THE royal donatives which our Saviour, when He ascended in triumph, dispensed to His churches, and through them to the world, consisted of a variety of duly qualified office-bearers and missionary agents to be employed in the increase and growth of the members of His mystical body, and in the conversion of heathen nations to the faith of His name. They are thus enumerated by St. Paul in his Epistle to the Ephesians iv. 11.,-apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teachers. Some of our Congregational predecessors, believing that the two last of these terms were intended to describe distinct classes of church officers, appointed both a pastor and a teacher in the same church; but the attempt, both in New and in Old England to keep the two functions separate has for many years past been abandoned, and the only spiritual office now practically recognised in all our churches is that of pastor.

Dr. Hodge, in his Commentary on the Epistle to the Ephesians, truly says, "the word evangelist means nothing more than preacher of the Gospel." He represents it as "the commonly received view," that the term is used in the New Testament to describe itinerant preachers, who “were properly missionaries

VOL. XXI.

sent to preach the Gospel where it had not been previously known," and that the Apostle intends in this passage, to distinguish "those who make known the Gospel where it had not been heard" from "instructors of those who were already Christians." Dr. Eadie, also, in his learned Commentary on the same Epistle, represents evangelists as an itinerant class of religious instructors, "furnished with clear perceptions of saving truth, and possessed of wondrous power in recommending it to others, who passed from place to place with the wondrous story of salvation and the cross, and entering into the society of such as frequented not the places of Christian worship, pressed Christ on their acceptance."

It may, however, be doubted whether the term evangelist is properly restricted to missionaries or itinerant preachers of the Gospel; at least there appears no necessity for thus limiting its application to the state of things existing in a professedly Christian country. We have, till within a few years past, been educating nearly all our ministers for pastors and teachers, but there is still much room for work that may properly be called evangelistic in all the congregations over which our ministers preside.

B

The pastors of our churches, if they are faithful to their trust, must be also evangelists. It is a lamentable fact, that in most of our congregations scarcely half the entire number of adult hearers are members of the church; in many of them, I fear, not even a third. Our ministers, therefore, cannot fulfil their functions as religious instructors in relation to a majority of their regular hearers, unless in addition to their specific duties as pastors of the flock committed to their charge, they also "do the work of evangelists" towards those without the church. But the Gospel is to be preached to the converted, as well as to those who (speaking generally) may be considered as unconverted in our public assemblies. The members of our churches can only be built up, a spiritual house "on their most holy faith." They must "continue stedfast in the doctrine of the Apostles which is the only doctrine according to godliness." The word of the truth contained in the Gospel, the faith of Christ crucified is not only the seed or principle of spiritual life in regeneration, but also its aliment or principle of growth in sanctification. The word through which dead souls are made alive to God is also the word by which quickened souls are maintained in spiritual vitality, and nourished up to everlasting life. Dr. Watts gives the following poetic paraphrase of 1 Peter ii. 2,

"As new born babes desire the breast
To feed, and grow, and thrive;

So saints with joy the Gospel taste
And by the Gospel live."*

If this be true, it will follow that a minister egregiously fails in the performance of his duty as a pastor, in respect to the flock which he has undertaken to feed, if in his weekly ministrations, that Gospel which is the appointed means of spiritual growth and nourish. ment, is altogether withheld, or but sparingly dispensed, instead of being dealt out in full and ample measure. In that case, it may truly be said"The hungry sheep look up and are not fed." **See 1 Cor. xv. 1-4; Coloss. i. 22, 23.

I rejoice that our ministers and churches have now become sensible that if the work of aggressive evangelisation is to be carried forward more rapidly and extensively than it has hitherto been in our country, agents of this class in distinction from stated pastors and ordinary teachers must be employed in much greater number than heretofore. We have great reason for devout thanksgiving that God put it into the hearts of the leaders of our Home Missionary movement, some years since, to employ such men in several of our dark English counties. May their number soon be multiplied a hundredfold, for, alas, there are still counties, not a few, in which the rural districts are in a state of gross moral darkness.

