Brother Muller is a man of superior talent, genial spirit and fine conversational powers.  His name is fragrant in all the charges he served in Wisconsin and the Conference regretted his transfer from the State.

I was again returned to Spring Street, and the salary was now placed at thirteen hundred dollars.  With the new Church full of people, with every department of Church work thoroughly organized and in successful operation, I was now permitted to devote my labor to the regular pastoral work.  As far as possible, the forenoons were given to my study and the afternoons to pastoral visiting.

In a city like Milwaukee, this last department of labor is absolutely indispensable.  It is not intended in this form of expression to intimate that it can be dispensed with in any other field, for it cannot, but simply to indicate the impossibility of caring rightly for the souls of men in a great city, if this form of labor shall be neglected.

In a large city, the population is constantly changing, and unless the Pastor shall be on the alert in looking up the people, members of his own flock, to say nothing of others, will drop out of sight.  Soon they will feel that the band of union between them and the Church has been severed, and they have become outcasts.  The result of such a state of things, will be either recklessness of life, or a seeking of other Church alliances.  In either case, the charge itself suffers loss.  In addition to this class of cases that need the eagle eye of the Pastor, there is a constant influx of population.  These coming people, in large numbers, will fail to find churchly affiliations unless there is some one who shall seek them out at their new homes, and invite them to attend the means of grace.

I know it will be said, “Let the members of the Churches do this.”  I grant that the open field for this kind of labor is inviting to the Church members, but suppose they do not enter it, what then?  Shall the work be left undone?  Besides, the work can be done effectively only, through systematic arrangement, and this feature can only be given to it through the supervision of the Pastor.  He only can know the entire ground, and become the nucleus around which the membership will be able to rally.

It would greatly aid the Pastor in his work, if all new-comers would immediately report themselves at the Parsonage or the Church.  But as all such are usually burdened with many cares and perplexities during the first weeks or months in making a new home, the only way to reach the desired result seems to be through the vigilant maintenance of pastoral visiting.

During the winter I held a protracted meeting, which gave an addition of forty-seven probationers.  I felt the fatigue very much, and at the close of the meeting found it necessary for a time to abridge my labors.