The Recreations of a Country ParsonBoyd, Andrew Kennedy Hutchison
General
The Recreations of a Country Parson
Boyd, Andrew Kennedy Hutchison
Clergy -- Anecdotes; Country life -- England; Rural clergy -- England
not able bishop I knew in my youth, when they came to church on the
Sunday morning on which the good man preached for the first time
in his lawn sleeves. Their heads were turned for the time; but they
gradually came right again, as the ladies became accustomed to the
summits of human affairs. Let it be said for the bishop himself,
that there was not a vestige of that sense of elevation about him.
He looked perfectly modest and unaffected. His dress was remarkably
ill put on, and his sleeves stuck out in the most awkward fashion
ever assumed by drapery. I suppose that sometimes these rises in
life come very unexpectedly. I have heard of a man who, when he
received a letter from the Prime Minister of the day offering him
a place of great dignity, thought the letter was a hoax, and did
not notice it for several days. You could not certainly infer from
his modesty what has proved to be the fact, that he has filled his
place admirably well. The possibility of such material changes must
no doubt tend to prolong the interest in life, which is ready to
flag as years go on. But perhaps with the majority of men the level
is found before middle age, and no very great worldly change awaits
them. The path stretches on, with its ups and downs; and they only
hope for strength for the day. But in such men's lot of humble
duty and quiet content there remains room for many fears. All human
beings who are as well off as they can ever be, and so who have
little room for hope, seem to be liable to the invasion of great
fear as they look into the future. It seems to be so with kings,
and with great nobles. Many such have lived in a nervous dread of
change, and have ever been watching the signs of the times with
apprehensive eyes. Nothing that can happen can well make such
better; and so they suffer from the vague foreboding of something
which will make them worse. And the same law readies to those in
whom hope is narrowed down, not by the limit of grand possibility,
but of little,--not by the fact that they have got all that mortal
can get, but by the fact that they have got the little which is
all that Providence seems to intend to give to them. And, indeed,
there is something that is almost awful, when your affairs are all
going happily, when your mind is clear and equal to its work, when
your bodily health is unbroken, when your home is pleasant, when
your income is ample, when your children are healthy and merry and
hopeful,--in looking on to Future Years. The more happy you are, the
more there is of awe in the thought how frail are the foundations
of your earthly happiness,--what havoc may be made of them by the
chances of even a single day. It is no wonder that the solemnity and
awfuluess of the Future have been felt so much, that the languages
of Northern Europe have, as I dare say you know, no word which
expresses the essential notion of Futurity. You think, perhaps,
of shall and will. Well, these words have come now to convey the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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