How serviceable may ministers be to one another, and to all the churches, in their several associations. Indeed, it is a pity that there should ever be the least occasional "meeting of ministers,” without some useful thing proposed in it.

Nero took it very ill that Vespasian slept at his music: It is very much to be wished that the sin of sleeping at sermons were more guarded against and reproved in your sleepy hearers; if indeed it is proper to call those hearers who miserably lose the good of your ministry, and perhaps the good which you might have particularly designed for them. Will no vinegar help against the narcotics that satan has given to your poor Eutychuses? or cannot you bring that civility into fashion among your hearers, to wake one another?

Finally, After all the generous essays and labours to do good that may fill your lives, your people will probably treat you with ingratitude. Your salaries will be meaner than those at Geneva. They will neglect you; they will oppress you; they will withhold from you what they have engaged, and you have expected. You have now one more opportunity to do good, and so to glorify your Saviour. Your patience, Ó ye tried servants of God, your patience will do it wonderfully! To "bear evil" is to "do good." The more patient you are under ill usage, the more you exhibit a glorious Christ to your people, in your conformity to your adorable Saviour. The more conformed you are to him, the more prepared you are, perhaps, for some amendment of your condition in this world, most certainly for the rewards of the heavenly world, when you shall appear before the Lord, who says, I know thy works and charity, and service, and faith, and thy patience."

It was said of Ignatius, "that he carried Christ about with him in his heart:" and this I will say, if to represent a glorious Christ to the view; the love and the admiration of all people be the grand intention of your life; if you are desirous to be a star to lead men to Christ; if you are exquisitely studious, that

the holiness and yet the gentleness of a glorious Christ may shine in your conversation; if in your public discourses you do with rapture bring in the mention of a glorious Christ in every paragraph, and on every occasion where he is to be spoken of; and if in your private conversation you contrive to insinuate something of his glories and praises, wherever it may be decently introduced; finally, if when you find that a glorious Christ is the more considered and acknowledged by your means, it fills you with "joy unspeakable and full of glory," and you exclaim, "Lord, this is my desired happiness!" Truly, you then live to good purpose, you "do good" emphatically!

There was a worthy minister, whom the great Cranmer designed for preferment,and he gave this reason of his design--"He seeks nothing, he longs for nothing, he dreams about nothing, but Jesus Christ."* Verily, such "men of Christ" are "men of God;" they are the favourites of Heaven, and shall be favoured with opportunites to do good above any men in the world: they are the men whom the King of heaven will delight to honour, and they are the Gaons of christianity.

If I reserve one thing to be mentioned after finally, it is because I doubt whether it ought to be mentioned at all. In some Reformed Churches they do not permit a minister of the gospel to practice as physician, because either of these callings is generally sufficient to employ him who faithfully follows it: but, the priests of old, who preserved in the archives of their temples the records of the cures which had been thankfully acknowledged there, communicated from thence directions for cures in similar cases among their neighbours. Nor has it been uncommon in later-ages for clergymen to be physicians. Not only such monks as Aegidius Atheniensis and Constantius Afer, but bishops, as Bochelt and Albicus, have appeared in that character. Thus Mr. Herbert advises that his "country minister," (or at least his wife) should be a kind of physician to the flock; and we

* Nihil appetit, nihil ardet, nihil somniat, nisi Jesum Christum.

have known many a country minister prove a great blessing to his flock by being such. If a minister attempt this, let him always make it a means of doing spiritual good to his people. It is an angelical conjunction, when the ministers of Christ, who do his pleasure, become also physicians and Raphaels to their people. In a more populous town, however, you will probably choose rather to procure some religious and accomplished physician to settle in your neighbourhood, and make medical studies only your recreation; yet with a design to communicate to your Luke whatever you meet with worth his notice, and at times unite your counsels with him for the good of his patients. Thus you may save the lives of many persons, who themselves may know nothing of your care for them.

THE DUTIES OF SCHOOL-MASTERS.

