To My Younger Brethren Part 6

You observe that I do not speak absolutely on this point; I dare not. I do not say, Do not do it; I say, Do not _lightly_ do it. Faith is one thing; "light-heartedness" is another. And sometimes light-heartedness means nothing better than a vague expectation that "something will turn up." Perhaps what does turn up is a weary and distracting struggle with debt, and a gradual habituation to a not very creditable life upon the means of others, who very likely can spare only with difficulty what comes at length to be taken without grat.i.tude. I beseech my Brother to "suffer the word of exhortation."

RISKS OF DEBT.

ii. I touch thus already on the second point about which I would fain cry, Take heed unto thyself. That matter is _Money_. A few words here will sufficiently convey my appeal, but those few must be pressing. I appeal to my younger Brethren to be watchful day by day in the matter of money. At this moment there rises in my memory the face and name of a Clergyman with whom, long years ago, I became acquainted about the time of his ordination. He was unquestionably in earnest; I believe that he truly knew his Lord and Master, and was truly desirous to serve Him in His flock. But I am perfectly sure that he must have forgotten, almost from the first, to take heed unto himself in the matter of money. [SN: PECUNIARY INTEMPERANCE.] Perhaps he had brought with him from the University that fatal habit of _pecuniary intemperance_ which sometimes gets a hold upon a man second in its grasp only to that of intemperance commonly so called. Unhappily the ways of modern college life too easily generate such a habit, as University men are led more and more by their surroundings into a dread of appearing to be poor, and are almost expected to cost their fathers more for the academical year of eight or nine months than they will earn in the clerical year of twelve. But however it was, my poor dear friend _had_ about him the tendency to debt. And not all his earnestness and his devoutness could maintain his influence when that tendency began to tell. One post of duty had to be soon quitted for another, and so again and again, under this ever-recurring failure. Let us take heed unto ourselves.

PUBLIC AND PRIVATE MONEY.

In dealing with money which in any sense is public, no care can be too great. In a case well known to me, a Clergyman imperilled his whole influence, to the verge of ruin, by the simple but effectual process of allowing money collected for a church-object to be mixed and "muddled"

with his private funds. He was not business-like, and he was not at all well off. And somehow, when the time of reckoning came, the money had melted, he knew not whither. Strenuous exertions on the part of friends replaced privately the missing collection; but it was only just in time.

I have often heard our Indian Missionaries say how great and frequent is the difficulty raised by the apparent incapacity of some otherwise excellent native Pastors to keep public and private money apart. They mean all that is honourable; but a friend comes in begging for a loan, and there is the church fund at hand, and of course the sum taken shall be soon repaid, and of course it is _not_ repaid. But such difficulties are not confined to India. The native Pastors of England have great need to take heed unto themselves.

THE ACCOUNTS IN GOOD ORDER.

If possible, let us make our lay parochial friends our secretaries, and above all our treasurers. But if it must be otherwise, and often it must be, let us take heed, at any cost of pains. To do so may be overruled to win a positive influence for the Clergyman. I well remember a dear friend of mine telling me, with loyal pleasure, of his holy and devoted Vicar's care in this direction, and its power over the keen-sighted and not always friendly members of the school-committee in his great parish.

Every item of the books was accurate; every halfpenny of receipts accounted for. Men could find no fault in that Clergyman save concerning the Law--and the Gospel--of his G.o.d.

INVESTMENT-CIRCULARS.

Perhaps I need only allude in pa.s.sing to that crude sort of temptation put so freely before us Clergy, the circular advertis.e.m.e.nt of the mine which is to pay twenty per cent., or of the company just formed (I have such a circular in my possession, and keep it sacredly,) to promote the construction of a new projectile which shall make war more horrible than ever; one condition to the success of the Clergyman's investment being, of course, that war, thus made more horrible than ever, shall also be as frequent and continuous as possible. But the schemes announced in these circulars are very various in character; good, indifferent, and bad.

