ered, and to be acquired) of putting
here and there into a quiet and friendly talk, best of all towards the
close, some sentence which sets out a great truth clearly, strongly, and
in a shape which may wake attention and help remembrance. That is the
kind of didactic work which I earnestly recommend.

*THE PASTORAL TEACHER'S TOPICS.

If possible, let no visit close without some such utterance, if only
one. It may be about the very foundations of all Christian truth; about
the certainty of Christian facts, the Resurrection above all; about the
Person of the Lord Jesus; about His finished work of Atonement; about
faith, and our acceptance as believers in Him, and our victory and
deliverance in temptation by the power of the Holy Ghost through faith;
about sin, its true nature, its guilt, its end. Or it may be about the
holy practicalities of Christian conduct; about the Lord's call to us to
break with everything that is against His will; about that deep,
far-reaching truth of the Gospel that, while the sinner is saved by
faith only, he is saved on purpose that he may serve, on purpose that he
may "walk and please God," [1 Thess. iv. 1.] and that he may do this
above all in "the duty that lies near," in the plain things of the home,
the business, the handicraft, the social circle. Or it may be about the
mighty claims of the Missionary cause, about the strangely forgotten
fact that the Christian Church exists mainly in order to evangelize the
non-Christian world. Or it may be about the principles and duties of
Church membership and Christian ordinances; the true nature of worship;
the sacred duty of united worship; the call to hallow the Lord's Day;
the precious benefits of the Sacraments of Christ, explained with the
holy reverence and equally holy simplicity and moderation of the
Catechism and the Articles.

NEED FOR SUCH WORK.

I need not fill my pages with numberless details. For my plea is that we
should rather hold ourselves ready for the natural rise of such or such
topics, and for a clear instructive word in season upon them, than that
we should propose a theme and deliver a discourse. But I cannot too
earnestly remind my Brethren how great _the need_ of instruction is
among many of our kindly neighbours, even among our neighbours who go
regularly to Church and are constantly to be seen at the Table of the
Lord.

CHRIST "A BLESSED ANGEL."

Let me take one pre-eminent subject as my illustration: the
foundatio