the visits of an angel of mercy, and gives him a sway over his people which adds double weight to every word dropping from his lips in his pulpit exercises.

3. Pastoral visiting is a most efficient agency in keeping up and increasing an attendance on public and social religious exercises. A visit from a pastor is generally considered as expressive of his solicitude for the welfare of those he visits. It is taken as a token of his interest in the people of his charge. Now it is a law of human nature that interest should be reciprocal, We are interested for those who are interested for us. Love is the loan for love. True, sin may often be found to contravene every law of nature; and such is the opposition of the human heart to religion, that men sometimes affect to consider those their enemies who tell them the truth, and endeavour to do them good. Yet it is equally true that even such persons will reproach the man who neglects them, and will be much more likely to be found in the House of God on the Sabbath, if they have received an affectionate pastoral visit during the week.The very sight of a pastor coming to inquire after the condition. of his people awakens in their minds a sense of obligation to attend on his ministry, the fruits of which you will often discover in the excuses which seem spontaneously to be called up if they have been absent for any length of time from the House of God. But if a pastor neglects his people, a sort of estrangement grows up between them. They feel the neglect as a kind of indignity, and are disposed to repay him in his own coin.― There is a feeling which, if clothed in language, would say,"It is well enough for you to preach to empty walls who neglect to look after your people."

4. In pastoral visiting the best materials are gained for the pulpit. Without freely mingling with the people of his charge, it is difficult, if not impossible, for a minister to adapt his preaching to the state of his hearers. One great reason why sermons are often heard without interest is because of their deficiency in practical adaptation to the wants of the hearers. The matter, however excellent in itself, is out of place. It does not touch the point. Let a minister closet himself up in his library from month to month, or keep aloof from his people from one end of the year to the other, and there is no community of feeling between them. He dwells in another region; his thoughts flow in another channel; and when he enters the pulpit perchance

he succeeds in interesting himself, while those who should be his hearers go to sleep. On the contrary, the man who freely associates with his people becomes acquainted with their wants, their prepossessions, and their modes of thinking. He learns the obstacles which stand opposed to his success; discovers the favourable omens that appear; sees the image of his own labours reflected back upon himself, so that he may remedy defects or pursue his successes. In short, he becomes more and more a practical man, while at the same time he has far more variety than he could possibly gather from any other field than the interesting field of human nature, which his pastoral visits have led him daily to explore. "You must recommend this [pastoral visiting] to Henry, [his son]" said the incomparable Leigh Richmond, "as the very best preparation for the ministry. Try, my dear F., to keep him up to it. Tell him his poor father learned his most valuable lessons for the ministry, and and his most useful experience in religion, in the poor man's cottage."

5. Pastoral visiting may be considered the practical applica tion of pulpit discourses. In thousands of instances, we cannot bring important truth to an individual bearing, and a practical result, by any other means than following our hearers home. An impression may have been made, but it may be still faint. Conviction may in part be produced, but some difficulty may be still in the way, which can only be learned and removed by a personal interview; or, if the seed be fairly sown, there may be many fowls of the air ready to devour it. It may even have already sprung up, but the thorns may have arisen also to choke and render it unfruitful, unless the skilful husbandman arrive in season to root them out. Let any faithful minister set down the number of cases that occur, in even two or three years, where pastoral efforts have been the means of removing formidable difficulties-where persons had, to all appearance, come to a crisis, and were trembling in the balances between life and death, and the scale has been turned; or when they have been brought under some powerful temptation, which has been removed, or when they had backslidden, and have been reclaimed, or where convictions have been brought to result in conversion-where, in one word, a principal instrumentality in saving a soul was pastoral visiting, and it is apprehended he will be astonished at the result.

6. Pastoral visiting is indispensable to gathering the fruits of a revival, and discharging the duties due to young Christians. When God has made a minister instrumental in the conversion of a soul, it is, without doubt, the duty of that minister to watch over that soul, as one that must give account. That soul is eminently one over which the Holy Ghost has made him overseer. It is no work of proselytism, for a minister to look after that soul, and gather the fruits of his own labours. There is an obligation resting upon him to do so an obligation from which he can be free only when that person voluntarily leaves his pastoral care, or when he himself removes to another field of labour, or an unavoidable separation takes place. For want of proper effort in taking care of those God has given us, we have been ofttimes bereaved of our children, and many, very many, awakened and converted to God in Methodist churches, and who are to this day Methodist in sentiment, are gathered into other churches, while scarce a person of another faith is to be found in our churches. If persons who are converted among us change their sentiments, uninfluenced, and leave us for conscience' sake, we have no reason to complain; but where they continue one with us in sentiment, and yet are taken from us, verily there is a great fault somewhere. Now is it not a fact that our ministry is much more successful in the awakening and conversion of souls, than in nurturing them after they are converted? Is it not a fact that, through culpable negligence, we have allowed many to be alienated from us, while we have, from the same cause, allowed many to backslide from God, who, with faithful watch-care, might have now been useful members of the church? The apostle has appropriately likened the young Christian to a little child; and how much care and effort is required for raising a little child to maturity, yea, and how many would perish without that care, and how culpable

