their powers have been developed to broad exercise and their lives expanded to wide ranges of usefulness. They are not saved, these new-created souls, till they are circling in sharp, clear, steady, unswerving, blessed and blessing orbits about the Sun of Righteousness, filled with his light and reflecting it from the whole circumference of their lives.

This is the work which the revival has left for the churches to do. May God help us to be faithful in its accomplishment!

PASTORLESS CHURCHES.

BY REV. HENRY M. DEXTER, D.D., OF BOSTON, MASS.

WE hold a Christian church to be a company of faithful people united under God by covenant to do his will. To use the distinction which our fathers made, since a body must exist before it can have functionaries, pastors and other church officers and servants are not essential to the being, but only to the well-being of churches; yet as, without dispute, it is above all things indispensable that the being of a church should be well-being, it is right to say that a pastor is so far a necessity to a Congregational church that it cannot be in that state of good order which its own welfare demands, and its great Head enjoins, without one.

In the beginning both of ancient and modern Congregationalism, the pastor was simply that member of the body who seemed fittest, chosen and set apart by his fellows to be their guide (nov), teacher (didozaλos), overseer (лoxоños), and (since capacity for these would oftenest be found among the gray-haired) their elder (798¤ßvteos); — four names for one office seen from different points of view, as proven by the New Testament usage of these terms themselves, and by the fact that the same qualifications are divinely assigned to, and the same duties required of, each and all. Various causes chief among which was an advance of general culture which brought about a condition of society, in which, as the rule, it was felt that no man could usefully perform pastoral duty who had not spent years in general academic and special professional education for the position - led to the existence of a class of candidates for the pastorate; members of churches before undertaking this course of education, yet, practically, as to entrance upon their desired work when that course was completed, outside of all churches. This complexion of affairs raised a new question, of equal interest to both parties, by what process these churchless pastors and any pastorless churches might wisely be brought together. Cotton Mather, one hundred and fifty years ago, described the manner in which, in general, that question was answered, as follows: When a church wants a pastor, they do first, by prayer with fasting, humbly supplicate our ascended Redeemer, who giveth such gifts unto men, that He would give unto them a

pastor after His own heart. Then (except the Providence of Heaven have otherwise laid prospects of supplies before them), upon consultation with the Christian inhabitants of the town, they ask information from the ministers in their vicinity, or from the Governours of the college, what young men may be most likely to be serviceable unto them; and being thus or otherwise informed, the committee whom the Church usually have to act on their behalf in such an affair, invite one or more of these candidates to preach a few sermons among them." (Ratio Disciplinæ.) Substituting the term "theological seminary" for the word "college," this very well indicates what remained usual until within the memory of many of us here present.

All this is now changed. On the one hand, the permanence of the pastoral relation has become so impaired that the party seeking the pastorate has been largely augmented by ministers who have been settled and dismissed once, twice, thrice, or many times, and who are thus thrown upon the pastoral market, so to speak, irregularly and out of course; while, on the other hand, the churches are grown so self-competent, so jealous of influence from without, and so inexact in their conception of what ought to be sought for in a pastor, that chaos has considerably come to us in this thing.

Without needless statistical particularity, it is within the knowledge of us all that but few more than one in three of our Congregational churches are now settled with pastors; while deducting from the reported sum total of our ministry those pastors, and the nearly one thousand who are counted out of the pastoral work as secretaries, college officers, and other teachers, editors, life-insurance agents, genteel drones and dunces, and in one way or another we have no fewer than from thirteen to fourteen hundred remaining who are, or are at any moment liable to become, candidates for the pastorate. That the difficulty, however, is not in ministerial overproduction becomes obvious when one notices that the grand total of our ministry, including the thousand who do not seek pastoral work, still falls more than one hundred behind our total of churches. So that, were every so-called Congregational ministerwho wants it and who does n't want it to be utilized in a pastorate, more than one in every twenty-two of our churches would still perforce be left in the "vacant" column; while leaving out those ministers who appear to have no desire for settlement, that column would rise, after every "candidate" had been provided for, to considerably more than one church in every four. The difficulty

clearly lies in the total want of adjustment which now obtains, resulting in the fact that good churches and worthy ministers, having in them the material of useful and satisfactory mutual service, are not brought together, do not find each other, and waste themselves apart in vain attempts which come to nothing but discouragement and desolation. This is one of the evils incidental to the freeness of our system. We have no bishop or other dictator to say to this candidate, "Take thou authority over that church," and to that church, "Submit yourselves in the Lord to this man,” and we do not want any. We

