CHAPTER XXXIV.
SHORT OR LONG PASTORATES.
The question is being discussed in many journals, "How long ought a minister to stay in one place ?" Clergymen and laymen and editors are wagging tongue and pen on the subject--a most practical question and easy to answer.

Let a minister stay in a place till he gets done--that is, when he has nothing more to say or do.
Some ministers are such ardent students of the Bible and of men, they are after a twenty-five years' residence in a parish so full of things that ought to be said, that their resignation would be a calamity.

Others get through in three months and ought to go; but it takes an earthquake to get them away.

They must be moved on by committees, and pelted with resolutions, stuck through with the needles of the ladies' sewing society, and advised by neighboring ministers, and hauled up before presbyteries and consociations; and after they have killed the church and killed themselves, the pastoral relation is dissolved.
We knew of a man who got a unanimous call.

He wore the finest pair of gaiters that ever went into that pulpit; and when he took up the Psalm book to give out the song, it was the perfection of gracefulness.