*

* However applicable this may be to the American Episcopal Methodist Ministry, it does not apply to us, either at home or abroad. From our own experience we have known many who have sought our communion, not so much from any particular predilection for any individual ministry, as from the suitable Ordinances which are ceaselessly accessible to penitents and Christian believers; affording direction and encouragement in every stage of religious growth, not excelled by any other section of the Catholic Church. Occasionally we have defections among us, but rarely indeed of those whose "life is hid with Christ in God; " and never have we known any instances of persons being awakened and going elsewhere for instruction, unless separated from us on some doctrinal question.-ED.

would those be deemed who were guilty of the neglect through which they perish? And can Christian Ministers, to whom God has given the especial charge of those converted under their ministry, be otherwise than highly culpable if they refuse to exercise that care which is requisite in the infancy of their spiritual life? 7. Pastoral visiting is essential to secure a pastoral connection with the youth and children of our charge. We are under the obligation imposed by the solemnity of a religious oath, (the most sacred of all oaths,) contained in our ordination vows, "to instruct the youth." As to the advantages of a general connection between the ministry and the youth of their charge, a volume would scarcely be sufficient to trace them. The fairest field for ministerial labour is among the young. There, if any where, may we look for the absence of fixed sinful habits, and strong sinful passions. There, if any where, are to be found minds open to conviction, and among the converts from the ranks of the young we are to look for the materials for useful servants of the church. If the aged are converted, the days of their activity have gone by, and the time of their service is short. The young are the hope of the church, and the hope of the world. Their peculiar dangers also call for the faithful services of the ministry. It is their misfortune that their passions come to maturity much sooner than their understandings. Unlearned in the school of experience, buoyant and active, they are indeed in "slippery paths," and need a most zealous and affectionate inculcation of the lessons of the Bible. They are also exposed when, like wax to the seal, they are peculiarly susceptible of impression to the efforts of the abettors of error. Under these circumstances, the duties of the ministry to the youthful portion of the community, have become extremely important and arduous; and it becomes every minister, as he regards the interests of religion and the welfare of the present and future generations, to seek to establish and keep up a close connection with the youth of his flock. He should watch over the Sunday-school, meet with the superintendents and teachers, address the school, labour with the parents, establish and superintend Bible classes, and visit the children and youth, with affectionate solicitude. Unless this be done, and done in good earnest, we may expect to see our young people carried away in a flood from us, if not to see them whelmed in the gulf of infidelity and licentiousness.

VOL. II. First Series. SEPTEMBER, 1842.

E 2

THE STUDENT.

[From the Church of England Magazine.]

Alas! for those by drooping sickness worn,

Who now come forth to meet the gladsome ray,

And feel the fragrance of the tepid morn

Round their torn breast and throbbing temples play;
Yet oft, as sadly thronging dreams arise,

Awhile forgetful of their pain and gaze,

A transient lustre lights their faded eyes,
And o'er their cheek the tender hectic strays.

THERE are few scenes more painfully distressing than that which
presents itself on a bright spring day in one of those towns in
the southwest of England, whither the afflicted with pulmonary
disease have been recommended to remove, in the (alas! too of-
ten fallacious) hope that change of air and a milder climate may
arrest the progress of that disease, so fearfully prevalent in our
beloved island, and the eradication of which has so often baf-
fled the skill of the most eminent medical men. There is a so-
lemnity reigning in such places which cannot fail to impress
the heart. The gradual disappearance of faces once familiar,
when little doubt remains that the emaciated frame has at length
given way; the frequent tolling of the passing or funeral bell;
the church-yard, crowded with the remains of those who have
found a grave
far from the homes of their childhood; more es-
pecially the invalids to be met with at almost every step, and
on whose wasting cheek the fearful hectic flush is so promi-
nently marked ;-these are all calculated to engender painful
feelings; and much to be pitied is that man, who can sojourn
amidst such mementos of the evanescence of earthly joys,
without being awakened to serious reflection.

Walking in the streets of one of the towns referred to, and struck with the solemn scene which now for the first time presented itself, I met an old college acquaintance, on whose arm was leaning a young man of peculiarly elegant and prepossessing appearance, but on whose frame it was obvious that disease was working its ravages. How touching the descriptive language of one of our most elegant Christian poets

“Where time has rent the lordly tower,

And moss entwines the arches gray,
Springs many a light and lovely flower,
That lends a lustre to decay.