pains by which we seek to destroy it. Let us acquaint ourselves with those inflexible laws which arise from the nature of things in the whole of a population, and let us have them before our mind in every particular case, since a particular case does remind us of them, and may also tend to make us forget them.

Our concern that no one should doubt our personal beneficence should not make us connive at an idea which is cred

itable in certain parishes, that every case, without discrimination, is to be undertaken by the pastor or his family. Let us know how to keep importunity and indelicacy in order.

Let us not appear to desire payment for aid which we may give under demonstrations of piety; nor to induce the belief that we succor the body only that we may have access to the soul. In our first approaches, let us be moderate in our religious communications.*

The good which the pastor himself can do is very small compared with that which he can do by means of others. He is the delegate of the poor to the rich, and of the rich to the poor. The first function is delicate and difficult. He must expect refusals, affronts. A sublime trait (that of a pastor who, receiving an insult from an impatient rich man, said to him, "See, this is for myself, what now have you for my poor?") should often be in the memory of pastors. We should, however, do wrong not to consider the difference of situations and antecedent demands. We must know how to withdraw in a proper manner; we must engage the rich in the details of the case which we represent to him; get him to make the investigation of this misery his own affair; ask

* Beneficence has become an art, the principal rules of which have become popular. On this subject there are important works which we must not omit reading; as, in French, the book on Charity of M. DUCHATEL; that of M. NAVILLE on the same subject; Le Visiteur du Pauvres, by M. DE GERANDO; in English, The Civil and Charitable Economy of Great Cities, by Dr. CHALMERS.

him for something better than money; do not urge him too earnestly to give; be content when he gives; resigned, and not out of humor, when he does not give; but in every case discharge this mission with as much of liberty as of modesty and delicacy. To be ashamed would be to renounce one of the most beautiful parts of the ministry, and to prepare ourselves for refusals.

1

[CHAPTER III.

By the Translator.

Of the Care of Souls in Times of special Declension and special Interest in Religion.

AFTER much reflection, we venture, though tremblingly, to add a chapter on this subject.

In this part of his work the author has not only transcended his predecessors, but, admirably as he had executed the other parts, he has, we think, transcended himself also: And yet there is here (what doubtless will be regarded, especially in this country, as an important omission) no distinct consideration of the care of souls, as modified justly by the two specialities in the state of the flock which we have indicated. These specialities, though perhaps more observable and more prominent under certain modes of pastoral activity, certain views of theology, and certain external circumstances, than others, have their ground in the nature of man as at best imperfectly renewed, the laws of the new life under the economy of grace, and the circumstances of trial and exposure in which churches find themselves while they remain in this world. They are not necessary; they violate the ideal of Christian sanctification, which excludes all change except that of increase; but probably they will continue until the triumph of Christianity is complete, and the advance of Christianity in the future be as it has been from the beginning, chiefly, as Edwards has said, by "remarkable communications of the Spirit of God at special seasons of mercy." Neither in individuals nor in masses does the spiritual life remain always in the same state; in both it is alternately high and low, and the elevations and depressions are not un

frequently extreme and of long continuance, and it would be superfluous to prove that the care of souls should vary with these variations of their state. We can not but lament that our author's great abilities were not occupied as thoroughly with this subject as they were with the others which are included in this part, and which he has treated with such unparalleled success.

There may be specialities of other kinds in the state of a flock as such, requiring corresponding modifications of pastoral activity. The flock may be suffering severely from persecution, from war, from pestilence, from famine, from unfavorable changes in trade and business; or, on the contrary, they may be in a state of great temporal prosperity, with prospects continually brightening, by which they may be placed in severer temptation than any they might find themselves subjected to by external affliction of whatever degree or kind. It is obvious that in all such cases a demand is made on the pastor for some variations in the exercise of his ministry, in order to accommodate it suitably to the particular circumstances in which he finds himself:* Much more is he required to adapt his ministry as precisely and completely as possible to the exigencies of his flock when they are in either of the states first mentioned.

Let us not think that a flock can never find itself in the first of these states but by the pastor's fault. The principle that there is a constant proportion between the care given to souls and the life of the parish,† is not to be taken as implying that pastoral fidelity in the care of souls will infallibly and universally secure in the parish a high state of spiritual prosperity. The proportion in respect to the spirituality of the parish as a whole may even be inversely as the pas tor's fidelity. "Then began he to upbraid the cities wherein most of his mighty works were done, because they repented not: Woe unto thee, Chorazin! woe unto thee, Bethsaida. * See pages 208, 242. + See page 238.

for if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes."-Matt., xi., 20, 21. "Now thanks

be unto God, who always causeth us to triumph in Christ, and maketh manifest the savor of his knowledge by us in every place. For we are unto God a sweet savor of Christ, in them that are saved, and in them that perish: To the one we are the savor of death unto death; and to the other the savor of life unto life."-2 Cor., ii., 14-16. In general, or in a comprehensive view, the care of souls, and the actual state of religion in a parish, and we may say in a country or in the Church at large, do very observably and decidedly correspond with each other; but not so as to be inconsistent with the directly opposite state of things in particular localities and particular circumstances. The sovereignty of divine grace has subjected itself to no economy, no laws, by which its free exercise or manifestation is forestalled. A pastor, as appears from the example of Edwards at Northampton, may be rejected by his parish, on account of his inflexible adherence to what, in the exercise of a pre-eminently spiritual disposition, and after much prayer and reflection, appears to his judgment and conscience the path of duty and of wisdom in reference to the mode of exercising the pastoral care. It is, therefore, supposable that a parish may be declining in religious interest and zeal, while there is no room for the suspicion that the cause of this declension is to be found in an antecedent one on the part of the pastor, or in any fault or any neglect whatever in his ministry. Especially is this supposition admissible if there has been a high religious excitement in the parish, to which the declension has succeed. ed. Such an excitement as a permanent state may have been incompatible with the laws of the mind; and if a change to a lower state of feeling once have a beginning, it will naturally proceed in the same direction, unless some new influences, some new mode of agency, offer it resistance. The pas