THE COUNTRY MINISTER.

HEY have none of the fine clergymen to

THEY

be found in novels, among the hard hills of New England. Such poetry as has been thrown around the calling in other countries does not belong to it there. It is, instead, the most actual and outright prose possible.

Times have changed about very strangely since the days of our fathers, that we know; and, along with the times, the relations between pastor and people also. A genial and facetious clergyman of Massachusetts remarked, in the course of a telling speech at a horseshow, that the horse was a truly noble animal, and a nice piece of property for a minister; for he verily believed the time was close at hand when it would be necessary for ministers to settle on horseback!

The old-fashion, old-school, patriarchal, positive, dogmatic, yet benevolent ministers who used to maintain their fixed positions from one end of the land to the other, are nearly all

passed away; and none come forward to supply their places, simply because the condition of society requires a new order of men. These were stern men and godly; puritan and primitive; ascetic in their habits and forbidding in their mien, yet as playful as kittens at heart, praying to God morning and evening that they might be kept innocent of all guile. They were established, with their families, on broad and fertile acres, and still, the acres were as likely to prove sterile as fertile. They domiciled in huge rectangular houses, with low ceilings and rambling rooms; sat at boards laden with substantial cheer, and garnished with goodly rows of children; and kept their horse apiece, and their cow or two, and their oxen sometimes, a yoke or so, with whose patient help they ploughed their stubborn glebe in the springs.

Theirs was a day and generation by itself. They were the Popes of their isolated parishes,

the Clements and Hildebrands of all the country round. Beside the doctor and the lawyer of the place, no one knew so much as "our minister." Indeed, not even they were at all times admitted to an equality in the popular esteem with himself. The little girls and boys were taught to fear his frown, and to feel

eternally grateful for so much as a ray of his benignant, but strictly conscientious, smile. When he walked down the road with that solemn tread, the females would hurry to the front windows and summon all within their hearing to come and see the minister go by. They seemed to believe the very atmosphere around him was a sort of "glory." Even the earth on which he left the print of his substantial soles they esteemed half sacred by reason of his tread. What he divided of the Word among them on the Sabbaths, they accepted with thanks and without the thought of venturing a question. His Scripture commentaries were received as final, and quite beyond the disturbance of human criticism. His definition of the doctrines he so stoutly enforced was the beginning and end of true theology, the Alpha and Omega of biblical truth.

Outside of the old Romish Church herself, it would be difficult to find an individual in any age, who so perfectly personated, by his influence and force of character, the almost unlimited power of its priests. It was genuine Theocracy. While eschewing and combatting, and denouncing and defying that Church, with all the rigor, and aroused energy, and passion of his rugged nature, he at the same time, and in

his own way, illustrated most strangely the powers and peculiarities against which he was so fervently praying and contending.

Such were the ministers of the Oldtime. They had the spirit of fight in them, and plenty of it. They were bred up to make a show of pluck, as well in the pulpit as out; and could flourish a sword, or handle a musket, or lead a forlorn hope, some of them, as well as many more who cut such figures on the page of history. They took their stand, whether on religion or politics, and vigorously defended it. Not a foot was yielded to the assaulting enemy, whether human or satanic; they would sooner throw inkstands in return, as did unyielding Luther. The last thing they would do was give quarter; that was a favor they neither asked nor accepted for themselves, but fought until fighting was of no further use, one party only being left for future operations. In such habits of mind, it is true that the gentler and more Christlike qualities of the Soul were not always called out; but the work to be done

rough pioneer work as it was was not of the sort for sentimentalists to take in hand, or for lily-white rhapsodists and rhetoricians, with smoothly ironed bands beneath their chins. These brave and sturdy old ministers, with

their hearts of oak, had rough work before them; and they did it thoroughly and well.

But a race like that passed away with the times that demanded its services. A new race trode in its footsteps, inheriting all its vigorous and independent qualities of character, fully as dogmatic in its opinions and as deeply rooted in its prejudices, yet with a degree of flexible adaptiveness, yielding to the changing temper and custom of the times, though claiming just the same show of veneration from its entire parishes, and seeking to impose the same servile fear on all the little boys and girls that came in its way.

And still another, and another class has followed; in some respects mellowing, and, as it were, humanizing with each advance, but in its main qualities of character copying with a rigid spirit of veneration the very traits, speech, and manners of those ancient and time-honored men, whose names are engraven more enduringly than in brass.

The modern New England minister is hardly the minister, or the man, of the Old School. While he lacks and knows it - the vigorous — energy of the latter, and is wanting in that fearless independence which never quailed in an emergency, he nevertheless seeks to com