THE SORROWS OF A CURATE.
OUR old friend the anatomist curate, victim of British stupidity empanelled on a coroner's jury, has turned up again with a lively pamphlet* on the wrongs of curates. De minimis non curat lex he would certainly translate as meaning that ecclesiastical law has no cure for the wrongs of curates. From the large, the telescopic view of the Church of England, in relation to other Churches and to the centre of its own system, the Throne, he with- draws our gaze suddenly to the minute microscopic view of it in relation to those animalcules of the clerical body which the care- ful examination even of a single molecule of Church vitality dis- closes as the active elements thereof,—the curates. The idea of the pamphlet is in effect the same as that which a lively writer, in xemonstrating against Miss Bronte's profound heartlessness towards curates, expressed by a slight modification of Isabella's words in Measure for Measure:—
"The poor curate that we tread upon In corporal suffrance feels a pang as great As when a rector dies."
The peculiarity of a curate's position is, that with a spiritual life and dignity of his own to support, he is in the very undignified position of something like a servant to the incumbent. Indeed unless the incumbent can rest comfortably upon the curate, the curate has in most parishes little chance of finding an abiding place under him. Now our friend the anatomist curate, it must be confessed, would be a very uncomfortable spiritual settle for this sort of incumbency. Mr. Hunt is obviously restless, rather savagely independent, eccentric, given to saying startling things which have very much the effect on incumbents of spiritual pins starting up in the cushion beneath them, energetic no doubt, but not in a comfortable, regulation way, given, too, to taking distinc- tions which mean something instead of the distinctions which make a 'valuable discourse,' and given, besides, to taking them in an abrupt and even spasmodic fashion that shatters the nerves of the most susceptible nervous systems in the English world. A curate who even under the anonymous disguise of "X. Y." can write in answer to a list of silly questions from an advertising rector who signs himself "Yours truly in Jesus, H. L.," "X. X. Y.' is of * Clergymen Made Scarce. A letter to the Bishop of London. By "A Presbyter.' London : Ban, Smart, and Allen. opinion that L.' is half-cracked, and would recommend him, if he is in Jesus, to walk in the light, and not in the darkness," can scarcely regard his personal difficulties as strictly repre- sentative of those of his class. We are almost surprised to find that the health of "H. L.," a traditionalist, who held that "a sermon should consist of an exordium, then a prayer to the Holy Spirit, thre2 heads, and an application"—survived the receipt of this violent missive—as it appears that it did—even from an unknown clerical quantity. Indeed after reading this history we are not at all surprised that Mr. Hunt has been, even among the small class of active-minded and original curates, exceptionally unfortunate. It is obvious, for instance, amongst other accentuated personal charac- teristics, that Mr. Hunt has no Christian scruple against a little retaliation, not always of the most refined kind. For example, he allows himself to attack one rector, —who certainly swindled him, —on the score of his plethoric habit and thick utterance, using his anatomical knowledge to describe the "adipose tissue that had collected in the vicinity of the submaxillary and the os hyoides," and likening his articulation in a sermon against luxury to that of "a swimming pig about to commit involuntary suicide." This language strikes us as something worse than mere eccentricity in a Christian minister. We have no objection to plain speaking
about swindling rectors, but this kind of revenge is neither Christian nor dignified.