Need I say that, as a very safe rule, they must all be viewed as bad from the point of view of the young Clergyman's (or indeed of the Clergyman's) purse? It is a truism to remark that high interest means low security; but even a truism can bear occasional repet.i.tion when it has to do with a good man's whole life and work, and when the oblivion may mean acute or chronic misery. Such investments are for us a form of gambling, almost as much so as the shameless circulars which we sometimes receive from foreign cities, announcing the possibility of clearing a fortune at one stroke by a turn of the lottery machine. Does the sending of such missives to the English Clergy mean that English Clergymen sometimes answer them? If so, I say that it is strictly impossible that the man who so answers, whether he loses or wins, can also be walking with G.o.d, and so working that the Lord works with him.

So far as such acts go, he is acting an awfully untrue part, and his Master knows it. Let us take heed unto ourselves.

OTHER MONEY-PERILS.

In conclusion, I turn another way. The whole question of the increase and investment of money is a very solemn and searching one for the Christian, clerical or lay. There are holy men who say that we ought in no degree to "lay up." While I reverence their meaning, I do not agree with them. Yet I do most deeply feel that their warnings raise a danger-signal in a direction opposite to that which we have been viewing, but equally important. Some of my younger Brethren have already a private competency; others may be expecting one.

*"WHEN RICHES INCREASE."

To others, gifted in one way or another for marked acceptance in the Church, posts are, or will be, offered which even in these days bring a good income, perhaps a growing one. Take heed unto thyself. It is with deep significance that the Word of G.o.d bids us not set our heart upon riches _when they increase_. [Ps. lxii. 10.] It is often observed, I fear, that a man's readiness to give diminishes in proportion to his power for giving. There is a subtle fascination for many minds, and among them for minds generous at first, in an access of possessions; the thirst for more sets in, however imperceptibly, and perhaps the Christian, perhaps the Pastor, has become--before he knows it--covetous; caring a good deal for money. Let us take heed unto ourselves.[13]

[13] I cannot help relating a pathetically amusing remark I once heard in a Dorsetshire cottage. I had looked in on the good housewife in the course of a long walk, and she was telling me about the needs and straits of a recent time of illness. The aged Vicar of the large and thinly-peopled parish was a well-to-do man, and not at all unkind in meaning and manner. But he never gave alms, or indeed material help of any kind. "Poor Mr ----," said the cottager, with the kindliest _navete_, "he never _do_ give away anything. There, _I suppose it be his affliction_."

"LAY NOT UP FOR YOURSELVES."

I am sure that the Gospel has no censure for modest comforts and for simple refinements. I am sure that it bids the Christian, whether Pastor or not, "_provide_," look beforehand, with a view to save needless anxiety and disadvantage both for himself and yet more "for them of his own house." [1 Tim. v. 8.] But I am equally sure that it commands us even more emphatically not to lay up treasure upon earth; not to make the sad mistake of thinking that the work of life is to get. Rather may ours be the spirit of a n.o.ble-hearted friend of mine, now at rest for ever, early called away from heroic Missionary work. He had found himself rapidly getting richer in a successful school-enterprize; and recognized _in this_ a summons to give it up, and volunteer for the foreign field.

But I say no more. Probably to the great majority of my readers these last paragraphs seem little to the purpose, at least at present. But there are few lives in which, sooner _or later_, such reflections may not find a corner for application.

THE MOTIVE.

Meanwhile, whether our call is to avoid debt or to avoid gathering, we will look up for new motive power into our Master's face. Him we love; Him we long to commend; and to Him we belong with all we have. In His Name, and for His sake, we will take heed unto ourselves.

CHAPTER VI.

_THE DAILY WALK WITH OTHERS_ (iii.).

