cattered over the country, who
being more detached from the temporal concerns of the benefice, have
more leisure for improvement and study, and are less subject to be
brought into secular collision with those who are under their spiritual
guardianship. The curate, if he reside at a distance from the incumbent,
undertakes the requisite responsibilities of a temporal kind, in that
modified way which prevents him, as a new-comer, from being charged with
selfishness: while it prepares him for entering upon a benefice of his
own, with something of a suitable experience. If he should act under and
in co-operation with a resident incumbent, the gain is mutual. His
studies will probably be assisted; and his training, managed by a
superior, will not be liable to relapse in matters of prudence,
seemliness, or in any of the highest cares of his functions; and by way
of return for these benefits to the pupil, it will often happen that the
zeal of a middle-aged or declining incumbent will be revived, by being
in near communion with the ardour of youth, when his own efforts may
have languished through a melancholy consciousness that they have not
produced as much good among his flock as, when he first entered upon the
charge, he fondly hoped.

Let one remark, and that not the least important, be added. A curate,
entering for the first time upon his office, comes from college after a
course of expense, and with such inexperience in the use of money, that,
in his new situation, he is apt to fall unawares into pecuniary
difficulties. If this happens to him, much more likely is it to happen
to the youthful incumbent; whose relations, to his parishioners and to
society, are more complicated; and, his income being larger and
independent of another, a costlier style of living is required of him by
public opinion. If embarrassment should ensue, and with that unavoidably
some loss of respectability, his future usefulness will be
proportionably impaired: not so with the curate, for he can easily
remove and start afresh with a stock of experience and an unblemished
reputation; whereas the early indiscretions of an incumbent being
rarely forgotten, may be impediments to the efficacy of his ministry for
the remainder of his life. The same observations would apply with equal
force to doctrine. A young minister is liable to errors, from his
notions being either too lax or over-strained. In both cases it would
prove injurious that the error should b