The Recreations of A Country Parson | Page 4

pleased to be a country parson, and to make the
best of it. Friends, who have held like stations in life, have you not felt,
now and then, a little waking up of old ideas and aspirations? All this,
you thought, was not what you once had wished, and pictured to
yourself. You vainly fancied, in your student days, that you might reach
a more eminent place and greater usefulness. I know, indeed, that even
such as have gone very unwillingly to a little remote country parish,
have come most heartily to enjoy its peaceful life: have grown fond of
that, as they never thought to do. I do not mean that you need affectedly
talk, after a few months there, as if you had lived in the country all your
life, and as if your thoughts had from childhood run upon horses,
turnips, and corn. But in sober earnest, as weeks pass over, you gain a
great interest in little country cares; and you discover that you may be
abundantly useful, and abundantly laborious, amid a small and simple
population.
Yet sometimes, my clever friend, I know you sit down on a green bank,
under the trees, and look at your little church. You think, of your

companions and competitors in College days, filling distinguished
places in life: and, more particularly, of this and that friend in your own
calling, who preaches to as many people on one Sunday as you do in
half a year. Fine fellows they were: and though you seldom meet now,
you are sure they are faithful, laborious, able, and devoted ministers:
God bless them all! You wonder how they can do so much work; and
especially how they have confidence to preach to so large and
intelligent congregations. For a certain timidity, and distrust of his own
powers, grows upon the country parson. He is reaching the juster
estimate of himself, indeed: yet there is something not desirable in the
nervous dislike to preach in large churches and to cultivated people
which is sure to come. And little things worry him, which would not
worry a mind kept more upon the stretch. It is possible enough that
among the Cumberland hills, or in curacies like Sydney Smith's on
Salisbury Plain, or wandering sadly by the shore of Shetland fiords,
there may be men who had in them the makings of eminent preachers;
but whose powers have never been called out, and are rusting sadly
away: and in whom many petty cares are developing a pettiness of
nature.
I have observed that in those advertisements which occasionally appear
in certain newspapers, offering for sale the next presentation to some
living in the Church, the advertiser, after pointing out the various
advantages of the situation, frequently sums up by stating that the
population of the parish is very small, and so the clergyman's duty very
light. I always read such a statement with great displeasure. For it
seems to imply, that a clergyman's great object is, to enjoy his benefice
and do as little duty as possible in return for it. I suppose it need not be
proved, that if such were truly the great object of any parson, he has no
business to be in the Church at all. Failing health, or powers overdriven,
may sometimes make even the parson whose heart is in his work desire
a charge whose duty and responsibility are comparatively small: but I
firmly believe that in the case of the great majority of clergymen, it is
the interest and delight they feel in their work, and not its worldly
emolument, that mainly attach them to their sacred profession: and thus
that the more work they have to do (provided their strength be equal to
it), the more desirable and interesting they hold their charge to be. And
I believe that the earnest pastor, settled in some light and pleasant

country charge, will oftentimes, even amid his simple enjoyment of that
pleasant life, think that perhaps he would be more in the path of duty, if,
while the best years of his life are passing on, he were placed where he
might serve his Master in a larger sphere.
And thinking now and then in this fashion, I was all of a sudden asked
to undertake a charge such as would once have been my very ideal: and
in that noble city where my work began, and so which has always been
very dear. But I felt that everything was changed. Before these years of
growing experience, I dare say I should not have feared to set myself
even to work as hard; but now I doubted greatly whether I should prove
equal to it. That time in the country had made me sadly lose confidence.
And I thought it would