commissioned to announce them, only in the sacred place, they do not take them home-they come to make them a ceremonious visit on the following Sunday. It is in the midst of their field, it is when they are repairing their hedges, it is when they are taking repose at the shop-door, it is when the severity of the weather keeps them within doors, or when an event of some importance occurs among them, that you may hope, sacred men, to inculcate the truths that should direct that conduct which is to appear one day as a witness for or against you.

"If you would instruct your parishioner, associate the truth, his duties, your idea, with his daily labors: Let his harvest-field remind him of the conversation you had with him when he was sowing; let the cutting of his second crop recall the ideas you unfolded to him when he was mowing his hay; and, in a word, let him find you every where, and let him every where love to find you. But how may this be if you venture to go nowhere? How attach him to his duties when you seem to be so little concerned to make him love them? How shall he not fear his yoke (and this fear is the pest of virtue), if you fear so much to touch it? How not hate his condition, if those whom he thinks happy so carefully estrange themselves from it?"*

Visits like these have many advantages. They make the pastor well acquainted with the moral and material wants of the families of his parish; they knit and tighten friendly relations; they open the way to action on individuals.

Shall we wait for some particular occasion before we make them? It is well to make them without an occasion, without any immediate motive, that when a special case shall render them particularly necessary, they may not have a strange and alarming character.

It is also well, however, to take advantage of events which impress the soul, and dispose the heart to open itself (mol* Essai sur la Vie de Tissot, par CH. EYNARD. Lausanne, 1839, p. 109.

lissima fandi tempora), without affectation, and without abusing them. Dread procrastination, or the habit of delayHow many pastors, how many Christians, have had cause to deplore that, by their repeated delays, they left destinies to consummate themselves, of which, for a moment at least, they had the power to determine the course.

As far as possible, all the parishioners should be visited by the pastor; all, at least, should be approached-the friends of our ministry, and also its adversaries (as adversaries never should be recognized, unless they have given us flagrant proofs of enmity), the rich and the poor. If the pastor saw only the rich, we might boldly say, without closer examination, that his visits are not pastoral, but social ones: If he should see only the poor, we ought not to say as we have often heard said, that the poor man alone has a pastor; for, indeed, he has not one; he is not a true pastor who concerns himself only with the poor; that is to say, with him whose poverty obliges him, whether he will or no, to accept his pas tora! attentions.

CHAPTER II.

OF THE CARE OF SOULS APPLIED TO INDIVIDUALS.

§ 1. Introduction-Division of the Subject. IT is only an absolute impossibility that can justify the pastor in not occupying himself immediately with individuals. If he had the leisure to examine thoroughly the situation and the wants of each one, and to be his pastor as assiduously as he is that of the flock, he ought to do it. Even if each individual might be preached to apart, and directed at leisure, still preaching to the whole flock should have place; of this we have elsewhere given the reasons ;* but it is not the less, on this account, a secondary office for the pastor, and the instruction of individuals remains of the first importance. The pastor, then, as much as possible, must address himself to individuals.

Solicitude for individuals is one of the characteristics of the New Testament and the new ministry. It is very remarkable that the same religion which has founded a Church, and has given to this institution a reality which is almost a personality, has consecrated the individuality of man as a religious being, and put this beyond controversy and beyond attack. This same religion it is, and this alone, that has regard only to individual effects, or makes these the last end of its efforts. The Gospel is addressed, the preacher is sent, not to peoples, to masses, but to all the individuals of which the masses or peoples are composed. If the preachers seek to act on masses, it is with reference to individuals; not that one individual is of more value than a thousand, which is an absurdity, but more than a people, as far as it is a people,

* See the Introduction to the Course on Homiletics.

more than a mass as such. It is, then, with individuals that we have to do, less directly in preaching, more immediately in the care of souls, which is without object, without reason when the individual loses his reality, or even his importance. The minister seeks them in worship or in public, only because he is not sure of finding them elsewhere, or because he has things to say which he can speak only to assembled individuals, or, finally, because the public assembly symbolizes equality, the community of interests, the cornmunion of hearts. But so far as he may hope to find them elsewhere, he is to seek them there. This is the first duty, the first form of pastoral ministration; public preaching is only its complement. A friend who, wishing to enjoy a familiar conversation with his friend, is contented to see him in a great company, and who, having some particular thing to say to him, which concerns no one but him, should fuse what was specially applicable to him into a general discourse, would be a singular friend. Now every one needs instruction suitable to himself only, or, at least, he needs to have us appropriate to his particular use, his particular circumstances, that general instruction which he may have received in common with others, but which very often, for want of such care, is lost to him. One after another he passes through different states, internal or external, for which general preaching does not suffice. The pastor knows this; if he can deal with this soul apart, shall he not do it? How can he avoid reflecting that preaching may have prepared the way for a work in this soul that preaching may complete it if it be once begun, but that the decisive moment, either of the life or of the particular situation, may call for a more minute and more delicate work. And, lastly, with what eye will the whole parish look on a pastor who is a pastor only in the pulpit, who does not, so to speak, descend from the pulpit, and who, though he may know individuals, wishes only to know the mass? As much as pastoral zeal in the care of souls adds

force to preaching, so much does negligence in the pastor enfeeble the preacher.

We have now indicated certain natural, and, so to speak, legal occasions of approaching individuals; there are others which charity induces, and which prudence determines us to improve. They are not wanting to him who desires them. We recommend no offensive importunity: at the same time, it is important that the pastor should assure himself that the solicitude which makes him seek occasion is rarely taken amiss when it is characterized by frankness and simplicity.

We now discriminate between individuals. Individuals are distinguished from one another by their external circumstances and by their internal state. We shall give our attention first to circumstances which pertain to the latter.

2. Internal State.

The same tendencies reappear at all periods, and we may affirm that the smallest flock presents all the shades of truth and of error. But the proportion varies, and each period, each place has its character, which results from the predominance of certain elements. Every where there is some excess or some void. Mysticism, antinomianism, legalism, the bondage of the letter, by turns prevail.

However it may be as to this, there are, as concerns the internal state, different classes, which in each flock are more or less numerous.

I. The first is that of decidedly pious persons, who are at a more or less advanced stage in the evangelical life. We do not think that these should be left to themselves, or that advice and direction should be refused them, but we insist that they ought not to be withdrawn from the discipline of God's Spirit. It is important that we do not interfere with-we should rather cherish their sense of their liberty, their re