gement. Of course there are sorrowful and heart-trying visits to
the sick. One such, to poor old T.H., I have described. And we might see
the much older A.C., a woman of near ninety years, who seems
impenetrable to the true light, though grateful and kindly towards the
visitor; and B.F., older still, ninety-six, so vain of her age that it
is difficult to get her off the beloved theme; and J.G., a steady,
self-righteous man; and C.W., clever, and disposed to scoff; and T.B.,
known to be leading a very evil life, civil, but immovable.

RESOLVE TO BE A VISITOR.

The work is very various, very interesting, and full of the call for
"long patience," while full, too, of blessed encouragements and
surprises. But "the time would fail me." Ah, let me not close without
saying to my younger Brother how deeply humbling to me are the memories
of those pastoral days, and humbling above all as I look back and wish
now, in vain for ever, that I had _visited more_, among both the sick
and the whole. "Enter not into judgment with Thy servant, O Lord"; "To
Thee only it appertaineth to forgive sins."

My dear younger Brother, resolve that by the grace of God you will be a
visitor, whatever else you are, or are not. And be a visitor who
respects his neighbours, who feels with them, whose heart lives with
them, and who on the other hand watches over his call to instruct them,
to clear up and deepen their thoughts of self, and God, and life, and
death, and salvation, and duty, and eternity.

A CONVERSION AT EIGHTY-SIX.

"Go, labour on; spend and be spent." There is a sure reward, seen or not
seen as yet; and often the most unlikely quarter shall prove the quarter
of blessing, and the last shall be first. One recollection, drawn out
of my earliest childhood, shall close this wandering talk. It is of dear
old Mrs E., then aged quite eighty-six. She must have been born under
the rule of King George the Second. A farmer's widow, she had been
absolutely and perfectly respectable all her life, and was entirely
satisfied with her state and her prospects for the next world. My dear
Father, and his devoted Curate of those days, the Rev. W.D., not seldom
saw her, but without leaving any apparent impression on her conscience.
At last that conscience woke. The Curate read a chapter, in her hearing,
to her pious invalid daughter, who had sought her mother's conversion
for years in prayer, and had _lived_ true Christianity all the while in
her mother's