but should connect, or, rather, intermingle religion with every thing. He is never to forget that he is its minister, nor lay aside his character as a minister in his co-operation in the government of the school. This does not imply that he is to limit himself exclusively to religion; does not mean that the minister, as much as any other man, may not concern himself with the entire assemblage of interests which are involved in this great work of popular instruction.

I do not mean to intimate that he should take from the regent of the school the province of religious instruction; but that, without excluding him, he should teach him how to instruct, and aid him in teaching.

As a member or president of the school commissioners, the minister may use what influence he has, but not seek to domineer or do every thing: He should think it more proper and more useful to teach others to do well, and, as the case may be, in his turn to learn from others. If circumstances in which his relative superiority gives him the preponderance, secure to him the ascendency, he should be condescending and deferential: He should not make his colleagues instruments or mere supporters to himself, but as much as possible collaborators.

This counsel is applicable to all institutions, to all works, in which the pastor may be called to take a principal part. We come to the pastor's relations to families and individuals.

§ 6. Relations to Families: Pastoral Visits.

I speak of families, because it is especially through families that the minister reaches individuals, of whom we are to speak hereafter; and because, again, it is important that he should maintain relations to families as families. The family, the only group which remains in society below the national group-the family, a natural bundle, not compact

enough, perhaps, but not dissolved, is a most valuable fact for the minister, who through it reaches without effort many individuals at once, in a manner sufficiently indirect not to alarm their liberty, sufficiently direct to act upon them closely and strongly. I add, with earnestness, that the minister should have to do with families, that he may, as much as he possibly can, verify, consecrate, confirm this divine institution.

Nevertheless, individuals are to be reached, since it is only the individual who is or is not a Christian; who receives or does not receive the truth. We shall not, therefore, dwell long on families; but before we pass to individuals, not again to leave them, we will say something concerning an important duty which relates to families and to individuals, and is a powerful means of reaching both. I refer to pastoral visits.

These pastoral visits are neither purely social visits, such as well-bred people pay to one another from convenience or taste, nor those official visits, domiciliary visits, so to speak, which have a somewhat inquisitorial character. They ought to be pastoral, and purely pastoral, but familiar and friendly. Those to whom they are made should recognize the pastor, but should recognize in him the friend and the father. We should not be burdensome; we should leave or put at ease those who receive us; we should exclude every idea of ceremony and worldly politeness.

Tissot has very well shown what pastoral visits in the country ought to be, and how a true pastor can make them inexpensive to himself, and secure their just result.

"What fatal influences has not effeminacy in the churchman? I fear not to say that on neither his knowledge nor his eloquence does the well-being of the precious deposit which is confided to him depend; it depends on his vigilance, his activity. It is not by adorning his sermon in his study-retreat that he enlightens the people; the sermons he delivers in the temple are not his most efficacious sermons. When the people hear the holy truths; when they see the man

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.

lessima 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 pastora' attentions.

INSTRUCTION OF INDIVIDUALS.

251

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.