_Thrice happy they who at Thy side, Thou Child of Nazareth, Have learnt to give their struggling pride Into Thy hands to death: If thus indeed we lay us low, Thou wilt exalt us o'er the foe; And let the exaltation be That we are lost in Thee._

Let me say a little on a subject which, like the last, is one of some delicacy and difficulty, though its problems are of a very different kind. It is, the relation between the Curate and his Inc.u.mbent; or more particularly, the Curate's position and conduct with regard to the Inc.u.mbent.

A LECTURE ON CURATES.

I need not explain that the legal aspect of this important matter is not in my view. Not long ago I listened, in the library of Ridley Hall, to an instructive lecture, by a diocesan Chancellor, on the law of Curates; one of a series on Church Law delivered under the sanction of the University. The Lecturer informed the audience, certainly he informed me, of many points of practical moment not clearly known to us before.

He gave a sketch of the history of the licensed Curate as an inst.i.tution, and made us aware that he is a modern inst.i.tution, comparatively speaking. Before the Reformation the numerous host of "chantry-priests" was largely used to supplement the offices of the parochial Clergy. After the Reformation, for a very long while, the pastoral arrangements did not include a special inst.i.tution of a.s.sistants. Then, as the unhappy system of pluralities grew large and common, such as it was all through the eighteenth century and beyond it, "the Curate" meant not the active a.s.sistant of the resident Pastor but the subst.i.tute for the non-resident--the Curate-in-Charge. It was not till well within these last hundred years that men were commonly to be found doing what we now understand so well as a.s.sistant-Curates' work.

The presence in the Church of us a.s.sistant-Curates (I hold a licence myself, and am therefore one of the company) is at once an effect and a sign both of the great increase of population and of the concurrent increase throughout the Church of England of the desire for fuller and more laborious ministrations.

A CHANCELLOR'S SUGGESTIONS.

So our able Lecturer led us through our own history; and then he proceeded to instruct us in some main elements of our legal qualifications, and duties, and rights: how to get into a Curacy, and how to get out of it; what are the Bishop's rights over the Curate, and how the Archbishop may interpose if the Curate pleads a grievance against the Bishop. But I trust that this and other Lectures of the same course may see the light some day in a better form than a rough and pa.s.sing report of mine. My purpose in referring to them now is that I may call attention to one point on which the Lecturer laid no little stress. It was, that it is the wisdom of the Curate, when he has once deliberately accepted a Curacy, to be thoroughly loyal all along; to consider himself as "at the Vicar's beck and call"; to serve him heartily and unreservedly. If tempted to do otherwise, particularly if tempted to complain of the Vicar to the Bishop, let him resist that temptation to the utmost of his power. "There may be sad exceptions, and necessity knows no law; but _as a rule_," said my honoured friend, "I may a.s.sure you, from a large experience, that the Curate who complains of his Inc.u.mbent to his Bishop injures not the Inc.u.mbent but himself."

LOYALTY.

Our Lecturer avowedly spoke not as a spiritual but as a legal counsellor. I would now take up his words, and from the point of view of the friend and Brother in the Lord say a little to my younger Brethren, engaged or about to be engaged in a.s.sistant Curacies, concerning the Christian rightness and Christian wisdom of taking the sort of line which the diocesan Chancellor recommended.

THE IDEAL INc.u.mBENT.

As I come to the subject, let me say on the threshold that I am sure to be writing for many readers who little need the discourse, at least at present. You are working under a Vicar or a Rector whose example and also whose friendship is one of the greatest blessings of your life. You see in him a man perhaps much older than yourself, perhaps nearly your coeval, but however a leader, who is also, in the Lord Jesus Christ, your brother, and your most considerate while stimulating friend. He consults you, without forgetting his responsibility of ultimate direction. He gladly and fully recognizes and honours your work done under his organization. He has not the slightest wish to come between you and the affections of his parishioners among whom you move. He cultivates, in his busy life, Christian fellowship with you in private; you pray together, and talk together, not only about the parish but about the Lord, and the Word, and your own souls. He lets you find in him, as he is glad to find in you, just a man, a friend, a Christian, with trials and blessings of inner experience on which it is sometimes good to speak to one another; a living soul, companionable and human, while in it Christ dwells by faith. You have experienced with happy uniformity your Inc.u.mbent's patience, sympathy, fairness, trustworthiness. You have seen in him one who is himself always at work, always watching for the flock; who does not put on you this duty or that merely because it is irksome to himself, but whose whole purposes are in the cause of G.o.d, and who distributes labour in any and every interest but his own.

