There is here, further, a renewed and powerful impression of the vanity and emptiness of all earthly possessions and sources of enjoyment-" Naked came I out of my mother's womb, and naked shall I return thither"—that is, to the womb of Earth, the great producer and nourisher of all the sensitive existence on it and in it. The language is equivalent to that of Paul-" We brought nothing into this world, and it is certain we can carry nothing out." 1 Tim. vi. 5. The meaning of the patriarch does not seem to have been, that, in consequence of having thus been stripped of all that pertained to him, he should return naked to the womb of his parent Earth; but rather that, even had he continued in his best estate, in the full possession and enjoyment of all his prosperity, such must at any rate have been the case-that this is the true account of all—"high and low, rich and poor together." "When he died," had he prospered to the end, he could have "carried nothing away."—It is as if he had said "These things were necessarily but for a season. I could not have taken them with me to the grave. And the God by whom they were given, has only stripped me a little earlier of what I must soon, at the longest, have left behind me."-Compare Eccles. v. 14-16.

And this leads me to notice, further, the devout acknowledgment of God's hand in his bereavements as well as in his enjoyments:"The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away."—There is here, what is always becoming and beautiful in adversity, the grateful recollection of what God had given, and so long permitted him to enjoy. He does not dwell exclusively upon the loss. But in the loss, as well as in the previous possession, he recognizes the divine agency. He does not, in a tumult of frantic violence, vent his imprecations on the banditti that had plundered his property and butchered his servants :-"Men were but God's hand." He does not curse the lightning and the tempest, the unconscious instruments of his heaviest bereavements: it was God that "made a way for the lightning of the thunder," and "the stormy wind fulfilled his word." To HIM, the supreme and uncontrollable Disposer, he traces all.

And he still blesses :-"Blessed be the name of the Lord!"-How finely this stands in contrast with the charge of Satan, verse 11"But put forth thy hand now, and touch all that he hath, and will he then bless thee to thy face?"-The charge of his malignant and false accuser is thus thoroughly refuted. The patriarch had blessed God when he gave:-all is taken from him and he blesses still. "In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly:"-the latter phrase giving the true spirit of the original Hebrew, which is, literally, nor vented froth against God."*

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To go further at present, would be to anticipate the second series of Job's trials, which, with his conduct under them, shall be the subject of another paper;-the one now closed being, at any rate, already too long.

* In the margin of our English Version-" nor attributed folly to God."

REMARKS ON DECAYED AND DECAYING CONGREGATIONAL CHURCHES.

I HAVE the happiness of knowing several ministers, well stricken in years, who are now presiding over flourishing churches and extensive congregations. It cannot be said that they at all resemble Apollos, who was an "eloquent man;" they have no pretensions to oratorical power or elegant gesticulation; they seldom speak of the sun, the rainbow, the woods, the flowers, or the birds, things true and beautiful in their place, but which the popular taste would often put sadly out of place, by giving them a preference to the naked truths of the gospel; their manner in the pulpit is grave, and by many would be considered dull, while their enunciation is slow, and their periods unpolished; with the utmost justice they might adopt the words of the apostle, " and I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God." Yet these men, in the decline of life, with their physical powers daily exhausting, see no diminution in the number of their hearers, and no deterioration in the spiritual state of their flocks. I have several of them in my eye at this moment. For a series of years they have walked worthy of the gospel in private, and with the greatest plainness have urged its truths in public, without witnessing any retiring in weariness from the sound of their voice, or sinking into apathy under its well-known intonations. Still it must be confessed that there are such scenes in the congregational world, as those which your correspondent X. sketches in your last,-aged ministers, who, after years of servitude, have the painful spectacle before them of an increasingly scanty attendance upon their sabbath ministrations, and of dull, drowsy, dwindling churches. Now it is a grave, practical question which your correspondent suggests, how this last state of things is to be remedied, but I submit, that in order to answer it a prior question must be proposed, and that is, how it has been produced? Let it be kept in mind that no fault can be found with the ministers in question on the ground of false doctrine or of moral character; it is presumed that they are orthodox in their creed, and godly in their walk; and it is supposed by your correspondent that the sad condition of their respective charges is to be primarily referred to their want of popular talents. This is not my opinion; and I bring forward the case of those ministers first mentioned against it; and just as I hold the Jewish church responsible for the non-success of Elijah, Jeremiah, and our Lord, so I hold the particular churches in the present day, whose condition is so deplorable, while, in the circumstances presumed, responsible for their impoverishment. Both the principles of the New Testament, and facts open to observation, warrant me in giving the following explanation of the distressing phenomena under our notice. The people calling themselves Christian have ceased to receive the truth in the love of the truth, to value it for its own sake, and to prize it as the word of God and not the word of man. The Holy Spirit, grieved by their misconduct, has withdrawn those blessed influences

