CLERICAL PECCADILLOES

SOME friends complained that in my former book I have said so little about my life as bishop. I do not know what my brothers in the episcopate may feel, but for myself I should say that there is little to chronicle in the routine life of a bishop. It is only now and then that some affair yields some special or dramatic experience. Normally speaking, when the machine is working well there is little which affords motives or incidents demanding any record. Certainly it may be laid down as an axiom that when things are going well there is little to chronicle. Like the body, the diocese is unaware of its organs except when there is local disturbance. Then, of course, there is trouble, and then the head knows that there is trouble. The bishop, too, is like the coxswain of a college boat. If the race is successful it is the oarsmen who have won it. If the race is lost it has been lost through bad steering. If there is trouble in a parish, the question is, "Why doesn't the bishop do something?" and as soon as he does anything the question is, "Why does the bishop interfere?"

Nevertheless the parishioners of any parish are generally very kind they welcome the bishop when he visits the parish to open the church after restoration, to open the new schools, to dedicate the new window, or the new organ, or the new font. Then the flag floats from the church tower;

the village band is out: the choristers robe themselves in surplices fairly free from ironmould: the bells are heard, their sweet clamour wakes the countryside: the boy scouts form a guard of honour: the service is to be "quite short," which means that the exhortation is to be abbreviated, but the hymns are to be multiplied, and the anthem elongated to the utmost capacity of the choir. It is all very hearty and earnest, and pleasing and kindly and exhausting. The time spent in reaching the church: the service followed by a luncheon-I beg pardon, a cold collation: the speeches, the introductions: the various few words to be spokento our good ladies' committee who arranged the refreshments: to the Church Lads' Brigade: to the children in the schools: these things mean a fatiguing though a happy day. The quiet of the railway carriage as you travel home is like peace after storm. You fling your poor body down: you think will find refreshment in a book, but your jaded you mind is irresponsive to the words on its inviting pages: the brain, denuded of nourishing blood, refuses to work. You endure the hour of the homeward journey, and you know that you have gone beyond the limit when work is naturally followed by recuperative sleep. You hope for some interval of repose, but your engagement-book inexorably tells you that to-morrow is as to-day, and even much more abundant.

There is joy in work, notwithstanding its fatigues. The memory of the bright and hospitable faces; the insight into this little leafy corner of honest and simple work; the realization of its happy order and brotherly co-operation; these things bring a glad content into the heart, and abundantly compensate for any fatigue.

The limits of time and space make things difficult. Sometimes similar functions are arranged for the same day in parishes a goodly distance apart from one another. I remember having to institute and induct two vicars on the same day; one function was in Leeds, the other some twenty miles distant by rail. I had fixed the times and the trains; but the good people, with the new vicar, at the first function had some musical ambitions; the arrangements were so elaborate that there was considerable preliminary delay; processional hymns of inordinate length, an anthem of ambitious character, prolonged the service. At last, during the singing of a hymn, I went across to the vicar and said, "I must be at the Leeds Station in ten minutes." This I said to warn him that I, at least, must leave to fulfil my next engagement. Having given the warning, I went to the pulpit to preach my sermon. I caught my train and fulfilled the more distant engagement. But such experiences are a little trying to the nerves. The use of a motor considerably reduced the strain of these nervous experiences.

But the real trials of a bishop's life come from the unreasonable and wicked men from whom even an apostle desired to be delivered. I think that a vicar who habitually drinks may be classed among the wicked. How far his parishioners may be classed among the unreasonable, let the following plain, unvarnished tale declare.

In telling the tale I give fictitious names of parson and parish. Certainly the experiences of a bishop's life are various. Some, I believe, who read my former book, thought that I had done scant justice to these episcopal

experiences. I feel tempted to expostulate, and to say, Friend, if you do not know, can you not realize, that to write explicitly of a bishop's experiences is to run the risk of wounding some worthy soul? The ordinary record of a bishop's doings is not very interesting. Would it amuse or edify you very much to have a chronicle of miles travelled, of confirmations held, of villages visited, of knotty questions disentangled?" No, dear reader, you wish something more piquant than these things. Precisely so, yet the piquant things are the painful things, which, being told, may bring hurt to some sensitive spirit.

I can only touch on such things in a general way; or shall I say that it may be profitable to generalize my experience in some imaginary incident, which can be justified by memories which must not be allowed to become explicit ?

I wonder what is the most demoralizing habit among the many habits which demoralize men. Some will say drink, others debauchery. I am inclined to say debt. I have had to deal with all. Drink demoralizes, but it is a strange thing that when a parson drinks a large number of his parishioners combine to protect him. They feel that the weakness is very human; it does not make a man hard; on the contrary, when he has indulged he is companionable, amusing, and magnanimously lenient to offenders. "He drinks, but he is a good sort," is the thought of many who know him to be generous and kindly, none too proud to crack a joke or share a glass. These judgments are very partial they lose sight of the degradation arising from a low animalism; they forget the inconsistency between life and profession; and they breed a kind of inverted chivalry, which

feels bound to protect the offender from his bishop. Thus it may come to pass that a clergyman may be a notoriously intemperate man, and for years he may entrench himself behind the defences which the good-natured of his people raise on his behalf. Here is a case which I give in veiled form.

The vicar was a short, stout man, with rubicund, but not dissolutely rubicund, face; he wore the decent black of his cloth. Whatever air he assumed towards his parishioners, he had a furtive air in his bishop's presence. He was not one of the bland and insinuating men who are sure to edge themselves to the front at a diocesan gathering, and to assume an air of deferential familiarity with the bishop. On the contrary, the stout little vicar hides away among the outskirts of the throng, and shows a propensity for avoiding the episcopal glance. He drinks; he knows that he drinks; he knows that his people know that he drinks; he has a suspicion that the bishop may know it too. He keeps in the background. Can we call it modesty that keeps him there? Hardly, but yet—and here is where the pathos of it comes in-it is humility of a sort. It is the self-conscious humility which feels that he is a stained creature called to mingle among his brethren who are not smirched as he is. Poor soul, he cannot pity himself, but he can be painfully conscious of self. You, who know what is wrong, begin to wonder what will be the end of such a man's career.

I will tell you. He will go on for a time, the victim of a growing habit, till at length his conduct causes a shock to the public conscience; then the parishioners will feel aggrieved. They will resent his action as though he had betrayed a