owns the field,
And does Himself what His true servants do._

I take up again the all-important subject of Pastoral Visitation, for
the same sort of informal and fragmentary treatment as that attempted in
the last chapter, and with the same feeling that the subject is
practically inexhaustible.

LET THE VISITOR BE A TEACHER, WATCHING FOR OPPORTUNITIES.

One object which the visitor will do well to keep steadily before him
is, to be a _teacher_ as he goes. I have said something of this already,
in recommending my Brethren to seize every good occasion for bringing in
the Bible, and words about the Bible. But the whole work of instruction
needs remembrance in our private intercourse with parishioners. Of
course we shall avoid with watchful and willing care the magisterial
manner, the too didactic tone. And only when obvious occasions present
themselves shall we even seem to _set ourselves_ to teach; as when we
are distinctly asked what is the meaning of this doctrine, or that
passage of Scripture, or that phrase of the Prayer Book, or how to meet
that difficulty of belief. Such moments do come; in some pastoral lives
they come frequently; and whether the inquiry is made in a friendly
spirit, with a real wish for information, or whether, as sometimes, it
is the question of a critic or a caviller, it is an opportunity for
which, in the Lord's grace, we should stand quite ready. To be sure we
may have sometimes to remember that sensible precept of the Rabbis,
"_Teach thy tongue to say, I do not know_"; the answer, often, of the
truest and deepest-sighted wisdom. But even when answering so,
instruction may be given, as we state the reasons for the answer. And we
shall at least have the opportunity while so doing to bring in that
other maxim, which we owe, I think, to the late Archbishop Whately,
"_Never allow what you do know to be disturbed by what you do not
know_"; a principle of very wide application.

But I am thinking now rather of the every-day sort of pastoral call and
conversation, in which perhaps the parishioner visited may be anything
but a caviller, and anything but even a questioner; much too ready,
perhaps, to take everything about Christian truths for granted, which,
alas, means too often to take them as understood, to take them as
believed, when there is little understanding of the matter, or even
thought about it. Now it is a great thing when a pastoral visitor has
the art (which needs to be consid