I have been staying with a friend in Yorkshire, in an out-of-the-way
place, and I have seen a good deal of the parish clergyman there, who
is rather a pathetic person, I think. It seems to me that he belongs to
a type which is perhaps becoming more common, and the fact makes me
somewhat anxious about the future of the Church of England, because it
is a type that does not seem to me to correspond to the needs of the
day at all. He was, I believe, the son of a solicitor in a small
country town; he was educated at a local grammar-school, and went up to
a small Cambridge College; here he took a pass-degree, and then went
into a Theological College, of a rather advanced High-Church type.
Having received a so-called classical education, he had no particular
intellectual interests. He was not an athlete; he worked just enough to
secure a pass-degree, and spent his time at Cambridge in mild
sociability. He takes no interest in politics, books, art, games, or
even agriculture. Just when his mind began to expand a little he went
off to the Theological College, where he was indoctrinated with high
ecclesiastical ideas, and formed a great idea of the supreme importance
of his vocation. He had no impulse to examine the foundations of his
faith, but he meekly assimilated a large number of doctrinal and
traditional propositions, such as the Apostolic succession, the visible
corporate Church, the sacrificial theory of the Eucharist, priestly
absolution, and so forth. He is a believer in systematic confession,
but is careful to say that this was not inculcated upon him, but only
indicated, and that his belief in it is based on practical experience.
He also imbibed a great love of liturgical and ceremonial usage. He was
for a short time a country curate, and married a clergyman's daughter.
His College gave him the living which he now holds, which is fairly
endowed; and having some small means of his own, he lives comfortably.
I will add that he is a thoroughly kindly man, and very conscientious
in the discharge of what he conceives to be his duty. He has a great
many services on Sunday, somewhat sparsely attended. He reads matins
and vespers every day in his church, and gives an address on saints'
days. But he seems to have no idea what his parishioners are doing or
thinking about, and no particular desire to know. He is assiduous in
visiting, in holding classes, in teaching; he has no sense of humour
whatever; and the system of religion which he administers is so
perfectly obvious and unquestioned a thing to him, that it never occurs
to him to wonder if other people are not built on different lines. I
have often, attended his church and heard him preach; but the sermons
which I have heard are either expositions of high doctrine, or else
discourses of what I can only call a very feminine and even finicking
kind of morality; he preaches on the duty of church-going, on the
profane use of scriptural language, on the sanctification of joy, on
the advisability of family prayer, on religious meditation, on the
examples of saints, on the privilege of devotional exercises, on the
consecration of life, on the communion of saints, on the ministry of
angels. But it seems all remote from daily life, and to be a species of
religion that can only be successfully cultivated by people of abundant
leisure. I do not mean to say that many of these things do not possess
a certain refined beauty of their own; but I do feel that farmers and
labourers are not, as a rule, in the stage in which such ideas are
possible or even desirable. I have seen him conduct a children's
service, and then he is in high content, surrounded by clean and
well-brushed infants, and smiling girls. He sits in a chair on the
chancel steps, in a paternal attitude, and leads them in a little
meditation on the childhood of the Mother of Christ. Whenever he
describes a scene out of the Bible, and he is fond of doing this, it
always sounds as if he were describing a stained-glass window; his
favourite qualities are meekness, submissiveness, devotion, holiness;
and he is apt to illustrate his teaching by the example of the
Apostles, whom we are to believe were men of singular modesty because
we hear so very little about them. The modern world has no existence
for him whatever; and yet one cannot say that he lives in the Middle
Ages, because he knows so little about them; he moves in a paradise of
cloistered virgins and mild saints; and the virtue that he chiefly
extols is the virtue of faith; the more that reason revolts at a
statement, the greater is the triumph of godly faith involved in
accepting it unquestioned.
The result is that the little girls love him, the boys laugh at him,
the women admire him, the men regard him as not quite a man. The only
objects for which he raises money diligently are additions to the
furniture of the church; he takes a languid interest in foreign
missions, he mistrusts science, and social questions he frankly
dislikes. I have heard him say, with an air of deep conviction, when
the question of the unemployed is raised, "After all, we must remember
that the only possible solution of these sad difficulties is a
spiritual one."
The pity of it all is that he is so entirely complacent, so absolutely
unaware that there is anything amiss. He does not see that people have
to be tenderly and simply wooed to religion, and that they have to be
led to take an interest in their own characters and lives. His idea is
that the Church is there, a holy and venerable institution, with
undeniable claims on the allegiance and loyalty of all. Worship is to
him a man's first duty and privilege; and if he finds that one of his
parishioners thinks the services tedious, tiresome, or unintelligible,
he looks upon him as a child of wrath, perverse and ungodly. The one
chance a clergyman has to gain the confidence of the men of his
congregation is when he prepares the boys for confirmation; but the
vicar sees them, each alone, week after week, and initiates them into
the theory of the Visible Church and the advisability of regular
confession. I confess sadly that it does not seem to me to resemble
Christianity at all; in the place of the shrewd, simple, tender, and
wise teaching of Christ about daily life and effort, the duties of
kindness, purity, unselfishness, he gives an elaborate picture of rites
and ceremonies, of mystical and spiritual agencies, which play little
part in the life of a day-labourer's son. If he would learn something
about the points of a horse instead of about the points of an angel, if
he would study the rotation of the crops instead of the rotation of
Easter-tide, he would find himself far more in line with his flock: if
he would busy himself with getting the boys and girls good places, he
would soon have a niche in the hearts of his parishioners; all that he
does is to give a ploughboy, who is going off to a neighbouring farm, a
little manual of devotion, with ugly and sentimental chromo-lithographs,
and beg him to use it night and morning.
