labors and plans of the Church a thing of fits and starts and changes.

One pastor considers the condition of the church where he is located, looks around upon the community, and proceeds to lay his plans for doing good. He has his convictions in regard to the Sabbath-school, the teachers' Bible-class, the class-meetings, the circulation of tracts, and he convinces his people of the soundness of his views, and puts them in operation. Interest is created, good is done, and greater good promised. But his three years expire; he goes his way and his successor comes. He, too, has his convictions and his plans. The arrangements made by his predecessor do not suit him; and he lays them aside for other plans and agencies, which are no longer-lived than those which they supplant. Thus the church suffers, because nothing lasts long enough to do its work. The changes in the pastorate are not favorable to the success of measures which require time to develop their results.

4. Another evil incidental to the itinerant system is, that, under it, societies and congregations have less cohesive force than their own good demands.

Our ecclesiastical loyalty regards the whole Church, rather than the particular society to which we are attached. In towns and cities where there are several churches of our own denomination, they fear each other more than any other rivals. When the official brethren are considering whom they would like to have for their next pastor, the thought uppermost in their minds is, the necessity of securing a preacher at least equal in attractive power to their neighbors', that their congregations may not scatter. A Methodist church half a mile away, disturbs them more than half a dozen churches of any other name on the same square. If three or four Methodist churches are within easy reach of each other, the competition is almost too strong for good fellowship. If one of them secures a preacher of uncommon popularity, the others undergo a depleting process. Some members of the church, and many more of the congregation, drift about very much as the tide carries them. If those who are entitled to certificates of membership would take them, and, enlisting under their new leader, be good and faithful co-workers with him, the injury

which they inflict, and the loss which they sustain, would be less. But just in the degree in which they form the habit of wandering about from Sabbath to Sabbath, they are useless in the church to which they belong, and valueless everywhere else. They form no settled religious habits. They are available for no important work. Having no root anywhere they have no more chance for spiritual life and growth than a tree would have of living and growing if it were dug up and set out in a new place every three days.

This, we are persuaded, is one cause of the fearful amount of apostasy among us. If every one of our professed converts could be made to see clearly and feel deeply that he is in duty bound to be an active, steady worker in the society whose register bears his name--that in the house of God, whenever opened for worship-in the Sunday school, the class room and prayer meeting, there is a place which God and the church expect him to fill-that in the path of faithful, habitual obedience lie peace and safety, "glory, honor and immortality," and there alone-there would be fewer cases of religious failure among us. They who would prosper spiritually, must have a spiritual home. The Psalmist compares the ungodly to chaff blown about with every wind, while the true servant of God is as a tree whose leaf never withers, because it is "planted by the rivers of water." There are plants which float upon the surface of our ponds, and have no hold upon the soil. There is also a rootless Chinese plant which draws its sustenance from the air alone; but neither the native production nor the foreign curiosity ever becomes a tree.

Just in proportion to the number of those members who have no root, no feeling of local responsibility, a society lacks solid strength. Where they are numerous, the Church is unsteady and unreliable. Within the space of a few months, or even weeks, it will pass from a comparative solitude to a crowd, from apathy to enthusiasm, from the freezing point to fever heat, and back again. This is the sin which doth so easily beset the Methodist Churches in the cities. The plan of renting the pews, whatever may be its disadvantages in other directions, tends, in a degree, to remedy the evil. The recent lengthening of the term of pastoral service will also, we think, lessen it. But the best remedy for it would be a deep

and general conviction among the members of our churches. that their peace and safety, their usefulness, their duty to God, to themselves, to their families, demand that they have a church home, a deep and general conviction that the "living stones" of God's great temple are hewn, squared, laid in their place, and cemented there, not like the pebbles that lie in the bed of the mountain stream, one day whirling along amid the flood and the foam, and the next buried out of sight in the mud. In regard to the stability of the society and congregation, we admit that systems more local and less denominational in their spirit have some advantage over us.

