I take up again the all-important subject of Pastoral Visitation, for the same sort of informal and fragmentary treatment as that attempted in the last chapter, and with the same feeling that the subject is practically inexhaustible.
LET THE VISITOR BE A TEACHER, WATCHING FOR OPPORTUNITIES.
One object which the visitor will do well to keep steadily before him is, to be a teacher as he goes. I have said something of this already, in recommending my Brethren to seize every good occasion for bringing in the Bible, and words about the Bible. But the whole work of instruction needs remembrance in our private intercourse with parishioners. Of course we shall avoid with watchful and willing care the magisterial manner, the too didactic tone. And only when obvious occasions present themselves shall we even seem to set ourselves to teach; as when we are distinctly asked what is the meaning of this doctrine, or that passage of Scripture, or that phrase of the Prayer Book, or how to meet that difficulty of belief. Such moments do come; in some pastoral lives they come frequently; and whether the inquiry is made in a friendly spirit, with a real wish for information, or whether, as sometimes, it is the question of a critic or a caviller, it is an opportunity for which, in the Lord's grace, we should stand quite ready. To be sure we may have sometimes to remember that sensible precept of the Rabbis, "Teach thy tongue to say, I do not know"; the answer, often, of the truest and deepest-sighted wisdom. But even when answering so, instruction may be given, as we state the reasons for the answer. And we shall at least have the opportunity while so doing to bring in that other maxim, which we owe, I think, to the late Archbishop Whately, "Never allow what you do know to be disturbed by what you do not know"; a principle of very wide application.
But I am thinking now rather of the every-day sort of pastoral call and conversation, in which perhaps the parishioner visited may be anything but a caviller, and anything but even a questioner; much too ready, perhaps, to take everything about Christian truths for granted, which, alas, means too often to take them as understood, to take them as believed, when there is little understanding of the matter, or even thought about it. Now it is a great thing when a pastoral visitor has the art (which needs to be considered, and to be acquired) of putting here and there into a quiet and friendly talk, best of all towards the close, some sentence which sets out a great truth clearly, strongly, and in a shape which may wake attention and help remembrance. That is the kind of didactic work which I earnestly recommend.
*THE PASTORAL TEACHER'S TOPICS.
If possible, let no visit close without some such utterance, if only one. It may be about the very foundations of all Christian truth; about the certainty of Christian facts, the Resurrection above all; about the Person of the Lord Jesus; about His finished work of Atonement; about faith, and our acceptance as believers in Him, and our victory and deliverance in temptation by the power of the Holy Ghost through faith; about sin, its true nature, its guilt, its end. Or it may be about the holy practicalities of Christian conduct; about the Lord's call to us to break with everything that is against His will; about that deep, far-reaching truth of the Gospel that, while the sinner is saved by faith only, he is saved on purpose that he may serve, on purpose that he may walk and please God," [1 Thess. iv. 1.] and that he may do this above all in "the duty that lies near," in the plain things of the home, the business, the handicraft, the social circle. Or it may be about the mighty claims of the Missionary cause, about the strangely forgotten fact that the Christian Church exists mainly in order to evangelize the non-Christian world. Or it may be about the principles and duties of Church membership and Christian ordinances; the true nature of worship; the sacred duty of united worship; the call to hallow the Lord's Day; the precious benefits of the Sacraments of Christ, explained with the holy reverence and equally holy simplicity and moderation of the Catechism and the Articles.
NEED FOR SUCH WORK.
I need not fill my pages with numberless details. For my plea is that we should rather hold ourselves ready for the natural rise of such or such topics, and for a clear instructive word in season upon them, than that we should propose a theme and deliver a discourse. But I cannot too earnestly remind my Brethren how great the need of instruction is among many of our kindly neighbours, even among our neighbours who go regularly to Church and are constantly to be seen at the Table of the Lord.
CHRIST "A BLESSED ANGEL."