These seasons of affliction furnish a pastor the surest access to the homes and hearts of his flock; and rightly improved they greatly add, not only to his pastoral usefulness, but also to his personal hold on the affection and confidence of the families of his charge. Neglect of the sick and sorrowing on the part of a pastor, or a heartless, perfunctory manner in performing his duties to them, violates the most sacred obligations, and is justly felt alike by the religious and the irreligious as a reproach to him: it must in the end destroy the power of his work in the pulpit. He should use great care, therefore, to keep himself informed as to the sick and afflicted, to visit them promptly and frequently, and to come to their homes, in the spirit of his Master, with the tender, earnest sympathy of a Christian friend, and with the rich resources for Christian help and consolation with which he is entrusted by God as a minister of the Gospel. +SECTION VIII.+ REVIVALS OF RELIGION. The history of Christianity is a history of revivals by which the work of redemption has been advanced among men; there is all reason to suppose that it will be so to the end. Men dream of the Gospel advancing with even, steady pace to its triumph, without the vicissitudes of decline and revival but the thought finds ground neither in the Bible nor in church history. The great revivals in the past have been epochs in which the Christian world has risen to clearer apprehensions of Divine truth and a higher elevation of Christian life. They have constituted the Divine process by which the Gospel has burst through the errors and sins of men and has found a more complete development in the consciousness and life of the churches of Christ. No careful student of church history will undervalue revivals of religion. By it no means follows that a pastor is to seek success only, or chiefly, in these special manifestations of spiritual power. For a revival ordinarily supposes a previous declension, which it was the design of the ministry to prevent; for they are given "for the perfecting of the saints, for the edifying of the body of Christ" (Eph. iv. 12). Fidelity and wisdom in the pastor may keep the spiritual forces in a church so inspired and organized that its life will not decline, but develop and strengthen, and its condition consequently be one of continual growth and progress. Such is the fact in Mr. Spurgeon's church. As one mingles in its assemblies and observes its manifold and thoroughly organized activities, the preaching and devotion, the spirit and life, resemble what is seen in a powerful revival of religion. The Holy Spirit is continually present, and there is no cessation in the work of conversion. Toward this ideal a true pastor will be always working; and where it is attained a revival will mean, not a recovery from declension, but an acceleration in spiritual advancement and a mightier display of the Spirit's power in the conversion of men.