5. The changes of our system sometimes come inopportunely.

God pours out his Spirit, and many are gathered into the fold. These regard with great respect and affection the minister who led them to Christ. If they fall into doubt and temptation they can tell him of their conflicts more readily than any one else. If they wander from the way, a word from him seems to have more weight than admonition from any other source. He is their counsellor, their guide, their spiritual father. A few months pass on, and they reach a critical period in their religious history. The sudden emotions which attended the first part of their experience have subsided, as they needs must. They are no longer swept onward by a tumultuous tide of new joys and hopes. They begin to find that there are currents that set against them, and that only by hard toiling they can make their way. The discovery discourages them. Their great enemy, once defeated, rallies his forces, and returns to the assault, hurling upon them fiery arrows of unbelief and fear. Suppose just at this point the pastor is removed and a new ones comes. They know him not. They cannot approach him as they were accustomed to approach the other. Weeks, perhaps months, elapse before some of them become acquainted with him: and meanwhile, like a little company of soldiers separated from the main body, they may be attacked and defeated by the watchful and crafty foe.

It may be replied that those who fall away at such times have felt no gracious influence; that they were converted to the man, and not to the truth. We are not so sure of that. God's modes of dealing with us take into the account every affection

of our hearts, and press into the service every element of our nature. That the convert should care nothing for him who has warned and entreated him, and finally through divine grace, led him to the fountain of life, would be unnatural. If love and brotherhood belong at all to the Christian character, surely here is a fitting place for their manifestation. And if the communion of saints is a good thing, cheering, strengthening, this peculiar bond of union must be powerful to hold men to their duty; and, humanly speaking, its rupture under the circumstances named must be to some dangerous, if not disastrous.

6. The brief pastorates of our system are liable to create an unwise love of novelty and excitement.

When a man of only average ability occupies the same pulpit for a long term of years, his ministry will not interest his hearers, nor wield the same power over them that it would were he a new man among them. He becomes a book which the congregation have read and reviewed-a "thrice-told tale." The tendency is to dullness and deadness. The itinerant system, on the contrary, by its periodic changes, rouses curiosity, and draws the people to the house God by the force of novelty. Hence there is danger in an opposite direction, the danger of creating a restless, feverish demand for novelty and excitement. The hearer may unconsciously fall into the habit of estimating the sermon in proportion to its power to please for the moment, and pay more attention to the messenger than to the good tidings which he proclaims. There is a possibility that the mind may be entertained while the heart is not reached; that we watch so closely for eloquence that we forget worship, and in the very temple of the Lord, become more thoughtful than prayerful, and critical rather than devout.

It seems clear that a congregation seeking a new pastor among scores of candidates, and hearing one stranger after another every sabbath, will run down in the spirituality of worship. And under the continual changes of the itinerancy, the same tendency is strong enough in some minds to justify our being on our guard against it. How our people prick up their ears at the sound of a new name! How ready some of them are to run from one church to another, when they hear the announcement of some unusual theme! They may not

examine their own hearts sufficiently to comprehend their motives; still it is not uncharitable for us to suspect that if they would sift the matter, they would find they are in quest of entertainment rather than spiritual profit, and that they are more curious than pious. The plea that they are in search of good sermons, that they wander anxiously about for the health of their souls, is disproved by the fact that they show otherwise no unusual regard for their spiritual interests; and that, as a rule, they are less attentive to the other means of grace, the prayer meeting and the class meeting-less reliable for any good word or work-than those who are always found in their places in the house of God.

Here, then, is one of the incidental evils of the itinerant system. In minds of a certain class it fosters a love of excitement, which wars directly with true devotion, and with that serious, prayerful hearing of the word which leads to growth in grace. To those who listen only to criticise, nothing that they hear seems to have divine weight. They are so absorbed in watching the style in which the preacher does his work, that in their case, at least, nothing is done. Their minds resemble those bad anchorage grounds which annoy the sailor, and endanger the ship, where the vessel drags all her anchors because the mud is too soft for them to take hold. The apostolic warning in regard to "itching ears" is not an unnecessary admonition.

7. Another evil incidental to the itinerancy is, that in regard to their degree of responsibility for the success of the gospel, the views of our people are not always as clear, nor their convictions as deep, as they should be.

Our system gives rise to an incessant measuring and weighing of ministers. The constant inquiry is-" How does he succeed?" The great demand is for men that "make things go." Within certain limits, the inquiry and the demand are right. The pastor of a church has a greater responsibility than any other man connected with it. He has more power for good or evil. His zeal may rouse that of his people, his holy life be their pattern, his faith, hope and charity teach them the same graces. His feebleness may weaken the Church, his coldness chill it, his follies rend it. At the same time the members of the Church have their obligations, numerous and weighty, which