the very least, encouragement enough is given and a way is sufficiently opened, for announcing his errand to them as their christian friend or christian adviser, who will preach in their immediate neighbourhood on the Sabbath, and is willing to render through the week all those attentions and services of which they may choose to avail themselves. There is often a promise to attend on the public, and still oftener an invitation to repeat the personal visit—and so the profession of a willingness to accept of the private or the household ministrations. If this process be steadily persevered in, if to these stated movements oft repeated among the people, there be added a frequent occasional movement, whenever the call of sickness or of death or any sort of family distress shall have opened the hearts and the houses of the afflicted to the entry of christian kindness—the result of these assiduities through the week, is the gradual building up of a congregation on the Sabbath. people even of the most outlandish district, in The places the most destitute and depraved, may thus be gathered into a parochial family, and trained to parochial habits. Children of all others may made to participate most largely in this improvebe Under the moral ascendancy of the pastor, who has assumed their territory for his vineyard and earned as the fruit of his daily and weekly labours the confidence and attachment of the people, education will grow apace among them. Even by the time when only perhaps a few are converted, many will be at least humanized for, suc is the savour of Christianity, that, over and

ment.

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its own proper influence on the individuals whom it sanctifies, it has a secondary and wide spread influence over the community, whose standard of morals it exalts, and whose general habits it **fines and civilizes. Altogether, with the power of that kindness which the messengers of Curistiaur might bring to bear upon human feelinge, aus A power of Christianity itself over ima cupen. there never was so effective an instrument ER THE one which we now describe, he renaming from what might appear even he met w and impracticable degeneracy.

power, Christianity wants need a evidence, to the aspect of ikainen run tra even at the first, and ita perpetualy gong same on the attention and moral earnestness T inquirer till at length the conclusive eventuel is made to him of such credentials, as salesmind that the religion is true.

For the fuT 12

power it is indebted to that pesularm £

human constitution, by which it is a t

fested good will of one man tela es

and with such subduing effect

another man.

ministrations of the Gospel tu

As a pioner i 2 "ERTELE

able-though, till of last

to; and far too little E

It of itself forms no par to s truth of the christian reign. · AR by which the Fatue E finds its way to the matar carries the belief, mutta

tion that precedes the belief-not the proof, but the means for the conveyance of it.

12. Hitherto we have not enough availed ourselves of those strong affinities which bind one man to another, and extend the brotherhood of our nature, far beyond the limits of kindred or previous acquaintanceship. It may be experienced on the moment of our entrance within the threshold of a family which we never before saw. The character of the reception is almost invariable-that of genuine and entire cordiality. The errand on which we go, announces itself to be one of kindness; and, in almost every instance, it calls forth the sense and the spirit of kindness back again. By the very act of coming under the roof of one of the common people, we in a manner throw ourselves upon his kindness; and scarcely ever, in one instance, does this confidence deceive us. Insomuch that we have often felt, as if, to enter the house of a poor man or a labourer, was the readiest method of finding our way into his heart. Certain it is that nothing can be more companionable, and if not courtly at least courteous which is far better-nothing can be more polite in the best sense of the term, for it is nature's politeness under the spontaneous impulse of nature's honesty, than that which is habitually experienced in these rounds of pastoral or missionary visitation. If we want to taste the amenities of human intercourse, let us go, not in the capacity of an almoner but in the higher capacity of a christian philanthropist, either to the country hamlet or to the city lane-let us

carry our proffers of beneficence, either to the peasant in the one situation or to the man of handicraft and hard labour in the other-let it be the prospect of a christian benefit to themselves, or of an educational benefit to their children-we do not say that the consent will be gotten all at once to the practical arrangement, whatever it may be; but, from the very first, both the visit and the object of it will be well taken; and, such is the charm of these household attentions, that a great and effectual door is opened by them, to all those results, which the manifested friendship and the moral suasion of one man, have power to effectuate in the purposes and the doings of another.

13. We can well imagine here a certain suspicion or incredulity, as if our picture was overcoloured-or as if there was more of the imaginative than of the experimental in our representation. But our shrewd and sceptical antagonists do truly confound the things which differ, when they liken these every-day findings with which we now deal to the visions of Arcadia. Those cordialities of human intercourse, and the results which come out of them, have nought in them whatever of the romance or the extravagance of poetry. What Howard on the walk of general benevolence realized in prisons, any other, if he is but a man of heart and genuine piety, will realize in parishes. Those triumphs of kindness which the one achieved in the malefactor's cell, the other will with still greater facility achieve in the ploughman's cabin and the workman's lowliest tenement. If the