A well-known clergyman, who was extremely popular in several parishes, tells with much delight, his experience with a certain amiable old lady who received him very cordially one day when making pastoral visits.
This minister was a comparative newcomer in the community and had never had an opportunity to really make the acquaintance of the lady in question. The conversation covered the normal range of small town subjects, the lady showing very considerable interest in the minister and his prospects and becoming more and more affable as the conversation continued.
Finally it became the proper thing for the minister to gracefully withdraw, which he did despite the urgent protest of his hostess to linger a little longer. As he was about to take his departure, she gave him a most approving look and dismissed him with the following words:
“I am so glad we have had this little visit. I am sure we shall all like you ever so much. Do you know you greatly remind me of the minister who was here when my husband and I first went to housekeeping. He died a driveling idiot.”
In a remote village there was located a clergyman who divided his energies between two small parishes. Diplomacy was not his strong point. Probably not one-third of his hearers were communicant members. And under his austere ministrations, many who were fairly regular in their attendance showed a marked reluctance to allow themselves to be enrolled officially.
In consequence of this unwillingness to assume church responsibilities, the pastor held very pessimistic views as to their probable future and did not hesitate to make it fairly clear and definite when occasion permitted.
A great opportunity came to him and it may be truthfully said that he made the most of it.
The Love-Cracked Suicide
Away back in the hills there was a young man of nineteen or twenty who had become greatly interested in a somewhat frivolous maiden of sixteen years. Psychologists of the present would have probably pronounced Jim’s development as about equal to that of ten or twelve years. He was distinctly defective mentally, but a good worker on the farm and of generally amiable tendencies. Theology to him was as remote a topic as Babylonian literature.