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which are necessary to keep them alive to their own spiritual improvement and the salvation of others; in cold formality, or under the power of an absorbing worldliness, they have mismanaged that new generation" which has deserted the old minister-and the servant of the altar, perhaps after fifty years of faithful servitude, thus goes to his grave with regrets obtruded upon his ear, about his lack of physical energy and popular address.

With reference to remedial measures, these should be as follows:1. The respective churches of which we are treating must be renewed again unto repentance. There should be those confessions of personal and collective sinfulness, that humbling of themselves before the Lord their Maker, that godly sorrow before an offended God, and those supplications for forgiveness in their individual and corporate character, which are essential to a devout state of heart and life, and especially necessary to a restoration from a condition of religious decline. I would not recommend them to take a minister of shining talents as the grand desideratum, but to take Daniel's prayer without delay:-"O Lord, according to all thy righteousness, I beseech thee, let thine anger and thy fury be turned away from thy city Jerusalem, thy holy mountain, because for our sins, and for the iniquities of our fathers, Jerusalem and thy people are become a reproach to all that arc' about us. Now, therefore, O our God, hear the prayer of thy servant, and his supplications, and cause thy face to shine upon thy sanctuary that is desolate, for the Lord's sake. O my God, incline thine ear, and hear, open thine eyes, and behold our desolations, and the city which is called by thy name, for we do not present our supplications before thee for our righteousness, but for thy great mercies. O Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive; O Lord, hearken, and do; defer not for thine own sake, O my God; for thy city and thy people are called by thy name." Then when this is the desire of their hearts, and the prayer of their lips, He who ministers in the true sanctuary, and who has received of the Father the promise of the Spirit, will dispense that stream of celestial influence which will correct the evil that exists, and re-invigorate the enfeebled principles of faith and love.

2. It is of immense importance that scriptural views of the design of the ministry should be entertained, and a suitable demeanour towards it be practised, in order that these churches, when reformed, may continue so, and go on to prosper.

It is granted at once that the ministry has been appointed for the "perfecting of the saints," but instead of this being its exclusive object, there is another to which this is subordinate and ought to be made subsidiary, even that of bringing men in a rebellious state to be reconciled to God, and not to carry the weapons of their warfare against him brandished to the grave. It has been, however, too much the case, that demands have been made upon the ministry at variance with that attention to this object which its importance de mands; the church has stept in with its own wants to be ministered unto, and its own appetite for soothing to be gratified; and though he who rightly divides the word of truth will give it a portion of meat in due season, yet it should be remembered that the church has al

ways the means at hand of helping itself, apart from the ministry in the written word and promised spirit; and that therefore, instead of reposing upon the ministry, as though its state was infancy, and its duties nought, both should be confederate in getting men out of the snare of the devil, and proposing God's message of mercy to a perishing and guilty world. If such, then, is the chief design of the ministry, it follows that to aid in its accomplishment, there must be a deportment on the part of the church in harmony with that design, and this deportment will embrace a scriptural regard to the truth taught, and the teacher teaching. Our Lord said to his disciples, "take heed how ye hear;" the apostle Paul declared to one of the early churches, "despise not prophesyings;" the injunction was issued to another, "desire ye the sincere milk of the word;" and "faith," we are told, "cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God." It may come, indeed, in other ways—it may come by reading, meditation, or prayer-but experience proves that, as a general rule, faith comes not apart from the word, nor commonly apart from its vocal ministration. If, therefore, those who are already under the influence of the word would help it to influence those who are not, they must practise a reverent behaviour themselves towards its outward ministration; they must take heed how they hear; they must despise not prophesyings; they must desire the sincere milk of the word that they may grow thereby; and just in proportion as their deportment is adverse to this are they hindering and not helping the truth; for if they are heedless in hearing, or show any disposition to despise in hearing, or betray little anxiety to profit by hearing, so far they give encouragement to a profane world to persist in its heedlessness and despisings, and thus contribute to render its hostility to the gospel deeper and more inveterate.

