I know one clergyman who, though ordained some forty years ago, has never written or preached a sermon in his life; but I only know one. His is perhaps a unique case. As a rule, we all begin by being curates--that is, we begin by learning our business as subordinates. It would be truer to say we used to begin that way; but subordination is dying out all over the world, and in the ministry of the Church of England subordination is a virtue which is _in articulo mortis_. Nowadays a young fellow at twenty-three, who has become a reverend gentleman for just a week, poses at once as the guide, philosopher, and friend of the whole human race. He poses as a great teacher. It is not only that he delivers the oracles with authoritative sententiousness from the tripod, but he has no doubts and no hesitation about anything in earth or heaven. He fortifies himself with a small collection of brand-new words which you, poor ignorant creature, don’t know the meaning of. You feel rather “out of it” when he gravely calls your gloves _Mannaries_ (he does not wear them), and your dressing-gown a _Poderis_; expresses his mournful regret that there is no _Scuophylacium_ in the _Presbytery_, nor any _Bankers_ on the walls; gently admonishes you for standing bareheaded by the grave at your time of life, when prudence would suggest, and ecclesiastical precedent would recommend, the use of the _Anabata_; tells you he always goes about with a _Totum_ under his arm, and a _Virge_ in his right hand. When he vanishes you slyly peep into your Du Cange, but the _Bankers_ are quite too much for you.