resident Pastor but
the substitute for the non-resident--the Curate-in-Charge. It was not
till well within these last hundred years that men were commonly to be
found doing what we now understand so well as Assistant-Curates' work.
The presence in the Church of us Assistant-Curates (I hold a licence
myself, and am therefore one of the company) is at once an effect and a
sign both of the great increase of population and of the concurrent
increase throughout the Church of England of the desire for fuller and
more laborious ministrations.

A CHANCELLOR'S SUGGESTIONS.

So our able Lecturer led us through our own history; and then he
proceeded to instruct us in some main elements of our legal
qualifications, and duties, and rights: how to get into a Curacy, and
how to get out of it; what are the Bishop's rights over the Curate, and
how the Archbishop may interpose if the Curate pleads a grievance
against the Bishop. But I trust that this and other Lectures of the same
course may see the light some day in a better form than a rough and
passing report of mine. My purpose in referring to them now is that I
may call attention to one point on which the Lecturer laid no little
stress. It was, that it is the wisdom of the Curate, when he has once
deliberately accepted a Curacy, to be thoroughly loyal all along; to
consider himself as "at the Vicar's beck and call"; to serve him
heartily and unreservedly. If tempted to do otherwise, particularly if
tempted to complain of the Vicar to the Bishop, let him resist that
temptation to the utmost of his power. "There may be sad exceptions, and
necessity knows no law; but _as a rule_," said my honoured friend, "I
may assure you, from a large experience, that the Curate who complains
of his Incumbent to his Bishop injures not the Incumbent but himself."

LOYALTY.

Our Lecturer avowedly spoke not as a spiritual but as a legal
counsellor. I would now take up his words, and from the point of view of
the friend and Brother in the Lord say a little to my younger Brethren,
engaged or about to be engaged in assistant Curacies, concerning the
Christian rightness and Christian wisdom of taking the sort of line
which the diocesan Chancellor recommended.

THE IDEAL INCUMBENT.

As I come to the subject, let me say on the threshold that I am sure to
be writing for many readers who little need the discourse, at least at
present. You are working under a Vicar or a Rector whose example and
also who