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.
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