_I hold that any clergyman in a country parish who aims_ exclusively _at being a Religious Teacher will miss his aim. He must be more, or he will fail to be that. He must be a social power in his parish, and he ought to try, at any rate, to be an intellectual force also. It is because I am strongly convinced of this that I have brought so much into prominence the daily intercourse which I have enjoyed with my people on the footing of a mere friendly neighbour. I cannot think that I have any right at all to lift the veil from those private communings with penitents who are agonized by ghastly memories, with poor weaklings torturing themselves with religious difficulties, or at the bedside of the sick and dying. These seem to me to be most sacred confidences which we are bound to conceal from others as if they had been entrusted to us under a sacramental obligation of impenetrable silence. We all have our share of miserable experiences of this kind. We have no right to talk of them; they never can become common property without some one alive or dead being betrayed. In the single instance in which I may seem to have departed from this principle, it was the expressed wish of the poor woman whose sad story I told that others should learn the circumstances of the case which I made public._ _It may be thought, perhaps, that my surroundings have something peculiar in them. But, No! they are of the ordinary type. For two centuries or so East Anglia was indeed greatly cut off from union and sympathy with the rest of England, and was a kingdom apart. The result has been that there are certain characteristics which distinguish the Norfolk character, and some of them are not pleasing. These are survivals, and they present some difficulties to him who is not an East Anglian born, when he is first brought face to face with them. But in the main we are all pretty much alike, and let a man be placed where he may, he will be sure to find something new in the situation, and almost as sure to make some mistakes at starting. I do not believe that a man of average ability, who is really in earnest in his desire to do the best he can for his people, and who throws himself heartily into his work, will find one place worse than another. Let him resolve to find his joy in the performance of his duty according to his light, and the joy will come. So far from repining at my own lot, I have found it--I do find it--a very happy one; and if I have dwelt on the country parson’s trials, I have done so in no petty and querulous spirit as if I had anything to complain of which others had not--this I should disdain to do--but rather as protesting that they press upon my brethren equally as upon myself, and that, such as they are, some must be, some need not be, some ought not to be._