name will stand among the fairest entered upon their pages. In England scarcely a voice may be found to pay homage to his modest worth; but I should be unfaithful to friendship and to Christianity, if at this distance from the home where I knew him, and the grave where he sleeps, I did not honor the memory of Thomas Thrush.

E. S. G.

THE MINISTRY AT LARGE.

THIS institution, we fear, does not receive the attention which it deserves. The interest awakened by its commencement might have been expected to decline, but it ought not to enjoy a less cordial or efficient support than when its early efforts were the subject of general remark. With those who observe its operations and mark its modest but industrious agency among the poorer classes of our citizens we do not believe that there is a less hearty disposition to sustain and encourage its ministers, than was shown in the days when Dr. Tuckerman made the city respond to his appeals. But the attraction of novelty having ceased, people do not bestow the attention that is necessary to obtain a knowledge of the beneficent work which is done almost at their very doors.

A writer in the last number of the Christian Examiner remarks, that "the Ministry at large, according to the idea of Dr. Tuckerman, is nearly abandoned in this country,' "the institution as at first established having so changed its character, that it can scarcely be said to exist." While we admit that there is foundation for this language in the present circumstances of the Ministry, we think the statement much too strong. The change which is noticed is a real and an important change, giving to some extent a new character to the relations which this Ministry holds to the community; but it is not so great as to prevent the restoration, or rather the incorporation of its original design with its present action, from being one of the easiest things imaginable. We have seen with regret that the preachers at the Free Chapels have become ministers of regular congregations, which must occupy certainly the greater part of their time and strength. But this was inevitable,

after the erection of large and permanent Chapels-a measure, of which Dr. Tuckerman approved. Time, we think, has shown that here the friends of the Ministry at large committed a mistake,—a mistake which may have resulted in good, but in good of a different kind from that which they contemplated, and somewhat adverse to it, so far at least as the attention of both the ministers and the Fraternity of Churches by which they were appointed have been drawn off from the original purpose. This purpose cannot be better exhibited in a single phrase than by the name which our English friends have given to their Ministries of a similar character-The Domestic Mission; and it cannot be better described than in the words of the writer in the Examiner to whom we have referred.

"It is primarily a Ministry of Visitation—a system of active search into the regions of vice and poverty, a thorough beating up of the haunts of the wretched, a pursuing and finding them in their own homes, and almost by violence redeeming them into the kingdom of God. Only in quite a subordinate sense is it a preaching ministry. It addresses itself to those chiefly, who cannot go out to churches or chapels, and whose gospel must be preached to them, if they are ever to hear it, by their own bedsides, in their loneliness and want."

Such doubtless should be the character of the Ministry at large. That it has in some measure lost this character must be ascribed to causes, which after the first step of building the chapels now in use were beyond the control of those who are engaged or interested in this Ministry. Accommodation was provided for congrega tions of nearly the usual size, the regular services of the Lord's day were established, Sunday schools were gathered in connexion with the Chapels, very soon an audience of constant hearers occupied the seats, between whom and the minister grew up all the relations that exist between the pastors and members of our older churches, the Christian ordinances were celebrated, the table of the Lord was spread beneath the altar of prayer, Bible classes and religious meetings in the course of the week for the members of these congregations were instituted, and he who began his work as a Domestic Missionary now found himself surrounded with all the duties and engagements of the regular ministry. Such a result, though it appears not to have been foreseen, was inevitable upon

the resolution to invite the poor to fill edifices erected for their use, where every circumstance except the single fact, that the minister's salary was not paid by the worshippers, tended to produce a state of things similar to what exists in the other religious societies of the city. Excepting in the one circumstance, that the Ministers at large draw their support (so far as this is derived from their ministry) from the treasury of an institution to which the members of their own congregations do not contribute, instead of receiving it from those whom they instruct, these ministers stand in the same relations and fill the same offices with the other clergymen of the place. But what then? Shall we say that the Ministry at large is a failure or that it does not accomplish much good? Certainly not. But that we witness a great deviation from the original plan, and though we cannot say with the Christian Examiner that this plan is "nearly abandoned," yet that it is not a ministry at large which the churches united in the Fraternity now support. We doubt not that the incumbents of this ministry visit other families than those which attend upon their public services; but it is impossible that they should do this to any considerable extent, laden as they are with all the duties which, it was said when they entered on the work, pressed so heavily upon the settled clergymen of the city as to render the appointment of another class of laborers indispensable. Undoubtedly, also, constant changes take place in the constitution of the audiences whom they address; but such changes are continually going in the older societies, to an extent of which we had no conception till a close acquaintance convinced us of the fact.

