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    by him in faith and morals . The time proposed for the catechetical lessons is immediately after the afternoon service , when there can be no interruption to the congregation , and the time employed may depend upon circumstances . If the children and by-standers shew no weariness , it may be lengthened at

    pleasure . Catechising with Mr . Gilly is instruction communicated by asking questions , and hearing and correcting the answers . It is a service in which the questioning and answering must be mutual , and the catechist does not do his duty by the catechumen unless he gives him an opportunity , not only of repeating the lesson , but of asking for explanations , and of returning the sense as well as echoing back the sound of his instructor . It is not a

    mere formulary , but a preaching conference . It is , in fact , requiring of the catechist to lead his young charge to employ their thoughts about themselves , to tempt them to think , and to prevail on them to exercise their minds upon that v \ hjeh they have been reading or learning . In addition to these duties , Mr . Gilly requires the exercise of all those endearing pastoral duties which

    attach the people to their ministers . It is the argument of an active life , he shews , that convinces common understandings . He adduces the practice of the foreign Protestant clergy , who follow their congregations to their houses , and , extending their pastoral care to old as well as young , ask for an account of their studies and meditations in the bosoms of their families . He

    considers the clergyman obliged to give much of his time and attention to the internal management of Sunday and weekly chanty-schools ; to devote private as well as public attention to the young . The benefits of pastoral and catechetical instruction are not to be confined to the poor and children in charity-schools , but are to be extended to young persons of higher degree , to servants , to apprentices , to the high and low , the rich and poor . —This

    outline of what a good master-builder might erect upon catechising , the Parish Priest admires ; but he also strenuously contends that the plan is impracticable in the present state of the working clergy . He is firmly persuaded that curates never can perform their duty until they are better remunerated for the labours which are required at their hands ; until , in fact , they are in a condition to abandon every secular employment , and to devote themselves in earnest to their high and engrossing service .

    To make Mr . Gilly ' s system truly beneficial , it must , he contends , be acted on , not only in large towns , but in the small and quiet village also ; it must be pursued , not only amongst the dense population of the manufacturing districts , but it must work its way too among the scattered hamlets of our agricultural counties . But its adoption in the country is , in the present state of things , impossible . A great number of parishes in the country are under the spiritual care of curates appointed by pluralist incumbents , who allow

    them for their services a sum that is often barel y sufficient to keep them from starvation ; in many cases , where they have families , it will not do it , and they are consequently obliged to serve more than one curacy , to take private pupils , or to keep a day-school , to augment their miserable stipends , and to maintain themselves with some outward decency and respectability . As this is no uncommon case , how can the minister find time to give the young

    that preparatory training which is essential to the success of public catechising , or conduct with satisfaction the catechetical exercises of his class ? Besides , two full services , often in large churches , and several miles' hard riding , fall to the lot of many country curates ; and after the mind and bod y have been thus fatigued , there are few men who would be able ( even were it safe to do so ) to descend from the pulpit in a state of perspiration to catechise the children , in a damp and cold church . The body would be hardly

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    228 State of the Curates of the Church of England .

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), April 2, 1829, page 228, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2571/page/4/