superintendence and direction of these auxiliary labourers; and against delegating to them their own peculiar functions and duties, as the commissioned interpreters of Scripture, as the Lord’s remembrancers for his people, and as the appointed guides of their devotion. There is a special promise of blessing annexed to ministerial service; and the sense of that specialty ought not to be effaced from the minds of our flocks, by the permitted intrusion of laymen, however pious and zealous, into that which belongs to our own peculiar office. If this be not attended to, you must expect that tares will spring up in the wheat, and that your visiting societies will become so many nurseries of schism.” {185} The Bishop of Chester, after giving a striking description of the transforming power of Divine grace, thus continues—“And can these things be? ‘O Lord God thou knowest.’ Earnestness, disinterestedness, simplicity, godly sincerity, patience in teaching, watchfulness in seizing the favourable moment for counsel, are known to overcome even that which seems most hopeless; the effects of natural corruption, inflamed by evil example, and strengthened by habits of wilful disobedience. “It will be asked, however, ‘Who is sufficient,’ physically ‘sufficient for these things? Certainly in our larger parishes it is not possible for the strength or activity of the Clergy alone to provide for such individual instruction. But, there is a resource at hand: when the population is moderate, nothing is wanting but resolution and contrivance; and in the case of a denser population, the bane and the antidote, the evil and the remedy are found together. The same population, which presses so heavily, affords also that variety of ranks and degree of superior education, that many fellow-workers may assist the minister, and diminish his labours. In this manner the Apostles were enabled to execute the manifold concerns which lay upon them.”—“They have left us an example. Let the minister of a populous district, using careful discrimination of character, select such as ‘are worthy,’ and of ‘good report,’ and assign them their several employments under his direction: they may lessen his own labour by visiting and examining the schools, by reading and praying with the infirm and aged, by consoling the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and pursuing the many nameless ways by which it is in the power of one Christian to benefit and relieve another. Such charity, even more than any other charity, is useful to the giver as well as to the receiver: it occupies minds, which, for want of engagement, might otherwise prey upon themselves: and it occupies them in a way which better fits them for eternity: in religion, as in worldly matters, we often learn our best lessons by teaching. What image more exemplifying the reality of pastoral care, what more truly Christian picture can be presented to our contemplation, than that of a