“Domine, how do you do?" was a friendly and honorable salutation among the Dutch churches in years gone by. It retains its usage in many places now, where the good man is familiarly and affectionately addressed by this title. It is the Latin Dominus, and means the master of the house, then a schoolmaster, then a clergyman, who is a teacher, rector, and the lord of the parish. Thus the word includes the ideas of instruction and government, and is a proper term if properly understood.

Pastor is the word: he is a shepherd. He feeds the flock. All the tender and endearing thoughts that cluster about the term when applied to one who tends the sheep and the lambs, surround the word pastor when given to him who is set to watch for souls. It implies FIDELITY. The shepherd's dog is often a model of faithfulness. How much more responsible is a man than a dog? And of how much more value is the soul of a man than a sheep? It implies WATCHFULNESS. In an hour we think not the wolf may invade the flock, or one of them may go astray. Eternal vigilance is the only security. It implies AFFECTION. "Lovest thou me?" asked the Great Shepherd and Bishop of souls: “Lovest thou me?" “Feed my sheep." "Feed my lambs." It implies PERSEVERANCE in well-doing. To get tired of the work and to seek rest when the flock is exposed is to be a heartless, careless shepherd, who has no love for his work or the flock. To be a pastor in the church of God is enough to fill the right ambition of any good man. The office is not magnified in the esteem of the ministry and the people as it should be: it does not hold the place it did when George Herbert wrote his "Country Parson,” and Oliver Goldsmith his “ Deserted Village," and Cowper drew his portrait of the godly preacher. The manners, tastes and pursuits of the age have invaded the church. This is a matter-of-fact, a trading, commercial age. It is also a levelling age. And the worst of that fact is that it levels down instead of up. As reverence for dignities declines, with the divine right idea of rulers, the people and pastor come to be less distinct: if anything, the pastor has come to be used by the people for

their purposes, often selfish, rather than as a shepherd to whom the flock looks for food convenient for them. Any man who keeps an intelligence office, as I do, for ministers and people, a sort of matrimonial agency, will testify that the applications for a preacher do not generally specify the spiritual qualifications required so much as the intellectual: "We must have a man of ability to attract attention: the other churches have able preachers, and we want one that can hold his own."

This idea of the ministerial office is low and sordid; degrading to the church and to Christianity. To deliver the calling from such debasement a deeper sense of its dignity and duty is required. That is to be secured by the pastor himself getting his own heart and mind saturated with the true spirit of Him who sent his disciples forth to feed his sheep, to feed his lambs-in other words, to be pastors of his flock.

It was bought with a great price. He "purchased it with his own blood." The pastor has such a flock in his care. "Grievous wolves" are ready always to enter in," not sparing the flock." They are to be watched, driven off, slain, if possible, with the weapons God has provided. This makes the pastor an officer in the church militant. He must fight manfully the good fight. The weapons are not carnal, but mighty, and he must wield them as a good soldier, for the captain of our salvation requires of every soldier under him that he be found faithful.

His work ought to be a life-work. Here is the grand reason of failure. The place a man is in is too often used as a stepping-stone to another, supposed to be higher and better. But the way to be the ruler, victor, domine of many things, is to be faithful in few things. Called to any post or position in the church, let him who is called devote himself to it as the one thing that he is to do. Let him not be afraid that he will be uncared for, unthought of, forgotten. God knows where you are. If he has any other work for you to do he will send an angel, or some other messenger, to summon you to the duty.

There may be many of God's hidden ones in the most retired parish. To find them, feed them, guide them into green pastures, God sends the pastor best fitted for that high service. He may not be armed with the logic and lore of the schools. He may not have the pen of a ready writer or a tongue of angelic eloquence, and that trumpet of the Pharisee, the religious newspaper, may not herald his name to the world; but in the calm, steady, fruitful fields of usefulness, he feeds the flocks of his Heavenly Father on the hills of peace, in the sunlight of divine approval, and the gates of glory stand ever open for him and his to enter into celestial joy.

