THE LOT OF AN ENGLISH CLERGYMAN.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 143647, 15 November 1911, Page 3

THE LOT OF AN ENGLISH CLERGYMAN.

Sidelights are thrown on tho difficult art of being a clergyman by an article which a Lancashire rector has contributed to Ids parish magazine. The rector complains'that whatever ho elects to do in his parish is misinterpreted. Is ho sociable? He is regarded as worldly. Is ho reserved, lie is looked upon as a misanthrope. If ho turns his hand to anything that may bo wanted, ho is a sort of Jack-of-all-tradce, whom everjono makes use of and no one respects. If, on the contrary, ho is not at every man’s beck and call, ho is derided as a lazy and inefficient person. Equally severe criticism is passed upon his efforts, however cossciontious, to preach. He reads, wo will say, from a written sermon, and at onco everyone speculates from what book of pious discourses, published ever so many years ago, ho has drawn his inspiration. Supposing on tho other hand, for liveliness’s sake, ho preaches extempore; then his eritiCiS at once assume that he is garrulous and shallow. But a still worse fate befalls him in his social relations. To bo unmarried in a country vicarage is to be the victim of every gossip, and to bo the cause of perpetual bickering between the fair members of his congregation. On tho other hand, if ho is urn Tried, there may be some charitable indulgence for him, but there is none for In's wife, who is regarded as a blot on his otherwise unimpeachable career. Wo do not imagine, says the London Daily Telegraph, that the Lancashire rector is singular in his experience, nor are wo inclined to suppose that it is only clerks in holy orders who have to run Die gamut of such unfriendly criticism. But there is no doubt that the position of a minister in a country parish is not altogether a bed of roses. Ho may, however, console himself with the idea that the criticism to which lie is subjected proves, at all events, that he is not a nobody. Or, if be desires a deeper consolation still, let him turn to those pages in the Gospel which reveal to us not wholly dissimilar criticisms passed on the figures of John the Baptist and' his Master. John the Baptist, ho will observe, "enmo neither eating broad nor drinking wine,” and the people said he had a devil: while when the Ron of Man came eating and drinking, He was derided as “a man gluttonous, and a winebiber, a friend of publicans and sinners.” In this ease, as in others, Wisdom is justified of all her children.