ers. The two must often go together. As taught in our Discipline, and indicated in our lovefeasts, the Church should take care of her poor; and pastoral visitation is essential to the discharge of this duty. Let the preacher, then, who would slowly but surely accumulate a revival force in his flock; who would combine all those elements of force into one glorious whole, and win a victory to his Lord, study well the momentous duty of pastoral visiting; study it in its principles and in its details; study well when and how these visits will be made the most effectual, remembering that man's extremity is God's opportunity.

A death in a family is a voice from eternity. There is no grief so utterly annihilating as that of funeral grief. By the side of the grave of buried love, one feels as he can feel nowhere else how like a frail bubble upon the billow are the fairest of human hopes. The hardest heart becomes as water when taking the last look at the coffin at the bottom of the grave, and listening to those leaden sounds which arise on the ear when the first clods of the valley drop upon mortality's narrow house. It is said of afflictions, that they are to us as the darkness of the night, and that we would see no stars, and be

ignorant of the majesty and magnificence of the heavens over us, but for such darkness. It is from out of the gloom of funeral sadness, that the most thoughtless can be induced to look up. Amid such emergences, then, let the pastor be present to point to the Star of Bethlehem. We have viewed with grief and surprise, a growing indifference among some of our ministers to preaching at funerals. This is owing, in part, to a want of a due appreciation of the golden opportunities which they furnish to the pastor, and, in part, to an abuse of the institution. He who feels it his duty to preach an elaborate discourse of seventy minutes' length on every funeral occasion, is sadly wanting in a sense of the appropriate, and with such a preacher, preaching at funerals will soon become irksome. Not so, we trust, with him who can always speak on such occasions, from fifteen to thirty minutes, and speak such thoughts as the inspiration of the occasion naturally suggests, and to a reflecting mind, will suggest in almost infinite variety.

In pastoral visiting, we would not have the preacher overlook, or treat with recklessness, the customs and proprieties of life. It may not be equally proper for him to call upon the family at all hours of the day, and it may so happen

that he may call at times when he finds the family not in a fitting condition to receive him. The family may have been thrown into some confusion or hurry. Some of its members may be just on the eve of leaving, and it may be within a few minutes of car time, etc., etc. In such cases, let him not be obtrusive. Let him greatly modify his mission, or wave it altogether. Good sense, good taste, good manners, and deep piety, are the leading characteristics of a good pastor.

CHAPTER XXIII.

EXCITEMENT.

METHODISTS NOT ALARMED EXCITEMENT FEARED BECAUSE IT CONFLICTS WITH A CREED

SELDOM SUCCESSFULLY GUARDED

EXTRAVAGANCES DEP

AGAINST DEFINITION OF METHODISM
RECATED-EXCITEMENT ANALYZED -FOUR CARDINAL SOURCES
OF EMOTION-RELIGIOUS EXCITEMENT ALWAYS WHOLESOME.

MUCH is said about the danger of undue excitement in revivals of religion. With some, it is feared as the sin of witchcraft. As Methodists, we have never been as fearful and unbelieving on this subject as some of our neighbors. We have always believed that excitement is essential to revivals, and have not, from our experience, been induced to be so very apprehensive as to its consequences. The case might be very different, were we like many of our neighbors, embarrassed by our creed in the case. If we believed that no one was converted, only the "elect," and that when it pleased God, in his eternal sovereignty, to touch a heart by his Spirit, that a work was commenced, which would continue by an absolute certainty, and

that all others, who might give similar evidence of a disposition to fly from the wrath to come, if they apostatized, never had anything to apostatize from—we say, if we labored under this embarrassing creed, we should be very wary of excitement, and rather than to have the kingdom of heaven taken by violence, we would, like our brethren alluded to, desire to have it taken possession of in silence; for it is really not a little embarrassing to those who hold to the creed, once in grace, always in grace, to witness publicly a number of conversions, and to witness these persons for a considerable length of time, giving precisely the same evidence of their conversion, exhibiting precisely the same spiritual phenomena, and yet, when a portion of them shall fall back into the world, to tell the world that these persons never had any religion, and that all the evidence they gave of the fact was deceptive, that they were either self-deceived, or, as hypocrites, they were deceiving others. Such declarations are apt to cause reflecting men of the world to come to some strange conclusions. They are apt to say, how, then, do we know that anybody is converted? Our Calvinistic friends, however, who would guard against - excitement in revivals as if it were an epilepsy,