Thus the clergy, while poor as a profession, are rich as a class; a fact, which goes far to account for the popular notions of the vast wealth of the Church.' The advantages derived from this state of things are obvious to all men. We see them, wherever we go, in ruined parsonages rebuilt, new churches raised, and old churches restored, school-rooms erected and endowed, and rich and poor knit together by ties of kindness, which exemplify the mutual help and comfort which the one ought to have of the other.' Sydney Smith declares, that the wealth of these capitalists is attracted into the service of the Church on the lottery' principle, by the gambling propensities of human nature, and the irresistible tendency to hope that they 'will gain the great prizes.' But this is a palpable mistake; for the clergymen of private fortune are the very men who have (as a general rule) neither expectation nor wish for the 'great prizes;' and the real competitors for these rewards, the literary men, the controversialists, and the partisans, have usually little or no private fortune.

A

But if we reject this gambling' theory, we are bound to assign some other and more probable motives, which may explain the fact that so large a number of men annually devote themselves to a profession so ill remunerated. Nor shall we attempt to maintain that the great mass of the clergy adopt their calling from motives of heroic self-sacrifice. Those who are ordained in the spirit of apostles are necessarily few, because human nature does not produce heroes or saints in crops; such visitants come to us not in battalions, but as single spies.' modern infidel writer, who cannot be suspected of exaggeration in favour of the Church, estimates these apostolic clergymen as 'one in fifty;' and says that, rare as they are, yet their life exhibits a self-devotion so noble, that they are not only enough 'for the salt of their class, but for the salt of the world too.'* the next degree to these, we may reckon no inconsiderable number who have sought in the service of religion a remedy for the sorrows of life. They hope to sweeten the bitterness of their lot, by giving themselves wholly to the duties of benevolence and devotion. To preach glad tidings to the poor, to heal the broken-hearted, to shed light upon the darkness of the dying, seems to them the happiest destiny for a wounded spirit. Their imagination responds to the words of the clerical poet, who sings the soothing influence of ministerial duties :

The herbs we seek to heal our woe
Familiar by our pathway grow,
Our common air is balm.'

*Froude's Nemesis, p. 7.

In

Others again there are of shrinking and sensitive natures, who seek refuge in a sacred calling from the unsatisfying turmoil and hard-hearted selfishness of the world. They yield to the same impulse which drove so many of kindred disposition from the rough struggle of medieval life into the shelter of the cloister. They imagine that they can escape from the strife of tongues by flying to the altar of God; though they often find, too late, that where they fled for peace they have rushed into a battle-field. More numerous than any of these classes are those who enter the profession because their unambitious temper finds in it an appropriate sphere for the exercise of moderate talent and ordinary energies. If they are animated by no vocation to a life of apostolic labour, yet they intend to do their duty to the flock which shall be committed to their charge. Without renouncing the prospect of happiness for themselves, they think also of contributing to the happiness of others. They indulge, it may be,

'In moonlight dreams

Of love and home by mazy streams;'

visions of the domus et placens uxor;' of the snug parsonage and cheerful fireside; of smooth lawns and trelliced roses, mingle in their ideal of the future. But with such fancies are blended less selfish pictures of new school-buildings filled with peasant children; of shivering paupers clothed and comforted; of cottages made glad with Christmas dinners; of wine and oil poured into the wounds of poverty. Such candidates for ordination look forward to a routine of kindly and useful, if not laborious duties, with a respectable position in society, and a small addition to their private fortune. Many of them, moreover, being themselves the sons of clergymen, have the additional inducement of habitual association and hereditary connexion to tempt them into the profession of their fathers.

Such are the motives which, acting either separately or in combination, and often mingled in undistinguishable proportions one with another, impel so many thousands of educated men into the ministry of the Church. And if these fall short, as no doubt they do, of the ideal standard of Christian zeal, and of that necessity to preach the Gospel which was laid upon a Paul or a Bernard, yet we must remember that it is the wisdom of those who establish or maintain national institutions, to avail themselves of the ordinary laws of human nature, not to look for exceptional manifestations. The utmost which the State can demand of its officers is not a life of heroism, but a life of usefulness.

But though we deny that the clergy generally are influenced

by motives so low and selfish as those ascribed to them by Sydney Smith, we admit that there is a small minority actuated, if not by the gambling' spirit which he advocates, yet by views equally secular, and calculations even more definitely sordid. To this minority belong not only some active and ambitious men, who possessing ability sufficient to make themselves valuable in any profession, are called to the Church in the same spirit in which they would be called to the Bar; but many of an inferior class, whose aim is to rise without any merit at all, and whom the world designates as clerical adventurers. First and most conspicuous is the Irish Fortune-hunter, who after getting ordained in Tipperary, and serving his two years as curate among his native bogs, impatiently rushes across the Channel to seek his destined prey. He promptly advertises in the 'Record' for a 'town sphere of usefulness,' and is at length appointed assistant to the minister of a chapel in some wealthy borough, the seat of manufactures or commerce. If his face and figure aid the fascinations of his tongue, he soon wins the idolatry of his fairer hearers, and ends by marrying the richest widow in his congregation. Next we have the Creeping Climber, who begins life as a servitor at Oxford, with a firm determination to die a bishop; and by dint of tuft-hunting and timeserving, succeeds in crawling slowly but surely, if not to the pinnacle of the temple, at least to a snug harbour among its battlements. Then there is the Renegade Dissenter, perhaps the most offensive specimen of this offensive class. He is the son of a small tradesman in a country town, and being a clever lad, is patronised by the independent minister, and educated by assistance from a non-conformist charity fund. In due time he becomes himself a dissenting preacher, and saves enough out of the small gains of his profession to pay for his academical course at St. Bees. Thus qualified, he renounces his hereditary faith, takes orders in the Church, becomes hyper-orthodox in his opinions, and cuts his father who adheres to their patrimonial creed. He of course distinguishes himself by extreme violence against the sectarians whom he has deserted, and publishes tracts against schism, and dialogues defensive of the Establishment. Thus perhaps he commends himself to the notice of some weak and well-intentioned patron; and obtains the wages of apostacy in the shape of a paltry benefice and a trifling rise in social rank. Finally there is the Society's Agent, who spends his life in a perpetual tour, speechifying every day at some new place, and dining afterwards upon venison and claret with the chairman of the meeting. When he has employed five years in this way, he must have formed so large an acquaintance with influential people,