One of the best and most to be envied men whom I reckon on my list of friends is the pastor of a little flock, the rector of an Episcopal church in the rural districts not far from the great Babel of New York. Ten, twenty, thirty, now going on forty years, he has taught his people the road to heaven, while he has led the way. A gentleman, a scholar, a man of affairs, with talents and tastes to fill and adorn any station in the church, he has declined all inducements to leave the charge of his youth; and now, as white hairs admonish him that he is no longer young, he rejoices in the work of a lifetime, and waits to hear the Master say "Come up higher." That is the joy set before him. The applause of crowds, the praise of the press, the distinction of fame, are lighter than the air compared with that eternal weight of glory which awaits the pastor who is wise in winning souls; who feedeth the sheep, takes the lambs in his bosom, and at last, in the day of all days, presents himself to the Great Shepherd and Bishop of souls, saying, "Here, Lord, am I and them whom Thou hast given me."

FANNY KEMBLE ON THE BIBLE AND THE
THEATRE.

FANNY KEMBLE is justly distinguished as one of the great tragic actresses of modern times. Her talent, acknowledged on both sides of the Atlantic, has won for her fame and fortune. In addition to this great success, she has the still higher honor of a name without reproach. The highest virtues of private life adorn her character with lustre which her profession did not dim.

When she was eleven years of age she was sent from London to a boarding-school in Paris. Of her acquirements at this institution she says: "The pupils were required to learn by heart, and recite morning and evening, selections from the Scriptures. To me my intimate knowledge of the Bible has always seemed the greatest benefit I derived from my school-training." As she was thoroughly educated, and trained to be a brilliant ornament of the highest circles of society, to be the companion of the poet Rogers in his old age, Sydney Smith, Macaulay, Lord Grey, Disraeli, Washington Irving, and all the wits of two generations, it is certain that her education was not imperfect. She studied the French poets, and committed to memory passages from Corneille and Racine; while Shakespeare, Milton, and Walter Scott, in her own tongue, were her familiar reading. But she puts into writing and prints it in the "Records of her Life" that her intimate knowledge of the Bible was the greatest benefit she derived from her school-training. This is a very extraordinary statement, coming from one whose pursuits and associations were such as do not appear to require familiarity with the Scriptures to promote enjoyment or success. Certainly we are not accustomed to suppose that actors and actresses and the people in whose society they mingle and shine, draw very largely on the pages of God's word as the sources of their wit or wisdom, or for examples and illustrations. It could not be that Miss Kemble attributed her suc

cess in the profession to which she devoted her life to her Bible studies. If she had been trained to authorship she would naturally have been aided by the unexcelled models of thought and expression which it contains. Sir William Jones left his recorded opinion that "the Bible contains more true sublimity, more exquisite beauty, more pure morality, more important history, and finer strains of poetry and eloquence than can be collected from all other books in whatever age or language they may have been written."

The most famous untaught orator of America, Patrick Henry, said, “It is a book worth more than all other books that were ever printed." Among philosophers we have the same testimony from John Locke, who prepared with his own hand a Commonplace Book of the Scriptures, and in his meditations on their wonderful wisdom cried out, “Oh the depths of the riches of the goodness and the knowledge of God!" Poetry and philosophy might draw largely upon the Bible, but what benefit would an actress get from intimate acquaintance with the book?

To understand the influence of the Bible upon the life of Fanny Kemble, we must keep in mind that the profession was always distasteful, positively repugnant, to her feelings; and this was the uniform testimony she bore throughout her public life. She regarded it as personally humiliating and demoralizing. She expressed to Washington Irving her dislike of it. She wrote in letters to her friends in strong terms of her aversion to the stage as a profession. And Madame Craven, a French novelist of the better class, testifies that "the records of her life by Fanny Kemble demonstrate clearly enough that the thought of elevating the theatrical profession to the ideal height which many propose must be ranged in the category of chimeras; since this profession, practised with the greatest success, and in conditions the most favorable to the realization of this dream, has always inspired in Fanny Kemble an estrangement for which she can eloquently account." What Madame Craven infers is taught in the history of the stage from its earliest period. It always was what Fanny Kemble found it. She tried her best by example