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 circumstances inherited from past years, was ripe and ready for partizanship and division. Nothing would have been needed but the Curate's passive allowance of such tendencies to embarrass 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 God before him.
"THE LOST GRACE, HUMILITY."
Surely few Christian men have wider and nobler opportunity than Curates have for the practice of "that lost grace, humility," in its form of unselfish dutifulness, "good fidelity in all things." [Tit. ii. 10.] My Brethren know the sort of humility I mean; no artificial mannerism, nothing in the least degree unworthy of the "adult in Christ." What I do mean is that thing so scarce in our days, the noble opposite to that individualistic spirit than which nothing is more narrow, more low, more hostile to all true, genial development and greatness. I mean the generous modesty which delights to recognize the claims of an elder, of a leader; which loves the idea of trustworthy service, taking as its motto a more than princely Ich Dien. I mean the temper of mind which sees the happiness of siding against ourselves, of judging not others but ourselves; the spirit which is much more anxious to vindicate a superior's reputation than our own, more alert to ward criticism off from him than to shield our own head from its arrow. I mean the life which shows that so far from being ashamed of the idea of subjection, the man has learnt at the feet of Jesus to think true service the truest freedom.
Another day, very probably, the Curate will find himself an Incumbent, and will have his own helping brother at his side. It will be a happy thing then for both parties if he has thoroughly learnt that great qualification for command, the experience of obedience; and has cultivated the exercise of sympathy with his subordinate by having first striven in honest loyalty to take his chief's part against himself.
TAKE PART AGAINST YOURSELF.
Few, very few, are the cases where a man who has accepted a Curacy with his eyes reasonably open finds that such is the friction of the position that his first duty is to seek a release. There are such cases, I am afraid. But, I say it again, they are very few; and in every case which looks as if it were one of them, the Curate should first exercise the severest scrutiny upon himself, trying honestly to find, in some magnifying mirror, "the beam in his own eye." [Matt. vii. 3.] And even where such scrutiny still leaves it plain, after consultation not only with sensible friends (if necessary) but of course with the Lord Himself, that it is best to seek a change, let it be remembered that, up to the very last day of connexion, the Curate is still the Curate, bound to all possible loyalty and good faith.
"SUFFER THE WORD."
It is with some misgivings of feeling that I have dwelt thus at length on difficulties and anxieties incident to the relationship of Curate and Incumbent. But I do not think after all that I shall be misunderstood. In the nature of the case, the bright sides of the matter have hardly needed comment. The Curate who finds himself the favoured and advantaged helper of some true-hearted leader needs little counsel from me, unless it be in face of the fact, on which we have touched, that the noblest leaders in the Lord in the whole English Church are not above parochial criticism, or even parochial slander. But I do know that there are Curates whose circumstances are less favourable; and I long to impress it upon them that few Christians have a larger and more fruitful field than they for the cultivation of some of the crowning graces of the Gospel. It is for them to make no common proof of the power of the Indwelling Lord to subdue the iniquities of His people, to hallow their inmost spirits, to set before their lips the watch and ward of His blessed Presence, to drive utterly away from their pastoral souls the wretched spirit of sarcasm, to enable them for an unselfish faithfulness when no eye but the unseen Master's oversees.
INDEPENDENCE AND LOYALTY.
It is no part of the system of the Church of England, as it is of that of the Church of Rome, to put a man (or a woman) under the "spiritual direction" of a fellow-sinner, who is to be, for the "directed," the organ and representative of the will of God. For such a method is no part of the apostolic Gospel, which never for a moment bids us surrender conscience into the keeping of another. "Who art thou that judgest Another's servant? To his own Master he standeth or falleth" [Rom. xiv. 4.]; words which deeply and decisively contradict the root-ideas of spiritual despotism, for they teach us to think of our fellow-Christians, as if—for purposes of the conscience—He who is their Master and ours was, for them, another Master than ours.[14] Yet the ideas of spiritual despotism are only the distortion or parody of ideas which are as true and sacred as the Gospel can make them; the ideas of self-abnegation for the good of others, and of resolute denial of the miserable spirit which prefers self to others and talks about rights when we should be intent on duties. The Christian man, and à fortiori the Minister of Christ, is called (as we have seen in earlier pages) to nothing less than a life in which, while conscience is inviolable, self is surrendered to Christ, in that practical sense of the words which means surrender, for His sake, to others, in all things which concern not right and wrong but our self-will.