tempting to carry measures by force of authority and office, rather than by argument and persuasion; for if the bare proposal of a measure by a pastor to his church and congregation, with a candid statement of his reasons for it, do not ensure its adoption, to persist by authority will produce a dangerous reaction. 3. That no good is ever secured by what is called management, for as surely as that trait is discerned in a minister, instead of the simplicity and godly sincerity which should distinguish him, he will be an object of suspicion and distrust, and will soon manage himself out of pulpit and place. 4. That a desire to please men in preaching or in measures, is the most likely way to displease men and God too; and if at any time a minister has the fear of man before his eyes, so that he dare not preach certain doctrines or duties plainly and boldly, he is then ensnared and shorn of his strength. 5. That in case conflicting interests and opinions divide the minds of his people, and it is necessary for him to take sides with one or the other, he must stand upon his reasons, modestly, frankly and decisively expressed. 6. And once more, to ensure the confidence and co-operation of his people, a minister must rely much more on his good sense and prudence, than on the sanctity of his office or even his good intentions. For, though a people will bear long with one who means well, though he be not a great man, yet they have not commonly grace enough to forgive want of common sense.

Hence, further, it is the voice of experience, that while a minister's reputation abroad depends chiefly on his preaching and public labors, the attachment, respect and confidence of his own people depend much more on his daily manifestations of private and personal worth. The secret of his power, after all, lies in his character; in the consistency of his example; in prudence of speech and conduct; in his kind and sympathizing spirit; his meekness and affability; in his deportment as a neighbor and as a citizen. His worth is better judged of in the dwellings of the poor than in the mansions of the rich; by the bed-side of the sick, afflicted and dying, rather than in the pulpit. With all the power of intellect that distinguished Dr. Emmons as a preacher, he never could have gained such control over his parish as he acquired, without the private and personal worth to which I have alluded. In reference to this point, I know of nothing in his history more beautiful and touching than the testimony of a gentleman whom the doctor visited in sickness. "To know him," he says, " as he really was, you must have met him by the bed of pain, prostration and anxiety. Here I first saw him; and such was his discourse; so pious, so parental, so consoling, that it never has been, and I think never will be, forgotten by me. For at this moment, he lives in my memory as he then sat by my bed-side, the very image, it seemed to me, of his great and gracious Master."

V. Time allows me to speak further only of experience as to trials and encouragements in the ministry.

Happily, through the kind providence of God, we are exempted, in

great measure, from such trials as apostles and ministers of Christ in former ages experienced. Still, there are trials peculiar to the ministry everywhere; "we labor and suffer reproach." We often tremble at our responsibilities and cry out, "Who is sufficient for these things?" We are tried and grieved when our well-meant endeavors for the good of others meet with ungrateful returns; when our motives are misrepresented, our measures censured and our plans thwarted. The instability of some; the backsliding apostasy and enmity of others, of whom we once entertained good hope, are a grief to us. Not unfrequently, those on whom we relied as pillars in the church, break down; and our most substantial supporters desert us. We are tried at the alienations and dissensions; the errors and delusions; the bigotry and fanaticism, which, every now and then, spring up within the bounds of our charge. Every contending party seeks to enlist our sympathy and support; and whether we yield or refuse, we are in most cases equally the subjects of censure and reproach. The discipline of unworthy members often concentrates against us powerful family and local prejudices; and for our plain and honest reproofs of vice, we are counted imprudent by the timid and time-serving, and enemies by those whose reformation we seek. But our greatest trial is, that notwithstanding all our endeavors, we often seem to labor in vain and to spend our strength for naught; notwithstanding our counsels and warnings, our entreaties and prayers, the souls for whom we watch remain unmoved and unconverted. Under such circumstances, we can truly say, "We have great sorrow and heaviness of heart."