Several such agents have been employed in what was, until lately, one of the darkest of English counties--I mean Sussex; and from the reports which were presented at a meeting recently held in Brighton, it appears that the Divine message of peace proclaimed by them, has been conveyed by Divine power to the hearts of many of the hearers.

The Gospel was preached by Paul and his fellow apostles, both "publicly and from house to house," and if our scattered rural population is to be evangelised, we must have hundreds of men employed to carry the Gospel to their cottages. Even some of our smaller towns need the evangelist to prepare the way for a settled pastor. It is not enough to build a small chapel in a village, or even in a town of two or three thousand inhabitants, and send a minister to preach in it, to all who will come to hear him. He should go among the poorer part of the population, and "by winning words" endeavour to " conquer willing hearts," warning them to flee from the wrath to come, and by tender entreaties, and even with tears, persuading them to be reconciled to God on the ground which constitutes the foundation of "the ministry of reconciliation"—that God made Him who knew no sin, to be sin for us, that we sinners might be made the righteousness of God in Him.

Might not many of our churches which are already well supplied with pastors, also engage an evangelist to labour in association with him by showing in the simplest and most familiar, as well as in the most earnest and affectionate manner to the neglected masses around, the way of salvation by faith in a crucified Saviour? I rejoice to know that there are already several of our churches which are supporting such an agent to preach the Gospel in the immediate neighbourhood of their place of meeting to those who at present would not enter within its doors, even were there proper and sufficient accommodation provided for them, which is not the case in most of our chapels.

The late Robert Hall expressed his judgment very decidedly, that every church having the power should support an evangelist. “Every church," he says, "possessing the means should feel itself bound, not merely to maintain religious teaching and worship internally, but also as a church to promote the dissemination of religion around. I think that a church ought to maintain not only a pastor for itself, but, at the same time, an evangelist to preach the Gospel where it is not known. This would in a few years banish heathenism from Christian countries, teach us the best mode of attacking it in foreign countries, and would be promoting religion in a religious way."

It would, however, be matter of great regret if our pastors were to give up the custom of preaching occasionally in the villages around the sphere of their stated labours.

I was struck in reading the Memoirs of Samuel Pearce, of Birmingham, by Andrew Fuller, with the statement there made of his love for village preaching. That devoted man, in the earlier part of his religious life, longed to be a missionary to the heathen. He thus writes, concerning his feelings toward them, "I believe the first week that I knew the grace of God in truth, I put

*Memoirs of his Life. By Olinthus Gregory, LL.D. p. 241.

up many fervent cries to heaven in their behalf, and at the same time felt a strong desire to be employed in promoting their salvation. It was not long after that the first settlers sailed for Botany Bay. I longed to go with them; although in company with the convicts, in hopes of making known the blessings of the great salvation in New Zealand... While I was at the Bristol Academy, the desire remained, but not with that energy as at first, except on one or two occasions. Being sent by my tutor to preach two Sabbaths at Coleford, [in Gloucestershire] I felt particular sweetness in devoting the evenings of the week to going from house to house among the colliers who dwell in the Forest of Dean, adjoining the town, conversing and praying with them, and preaching to them. In these exo ises I found the most solid satisfaction that I have ever known in discharging the duties of my calling. In a poor hut, with a stone to stand upon, and a threelegged stool for my desk, surrounded with thirty or forty of the smutty neighbours, I have felt such an unction from above, that my whole auditory have been melted into tears, whilst directed to the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world; and I, weeping among them, could scarcely speak, or they hear, for interrupting sighs and sobs. Many a time did I then think, Thus it was with the Apostles of our Lord, when they went from house to house among the poor heathen. In work like this, I could live and die. In deed had I at that time been at liberty to settle, I should have preferred that situation to any in the kingdom with which I was then acquainted." Pp. 107,

108.

Toward the end of the memoir, the writer says of Mr. Pearce's preaching:— "His ministry was highly acceptable to persons of education; but he appears to have been most in his element when

preaching to the poor. The feelings which he himself expresses when instructing the colliers appear to have continued with him through life. It was