Still, after eliminating Mr. Hunt's abrupt and somewhat harsh personality from this amusing narrative, there is evidence enough that any earnest and original man of eager and even voracious intellect such as he undoubtedly possesses, has much to bear which belongs to the experience of universal curacy, and not to that of the somewhat rampant individuality which was united to the status of curacy in this particular case. The chief trials of curates appear to arise from two distinct sources,—from the doctrinal tyranny of incumbents and of the societies, like The Pas- toral Aid Society, which most often supply their salary,—and secondly, from the petty jealousies of the incumbent!) when the in- cumbent is not a large-minded man and the curate has enough ability to be his superior or rival as a preacher. The latter trials are perhaps the most vexatious, the most insignificant, the most ridiculous to every one but the curate concerned, and the least susceptible of any kind of remedy—except the universal remedy for all the small envies, hatreds, and uncharitablenesses of human life. Mr. Hunt tells us that in his first London curacy the incumbent, who had been a suppressed curate nearly all his life, preaching as little as his superiors could help, and subordi- nate even at the "ministrations," was anxious in his turn to sup- press his curate. "He had an idea which afflicts many vain preachers, that his congregation were not satisfied to see any but himself either in the pulpit or the desk." Now Mr. Hunt was an irrepressible kind of curate, whom it required a weight of many atmospheres to keep out of the pulpit and the desk. Accordingly the rector had to solve the problem how to find or feign other moral atmospheres, supplementary to his own, adverse to Mr. Hunt's appearance in the pulpit and the desk. He managed it as follows. We need not say that the rectorial names in this pamphlet are all fictitious :— " I am very sorry, and it is a matter of great trouble to me,' he pro- ceeded to say, but a deputation from the congregation waited on me yesterday to state that your reading is so bad that they will not endure it longer.' He added that there was no objection to may preaching, only to my reading. The natural amendment which suggested iW* to me was, that he should read and I would do the preaching. I .arked that the information he brought me was very strange. I had come one Sunday on trial, and had offered to stay a month in the same condition, that they might all be perfectly satisfied. I proposed to resign the curacy, but he would not hoar of that. He wished that I should confine my labours to visiting the poor, and on Sundays I could sit in the com- munion and read the epistle. The novelty of the proposition made me smile. He wished to confer on me the dignity of a Bishop or a Dean, to sit enthroned that the congregation might behold me—and, strange infatuation ! I refused the honour. My absence from church was a subject of inquiry, I told the story in a good-humoured manner, shield- ing Mr. Arlington as well as I could, but the result was an excitement in the parish. Pews were threatened to be given up, hard words were spoken, and the people asked indignantly who wore the deputation that waited on Mr. Arlington. When pressed he denied the deputation. It was finally reduced to the Churchwarden's wife and one or two old ladies, Mr. Arlington's special admirers."
Another rector, in whose parish Mr. Hunt had, according to his own account, been even too popular, testified to his cha- racter in a letter which stated that his services had been highly appreciated by his parishioners. For this, however, the rector kindly suggested a reason, namely, that his style of preaching was "highly figurative," and that the appreciation 11118 in some measure due "to Scotch predilections on the part of some." Mr. Hunt chanced to see the letter, and addressing his
rector, said playfully, "I did not know that your parishioners were troubled with Scotch predilections." "He made an apology, and said he would not put that in again." Again ! He would not convey a false impression injurious to a poor curate twice ! But the wont sorrows of intellectual curates like Mr. Hunt arise in the supreme ignorance, narrowness, and cowardice of some of the incumbents. Some of these gentlemen appear to have a pretty regular test for the orthodoxy of curates. It consists in asking them what they (the curates) think of works of which they (the questioners) know nothing themselves. The liberal and low test is of course to ask what the curate thinks of Essays and Reviews, or to ask him to sign a protest against them. This appears to be done by many clergymen by no means narrow in their school of thought, who rarely if ever have themselves read the book or any part of it. Mr. Hunt tells us that one of his most liberal incum- bents brought him a protest or petition of this kind to sign as a matter of course, the bringer having no knowledge whatever of that work ; —indeed it would appear to ba common for men to preach furiously against the book in the same state of voluntary ignorance.