And perhaps you see this man honoured and loved by all around you, as they too see and know him to be what he is. You move about in the parish, and you are quite sure to hear allusions to the Vicar. And as a rule, perhaps, they are all friendly, all loyal, all grateful. You find yourself, in short, under no appreciable present temptation, being (as of course you are) a true man yourself, to do anything but identify yourself very gladly with him.

YET EVEN HE IS NOT PERFECT.

But then, even in this bright supposed case--a case of which the Church of England contains hundreds of practical examples, thank G.o.d--appreciable temptations in the other direction, the wrong, unhappy, fatal direction, may very conceivably creep upon you with time. Your admirable Inc.u.mbent is all the while a mortal man, and as such, most certainly (he himself above all men knows and owns it), he is not perfect, not quite equal to himself in every way. Perhaps he has come to be not perfect in physical health, and thus he is obliged, to his own grief, to do less in this or that branch of activity than some of his people think he ought to do; and then you are tolerably sure to hear some not very just and generous complaints in the parish. Perhaps domestic sorrow, or domestic straits and care, may have come in to becloud his spirit and to make his energies for a season flag. Perhaps among his many gifts you may find some gift a little lacking; he may be manifestly less strong in the committee, or in the labours of arrangement generally, than in the pulpit or the cla.s.s; or it may be just the other way. And you, my dear friend, may be (or may think yourself to be) somewhat strong where he is somewhat weak; an opportunity for many subtle temptations. The days and weeks go on; and if you let "the little rift" of criticism widen, and do not continually take it to your Lord to be examined and mended, other feelings--not born from above--may steal in between you and this good man, your elder and leader in Christ. Petty dislikes and impatience may rise in your heart about some trifling point of manner, some momentary failure of sympathy, some oblivion of arrangement or engagement due to a sore stress of work, some very small matter of Church order, or Christian dialect; or who can tell what?

GRAVE POSSIBLE TEMPTATIONS TO DISLOYALTY.

But also it is just possible that I am writing for some reader who finds himself in more grave and pressing difficulties than these. My most honoured brethren the Inc.u.mbents, if any of them should cast their eyes over these chapters, written by a Curate mainly for Curates, will not blame me for saying that there are cases, sad and sorrowful, where the Curate cannot honestly think with perfect happiness of his leader's work and influence. Perhaps that Inc.u.mbent has "run well," n.o.bly well, but (as it was of old with some primitive saints) something or someone "hindered him." [Gal. v. 7.] Perhaps he has lost first love and zeal, and sunk, he knows not how, into an indolent clericalism, or anticlericalism, of thought and habit. Perhaps he has suffered care, disappointment, parochial conflicts, to sour his spirit, or at least to take his heart away from his people. Perhaps he has felt the sad influence of controversial battles, and the love and richness of the old Gospel has somewhat faded out of his life, and conversation, and sermons; I do not refer to faithful care over distinctive and world-offending truth, but to the controversial _spirit_, which is altogether another thing. Perhaps he has somewhat lost command over temper; perhaps he has not yet found in our Lord's great fulness the open secret by which He supplies patience to His servants, even when they are sorely vexed by man. And just possibly difficulty between Curate and Vicar threatens to arise from some side-quarter; from those who stand around the Vicar, who inevitably see him often and intimately, who are active and important under-workers in his field, and who may themselves be not quite fully "governed by the Spirit and Word of G.o.d."

BEWARE OF THE GROWTH OF A CURATE'S PARTY.

