CLERICAL EFFICIENCY.
ONE of the best and most practical papers at the recent Church Congress was read by Mr. James Cropper, lately, -though, we regret to say, no longer, Member for South Westmor- land. The subject was "Clerical Efficiency," and it was handled with an attention to detail, and a sense of the important part that details play in the ordering of life, which make the paper stand out in striking contrast to much that is said and written on the question. Mr. Cropper is not afraid of being original ; he does not forget that truisms are sometimes nothing better than truths that have ceased to be true.
The heads of Mr. Cropper's paper—the points, that is, which he selects as specially affecting a clergyman's efficiency—are three, "Duty," "Matrimony," "Method." Readiness, and even anxiety to do his work properly, is assumed. Mr. Cropper's object is not to create the wish to be efficient, but to suggest some remedies for the hindrances which too often prevent a well- meaning clergyman from being as efficient as, in theory at all events, he would like to be. He is speaking only of the rural clergy ; and with this limitation, he gives the first place among these hindrances to the want of sufficient work,—" the small population of his parish, and the actual absence of claims upon him." The work of a country parish may be hard, in the sense that what there is of it makes considerable demands on physical strength ; yet it may be easy, in the sense that these demands come but seldom. In a scattered parish, a single case of sickness may involve a ten-mile walk many times repeated ; but when there is no such case, the care of a few hundred people may leave a clergyman with long intervals of time on his hands. The better fitted he is for his post, the more heavily this state of things will weigh on him. Formerly, it was not so. The standard of clerical work was lower than it is now ; the proper minimum was mote considered than the possible maxi- -mum. Consequently, the country clergyman more willingly ga-re up his spare time to those pursuits on behalf of which Mr. Cropper now only sets up a diffident and exculpatory plea. "Shall we blame him," he says, "if in such a case he becomes a gardener, a farmer, or a fisherman ; or if he is the best judge of stock and crops in his neighbourhood?" Certainly we shall not blame him. But it is in things that are not blameable that there is most need for caution ; and though it is better for a country parson to be a gardener, a farmer, or a fitherman than to be an idler, there is still a danger that the pursuits of his leisure may take a larger and larger share, not perhaps of the time, but certainly of the interest, that should be given to his work. If they do, the better he is, the more uneasy and restless he will be, and the less fitted to do well even the work he does. It is easy enough to give your work the first place in your thoughts when it makes large demands upon you, when its claims are imperative and cannot be put aside ; it is not so easy when the work may be done as well one day as another, or if left undone this week, can be picked up again next without any trace of the gap being visible. Mr. Cropper makes two suggestions to meet this difficulty. He 'mentions "one clergyman in such a condition who has, with marked success, undertaken the entire charge of his parish school." Two years ago, under a certificated master, attendance, work, and discipline were all bad ; this year, the Inspector's report notes them all as "very good." It is only in a very small parish that a single-handed incumbent could find time to do this. But there are other parishes in which there is rather more than work enough for one, and yet not enough for two. If the incumbent is energetic, and the funds are forthcoming, he has a curate, and then he lives in a state of constant doubt whether his curate does not get too much lawn-tennis. He cannot charge him with neglecting his duty, but he is painfully alive to the fact that for a large part of each week-day there is no duty for him to neglect. In a case of this kind, if one or other of them had charge of the parish school, there would be ample employment for both ; and if the incumbent took this part of the work, he would be laying the foundation of what might be a most useful permanent influence over the children of the parish.
But Mr. Cropper has a bolder coarse to propose than this. He throws over the "resident gentleman," and suggests that "in small parishes the periodical visit of a clergyman from some active centre would often be better than his constant residence." He gives the particulars of one such case that he himself once knew of. Some fifty years ago, a young Fellow of a college became the curate of a sequestrated living near a University town. For twenty-five years the parish had been wholly left to itself, and the new curate had to turn the cattle out of the church. He hired a bedroom, went over to the village two days in the week, and in course of time the people were got to church, a school was set up, the squire was moved to build cottages and to give allotments, and the whole character of the place was changed. Clearly, therefore, the non-residence of the clergyman was no hindrance to the work. More than this, Mr. Cropper points out that it was an actual help to it. If the curate had been planted there with no one to speak to, his spirits might have flagged, and his activity might have dwindled with his energy. As it was, he could return after his days of toil in the neglected village to the society of the combination-room, and be cheered and freshened by intercourse with his friends. Some arrangement by which small parishes could be worked from some central and larger parish, would not only provide abundant work for men who at present are eating their hearts out by reason of loneliness and want of interest, but also meet in some degree the recent decline in the incomes of the rural clergy. A man cannot work a parish on £100 a year if he has to keep up a parsonage, with all its attendant expenses, on the scale which the possession of such a house implies. But suppose him, instead of this, to be the inmate of the clergy- house of a large neighbouring parish, going over to his own parish on Sundays and two or three days in the week besides, and at other times helping in the work of the central parish, he will live far more cheaply, he will have his time fully occupied, and he will not, as now, miss the stimulus and encouragement of habitual intercourse with the men engaged in the same pursuits, and having the same objects in view.
The second head of Mr. Cropper's paper is closely connected with this-suggestion. The incumbents of these small livings, who are to live together in a common centre, would be single men. They would defer marriage until such time as promo- tion to a richer benefice gave them larger means and a kind of work which marriage would help, not hinder. No doubt this change would ran counter to a very general theory of clerical marriage, but it is a theory which, general as it is, has no sanction from common-sense. Still, Mr. Cropper is so sensible of the delicacy of the question, that he prefers to use words which have been supplied him by a clergyman's wife. "Many a young curate," says this lady, "finds on undertaking his new duties that he is at once the subject of curiosity and gossip ; he is assumed to be in love with this or the other lady, and before long is fairly entangled. He possibly marries before he is ordained priest, or at any rate before he has secured home or income." There is no need to paint the future of a man so situated. The cares of a family, combined with those of an inadequate income, absorb more and more of his thoughts, and his standard of clerical efficiency grows lower in proportion. "Would it not have been a help to him," this lady goes on, "had there been some strong current of public opinion opposed to the first step he took, encouraging him rather to spend the first, fresh years of his ministry in undivided devotion to his work, rather than in too early family responsibility ? " In our recoil from compulsory celibacy, we have introduced compulsory marriage. A clergyman may marry in the teeth of common prudence, and, as would in any other case be at once admitted, in disregard of obvious duty. He may have only a curate's stipend to live on, and his work may be of a kind which demands all his time, all his thoughts, all his energy. Yet he will find abundance of supporters, abundance of friends who will think that he has done no more than—being a clergyman—it is his bounden duty to do. Instead of public opinion encouraging him, as it would in the case of any other profession, to make his work his first care, and to marry only when he can do so without hindering his work, it is all the other way. He is positively encouraged to do what, if left to the guidance of his own wiser mind, he would probably never think of doing. If it were once recognised that large areas of clerical work can be best done by men living together in a common centre, a real stop would have been made to the forma- tion of such a public opinion as Mr. Cropper's correspondent desires. Clerical marriage would become, like lay marriage, a thing to be taken in hand soberly and advisedly, not rushed at for no better reason than the fact that the bridegroom is a curate, and hopes some day to be a rector.
The third point in Mr. Cropper's paper we shall not touch on, because. it does not involve any such revolution in the popular way of looking at a clergyman's life as those which we have mentioned. But the whole paper is one which ought to make its mark, and to leave lasting traces of its influence. As such, we have thought it well to single it out from the mass of sensible but not very original matter which makes up the annals of Church Congresses.
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