CHAPTER VI.

RELATIONS OF PASTOR AND PEOPLE.

THE Congregational churches, like the primitive, and most of the modern churches, have their settled Pastors. A ministry wholly itinerant, or often changing, though it may render much excellent service, is not adequate to all the wants of churches and societies, nor competent to all the good which the Christian ministry is designed to effect. The officers of a church are essential to its organization. It is incomplete without them, and especially without its pastor.

The pastoral office is, by divine appointment, a permanent office in every church; its duties are permanent; the necessities of the church and community are such as at all times to demand its exercise. Hence the New Testament churches had their permanent pastors. They ordained them elders in every city." And hence the explicit and careful instructions which are given respecting the qualifications and duties which pertain to this office, and the duty of the people in regard to it.

A church, or society, that has no settled minister, has no pastor. It may have a series of occasional supplies, or a succession of evangelists, missionaries, or traveling preachers, but the man that fills its pulpit is not its pastor. He has not the relations, and consequently has not the sympathies, nor the responsibilities and cares,. which are peculiar to that office.

The benefits of a settled ministry are very great. The relation is an endearing one both to minister and people. He dwells atnong them as a shepherd among his flock, whose voice they know. He is not a stranger held loosely to them by a temporary connection ; but has his home and his children's home among them.

He is acquainted with every family. He knows their history, their character, their circumstances, their joys, griefs, sicknesses. He is with them at their marriages, and at their funerals; and on many occasions of anxiety, of delicacy, of embarrassment and distress, such as the stranger intermeddleth not with, is their tried friend, counsellor, and comforter.

He is the baptizer of their children; and with a concern inferior only to that of the parents, and often surpassing that, he watches over their advancing childhood and youth.

He is the judicious friend of education, and of all which pertains to the good of the community; in which he has the threefold interest of a pastor, a citizen, and a father. He is identified with his people in all that concerns their welfare.

His home is the well known place of resort and entertainment for clergymen and other religious strangers who visit the place.

Being a permanent resident, he is more concerned for the results of his ministry than he naturally would be, were his stay but temporary. He cannot, like those who stay is short, light fires, in his boldness or impru

dence, and then go off by the light of them, and leave them to burn, or be quenched by others.

The settled pastor feels a growing interest in his flock. The longer he is with them, the more he labors and cares for them, the oftener he is called to sympathize with them, weeping with those that weep, and rejoicing with those that rejoice, and the more he experiences of their kindness towards himself, the deeper does his affectionate concern for them naturally become. I know of no affection more sacred and unquenchable than that of a long settled pastor for his people.

The settled pastor is acquainted with the spiritual condition of his people, as a stranger cannot be, and knows what is needful for them, from time to time, in the way of instruction, reproof, or consolation. Directed by this knowledge, and compelled too by the permanency of his ministry and his unchanging auditory, he of necessity takes a wider compass in his preaching, and his hearers receive, in the end, a greater variety and amount of instruction than would, or perhaps could be given, by a succession of transient preachers. The itinerant preacher, with an audience always new, needs but a few discourses, in memory or manuscript, to answer his calls. He is not obliged to be very diversified in his ministrations, nor is it probable that he will be. He naturally selects a few topics, and those commonly which are the most exciting, and the most vobvious and familiar; and with these begins and fini

ishes his temporary work. Another follows, and then another, much in the same strain. The consequence is that the people, though abundantly and fervidly exhorted upon a few topics, acquire but a defective knowledge of truth.

It is not so with the settled pastor. It depends on him, and he feels it to be his duty, as one set apart for the instruction of a particular people, to acquaint them with the whole counsel of God. They look to him chiefly for the bread of life, and to him the injunction comes emphatically and solemnly, "Take heed therefore unto yourselves and to all the flock, over which the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to feed the church of God." The church cannot be fed as the pastor is required to feed them, they cannot be instructed generally and fully in the knowledge of religious truth and duty, in a few random discourses, however elaborately prepared, or fervidly delivered.

While I honor the zeal, and I trust, duly appreciate the useful labors of evangelists and other itinerant preachers, I am clearly satisfied that an itinerant ministry can never be substituted for a settled one without great detriment to the interests of religion. And this I think is a growing conviction in the land. It is a conviction not diminished, but rather increased, by our recent increased experience of the results and tendencies of itinerant labors.

It was formerly the practice of our churches to settle their ministers for life. The same is the practice now

to some extent; but the times are given to change. The practice of dismissing a minister" for every cause" is one of the sins of the times. It is an evil to all concerned, but more to the people than to the minister. Its tendency is to unsettle the habits, and, in various ways, to diminish the prosperity of our churches. Every instance of dismissing one minister and settling another causes some to be dissatisfied, if it do not produce division and defection. It has an effect, too, to multiply itching ears, and to induce a habit of curious and speculative hearing, rather than of sober profiting by the word. It will be found by observation that those societies are most prosperous which are least addicted to a frequent change of ministers.

It belongs to the present chapter to speak of the powers and prerogatives of the minister.

His duties towards the people as their spiritual instructor and pastor àre too well known to need to be specified. Almost equally obvious are the duties of the people towards him.

He is entitled to their esteem and confidence; to a remembrance in their prayers; to an adequate subsistence; to a respectful attendance on his ministrations: for where Christ has made it his duty to preach, he has made it theirs to hear. In a word, as it is for him to labor and watch for them, so it is for them to acknowledge,

*1 Thess. v. 12, 13, 25. 1 Tim. v. 18.