What now can be done? Shall the congregations which have been collected within the Chapels be dissolved, and the Chapels be closed? We should deprecate any such proposal. Let the good which is in operation continue. Let it awaken our sympathy, our thanks, and our prayers. What is needed is simply an enlargement of the moral force which is now engaged in the elevation of the poor and vicious by means of Christian influences. Either of two methods might be adopted for this end. The plan as now conducted might be pursued with indefinite augmentation. Let more ministers be employed in collecting other congregations, and as each shall secure a successful commencement, let a chapel be

built for his use and that of the society which he shall draw within its walls-composed of those who previously to his visiting them had paid no regard to religious institutions. In this way there would be a continual uplifting of portions of the mass of neglected and degraded humanity, which is always tending to concentrate itself within a city, into the light and hope of a purer atmosphere where their souls should ever afterwards breathe a divine life. This, we conceive, would be the perfection of that system of Christian benevolence which it was Dr. Tuckerman's aim to establish upon durable principles in our community. The Minister who should undertake the work, the need and the benefits of which he so earnestly presented both in conversation and in writing, would first go to the abodes of pauperism and the coverts of vice, whence he would bring the unhappy inmates to a building provided by the liberality of their more prosperous neighbours, where the influences of his intercourse with them "in garret, cellar, alley, and lane " would be deepened by the associations of a consecrated spot and the sympathies of fellow-worshippers; and when he had thus obtained a congregation to whose spiritual improvement he might devote himself, another labourer would take up the function which he would have laid aside and go forth to redeem another company from the pollution of sin and the miseries of want. What a blessed work would thus be carried on, as the rich should continually stretch forth a helping hand to the poor, and the poor should continually emerge from their degradation into the enjoyment of the privileges which the rich possess, and the city should maintain within its own activity the means of its perpetual regeneration.

But a plan so thorough as this, and involving such a continual increase of pecuniary contribution, we dare not hope to see brought into operation in our day. We can but trust that the other method to which we have adverted may be adopted and vigorously pursued. This would require only the appointment of other Ministers in addition to those who now have the charge of the Chapels, whose office it should be to visit rather than to preach, or in other words, who should bring back the Ministry for the poor to its original character. We would have them labor in connexion with the present Ministers, occasionally aiding or wholly relieving them in their pulpit services, and as cases should arise where persons should

wish to connect themselves with the Chapels, affording to such persons all needful facilities. But these new laborers should not enter the field with the expectation of gathering new societies, nor should the Fraternity, at present at least, contemplate the erection of any more chapels. They should rather return to the course adopted at the beginning of this enterprise and hire rooms in which public worship might be conducted, for a certain period in this neighborhood, and then in that, so changing the location from time to time as to permit the greatest diffusion of religious instruction at an inconsiderable expense; or, what we should be inclined to encourage in preference even to this arrangement, holding meetings at the houses which they visited, where as many of of the neighbors as could be accommodated might be invited to attend; or, what seems to us to promise the most good, uniting such meetings in private apartments on week evenings or on the Lord's day with one public service in a hired room on Sunday evening. But the chief business of these ministers should be to seek out the proper objects of this charity, and to bear to them at their homes the influences of redemption and peace. By such an enlargement of their present modes of operation the Fraternity of Churches would accomplish even more than was proposed by the founders of the Ministry at large; since they would support two Chapels filled with congregations of as permanent a character as any in the city, though drawn from different conditions of life from those which supply the materials for our other societies, and yet would sustain a domestic ministration as extensive and effectual as was ever imagined by the most sanguine advocate of this form of Christian philanthropy.

Much might be said, if it were necessary, upon the propriety and importance of extending our present system of religious instruction for those classes of the community which lie without the usual walks of clerical duty. We will advert to only one consideration to which every day is giving additional force. The growth of this city is making the need of a special ministry for the unknown and the irreligious more and more manifest. The number of such persons is increasing even faster, probably, than that of the prudent or the church-going part of the population, for after a city reaches a certain point in its growth, the attractions to the vicious and the