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NOTE.-Mr. Stubbins expects to sail from Calcutta early in December therefore requests his friends not to write to him in India after the present date.

ON THE CONNEXION BETWEEN PERSONAL RELIGION AND MINISTERIAL USEFULNESS.

No earthly office is invested with such importance as the Christian Ministry. The discharge of its duties is closely connected with the wellbeing of man, not only during his state of probation, but for eternal ages. It is an ordinance of divine appointment, the great ends of which are the vindication of the authority of God, the promotion of the claims of Christ, and the salvation of souls from eternal death. The discharge of the duties connected with other avocations has reference more especially to the advancement of mans' secular interests, or, at best, to his intellectual and moral progress; but by the true Christian minister, man is viewed not only in respect of the relations he sustains to his fellow man, but also with reference to those higher relations which he sustains or ought to sustain to God through Christ. He is contemplated as a depraved and guilty, yet responsible and immortal being, who can only be brought back to God, renewed in the spirit of his mind, and prepared for eternal blessedness by the cordial reception of the truth as it is in Jesus. It is, in short, the great design of the Christian ministry, as an instrumentality appointed by God, to lead men to those heaven-devised means by the use of which (in dependence on the aid of the Spirit of grace) they shall be renewed, sanctified and saved.

The most cursory reader must see that it is of the highest importance, in order to the accomplishment of these ends, that the Christian ministry should be rendered as efficient as possible-qualified in every respect to discharge the duties with which it is intrusted. We cannot too strenuously insist on the fitness of the instrumentality employed, under God, to achieve results so overwhelmingly momentous.

In this brief paper we shall endeavour to show the importance of the possession of that primary qualification-personal religion-without which no one has any warrant at all to take on himself the sacred functions; and we would further maintain that, in proportion as personal religionis experienced and enjoyed, so, on the whole, will be the degree of true success which will attend the prosecution of the ministerial work. We do not overlook the fact that instances have occurred in which persons

have entered upon the work of the Christian ministry who have been entirely devoid of this essential qualification. There have been many, in every age of the church, who, though destitute of a saving acquaintance with revealed truth, have ventured to assume this most responsible of offices. They have spoken that which they have not known; they have testified of that which they have not seen. Even though God may have condescended to bless the truth proclaimed by their unhallowed lips to the good of men, yet on themselves must rest the awful responsibility for intruding into a sphere for the prosecution of the duties of which they were in the highest degree unqualified. We are fully warranted in maintaining that it is not a mock ministry like this which God has promised to own and bless. All his true ministers have been spiritually prepared for their work by personal conversion and renewal. Them especially God has made victorious over error and sin, and to them he has shown with peculiar significance, that they are the approved heralds of his salvation.

We will now view the minister under several aspects of his life and work, in order to show the bearing of personal religion on the right performance of his appointed duties.

We ask the reader to keep, for a moment, the minister and pastor out of sight, and to consider him as a man and a Christian. Regarding him only in this light, it must be admitted that, whatever may be the nature of the duties he is called to discharge in his relations to God or man, those duties will be likely to be the more efficiently performed in proportion as he is influenced and affected by the maintenance of a pious and devoted spirit. No duty can be named which personal religion will not greatly assist us in prosecuting aright, if we be only mentally qualified to undertake it. Whatever other qualifications may be insisted on as necessary for usefulness, the Christian ought ever to live and to act, under the impression that personal religion is "the one thing needful," and that in proportion to its cultivation so he will become more meet for the Master's use. The claims of personal piety cannot, therefore, be too strongly enforced upon the attention of every member of the church of God. It is the vital force which, through God, is absolutely necessary to give to the church conquering power over ignorance and sin. To all the Christian priesthood, to ministers, deacons, nay even to the most obscure members, God, under the new dispensation, says: ye holy." The minister, therefore, if we only view him simply as a member of "the body of the Church" cannot free himself from this obligation.

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Let us now consider him as a student of revealed truth. That truth must be investigated in its various bearings and relations, not only to increase his own acquaintance therewith, and to promote the work of heavenly grace in his own soul, but he is a student for the special behoof of others. The church and congregation to which he ministers, and the society with which he mingles, must enjoy the benefits of his investigations and inquiries. The treasures which he accumulates must be laid at their feet that they may be allured into the kingdom of light and love. The possession of personal piety must be admitted to be of the first importance in the prosecution of his intellectual pursuits. It will give him an ardent love for the truth. It will be one of the means of maintaining the equable balance of his mental and moral powers, and of preserving him from the

dominant influence of evil principles and baneful prejudices. It will prompt him to pursue his studies with childlike simplicity, and dependence on God, and induce him in seasons of perplexity and doubt, when his intellectual difficulties cannot be removed, still to live and walk by faith in the Son of God, ever clinging to those essential verities which are clearly and distinctly revealed. He will be led further, to consecrate his renewed faculties, and all the stores of knowledge he accumulates to the good of the Church. As he experiences the influence and power of true religion, so will he be divested of intellectual pride, and, instead of being vainly puffed up, he will regard himself as a Steward of the manifold mysteries of God," of whom it is required "that he be found faithful." We would urge those who have entered or are about to enter upon the ministerial work ever to live under the impression that there is a close connexion between the maintenance of a devotional spirit and the right acquisition and use of scriptural knowledge.