"Rather bear those ills we have,

Than fly to others that we know not of,"

but that our fathers knew, and knowing were not able to endure. To say that something cannot be done for the remedy of these evils, would be to declare that the wisdom of God is powerless for the help of his children. To say that it is hopeless to expect our churches to come into any prudent arrangement for such remedy, would be to deny their common-sense as well as piety. And the one conclusion is as inadmissible as the other. The true view to be taken is to remember that, as civil liberty, the world over, has gained clearness and strength only, like new wine, through a stage of ferment and froth, so Congregationalism, which is religious liberty protected by law, is subject to similar conditions, and may expect a like deliverance. Our churches are learning a lesson through an experience which God will by and by make fruitful in their return to a more just, wholesome, and prolific life. What needs to be now done is to prepare this way of the Lord, by making clear to all intelligent minds the principles which underlie the bane, and must therefore prescribe the antidote.

Diffidently, and yet with an earnestness born of the deepest conviction, I offer two or three suggestions as to what the difficulty really is.

I submit that the churches have lost sight of God's own philosophy of evangelizing the world, and of the proper function of the pastorate, and have taken up a false notion of both. God's way

is a way which he has imaged by salt and leaven, and their characteristic agencies. The salt and the leaven in their utmost unimpaired intensity are to be put into contact with the matter to be affected by them, and the vigor of their peculiar vitality is to enter, pervade, transform, and conserve the matter. The salt is not to be

freshened until the fresh matter which needs it loses all antipathy for, and rather likes it, because of its likeness to itself. God distinctly remits that kind of salt, which has lost its savor, to a place under men's contemptuous feet and upon the dunghill. The church is never, in any sense or form, to unchurch itself toward and into the world; but rather courteously to separate itself from it, with benevolent but distinct and habitual antagonism, until that divine power, which, when the due conditions have been fulfilled, works through it, by a law of grace symbolized by the law of science which gives opposite poles appetite for each other, brings the world up and into the church, and Christ sees of the travail of his soul, and is satisfied.

This being true of the church, the proper function of the pastorate is to be the teacher, guide, and executive officer of the church, instructing it how to grow in grace (how to keep and enhance its gracious saltness) and directing it how to work the works of Christ (how most effectively to bring about the needed saving contact between itself and the truth, with which it is surcharged, and the world around it), to be himself, first in the pulpit, and second out of it, the conductor through whom the salvatory magnetism of the church shall especially pass over into the community, — to “allure to brighter worlds and lead the way."

Now all this has so drifted and degenerated that churches seem to feel it their chief function to dilute the gospel to a degree that the world shall at least be able to swallow it without a wry face. They go down into the Egypt of a parish for help to build a great church, with great social rooms, and a great organ, and all the modern conveniences, including a great mortgage. And when a pulpit is now vacant, what is generally done is to make inquiry far and near for a "smart man," that is to say, for as "smart" a man as may be presumed to hold his smartness for sale at a price at all within the means of such a community. This, in the general. And then, in particular, note is apt to be taken of such personal preferences as prevail, more particularly among what is called the

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more influential" members of the congregation, which are usually, in point of fact, those members who really ought to have least influence in any matter vitally touching the spiritual life of the church. Colonel A, the manufacturer, intimates that he would n't mind giving a hundred dollars a year, if they will settle somebody who is "liberal" in his theology; if he smokes and is an Odd Fellow, so much the better. Doctor B will take one of the best