilibrium would allow, and the 20,000 voices rolled out the words in grand volume. Mr. Varley asked that the second stanza might be omitted, but only half the audience heard him, and so 10,000 were singing in the third stanza, while the other tea were still in the second ; but though the words lost their integrity, the tune was preserved, and the error was not discovered until 10,000 had finished the hymn and were ready to sit down, while the other still had the last stanza to dispose of. Succeeding the usual preliminary services was the sermon, preached from the parable of the five foolish virgins who neglected to furnish their lamps with oil : “ And at midnight there was a cry made, behold, the bridegroom cometh ; go ye out to meet him.” “ The doctrine,” said he, “ that the world is to continue until all nations are subdued to the kingdom of Christ lias long since been given up by thousands, of the moat thoughtful students of the Word of God, and now the end is anticipated as a most solemn judgment. The end, I believe, is near at hand ; but let no man predict the day nor the hour,, for the same word which declares that an end must come says also that it will approach as a thief in the night. Before the close of the sermon the audience at the ends, who could not hear, and who had wearied of the spectacle, abandoned their seats ; and when the last hymn was announced half the singers marched out of the hippodrome with the words on their lips.