agony, and minister prayer and consolation to the surrounding friends.*

In connection with these last visits to the sick man, the Minister may profitably use the Instructions and Advices to Friends and Attendants (pp. 644-656).

The faithful Parish Priest will not consider his ministration concluded by the death of the sick man he has attended; but as the Apostolic command is "to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction" as well as to "pray over the sick," and as his own vow is to exhort and monish as well the whole in body as the sick within his cure, he will take care to visit the surviving friends and relatives; and at a time when their hearts have been by GoD's chastisement peculiarly opened to receive instruction and advice (so it be mingled with comfort), either to bring them to better thoughts and habits, or to confirm them in submission to and performance of the will of God.

"Here it requires," as Mr. Sawbridge observes, "all the aid of religion to support the sufferers. This aid it is the duty of the Parish Priest to administer, and the attentive Shepherd, who knows his flock, and is known of them, will generally be able to do it with success. That voice which has been accustomed to soothe their less weighty cares, that well-known voice will now be able to speak comfort to the agitated and troubled mind. Whenever therefore death has made a chasm in a family, especially under peculiar circumstances of distress, the parochial Minister should throw himself in the way of giving the only consolation that can be afforded in such a case. If he perceives his listening to the tale of woe gives relief to the mourner, and his discourse raises the mind to the only source of peace and comfort, his reward from the inward satisfaction he experiences will be great; should he be unsuccessful, he may still rest satisfied that he has done his part."+

And as prayer will naturally form a part of his minis

*"And when any is passing out of this world.... the Minister shall not then slack to do his last duty." Canon 67.

↑ Manual for the Parish Priest, pp. 99, 100.

tration to them, we have provided an Office of consolation, (p. 198,) which may be said on his first visit after the decease; or if they desire it, and are able to bear it, he may assemble the family immediately after the death, and proceed with this Office. And to aid him in exhortations, whether of consolation or to future holiness, we have given the Exhortations and Advices to those who mourn, p. 657.

But in the event of a favourable and not a fatal termination of the sick man's illness, the Minister will also desire to continue his visits; maintaining and enforcing the impressions made on him during his sickness, until he is perfectly restored to health, and enabled again to take part in the public ministrations of the Church. The short Offices (pp. 237-250) will, we believe, be found useful on such occasions; combining as they do Psalms, instructive portions of Scripture, and Prayers; and all having reference, more or less, to eventual recovery. Or in a very slow and protracted recovery, the Office during prolonged sickness may be advantageously used. And as the sick man may be for some time so far recovered as to be beyond all probable danger, and in well founded hope of perfect restoration, before he is able to go to Church and so offer his thanksgivings in the public Service, we have compiled an Office for one recovered, which may be used when he first leaves his room or his bed, or such like decided period in his recovery. The exhortations to one recovered from sickness, of which we have given two (pp. 639, 640), to be used at the discretion of the Priest, ought, of course, to be united with the use of that Office. And it will be well in every case to remind the sick man that his obligation of external thanksgiving does not end with this; but that if he has had the prayers of the congregation, he is bound, by attending Church and making his public thanksgiving there, to pay his vows in the courts of the LORD's House in the sight of all His people.

Besides these various Offices complementary to the Visitation Office, and carrying out and fulfilling its line of teaching, a few others have been added, which are

in a manner supplementary to that Office, the cases to which they are intended to apply not having been directly provided for by the Church. Such are the bedridden; those about to undergo an operation; persons in a state of insensibility; sick women with child; those who have attempted suicide; and condemned criminals. Nor ought it to be charged on the Church, that her Office Book is deficient, in that, professing to contain an Office for sickness generally, it does not in its own ritual afford means of dealing with these particular cases. For evidently in some of them her Office for the Visitation of the Sick must be supposed to have been already used; and others are not cases of sickness properly so called, or which the Church can be supposed or need to have had in view in framing her manual for the sick. In dealing with these, therefore, her Ministers must be supposed to have, and to be allowed, a liberty of using such forms of prayer, (whether compiled from her Liturgy or from the provisions of Divines in Communion with her,) for such cases, as in their discretion they shall think fit; subject only to these two conditions: that they are properly adapted to the case in point; and in no wise contravene her own teaching and intention.