that it is strange if none of them is induced to provide for so good a man; especially as they are not likely to know that he has been thrice insolvent, and has ruined a whole army of small tradesmen who served him in the curacies where he ministered before commencing his itinerant career.

*

We do not shrink from painting these consecrated speculators in their true colours, nor from acknowledging that they deserve all the reprobation which is poured upon them by the enemies of the Church. But we must remember that they are by no means the peculiar product of a dignified Establishment. They are incidental to every method of providing for the ministration of public worship and its functionaries, and are at least as common a fruit of the voluntary principle' as of State endowment. Any one who doubts this has only to examine into the working of the unendowed system in the United States of America. Indeed, there needs but little knowledge of human nature to convince us that, so long as there are ministers of religion at all, there must be some mercenary ministers. Even among the Presbyters converted by St. Paul and ordained by Timothy, there were those who made a gain of godliness.

The only peculiar product of an opulent State Church is the Safe Man, who if a species of the mercenary genus at all, is its least disgusting and most decorous type. He is usually distinguished in early life by academical success, which forms the appropriate basis of his subsequent career. When he has entered on the business of maturer years, he seldom ventures upon the dangerous experiment of authorship; or, if he choose that mode of launching himself upon the notice of the world, he commits himself to nothing by his publication; but edits a 'Father' without controversial notes, or publishes a volume of sermons, polished in style, and neutral in sentiment. He carefully shuns the violence of partisanship, and shrinks with horror from extreme opinions, aspiring above all things to the character of a sound and moderate divine. Thus he steadily rises in reputation, and the general favour which he attracts, advances him in due time to an archdeaconry, a professorship, a London rectory, a college headship, or some other ecclesiastical stepping stone. In the execution of his office he is regulated by the old monastic rule 'Bene loqui de superioribus, fungi officio taliter qualiter,

We ought to state that we by no means intend this for a description of agents of religious societies in general. Most of them are worthy men, some of them are eminently excellent; but we are here speaking of exceptional cases, and some of these agents are the vilest of the vile.

At last

'et sinere mundum ire sicut vult mundus ire.' He does his duty in the way which best falls in with the standard of opinion in his time; and therefore, in the present time, he will do it well, but not too well. He never originates a reform in any established institution; yet he has no superstitious dislike of innovation, and if he sees that a change must come, he is quite willing to swell the triumph and partake the gale.' He never wilfully makes an enemy; and if as he rises, he finds it absolutely needful to drop a friend, he does it with decency; not cutting his earlier connexions, like the vulgar climber, but gradually loosening their hold upon him, and letting them slip down the stream, so that he seems rather deserted by them than deserting them; for in all his actions he is distinguished by a sense of the plausible and becoming. He marries, as he preaches, prudently; and in the whole of his well ordered life (though his prosperity may attract the assaults of envy) there is no point on which calumny can effectually fasten. his virtue is rewarded by the highest honours of his profession; and when the expected mitre descends upon his head, every one acknowledges that it would have been impossible for the Premier to make a safer' appointment. He carries his ruling principle with him to the Bench, and whether charging or speaking, preaching or voting, he is the safest' bishop in the House of Lords,His armis illâ quoque tutus in aulâ.' It is the grand aim of his episcopate that no man of any party may say that he would be dangerous' at Lambeth. If he provides for his family by his patronage, it is moderately and discreetly; from flagrant jobbery he is restrained, not merely by the fear of public censure but by gentlemanly feeling; for with all his foibles, he is still a gentleman. When at length he is laid beside his predecessors beneath the altar of his cathedral, all men must confess that his career, if it has conferred no splendid benefits on his country, has at least been serenely soothing and tranquillising to the Church. If he has done harm, it is by the omission of good, not by the perpetration of mischief.

By the abolition of the prizes of the Church, we might (it is true) eliminate the class which we have just described. The safe man would become an extinct variety of the clerical genus. But his place in the creation would be supplied by a degraded type. Fortune hunters of the lower and baser kinds would swarm into existence, who would add vulgarity to worldliness, and servility to ambition. On the other hand, by such a revolutionary proceeding, the nation would lose many advantages inseparably connected with the present system.

In the first place, if the bishoprics were reduced to an apos