Old Country Life

by S. Baring-Gould

In the matter of personal neatness he left much to be desired. His walled garden was famous for its jargonelle pears. Lady X—, one day coming over, said to him, "Will you come back in my carriage with me, and dine at the Park? You can stay the night, and be driven home to-morrow."

"Thank you, my lady, delighted. I will bring with me some jargonelles. I'll go and fetch them."

Presently he returned with a little open basket and some fine pears in it. Lady X— looked at him, with a troubled expression in her sweet face. The rector was hardly in dining suit; moreover, there was apparent no equipment for the night.

"Dear Mr. M—, will you not really want something further? You will dine with us, and sleep the night."

A vacant expression stole over his countenance, as he retired into himself in thought. Presently a flash of intelligence returned, and he said with briskness, "Ah! to be sure; I'll go and fetch two or three more jargonelles."

A kind, good-hearted man the scholar-parson was, always ready to put his hand into his pocket at a tale of distress, but quite incapable of understanding that his parishioners might have spiritual as well as material requirements. I remember a case of a very similar man—a fellow of his college, and professor at Cambridge—to whom a young student ventured to open some difficulties and doubts that tortured him. "Difficulties! doubts!" echoed the old gentleman. "Take a couple of glasses of port. If that don't dispel them, take two more, and continue the dose till you have found ease of mind."

But to return to our country parson, who had the jargonelles. His church was always well attended. Quite as large a congregation was to be found in it as in other parish churches, where all the modern appliances of music, popular preaching, parish visitations, clubs and bible-classes were in force. Perhaps the reason was that he was not too spiritually exacting. Many of our enthusiastic modern parsons attempt to screw up their people into a condition of spiritual exaltation which they are quite unable to maintain permanently, and then they become discouraged at the inevitable, invariable relapse.

We suppose that one main cause of dissent is the deadness and dulness of the Church service before the revival of late days; and we attribute this deadness and dulness to the indifference of these bêtes noirs, the clergy of last century. I doubt it.

At the time of the Commonwealth our churches had been gutted of everything ornamental and beautiful, and the services reduced to the most dreary performance of sermon and extempore prayer. At the Restoration, a very large number indeed of the Presbyterian ministers conformed, were ordained, and retained the benefices. Naturally they conducted the Common Prayer as nearly as they could on the lines of the service they were accustomed to. They had no tradition of what the Anglican liturgy was; they did not understand it, and they served it up cold or lukewarm, as unpalatable as possible. They did not like it themselves, and they did not want their congregations to become partial to it. The old clergy who were restored were obliged to content themselves with the merest essentials of Divine worship; their congregations had grown up without acquaintance with the liturgy—at all events for some nineteen years they had not heard it, and they did not want to shock their weak consciences by too sudden a transformation.