Yet, on the other hand, we are by no means destitute of comfort and encouragement. We are "willing to labor and suffer reproach," so long as we can approve ourselves as the ministers of God;" sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, yet possessing all things; often wearied in our work, but never weary of it. While we relinquish the ease, the honors and the wealth, which men in other professions grasp after and often acquire, we can truly say, with the apostle, we are thankful to be counted worthy to be put into the ministry. To be useful to the souls of men, we count a higher distinction than to be clothed with the honors and offices which the world can confer. Where is the faithful minister whose experience does not accord with the following testimony of an aged servant of Christ ?* "The ministers of Christ receive no inconsiderable reward as they go along, before their labors and their lives are ended. They enjoy the pleasure which there is in separating themselves from the world, and intermeddling with all wisdom. They enjoy the benefit which there is in the effectual and fervent prayers of those who esteem them very highly in love for their works' sake. They enjoy the satisfaction which there is in observing their people growing in knowledge and grace under their instruction. And some

• Emmons.

times, they enjoy that more noble and divine happiness which results from the success of their labors in the conversion of sinners, of whom they had travailed in birth, until Christ was formed in them. These spiritual children are their reward while they live and converse with them in this life; they will be their reward, when they meet them in the day of judgment; they will be their reward when they meet them in glory in heaven; and thence onward for ever!" Such a prospect as this supported and animated Paul under all his labors and sufferings in the cause of Christ. "We were comforted over you in all our affliction and distress, by your faith. For now we live, if ye stand fast in the Lord. For what is our hope or joy, or crown of rejoicing? Are not even ye in the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ at his coming? For ye are our glory and our joy !"

CONCLUSION.

1. We learn some of the causes of the frequent dismissions of ministers from their charge. These causes are exceedingly various. Some originate in a wrong public sentiment; in the unstable character of the times; in the excitements and innovations in society which would abolish existing institutions and make all things new. In many cases, no doubt, the people that decide it is expedient to dismiss their minister are chiefly to blame. But experience leads us to inquire, to what extent dismissions are owing to deficiencies or faults in ministers themselves! Is it not sometimes the case that men engage in this holy and arduous calling without due qualifications of heart? If not altogether without grace, yet without the deep, devoted, self-sacrificing piety, which constrains them to say, "Wo is me if I preach not the gospel!" Are not many deficient in mental culture and acquisition; without fixed habits of study, and with no disposition to form them; consequently failing to feed the people with understanding and with knowledge? Their ministry is unprofitable, and dismission ensues. Do not others relinquish their appropriate work? Either through want of love for their employment, or under the mistaken apprehension that they can better serve God and their generation by giving a portion of their time to other pursuits, they cease to magnify their office. One becomes enamored of literature, and cultivates his taste for it by pursuing studies quite out of the line of his profession. Another is ambitious to make a book, and if the minister becomes subordinate to the author, the former will be likely to fail in proportion as the latter succeeds. A third must needs dip into politics, and by the time he becomes acquainted with the science of government; with the discipline and tactics of party, and is perhaps himself a candidate for office; his zeal in the ministry is quite cooled, and his profiting appears to no one. Yet another assumes the business of a teacher, and his ministry is enfeebled, not for want of intellectual employment, but as a result of divided interest. Others, greedy of "filthy lucre," embark in some worldly enterprise or speculation; lose their spirituality of mind; become involved in debt, or, what is worse, inflated by wealth; and then,

from necessity or choice, close their pastoral relations. In regard to these and all such occupations, experience proves that just so far as they are engaged in, except from necessity and as wholly subservient to the work of the ministry, they do, insensibly perhaps, but really and effectually, undermine a minister's usefulness. Even music and the garden, when they divide the attention and affection of a minister, diminish his power. But experience does not stop here!

