These visits also enable him to meet many whom the pulpit could never reach. In every community there are the aged, requiring the supports of religion in their declining life; the sick and sorrowing, craving the words of Christian consolation and hope; and the careless, needing the kindly invitation and warning. The pastor is God's commissioned messenger to such, and in these personal interviews he may adapt instruction, encouragement, comfort, and admonition to each. Finally, pastoral visitation is a chief means of blessing and cementing the pastoral relation. Of late years pastorates have become of short duration. Hardly is a minister settled and fairly at work before the question of a change begins to be agitated. May not the decline of pastoral visitation, so faithfully done by many of our fathers in the ministry, be in part an explanation of this? The pastor's personal religious life is not brought into contact with his people; as the result, their religious confidence is not won, and his ministry is not in sympathy with their needs. The only bond between them is the pulpit; and when the novelty of his voice and manner and modes of thought has passed away, they are tired of him and seek a change. Besides, when the pastor is not faithful to the souls of his people in private, they instinctively feel that he is not sincere--at least, not thoroughly in earnest--in his public preaching. On the Lord's Day he comes before them proclaiming the most solemn truths and pressing these truths with the strongest urgency, but in the week, he meets them and has no words of kindly invitation and warning. He solemnly warns the impenitent from the pulpit of their imminent peril of everlasting burnings but meets them in their homes or on the street, perhaps year after year, without one word expressive of his interest for their eternal welfare. Such inconsistency makes religious confidence impossible, and there is no adequate bond to bind pastor and people together. But the relation of pastor and people, as God ordained it, is most sacred and enduring. Charged with the care of souls, he is to move among his flock as their spiritual guide and friend. The confessional, terrible as its power for evil is, was after all in its origin only a perversion of the pastoral institution, based on a real and universal need--the longing of troubled souls for guidance, help in getting back to God. This need the pastor must meet as the confidential counsellor and helper of the individual members of his flock; and if true to this sacred trust, his resources of power are ever increasing, and new bonds of sympathy hold him more firmly year by year in the hearts of his church. IV. VISITATION OF THE SICK.