ranch of activity than some of his
people think he ought to do; and then you are tolerably sure to hear
some not very just and generous complaints in the parish. Perhaps
domestic sorrow, or domestic straits and care, may have come in to
becloud his spirit and to make his energies for a season flag. Perhaps
among his many gifts you may find some gift a little lacking; he may be
manifestly less strong in the committee, or in the labours of
arrangement generally, than in the pulpit or the class; or it may be
just the other way. And you, my dear friend, may be (or may think
yourself to be) somewhat strong where he is somewhat weak; an
opportunity for many subtle temptations. The days and weeks go on; and
if you let "the little rift" of criticism widen, and do not continually
take it to your Lord to be examined and mended, other feelings--not born
from above--may steal in between you and this good man, your elder and
leader in Christ. Petty dislikes and impatience may rise in your heart
about some trifling point of manner, some momentary failure of sympathy,
some oblivion of arrangement or engagement due to a sore stress of
work, some very small matter of Church order, or Christian dialect; or
who can tell what?

GRAVE POSSIBLE TEMPTATIONS TO DISLOYALTY.

But also it is just possible that I am writing for some reader who finds
himself in more grave and pressing difficulties than these. My most
honoured brethren the Incumbents, if any of them should cast their eyes
over these chapters, written by a Curate mainly for Curates, will not
blame me for saying that there are cases, sad and sorrowful, where the
Curate cannot honestly think with perfect happiness of his leader's work
and influence. Perhaps that Incumbent has "run well," nobly well, but
(as it was of old with some primitive saints) something or someone
"hindered him." [Gal. v. 7.] Perhaps he has lost first love and
zeal, and sunk, he knows not how, into an indolent clericalism, or
anticlericalism, of thought and habit. Perhaps he has suffered care,
disappointment, parochial conflicts, to sour his spirit, or at least to
take his heart away from his people. Perhaps he has felt the sad
influence of controversial battles, and the love and richness of the old
Gospel has somewhat faded out of his life, and conversation, and
sermons; I do not refer to faithful care over distinctive and
world-offending truth, but to the controversial _spirit_, which is
altogether another thi