" The Essays-and-Reviews mania had reached its height. The book was in the hands of many ; it was the subject of conversation at every party, and especially if either of the Curates was present. I expressed my judgment of it freely, taking each essay by itself, showing what I approved and what I did not approve. I alluded to the subject in a sermon, taking a considerably more favourable view of the Essays than the Bishops had done. I was not aware that violent feeling existed on the subject. I had weighed the book calmly, and wished others to do the same. There was truth in it that we needed—truth, some of it unpalatable indeed, but it was necessary for truth's own sake that it should come out. My remarks brought me anonymous letters, express- ing amazement and disappointment that one whose ministrations they so much esteemed should see any good in such a book. The Vicar, too, wrote that I must leave at once. The other Curate, an ignorant man from St. Bees, next Sunday denounced the Essays and Reviews as the most atrociously infidel book that had ever been published. The Vicar came home, and he preached Essays and Reviews till every servant girl in the parish was reading Essays and Reviews. The Curate of course had never read the book, and the Vicar made a vow he never would read it ; but if his congregation wanted to go to hell, that, he said, was the book for them to read" But Essays and Reviews is the low and, so to say, the coarse test for heresy ; if that causes any decomposition in the curate's mind, if any elective affinity is shown for any portion whatever of that dangerous book, if there is any sign of chemical combination with Temple or Jowett, even though Baden Powell and Williams be left behind as red precipitate, then "away with such a fellow from the earth, for it is not fit that he should live." The second and more delicate test is the mention of Mr. Maurice's name. This seems to be regarded as of about the same degree of delicacy as the use of "vegetable blues" for testing acid and alkali among chemists. If the mention of Mr. Maurice dyes a curate's cheek, the poisonous acid is there. In one church the incumbent had just thanked our curate for his "very remarkable sermon," and all but engaged him for a term, when the former heard Mr. Hunt say that Mr. Maurice had some fine thoughts on the same subject as that of his dis- course. "Mr. Maurice !" said the incumbent, "do you agree with Mr. Maurice 2" " ' On that point,' I answered, 'I certainly do.'" "This effaced the good impression I had made ; for a curate to agree with Mr. Maurice, even when Mr. Maurice is right, is at least suspicious." Another clergyman in Mr. Maurice's neigh- bourhood applied the test for this moral arsenic acid at once and boldly. "What do you think of Mr. Maurice?" Mr. Hunt answered that he knew nothing against Mr. Maurice. "But I mean, what do you think of his doctrines?" "Which r said the distinguishing curate. "Well, any of them," replied the undistin- gnishing incumbent. We need not after this report the issue of the conversation. A rector who wants to know what you think of stay of Mr. Maurice's doctrines, must be in that state of mind in which he would doubtless reject the belief in an external world if Mr. Maurice shared it. But if Mr. Maurice fails, a few,—only a few of the incumbents,—have a more delicate one still, which cor- responds perhaps in their minds to the spectrum analysis, for heresy,—the sermons of the late Mr. Robertson of Brighton. " ' We never know,' said one incumbent to our curate, where we are to find infidelity now,' and, as I thought changing the subject, he asked if I had read Robertson's Sermons. I quickly answered that I had, and that they were wonderful sermons. Infidelity,' he replied,—' nothing else. A lady came to me yesterday with a volume of them, wanting me to read a passage which she said was very beautiful, but I soon showed her the error that was in it." Kingsley appears to be scarcely a test of the same order. They test with his name, but rather for love of eccentricity and out-of- the-way habits of mind than for heresy. "A young puppy," said
the last-named rector concerning him to Mr. Hunt, "nothing but a young puppy I knew him when he was a boy, and his father be- fore him." One of the most curious traits is the bold and ignorant heresies into which some of the incumbents fall in their effort to refute heresy. Here is the teaching of an incumbent who wished to improve Mr. Hunt. "His morning sermon seemed specially written for my benefit. The subject was the teaching of the Holy Spirit. The preacher maintained that the Spirit never taught except through the Bible. We had just prayed in the Com.- munion that our hearts might be cleansed through the inspiration of that Spirit, and now we were taught that inspiration was con- fined to a printed book." Another told him that to speak of the craving of the soul for God was "lacking in the fulness of evangelical truth ;" and a third explained to him that science was not an evangelical study, "for Jesus Christ knew nothing about science." In history, too, they are sometimes arbitrary. An M.A. of Cambridge who rejected Mr. Hunt for not being a Cambridge or Oxford man, supposed that Lent originated with the Reformation.
Such are the sorrows of an educated curate with a mind of his own. His rewards are not much in the balance. If he be able to escape suspicions as to his evangelicism, he can generally get an income raised to 100/. a year by The Pastoral Aid Society. If he is High Church, he has such offers as the following :—" One man offered the charge of his parish and rectory, with the use of the domestics, on the condition that I boarded them. I was to take his duty, and pay his household out of my private income. Another offered the use of an unfurnished room, a garden, and a cow." Thus subjected to the pettiest personal jealousies and the caprices of personal ignorance on the part of their superiors,— sharply luestioned on subjects on which their answers, if they know anything, cannot probably be understood by the questioners, —seldom permitted to put forth their full powers when they are in earnest in another man's parish,—driven to the ignominious process of advertising and answering anonymous advertisements in order to get bread,—ill-paid at best by jealous societies committed to particular shades of doctrine, and, through all, striving, if they are in earnest, to preserve an independent spiritual life and a high sense of the dignity of their own calling, it is difficult to conceive any class of persons in a more painful position than well-read, strong-beaded, earnest-minded curates. Mr. Hunt at all events, with all his eccentricities, deserves great credit for still being the man he is, as well as for his candour in narrating his miseries to his sometime Bishop.
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