ate, and the Parish, with its demands for
pastoral labour, and particularly for _Visitation_. Well do I know how
immense the differences are between place and place in this same matter
of visitation; how the parish of a few hundreds, or even of two or
three thousand, is one thing, and the parish of ten, or eighteen, or
twenty thousand is another. I know that there are parishes, in London
for example, where all the efforts of a staff of devoted Clergy seem to
fail to do more than touch the edges of the work of domestic visitation.
Yet surely even in such cases that work must not, and will not, be quite
given up as hopeless. A little, where only a little is possible, is
vastly better than none; even if it be only the visitation of the sick,
and of those who immediately surround them, and with whom the sick-visit
gives the Clergyman an opportunity. Such efforts, where nothing more of
the kind is possible, if only done in an unmistakable spirit of love and
self-sacrifice, must carry good to the people. And do not forget that
they must, quite as necessarily, carry good to the Clergyman. For they
are a means, for which nothing else can be quite the substitute, of
bringing him into contact with the people's thoughts and lives in ways
which will tell usefully (as we have seen in an earlier page) upon his
whole ministry, particularly upon his work in the pulpit, and at the
mission-room desk, and in the open air.

But, to be as practical as possible, I will assume that the Curacy is of
a more normal kind than that just supposed. The parish, whether in
country or in town, is not so large as to make visitation from house to
house impossible. And the Curate has had his work of this kind assigned
him, and is setting out upon it. A good portion of every day (though I
hope it is possible to give a part of one day each week to some sort of
wisely managed holiday) is devoted to "the district"; now for a steady
round of calls, door by door; now, in an irregularity not without
method, for visits to special cases of sickness, or sorrow, or other
need.

PREPARE FOR VISITATION WITH PRAYER.

What shall be my first suggestion? It shall point to the Throne of
Grace. Preface the pastoral round with special secret prayer. Sermons
are usually (I wish it were always so now) prefaced with prayer in the
pulpit that the heavenly blessing may rest upon the ordinance. Is it
less fitting, less necessary, to prepare for the afternoon's or
evening's visi