_THE DAILY WALK WITH OTHERS_ (iii.).
_Thrice happy they who at Thy side,
Thou Child of Nazareth,
Have learnt to give their struggling pride
Into Thy hands to death:
If thus indeed we lay us low,
Thou wilt exalt us o'er the foe;
And let the exaltation be
That we are lost in Thee._
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.
And perhaps you see this man honoured and loved by all around you, as
they too see and know him to be what he is. You move about in the
parish, and you are quite sure to hear allusions to the Vicar. And as a
rule, perhaps, they are all friendly, all loyal, all grateful. You find
yourself, in short, under no appreciable present temptation, being (as
of course you are) a true man yourself, to do anything but identify
yourself very gladly with him.
YET EVEN HE IS NOT PERFECT.
But then, even in this bright supposed case--a case of which the Church
of England contains hundreds of practical examples, thank
God--appreciable temptations in the other direction, the wrong, unhappy,
fatal direction, may very conceivably creep upon you with time. Your
admirable Incumbent is all the while a mortal man, and as such, most
certainly (he himself above all men knows and owns it), he is not
perfect, not quite equal to himself in every way. Perhaps he has come to
be not perfect in physical health, and thus he is obliged, to his own
grief, to do less in this or that branch of activity than some of his
people think he ought to do; and then you are tolerably sure to hear
some not very just and generous complaints in the parish. Perhaps
domestic sorrow, or domestic straits and care, may have come in to
becloud his spirit and to make his energies for a season flag. Perhaps
among his many gifts you may find some gift a little lacking; he may be
manifestly less strong in the committee, or in the labours of
arrangement generally, than in the pulpit or the class; or it may be
just the other way. And you, my dear friend, may be (or may think
yourself to be) somewhat strong where he is somewhat weak; an
opportunity for many subtle temptations. The days and weeks go on; and
if you let "the little rift" of criticism widen, and do not continually
take it to your Lord to be examined and mended, other feelings--not born
from above--may steal in between you and this good man, your elder and
leader in Christ. Petty dislikes and impatience may rise in your heart
about some trifling point of manner, some momentary failure of sympathy,
some oblivion of arrangement or engagement due to a sore stress of
work, some very small matter of Church order, or Christian dialect; or
who can tell what?
GRAVE POSSIBLE TEMPTATIONS TO DISLOYALTY.
But also it is just possible that I am writing for some reader who finds
himself in more grave and pressing difficulties than these. My most
honoured brethren the Incumbents, if any of them should cast their eyes
over these chapters, written by a Curate mainly for Curates, will not
blame me for saying that there are cases, sad and sorrowful, where the
Curate cannot honestly think with perfect happiness of his leader's work
and influence. Perhaps that Incumbent has "run well," nobly well, but
(as it was of old with some primitive saints) something or someone
"hindered him." [Gal. v. 7.] Perhaps he has lost first love and
zeal, and sunk, he knows not how, into an indolent clericalism, or
anticlericalism, of thought and habit. Perhaps he has suffered care,
disappointment, parochial conflicts, to sour his spirit, or at least to
take his heart away from his people. Perhaps he has felt the sad
influence of controversial battles, and the love and richness of the old
Gospel has somewhat faded out of his life, and conversation, and
sermons; I do not refer to faithful care over distinctive and
world-offending truth, but to the controversial _spirit_, which is
altogether another thing. Perhaps he has somewhat lost command over
temper; perhaps he has not yet found in our Lord's great fulness the
open secret by which He supplies patience to His servants, even when
they are sorely vexed by man. And just possibly difficulty between
Curate and Vicar threatens to arise from some side-quarter; from those
who stand around the Vicar, who inevitably see him often and intimately,
who are active and important under-workers in his field, and who may
themselves be not quite fully "governed by the Spirit and Word of God."
BEWARE OF THE GROWTH OF A CURATE'S PARTY.
I have put a good many supposed cases. How much I should rejoice if I
could know that not one reader of this page could find any of my
"peradventures" the least in point within his experience. But I must
emphasize one of them which is hardly a peradventure at all; namely that
the Curate is practically certain, sooner or later, to find temptations
presented to his loyalty by the conversation of parishioners. There is
not one parish in all England where everybody is pleased with the
Incumbent; pleased always and about everything. And if the given Vicar
or Rector employs a Curate, and if that Curate is you, it will be a
moral miracle if you never hear of such discontents. You will hear of
them, very probably, in ways which will offer you, however faintly, an
opportunity of acting towards your chief a little as Absalom acted
towards David when he expressed certain pious wishes that _he_ were made
judge in the land in his father's place. [2 Sam. xv. 1-6.] I do not for
a moment mean that you are, or ever will be, a man of treacherous
_purposes_; the Lord forbid. But if you do not watch, and are not in
some measure forewarned, you may easily be betrayed unawares, quite
unawares, into speech or into action which will practically be
treacherous to the man who is over you in Christ, and so toward Christ's
work and cause in the parish where you serve. Do you not know the
possibilities to which I refer? Have they not crossed either your own
path or that of some Curate-friend of yours? Is there no such thing as
an intimacy formed by the Curate in some house where the Incumbent is
not liked, and is that intimacy never used by the Curate _not_ for the
noblest ends? Is there no weak listening to parochial gossip on the
Curate's part? Is there never any allowance by the younger man of a
growth around him, in ways which he could stop summarily, if he tried,
of a certain unwholesome sort of preference and popularity? Is it not
sometimes known that a Curate condescends so low as to concur with
criticisms or sarcasms on his chief, or even to volunteer them? Alas for
the parish where there is a "Curate's party," small or more extensive.