I have put a good many supposed cases. How much I should rejoice if I could know that not one reader of this page could find any of my "peradventures" the least in point within his experience. But I must emphasize one of them which is hardly a peradventure at all; namely that the Curate is practically certain, sooner or later, to find temptations presented to his loyalty by the conversation of parishioners. There is not one parish in all England where everybody is pleased with the Inc.u.mbent; pleased always and about everything. And if the given Vicar or Rector employs a Curate, and if that Curate is you, it will be a moral miracle if you never hear of such discontents. You will hear of them, very probably, in ways which will offer you, however faintly, an opportunity of acting towards your chief a little as Absalom acted towards David when he expressed certain pious wishes that _he_ were made judge in the land in his father's place. [2 Sam. xv. 1-6.] I do not for a moment mean that you are, or ever will be, a man of treacherous _purposes_; the Lord forbid. But if you do not watch, and are not in some measure forewarned, you may easily be betrayed unawares, quite unawares, into speech or into action which will practically be treacherous to the man who is over you in Christ, and so toward Christ's work and cause in the parish where you serve. Do you not know the possibilities to which I refer? Have they not crossed either your own path or that of some Curate-friend of yours? Is there no such thing as an intimacy formed by the Curate in some house where the Inc.u.mbent is not liked, and is that intimacy never used by the Curate _not_ for the n.o.blest ends? Is there no weak listening to parochial gossip on the Curate's part? Is there never any allowance by the younger man of a growth around him, in ways which he could stop summarily, if he tried, of a certain unwholesome sort of preference and popularity? Is it not sometimes known that a Curate condescends so low as to concur with criticisms or sarcasms on his chief, or even to volunteer them? Alas for the parish where there is a "Curate's party," small or more extensive.

Happy the parish where no chance is given in that direction by either Inc.u.mbent or Curate. Happy the Curate who is so truly loyal and dutiful, it may be even under difficulties, that he makes it quite unmistakable that, if a party is to gather, it must gather around some one else.

HOW TO REPRESS IT.

Some cases happily in point are present to my own mind. I once knew of a parish in which the truly devoted Vicar was, however, not popular; he had sadly felt the weight of depression and disappointment, and this had had a weakening reflex influence on his ministry. He was joined by a Curate, a man in the prime of youth and vigour, well qualified to attract confidence and affection, and particularly gifted as a preacher.

Very soon many parishioners showed a preference for the young man's ministrations in public, and for his company in private; it was a golden opportunity for the almost spontaneous formation of a Curate's party. By the grace of G.o.d, the young Clergyman was enabled both to see the position at once and, by most decisive and manly speech and act, in the right quarters, to show, without a chance of mistake, that he considered his work as altogether identical with his Vicar's, never to be carried on for an hour outside a faithful subordination. Another instance may be given. Some years ago it was my duty to explain at a meeting the objects and work of the Divinity Hall with which I am connected. Quite incidentally, while describing our course of teaching, I mentioned my earnest desire always to caution my student-friends against giving the slightest encouragement to the rise of Curates' parties.

*AN EXAMPLE.

At the close of the occasion, a Clergyman rose at the back of the parish-room where we met, and said a few words, as gladdening as they were unexpected. He had come to the meeting-place with no knowledge of the meeting; merely to keep an appointment. But he happened to be the Vicar of a large town parish, and there to have had a friend of mine as his Curate; and he told us how this same Curate had come to him at a time when the parish, under circ.u.mstances inherited from past years, was ripe and ready for partizanship and division. Nothing would have been needed but the Curate's pa.s.sive allowance of such tendencies to embarra.s.s and spoil the difficult work of the Vicar. But my dear young friend was "found in Christ"; he knew his Lord's will in the matter, and he strove to do it. By active discouragement he precluded the mischief completely, and thus greatly strengthened his leader's hands for the work of G.o.d before him.

"THE LOST GRACE, HUMILITY."