What Sort of Parson

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 169, 12 April 1930, Page 21

What Sort of Parson

“If I stick to my MSB. in the pulpit I can’t get away from the book. “If I preach extempore I am a gasbag. “If I doff my dog-collar and go about as other men I am frivolous. “If I get about among my fellow-men and try to brighten up things in the parish I am not taking my calling seriously. “If I stay In my study, reading Dean Inge and Bishop Barnes to keep abreast of the times, I don’t see enough of my people.' “If I try to preserve the dignity of my calling and wear ‘the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit,’ I am standoffish and keep myself too much to myself. “When I invade the Mother’s Meeting to say a helpful word I am ‘muddling about with fi lot of old women.’ “And when I try to be a man’s man and put on shorts and a sweater to kick a football, I am ‘making myself too cheap.’ , “‘I like a parson to be a parson,’ says the churchwarden, but frhlit sort of parson? I ask.”—“P.G.D.,” in the “Dally Chronicle.”