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Untitled Article
viously instructed and prepared for , and interested in , the matter in hand . He has to select the topic , to create the interest , to vary the mode of treating it , and to adapt himself to a great diversity of minds and characters . And this he must do , and do it well too , if the professed object on account of which the country is
taxed for his support is to be accomplished . Where and what is the ecclesiastical training to prepare him for this branch of his ministry ? Hundreds , after having done all that is required of them , are equal to nothing better than buying lithographed sermons , the composition of some hack writer , and heavily reading them from the pulpit , with false emphasis and tripping tongue .
A clergyman who reads decently is a rara avis . A good pulpit orator is nothing less than a phoenix . We have met with some scores who could not enunciate even the Lord ^ s Prayer correctly ; who failed , not merely of investing it , by their manner , with appropriate feeling , but who did not , by their emphasis , give correctly the meaning of the words . But we are told of their
learning . They would no doubt have read the verses of Horace and Virgil , so as to have displayed the sense of the one , and the euphony of the other . It may be so ; this belongs to the education of a gentleman , not to that of a clergyman ; and accords with the fact , that the instruction contemplates the enjoyment of property , and not the performance of labour . A good New Testament critic
the clergyman should doubtless be made ; but the learning most closely connected with his future usefulness , is not that of dead languages , but of living arts and sciences- He should not be grossly ignorant of every thing about which his parishioners are occupied from dav to day . He should be able to enter into their
concerns , to sympathize in their difficulties and their achievements , and occasionally to save them from the bad consequences of their imperfect acquaintance with scientific principles . He will thus become their friend , and they will listen to him with respect and affection .
Whatever may be said of the education which clerical novitiates receive within the walls of our universities , the habits which it is the tendency of a residence there to form , are any thing but an appropriate training for the functions of a parish priest . They
are not of this world , but still less are they of a better world . Isolated from the people , mingling with the scions of aristocracy , with every inducement on the one hand to dissipation and licentiousness , or on the other , if they aspire to the honours of learning , to the cultivation of such branches of it as have least connexion
with public utility , they may become pedants , monks , or debauchees , but it must be by a rare virtue , that they qualify themselves for their future duties . And how is it that they enter upon the discharge of those duties ? In a very few cases indeed , they are called to it by the voice of the people . But this best method , the only method which can
Untitled Article
ChurchcrafL 793
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Nov. 2, 1833, page 793, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2626/page/61/
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