3. A just estimate of ministerial duties, and of the obligations of the people, must be obtained in order that these churches may be reformed, and become flourishing communities.

There are some, and it is scarcely to be doubted not a few, who fancy the ministry to be a work of no difficult performance-who think of it as only involving a slight amount of care, and thought, and exertion-whose ideas of its public exhibitions seem formed upon the supposition that it is a perfectly free, spontaneous, and extemporary exercise-who feel justified, therefore, in the quietude of their homes, in subjecting it to the most rigid examination, upon the principle that what is the very easiest thing in the world to be done, ought to be executed in the most perfectly faultless manner, and to meet the demands of their taste, no matter how fastidious it may be. But, in reality, this treatment is unmerited, and the notions that generate it are altogether unfounded, for I never met with one who succeeded in edifying others, without in the first instance undertaking the task of edifying himself; I never heard of one, since the dispensation of miraculous gifts ceased, who succeeded in edifying himself to any extent upon the lofty topics of divine truth, without some measure of patient and laborious application; and I never wish to see such a state of things return to the church, as for either its

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ministers or its members to be satisfied with being children in understanding, instead of in understanding being men. As the consequence of these views, however, the circle of ministerial engagements has been unscripturally extended; the work that should be performed by the people has been unceremoniously thrown upon the preacher; and he has not come up to their expectations, unless in addition to giving them things new and old in the sanctuary; he has visited the sick without knowing of their sickness, paid morning calls to the healthy, and mixed in evening parties with the gay; yielded personal attentions, repeatedly called for to schools, tract societies, and bible classes; in short, become himself that spiritual engine which the church should be, he under God being part of the motive power. Though I travel a little out of the record, I cannot refrain from expressing my conviction, founded upon a calm perusal of the New Testament, that both the church and the ministry are in some degree of practical error as to their mutual relation and occupations. Because the term shepherd is applied to the latter, there has been a transference of the ideas suggested by the literal to the spiritual pastorate-the demand has been made for repeated private ministerial visitation without special cause, just as though the sheep were in reality part of the helpless and irrational creation-whereas the task of "building up yourselves" is stated in the epistles as a personal obligation; the work also of private visitation is mentioned as a christian duty, therefore as much belonging to the members of the church as to its ministers; the onus is likewise laid upon the sick to send for the elders; and the pastoral visiting which is specially enjoined, is the mutual coming together of the minister and the flock in one place, to preach and to hear the word. These may be thought bold assertions. I know that they run counter to popular opinion. I do not make them, however, without due consideration, and to me they appear of great practical importance, because, where the ministry is loaded with avocations belong ing to the church, it is so far enfeebled in ability to discharge its peculiar and pressing duties. For myself, I am clearly of opinion that the churches of our denomination are in the habit of expecting far too much from their ministers, while rendering them far too little assistance, nay, occasioning them a vast deal of needless labour. We have no mere liturgy to read; we are not accustomed to preach other men's sermons; neither have we in general the means of keeping curates. I blame no man for raising high the ministerial standard; let it go up to the mark to which the Scriptures take it; but, in the name of right and honesty, let the churches standard go up to the same mark likewise; and when I hear an individual murmuring over the low state of things in the church, and throwing blame upon the minister for it, I feel that there is a previous question to be settled before that man's judgment can be allowed to pass current, and that I have the right to ask him, whether Paul could or would have said concerning him, what he said of one, "Salute the beloved Persis, who laboured much in the Lord."

4. In those cases where the "new generation" has gone off from