dead; but send not a living man to be chilled among the ruins of Tadmor in the wilderness!

CHRISTIANITY is so great and surprising in its nature, that, in preaching it to others, I have no encouragement but the belief of a continued divine operation. It is no difficult thing to change a man's opinions. It is no difficult thing to attach a man to my person and notions. It is no difficult thing to convert a proud man to spiritual pride, or a passionate man to passionate zeal for some religious party. But, to bring a man to love God-to love the law of God, while it condemns him-to loath himself before God-to tread the earth under his feet to hunger and thirst after God in Christ, and after the mind that was in Christ-with man this is impossible! But God has said it shall be done: and bids me go forth and preach, that by me as his instrument, he may effect these great ends; and therefore I go. Yet I am obliged continually to call my mind back to my principles. I feel angry, perhaps, with a man, because he will not let me Convert him: in spite of all I can say, he will still love the world.

ST. Paul admonishes Timothy to endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ. It sometimes falls to the lot of a minister to endure the hard labor of a nurse, in a greater measure than that of a soldier. He has to encounter the difficulties of a peculiar situation: he is the parent of a family of children, of various tempers, manners, habits, and prejudices: if he does not continually mortify himself, he will bear hardly upon some of his children. He has, however, to endure the hardness of calling his child-his friend to an account; of being thought a severe, jealous, legal man. If a man will let mat

ters take their chance, he may live smoothly and quietly enough; but if he will stir among the servants, and sift things to the bottom, he must bear the consequences. He must account himself a Man of Strife. His language must be--"It is not enough that you feed me, or fill my pocket-there is something between me and thee." The most tender and delicate of his flock have their failings. His warmest and most zealous supporters break down some where. A sun-shiny day breeds most reptiles. It is not enough, therefore, that the sun shines out in his church. It is not enough that numbers shout applause.

A minister may be placed in a discouraging situation. He may not suit the popular taste. He may not be able to fall into the fashionable style. He may not play well on an instrument. Though an effective man, and a man of energy, he may be under a cloud. The door may be shut against him Yet it is a dangerous thing for such a man to force open the door. He should rather say "I have a lesson to learn here. If I teach the people nothing, perhaps they may teach me.' The work of win

ter is to be done, as well as the work of summer.

The hardness which I have to endure is thisHere are a number of families, which show me every kind of regard. But I see that they are not right. They somehow so combine the things which they hear, with the things which they do, that I am afraid they will at last lie down in sorrow! Here is my difficulty. I must meet them with gentle. ness; but I must detect and uncover the evil. I shall want real kindness and common honesty, if I do not. Ephraim hath gray hairs; yet he knoweth it Ephraim is a cake not turned. But, if I tell him these things, he and I shall become two perSORS. He must however be so touched in private; for he will not be touched in the pulpit. He will say "I am not the man,"

not.

A MINISTER must keep under his body and bring it into subjection. A Newmarket-groom will sweat himself thin, that he may be fit for his office: Now they do it to obtain a corruptible crown; but we, an incorruptible!

is come from college. He has a refined, accurate, sensible mind. Some of our friends wish to get him a station at Calcutta. They think him just adapted for that sphere. I differ widely in my view of the matter. A new man, with his college accuracy about him, is not the man for the dissipated and fashionable court at Calcutta. Such a congregation will bid nothing for his acuteness and reasoning. He, who is to talk to them with any effect, must have seen life and the world. He must be able to treat with them on their own ground. And he must be able to do it with the authority of a messenger from God, not with the arts and shifts of human eloquence and reasonings. Dr. Patten said admirably well, in a sermon which I heard him preach at Oxford: "Beware how you suffer the infidel to draw you upon metaphysical ground. If he get you there, he will have something to say. The evidences and the declarations of God's word are the weapon with which he must be combatted, and before which he must fall,"

LONDON is very peculiar as a ministerial walk, Almost all a minister can do, is by the pulpit and the pen. His hearers are so occupied in the world, that if he visit them, every minute perhaps brings in some interruption.

It is a serious question-Whether a minister ought to preach at all beyond his experience. He is to

stand forth as a witness-but a witness of what he KNOWS, not of what he has been TOLD. He must preach as he feels. If he feels not as he might and ought, he must pray for such feelings; but till he has them, ought he to pretend to them? Going faster than the experience led, has been the bane of many. Men have preached in certain terms and phrases according to the tone given by others, while the thing has never been made out even to their conviction, much less in their experience.

It is a most important point of duty, in a minister, TO REDEEM TIME. A young minister has sometimes called an old one out of his study, only to ask. him how he did: there is a tone to be observed toward such an idler: an intimation may be given, which he will understand, "This is not the house!" In order to redeem time, he must refuse to engage in secular affairs: No man, that warreth, entangleth himself with the affairs of this life, that he may please Him who hath chosen him to be a soldier. He must watch, too, against a dozing away of time: the clock-weight goes down slowly, yet it draws all the works with it.

OWEN remarks that it is not sufficiently considered how much a minister's personal religion is exposed to danger, from the very circumstance of religion being his profession and employment. He must go through the acts of religion: he must put on the ap pearances of religion: he must utter the language and display the feelings of religion. It requires double diligence and vigilance, to maintain, under such circumstances, the spirit of religion. I have prayed: I have talked: I have preached: but now I should perish, after all, if I did not feed on the bread which I have broken to others.

A MINISTER must CULTIVATE a TENDER SPIRIT. If he does this so as to carry a savor and unction into his work, he will have far more weight than other men. This is the result of a devotional habit. To affect feeling is nauseous and soon detected: but to feel, is the readiest way to the hearts of others.

THE leading defect in Christian ministers is want of a DEVOTIONAL HABIT. The church of Rome made much of this habit. The contests accompanying and following the Reformation, with something of an indiscriminate enmity against some of the good of that church as well as the evil, combined to repress this spirit in the Protestant writings; whereas the mind of Christ seems, in fact, to be the grand end of Christianity in its operation upon man.

THERE is a manifest want of spiritual influence on the ministry of the present day. I feel it in my own case, and I see it in that of others. I am afraid that there is too much of a low, managing, contriving, maneuvering temper of mind among us. We are laying ourselves out, more than is expedient, to meet one man's taste, and another man's prejudices. The ministry is a grand and holy affair, and it should find in us a simple habit of spirit, and a holy but humble indifference to all consequences.

A MAN of the world will bear to hear me read in the desk that awful passage: Wide is the gate, and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction; and many there be which go in thereat: Because strait is the gate, and narrow is the way which leadeth