Happy the parish where no chance is given in that direction by either
Incumbent or Curate. Happy the Curate who is so truly loyal and dutiful,
it may be even under difficulties, that he makes it quite unmistakable
that, if a party is to gather, it must gather around some one else.
HOW TO REPRESS IT.
Some cases happily in point are present to my own mind. I once knew of a
parish in which the truly devoted Vicar was, however, not popular; he
had sadly felt the weight of depression and disappointment, and this had
had a weakening reflex influence on his ministry. He was joined by a
Curate, a man in the prime of youth and vigour, well qualified to
attract confidence and affection, and particularly gifted as a preacher.
Very soon many parishioners showed a preference for the young man's
ministrations in public, and for his company in private; it was a golden
opportunity for the almost spontaneous formation of a Curate's party. By
the grace of God, the young Clergyman was enabled both to see the
position at once and, by most decisive and manly speech and act, in the
right quarters, to show, without a chance of mistake, that he considered
his work as altogether identical with his Vicar's, never to be carried
on for an hour outside a faithful subordination. Another instance may be
given. Some years ago it was my duty to explain at a meeting the objects
and work of the Divinity Hall with which I am connected. Quite
incidentally, while describing our course of teaching, I mentioned my
earnest desire always to caution my student-friends against giving the
slightest encouragement to the rise of Curates' parties.
*AN EXAMPLE.
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 _‡ 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.
[14] I owe this remark to my friend the Rev. H.E. Brooke.
"CLOTHED WITH HUMILITY."
"Likewise, ye younger, submit yourselves unto the elder." [1 Pet. v. 5.]
I never forget how the Apostle finishes the passage; "Yea, _all of you_,
be subject one to another, and be clothed with humility," [Greek:
egkoubÙsasthe tÍn tapeinophosynÍn], "tie humility round you" as the
servant ties on his apron. Most characteristic of the Bible is the
impartiality of the precept, so given; the Elders in the Church of God
will not forget it on their side. But nevertheless the stress of the
precept bears upon the younger man. He, in the Lord's order, is
especially to recollect the sacred duty of a willing, loyal, and
open-eyed humility.
A NOBLE SUBORDINATION.
All the instincts of our time are against this. But for the true
disciple of Jesus Christ there is something stronger than any spirit of
the age; it is the Spirit of God, dwelling in the inmost soul. By that
wonderful power the Christian Curate, who walks with the Lord in secret,
and finds in Him his way of purity and consistency in the more general
aspects of his "walk with others," will daily be enabled for a bright
and glad consistency in the path of ministerial subordination. He will
not cease to be a man, who must observe and think; nor will he
necessarily hold it his duty never, in all loyalty and respect, to
express to his Vicar a differing wish or opinion. But his bias will be
against himself, and for his chief, if he indeed lets the Spirit of God
lead him, and rule him, and fill him. For the Lord's sake, [Greek: dia
tou Kyrion], and by the Lord's power, [Greek: dia tou Kyriou], he will
carry the principle of a watchful "submission" not only into greater
things, but even into the smaller preferences of his elder and leader,
if they in the least degree affect the duties of the parish and the
church.
A LETTER ON CURATES' GRIEVANCES.
I close this chapter with a quotation. It is a letter written to the
Editor of the _Record_, in the spring of 1885, after the perusal of a
correspondence in that paper in which some "grievances of Evangelical
Curates" had been set forth, and in which it had been implied that such
grievances might give some sufferers occasion to transfer their
sympathies to another "school."
"After reading the recent correspondence, I cannot forbear a few words
expressive of the sad impression left upon my mind. Far be it from me to
say that Incumbents have no lessons to learn from this correspondence.
All Incumbents who have, by grace, 'the mind that was in Christ Jesus'
will surely embrace every suggestion, however painful in form, which can
stimulate them to larger manifestations of holy and self-forgetting
sympathy, perfectly compatible with the firm attitude (which is also
their duty) of responsible direction. But this thought leaves unaltered
the mournful impression taken from the tone of the letters of my
aggrieved Brethren. In one form or another one thought seemed to breathe
in all;--the thought of _my_ rights, _my_ position, _my_ gifts and
opportunities, and what was due from others in regard of them; the
complaint that others were not humble, when the Christian's first
concern with humility is to derive it for himself from his Lord. Such a
spirit is not easily compatible with a true secret hourly walk with God
and abiding in Christ, the _sine qu‚ non_ of fruit-bearing. And
fruit-bearing is the supreme inner aim of the true pastoral life,
fruit-bearing in the devoted doing of the Master's present will.
"In one letter I read with pain that 'it is no marvel' if men who cannot
secure justice and happiness in one party should transfer their
allegiance to another. Is it indeed 'no marvel'? Is it to be expected,
then, in the holy Ministry, that convictions about divine truth should
be modified by the personal claims and comfort of the holder, if the
word 'hold' may be used without severe irony in such a connexion? Can a
saint and servant of God, young or old, Vicar or Curate, walk closely
with Him all day, truly given to Him, wholly submissive to His word and
will, and yet find it possible to deal with convictions so? What are
personal rights and exterior happiness weighed against the claims of
what we have really grasped as truth in the presence of the Lord? It is
well for us that martyrs and confessors, and their worthy successors,
our Evangelical ancestors of a century ago, knew how to answer that
question.
CONVICTION SACRED, SELF NOWHERE.
"I aim to speak with all humility and sympathy. But I cannot but thus
earnestly express the unalterable conviction that the only ministerial
life which can be 'sanctified and meet for the Master's use' is the life
in which conviction is sacred, in which Christ is all, and in which self
is nowhere."