On most of these cases we purpose saying a very few words, in the way of such advice as our experience in them enables us to suggest.

With regard to the infirm and bed-ridden, we are glad to quote as corroborating our views on this important subject, a passage from Sawbridge's Manual for the Parish Priest. "There is a description of persons in every parish besides the absolutely sick, which calls for the attention of the Pastor; I mean those who though not under the influence of disease, yet from age or infirmity, are unable to attend the public Service of the Church. To these the Church should in some measure be carried; the parochial Minister should, as often as the extent and population of his parish will admit, visit them, read some of the prayers of the Liturgy to them, and discourse with them upon religious subjects. He will always find they receive comfort from

these visits, and generally advantage. Their minds will be kept in a proper frame for that change to which they are approaching; and they will by this means be kept, not only in righteousness of life, but, most probably, in the unity of the Church."* Under the influence of feelings of this kind we were induced to set forth an Office for cases of prolonged sickness, and for infirm and bedridden persons; the express design of which should be, to teach all persons unable to attend the house of GOD on the usual Prayer days, that they were not cut off altogether from the great congregation, and that the Christian sympathies of their Pastor still bound them to the rest of the flock. The words of the Seventy-first Canon are," No Minister shall preach or administer the holy Communion in any private house, except it be in times of necessity, when any being either so impotent as he cannot go to the Church, or very dangerously sick, are desirous to be partakers of the holy Sacrament." And since the Church thus sanctions the administration of the holy Communion to those who are so impotent as that they cannot go to Church, it is evident that she contemplates also such offices being afforded to them by her Ministers, from time to time, as shall in some measure supply to them the lack of the other public Services of the Church, from which they are by the visitation of GOD withheld. And we have no doubt that were the Priest to go periodically once a week or once a fortnight to such persons, and use this Office, taking with him some charitable person, or regular assistant to help him in the responses, and at intervals of six weeks or two months, to administer the holy Communion, the greatest benefits would be derived to himself and his parish; not the least of which would be, that where a Minister actively engages in duty of this kind, he is taking one of the most practical and effective ways of impressing on his people's minds the great value of the Church's ministrations. A Clergyman's sentiments as to the importance of public prayer and sacred ordinances, must be felt with additional weight, when he gives such practical proof of his feeling

* P. 108.

for those who are debarred from attending them; and cannot fail, sooner or later, to be brought home to the conscience of the habitual violater of the LORD's day. Moreover, it has been found that elderly people who have left off attendance at Church, thinking themselves too infirm, will, when repeatedly visited after this manner, be ashamed to receive the assistance of their Minister, when a little exertion on their part, by bringing them to the house of GOD, would suffice to spare him a great deal of labour.

And that nothing may be wanting which is calculated to realize the fact of Church-membership fully to the infirm person, in this period of his loneliness and separation from public assemblies, the Parish Priest is recommended at private Communions of the bed-ridden and infirm, to intimate to the communicant, in preparing him for the rite, that the same privilege in respect to almsgiving is open to him, as he was wont to enjoy when he communicated publicly in the Church. Though this practice is not enjoined by any rubric in the Office for the Communion of the Sick (for the Church may have wise reasons for the omission, such as, for instance, the fear of seeming to make it compulsory), it is notwithstanding obvious that she could not have meant to refuse the offerings of those who might be willing to make them at this most fitting opportunity. There is nothing in the position of an infirm or bed-ridden person to make it less a duty not to appear empty before the LORD, than to the healthy and whole. And we know from ample experience that the intimation has been most gladly received and attended to, in such cases as have fallen under our notice. But to prevent any possible misconception on the part of the infirm, the Priest should always take pains to impress distinctly upon the minds of such communicants, from time to time, that the money thus given is devoted to charitable objects; that it is purely a voluntary gift; and that he is equally ready to administer at all times without it.

In cases of old age, or of long continued infirmity, where there is no immediate probability of death, as the Collect, Epistle, and Gospel in the Office for the Communion of the Sick are manifestly inapplicable, it is