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 Incumbent; or more particularly, the Curate's position and conduct with regard to the Incumbent.
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 institution, and made us aware that he is a modern institution, 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 institution of Assistants. 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 assistant of the resident Pastor but the substitute 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 Assistant-Curates' work. The presence in the Church of us Assistant-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 passing 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 assure you, from a large experience, that the Curate who complains of his Incumbent to his Bishop injures not the Incumbent 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 assistant Curacies, concerning the Christian rightness and Christian wisdom of taking the sort of line which the diocesan Chancellor recommended.
THE IDEAL INCUMBENT.
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 Incumbent'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 God, and who distributes labour in any and every interest but his own.