Personal religion is essential to the right prosecution of the work of the preacher. This may be regarded, in fact, as the qualification, without which no person is fitted to proclaim publicly to others "the unsearchable riches of Christ." An individual may be endowed with extraordinary mental powers; he may have received a severe intellectual training; he may have become extensively acquainted with the original scriptures; he may be able to avail himself of the stores of science and philosophy; he may possess the most fascinating address; he may employ the choicest diction to set forth the truth with attractiveness; he may be favoured to a remarkable degree with the liberty of utterance; and other qualifications besides these may meet in him in no ordinary measure; but if he do not live and act under the ever abiding influence of love to Christ and love to the souls of men he may be not unaptly compared to "the sounding brass and the tinkling cymbal." The main spring of right spiritual action is wanting where true piety does not exist in the preacher's heart. His zeal, at best, is connected with mere officialism, and is not heaven enkindled. We have only to take a retrospect of the lives of the most devoted preachers of the truth to discover how beneficial an influence the possession of a large measure of personal religion is adapted to exist on the mind of the preacher. It invests all the great facts of the divine Word with absorbing interest. It impresses the man with the fact that he is dealing, in his ministry, with vital truths and solemn realities. It produces and cherishes within him the impression that he is called to instruct, entreat and persuade immortal beings, each of whom is accountable before God for the use of the privileges with which he is favoured. It sustains in his mind such elevating, yet soul subduing, views of "the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord," that he becomes like "one who hath fire in his bones." He cannot but speak the things which he hath seen and heard. It impresses him with right views of his personal responsibility, and induces him continually to act under their constraining influence. It prompts him to place saving truth before the attention of his hearers with the greatest earnestness and the deepest affection, and tends to preserve him from that intellectual trifling in the pulpit on which God looks down with disapprobation. Personal religion leads the preacher to prosecute his work with the deepest humility and conscious insufficiency, whils the is sustained and encouraged by the thought that "his sufficiency

is of God." These are only a very few of the benefits resulting to the preacher from the possession and maintenance of vital godliness.

Personal piety is of the highest importance to the minister as one "who watches for souls." There is no divine authority for the institution of auricular confession as adopted by the priesthood of the church of Rome and by many of the Anglican clergy, whose spiritual arrogance has lately exposed them to national irony and scorn. The true Christian minister does not, therefore, need to be trained in those systems of casuistry which shall fit him to become a "lord over God's heritage." There are, however, important duties devolving upon him as a spiritual instructor, guide and comforter, for the prosecution of which he cannot be too highly qualified. To discharge them aright considerable acquaintance with human character is necessary. He ought to be able to discover and reveal the secret lurking places of error and prejudice. He is called upon boldly to attack or assiduously to undermine those strongholds of corruption and sin, in the hearts of men, without the prostration of which the truth cannot enter. He ought to be in some measure qualified to remove those doubts and perplexities, which (whatever be their cause) often fill the minds of the children of God with apprehension and give rise to severe conflicts. When afflicting and bereaving providences come, he is especially summoned "to bind-up the broken-hearted," to wipe away the tears of the sorrowing, or to minister to the spiritual wants of the dying. He has to deal with all the phases and aspects of unbelief; to give additional light to the convinced and awakened; to establish and confirm the newly converted in the faith of Christ; to allay the tempest of spiritual distress; and to give to all who demand his spiritual care, appropriate reproof, counsel and guidance. Rightly to fulfil these duties it must be admitted that much mental sagacity is needed, together with a deep and extensive acquaintance with Gospel truth, and with the method of wisely applying it as God's medium for weak or sickly souls. But in all these various departments of pastoral labour, personal religion must be regarded as the essential qualification for usefulness. It will assist the man of God in his endeavours to realise the true spiritual position of those who require his aid. It will prompt him, by wisdom and holy diligence, to labour for the good of those whose peculiar cases demand his especial care. It will assimilate him in spirit and temper to the condescending Saviour, who has "compassion on the ignorant and them that are out of the way." It will teach him not to despise even "the little ones," for whom Christ died. It will so impel him to the exercise of the hghest philanthropy that he will regard it as no burden or task, but a labour of love to be employed as a shepherd and bishop of souls. It is beyond contradiction that, in proportion as the minister and pastor cares for his own soul by assiduous attention to the means of preserving and promoting his spiritual health, so will he be prompted by his own personal experiences, and by the strength of his inward impulses to feed the flock of God.

We might, if our space permitted, pursue our subject much further by directing the reader to consider the beneficial influence which a high degree of personal piety is like to exert upon the minister and pastor in every department of relative and social life; or as a prominent member of the particular denomination of Christians with which he is identified; or as one who occupies a local position of no ordinary importance, and who