h for their hard work, are
compelled to feel that their occupation is gone. And accordingly I
hold that what is the best of all professions, for many reasons, is
especially so for this, that you need never retire from it. In the
Church you need not do all your duty yourself. You may get assistance to
supplement your own lessening strength. The energetic young curate or
curates may do that part of the parish work which exceeds the power of
the aging incumbent, while the entire parochial machinery has still the
advantage of being directed by his wisdom and experience, and while the
old man is still permitted to do what he can with such strength as is
spared to him, and to feel that he is useful in the noblest cause yet.
And even to extremest age and frailty,--to age and frailty which would
long since have incapacitated the judge for the bench,--the parish
clergyman may take some share in the much-loved duty in which he has
labored so long. He may still, though briefly, and only now and then,
address his flock from the pulpit, in words which his very feebleness
will make far more touchingly effective than the most vigorous eloquence
and the richest and fullest tones of his young coadjutors. There never
will be, within the sacred walls, a silence and reverence more
profound than when the withered kindly face looks as of old upon the
congregation, to whose fathers its owner first ministered, and which has
grown up mainly under his instruction,--and when the voice that falls
familiarly on so many ears tells again, quietly and earnestly, the old
story which we all need so much to hear. And he may still look in at the
parish school, and watch the growth of a generation that is to do the
work of life when he is in his grave; and kindly smooth the children's
heads; and tell them how One, once a little child, and never more
than a young man, brought salvation alike to young and old.
He may still sit by the bedside of the sick and dying, and
speak to such with the sympathy and the solemnity of one who does
not forget that the last great realities are drawing near to both. But
there are vocations which are all very well for young or middle-aged
people, but which do not quite suit the old. Such is that of the
barrister. Wrangling and hair-splitting, browbeating and bewildering
witnesses, making coarse jokes to excite the laughter of common
jury-men, and addressing such with clap-trap bellowings, are not the
work for gray-headed men. I