His wife is of the same type, a prim and colourless woman, who believes
intensely in her husband, and devotes herself to furthering his work.
They have three rather priggish children, whose greatest punishment is
not to be allowed to teach in the Sunday-school.
One does not like to laugh at a man whose whole life is spent in doing
what he believes to be right; but he seems to have no hold on
realities, and to be quite unable to throw himself, by imagination or
sympathy, into what his people want or need. He has no belief in
secular education, and thinks it makes people discontented and
faithless. He is generous with his money, spending lavishly on the
Church, but he does not believe in what he calls indiscriminate
charity. The incident which has touched him more than any other in the
course of his ministry, he will tell you, is when a poor old woman on
her death-bed confided to him a few shillings to be spent on providing
an altar-frontal. He gives a Sunday-school feast every year, which
begins with a versicle and a response. "Thou openest Thine Hand," he
says in a rich voice and the children pipe in chorus, "And fillest all
things living with plenteousness." The day ends with a little service,
which he thoroughly enjoys.
Even the services themselves are a dreary business, because he insists
on the whole thing being choral; and little boys in short cassocks,
with stocking-legs underneath, howl the responses and monotone the
prayers to the accompaniment of a loud raw organ. He reads the lessons
in what he calls a devotional way, which consists in reciting all
episodes alike, the song of Deborah or the victories of Gideon, as if
they were melancholy and pathetic reflections. He is fond of Gregorians
and plain-song. The choirmen consist of a scrofulous invalid, his own
gardener and coachman, and a bankrupt carpenter, given to drink and
profuse repentance. But he is careful to say that he did not suggest
the introduction of a choral service--"it was forced upon him by the
wish of certain earnest and devoted helpers."
The fact is that the man is, as the children say, a real goose. There
is nothing manly, vigorous, or sensible about him; he sometimes
deplores the indifference of his parishioners to what he calls true
Churchmanship, but he never thinks of comparing his ideal with the
Gospel or with the actual conditions of the world. He seems to be
hopelessly befogged; he is as certain as only a virtuous or stupid man
can be that the religious system which he inculcates is the exact and
deliberate development of the Spirit of Christ; and to hear him talk,
you would suppose that the only joy in heaven resulted from a rumour
that another church was added to the list of sanctuaries which had
daily matins. The hopeless difficulty is that he considers his system
so pure and lovely that to modify it in any way would seem to be a
grievous compromise with worldliness, a violation of his high calling;
he looks forward confidently to the time when the people of England
will be a devotional and submissive flock, crowding daily to their
village sanctuaries, and going back home with the glow and glory of the
heavenly mysteries radiating from them in grave smiles and pious
ejaculations.
It all seems to me a profoundly melancholy business. One does not wish
to prevent people from worshipping God in the vicar's way, if they feel
that thus they draw near to the divine presence; but it can only be a
very small minority who will ever find satisfaction in this particular
type of religion; and I must add that, for myself, I would not
unwillingly see that minority reduced. It is a narrow, stuffy, and
secluded region at best, remote from the open air, little alive to
simplicity, manliness, humour, courage, and cheerfulness. What I resent
about it is the solemn certainty with which this system is announced to
be the eternal purpose and design of God for man. I am not in a
position to say that it is not God's purpose, but nothing that I see in
the world convinces me of it; and in any case I can only feel that if
this type of religion continues to spread, which I believe it will do,
if the better, more unaffected, more intellectual, more manly men begin
to be alienated from the clerical profession, it will end in a complete
indifference on the part of the nation to religion at all. The fault
lies largely, I believe, with the seminaries. They have set up so
exotic a standard, screwed up the ecclesiastical tone so high, that few
but timid, unintellectual, cautious, and sentimental people will
embrace a vocation where so many pledges have to be given. The type of
old-fashioned village clergyman, who was at all events a man among men,
kindly, generous, hospitable, tolerant, and sensible, seems doomed to
extinction, and I cannot help thinking that it is a grievous pity. The
new type of clergyman would think, on the other hand, that their
disappearance is an unmixed blessing. They would say that they were
sloppy, self-indulgent, secular persons, and that the improvement in
tone and standard among the clergy was a pure gain; it all depends upon
whether you put the social or the priestly functions of the clergyman
highest. I am inclined to rate their social value very high, but then I
prefer the parson to the priest. I dislike the idea of a priestly
caste, an ecclesiastical tradition, a body of people who have the
administering of mysterious spiritual secrets. I want to bring religion
home to ordinary people, not to segregate it. I would rather have in
every parish a wise and kindly man with the same interests as his
neighbours, but with a good simple standard of virtuous and brotherly
living, than a man endowed with spiritual powers and influences,
upholding a standard of life that is subtle, delicate, and refined
indeed, but which is neither simple nor practical, and to which the
ordinary human being cannot conform, because it lies quite outside of
his range of thought. To my mind, the essence of the Gospel is liberty
and simplicity; but the Gospel of ecclesiasticism is neither simple nor
free.