Some, verily believing that Providence made a mistake in their location, and equally confident that they are qualified for a better or a larger place, privately seek a change, until, to their sorrow, it comes upon them. Others take counsel of their love of ease, and, hoping to be more useful by studying less and visiting more, their ministry ends in failure. How many in these days of new and strange things, borne away by some breeze of popular excitement, or even, it may be, convinced of the utility of some of the thousand projects of reform, conceive it to be their duty to enlist as agents, at least as active promoters of them, and then give that prominence to their new views and schemes, which belongs only to the doctrines of the cross and to measures to save sinners! What observer of the times has not already traced many dismissions to this cause! There are other points connected with this topic, which I am almost afraid to touch. Alas! my brethren, experience is sometimes a painful teacher! How often has a minister's power in the pulpit been paralyzed by his example out of it; how often his influence diminished and his dismission brought about, by some infelicity of temper, imprudent speech, ill-judged controversy; by impatience under provocation; by meddling with what does not concern him; by some meanness in business transactions; by too tenacious an adherence to his own opinion on unessential points; too much solicitude about his support; or perhaps, by too strenuous a demand of his legal claims! Why should I pain you, by alluding to experiences of another sort, that issue, not barely in the dismission, but in the disgrace, the deposing and excommunication of ministers? argues the healthful moral state of our churches; their doctrinal soundness and their elevated standard of piety; that the least departure from moral integrity, the abandonment of a single fundamental doctrine, and especially, one known act of vice or crime, is a forfeiture of a minister's character and place, never to be regained!

It

2. I remark, secondly, that as to the total amount of a minister's usefulness, it is comparatively of little consequence where he is settled. For inasmuch as his influence depends on his character for piety and talents, on his application and devotion to his appropriate work; where these are united in a minister, he will create an influence around him, which, according to the laws of God's moral kingdom, will go forth in continually widening circles, till it may reach the outer boundaries of the globe! We are aware, indeed, how common it is to estimate a man according to the place where he happens to be located: and in our wisdom-rather I should say, in folly and pride-we talk of one man being qualified for the city, and another for the country; one

for this station, and another for that; one for a foreign missionary, and another for a retired parish minister! And we often set about assigning men their several locations, according to these narrow views of fitness. On the same principle, candidates for the ministry not unfrequently picture out in imagination the place or kind of place, which they esteem themselves fitted to occupy! Now, I do not wholly deny that, in some respects, one minister may be better qualified for a particular situation than another. But I affirm that the qualities which, at all times and everywhere, constitute the 'essential ingredients of a successful ministry, will render a minister distinguished wherever he is located. Consequently, to judge men merely by place is an invidious, deceptive and unworthy criterion.

To be settled in a populous city, or thriving village, with a charge of one thousand or two thousand souls, may seem to be quite an object of ambition; and one so honored, may for a time be an object of envy to a brother in the ministry, who is settled, almost against his will, in a small obscure parish, with a feeble church, and an unlettered peasantry for his hearers; yet, supposing them to possess equal piety, talents, industry and love to their work, it is by no means certain that in the course of a ministry of twenty, thirty or forty years, the former will be the most successful, most honored and most rewarded by his Master. I need not point out all the causes which will affect their usefulness. But it is a notable fact, that of all the good ministers of Christ, whose praise is in the churches, and whom the Christian world holds most in reverence; the greater part lived, labored and died in small country parishes, whose very names, but for them, would never have been heard of. When Doddridge was first settled in the obscure parish of Kelworth, one of his fellow pupils in a letter condoled with him, "on being buried alive there." To which Doddridge replied, "here I stick close to those delightful studies, which a favorable Providence has made the business of my life. One day passeth away after another; and I only know it passeth pleasantly with me. I can willingly give up the charms of London, the luxury, the company, the popularity of it, for the secret pleasures of rational employment and self-approbation, retired from applause and reproach, from envy and contempt; so that, instead of lamenting it as my misfortune, you should congratulate me upon it as my happiness, that I am confined in an obscure village, seeing it gives me so many valuable advantages to the most important purposes of devotion and of philosophy, and I hope I may add usefulness too." Dr. Scott preached most of his life, in small parishes, that could barely support him. Of the pastors whose names are the glory of New England-let me speak of Edwards, whose ministry gave fame to Northampton and to Stockbridge; of Bellamy, who spent a ministry of fifty years in so obscure a parish in Connecticut, that its name can hardly be found on a map of the State; of Smalley, settled in Berlin; of Bachus, in Somers; and of Emmons, in Franklin. Pardon me, if I name two venerable servants of Christ, whose influence I can more fully estimate from observation. The late