ful only, but others of the countryside
also.' Jonathan Edwards called Thomas Boston 'that truly great divine.'
I am not such a judge of divinity as Jonathan Edwards was, but I always
call Boston to myself that truly great pastor. But my lazy and deceitful
heart says to me: No praise to Boston, for he lived and did his work in
the quiet Forest of Ettrick. True, so he did. Well, then, look at the
populous and busy town of Kidderminster. And let me keep continually
before my abashed conscience that hard-working corpse Richard Baxter.
Absolutely on the same page on which that dying man enters diseases and
medicines enough to fill a doctor's diary after a whole day in an
incurable hospital, that noble soul goes on to say: 'I preached before
the wars twice each Lord's Day, but after the wars but once, and once
every Thursday, besides occasional sermons. Every Thursday evening my
neighbours that were most desirous, and had opportunity, met at my house.
Two days every week my assistant and I myself took fourteen families
between us for private catechising and conference; he going through the
parish, and the town coming to me. I first heard them recite the words
of the Catechism, and then examined them about the sense, and lastly
urged them, with all possible engaging reason and vehemency, to
answerable affection and practice. If any of them were stalled through
ignorance or bashfulness, I forbore to press them, but made them hearers,
and turned all into instruction and exhortation. I spent about an hour
with a family, and admitted no others to be present, lest bashfulness
should make it burdensome, or any should talk of the weakness of others.'
And then he tells how his people's necessity made him practise physic
among them, till he would have twenty at his door at once. 'All these my
employments were but my recreations, and, as it were, the work of my
spare hours. For my writings were my chiefest daily labour. And blessed
be the God of mercies that brought me from the grave and gave me, after
wars and sickness, fourteen years' liberty in such sweet employment!' Let
all ministers who would sit at home over a pipe and a newspaper with a
quiet conscience keep Boston's _Memoirs_ and Baxter's _Reliquiae_ at
arm's-length.

3. Our young communicants' classes, and still more, those private
interviews that precede and finish up our young communicants' classes,
are by far our best opportunities as pastors. I remember Dr.