DUTIES OF THE PASTOR.

THE plan which I have adopted is not, perhaps, the best; but we may tolerate any classification of things which excludes nothing essential and embraces nothing false.

ure.

I trace many concentric circles around the soul of the pastor, which is my centre and my point of departI first give rules relating to the purely individual and interior life of the pastor; a life particular and distinct, by which all the other spheres of his existence are determined.

I

pass afterward to his social life, and, first, his domestic life (always considering him as a pastor).

Finally, I come to his pastoral life properly speaking, in which I distinguish the pastor, the conductor of worship, and the preacher.

PART FIRST.

INDIVIDUAL AND INTERNAL LIFE.

I ASSUME a holy vocation and a regular entrance, a pastoral and even a zealous spirit.

The pastor, even as the Christian, must fortify, must confirm his vocation (Bɛbaíav tolɛïolaí, 2 Pet., i., 10). In this there is a mystery, the profound, invisible concurrence of the human will which is excited with the Divine will which excites it. It is with vocation as with conversion. In one sense, we are called but once, as we are converted but once; in another sense, we are called and converted every day. Analogy here should suffice, and even be an à fortiori argument; but the Gospel is explicit: St. Paul says to Timothy, “I put thee in remembrance, that thou stir up the gift of God which is in thee."-2 Tim., i., 6.

I dismiss the question whether there are not many whom it concerns to make to themselves a call, while they are already engaged in the work.

The exercise of the ministry, will not this of itself suffice for the confirmation of the call?-It should contribute to it, but it may also have the opposite effect. The exercise of the ministry endangers the spirit of the ministry, if it be not sustained from within. If there be not this balance, if the internal does not exert itself sufficiently on the external, the external injures the internal, as the internal no doubt would fail without external action. There is danger that function

may become a substitute for feeling.

Our first impressions have in them much of imagination; when this is once exhausted, and without further aid from it we are made dependent for feeling on the heart and the conscience, it is much to be feared that we shall have too little feeling.†

We must not depend on the vivacity of our first impressions; that which affects us most to-day will leave us cold soon: For the influence of things on our sensibility we shall have to rely on their direct relation to our heart and con

* “The first time the priests and Levites saw in the desert the holy tabernacle which Moses was directed to construct, the miraculous cloud which went before it, the glory of God which covered this holy place, the oracles which proceeded from the inner sanctuary, the magnificence and the august solemnity of the sacrifices and ceremonies, they could not but approach them with a holy dread. Of the purifications, and all the other preparations which were prescribed to ministers by the law, they omitted nothing. But gradually the daily sight of the tabernacle made them familiar with this holy place; the precautions ceased with their awe; the prodigy of the pillar of fire, which God continued there every day, became contemptible by long custom; profanations soon followed; rash ministers ventured to offer strange fire; others usurped the functions which belonged exclusively to the high-priest; at last the daughters of Midian soon became to them a stumbling-block and a scandal, and hardly in the entire tribe of Levi could a Phinehas, a holy and zealous priest, be found, who dared to avenge the honor of the priesthood and the sanctity of the law, which had been shamefully dishonored before an unfaithful people."-MASSILLON, Discours sur la Nécessité où sont les Ministres de se renouveller dans l'Esprit de leur Vocation.

In the first fervor of the Christian and of the minister, imagination easily, and even necessarily, intermingles. In all life imagination has its part. It is a kind of vehicle without which many ideas could not reach us. And how far does its power extend! even to making us conscious that we have a life within us to which we are entire strangers. It enters into all our moral acts, and in some in a very high degree. When it leaves us, every thing it has created disappears with it as a phantom, leaving within us the net product of the work it has wrought in us. This often is little. The lees only remain at the bottom of the cup-the cordial of imagination has been drunk.

RENEWAL OF VOCATION.

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science, and, from being apparently full of zeal, we may be come mere men of office. There must, then, be a renewal of our call, and in proportion as the charm of novelty is ef faced, the moral element must be strengthened.

Now the first means of renewing our vocation as pastors is to renew our vocation as Christians. The Christian is not to be forgotten in order to dream only of the pastor; the one can not of itself, and all alone, do the work of the other. Even as pastors, it is important to remind ourselves that, of the souls which have been confided to our care, our own are the first; that toward these first our ministry should be exercised; and that, first of all, we should be pastors to ourselves.

Whether it be that, to advance the salvation of others, we must not neglect our own, or that justice requires each one's charity to begin with himself, St. Paul, in addressing himself to ministers in the person of Timothy, speaks to them first concerning themselves: "Take heed to thyself and to thy doctrine, for in so doing (in doing these two things, and not the last only) thou shalt save thyself and those who hear thee."-1 Tim., iv., 16. "Take heed to yourselves, and to all Holy Ghost hath made you over

the flock over which the seers."*-Acts, xx., 28.

Nevertheless, we are also required to renew directly our

"To observe the order of St. Paul (Acts, xx., 28; 1 Tim., iv., 16), a minister must begin with himself, fulfill his own duties, and care for his own salvation before all things. Before going abroad from love to his neighbor, let him withdraw into the secret place of the divine holiness. Before compassionating the misery of others, let him be sensible of his own ills and of his own weaknesses. And, before urging others to obey the law of God, let him first obey it himself. The first duty of a bishop is to be holy."-DUGUET, Traité des Devoirs d'un Évêque, art. ii., § 1. Gregory of Nazianzen expresses himself thus on the subject: "We must first be pure, and then purify others; be taught, and then teach others; become light, and then enlighten others; draw near to God ourselves, and then induce others to approach him; sanctify ourselves, and then make others holy."