The

FROM the tribe of Levi, let us proceed with our proposals to the tribe of Simeon; from which there has been a frequent ascent to the former. SCHOOL-MASTER has many opportunities of doing good. God make him sensible of his obligations! We read, that "the little ones have their angels." It is hard work to keep a school; but it is God's work, and it may be so managed as to be like the work of angels: the tutors of the children may be like their "tutelar angels." Melchior Adams properly styled it "An office most laborious, yet to God most pleasing."*

Tutors will you not regard the children under your wing, as committed to you by the glorious Lord with such a charge as this? "Take them, and bring them up for me, and I will pay you your wages !" Whenever a new scholar comes under your care, you may say, "Here, my Lord sends me another object, for whom I may do something that he may be useful in the world." Suffer little children to come unto

* Molestissimam, sed Deo longe gratissimam functionem ̧.

you, and consider what you may do instrumentally, that of such may be the kingdom of heaven.

Sirs, let it be your grand design, to instil into their minds the documents of piety. Consider it as their chief interest, and yours also, that they may so know the holy scriptures as to become wise to salvation. Embrace every opportunity of dropping some honey from the rock upon them. Happy the children, and as happy the master, where they who relate the history of their conversion may say, "There was a schoolmaster who brought us to Christ." You have been told, "Certainly, it is a nobler work to make the little ones know their Saviour, than know their letters. The lessons of Jesus are nobler things than the lessons of Cato. The sanctifying transformation of their souls would be infinitely preferable to any thing in Ovid's Metamorphoses."

CATECHISING should be a frequent, at least a weekly exercise in the school; and it should be conducted in the most edifying, applicatory, and admonitory manner. In some places the magistrate permits no person to keep a school, unless he produces a testimonial of his ability and disposition to perform the work of religious catechising.*

Dr. Reynolds, in a funeral sermon for an eminent schoolmaster, has the following passage, worthy to be written in letters of gold: "If grammar schools have holy and learned men set over them, not only the brains, but also the souls of the children might there be enriched, and the work both of learning and of grace be early commenced in them." In order to this, let it be proposed, that you not only pray with your scholars daily, but also take occasion, from the public sermons, and from remarkable occurences in your neighbourhood, frequently to inculcate the lessons of piety on the children.

Tutors in the colleges may do well to converse with each of their pupils alone, with all possible solemnity and affection, concerning their internal

* Aptitudinis ad munus illud imprimis puerorum catechisationem.

state, concerning repentance for sin, and faith in Jesus Christ, and to bring them to express resolutions of serious piety. You may do a thousand things to render your pupils orthodox in sentiment, regular in practice, and qualified for public service,

I have read of a tutor, who made it his constant practice in every recitation, to take occasion, from something or other that occured, to drop at least one sentence that had a tendency to promote the fear of God in their hearts. This method sometimes cost him a good deal of study, but the good effect sufficiently recompensed him for it.

I should be glad to see certain authors received into the grammar schools as classical, which are not generally admitted, there, such as Castalio in the Latin tongue, and Posselius in the Greek; and I could wish, with some modern writers, that "a north-west passage" for the attainment of Latin might be discovered; that instead of a journey which might be dispatched in a few days, they might not be obliged to wander, like the children of Israel, many years in the wilderness. I might recite the complaint of Austin, "that little boys are taught in the schools the filthy actions of the Pagan gods, for reciting which," said he, "I was called a boy of promise;" or the complaint of Luther, "that our schools are Pagan rather than Christian." I might mention what a late author says, "I knew an aged and eminent schoolmaster, who, after keeping a school about fifty years, said with a sad countenance, that it was a great trouble to him that he had spent so much time in reading Pagan authors to his scholars; and wished it were customary to read such a book as Duport's verses on Job, rather than Homer, &c.; I pray God, to put it into the hearts of a wise parliament to purge our schools; that instead of learning vain fictions, and filthy stories, they may become acquainted with the word of God, and with books containing grave sayings, and things which may make them truly wise and useful in the world." But I presume little notice will

*Ab hoc bonæ spei puer appellabar.