SHOULD THE CLERGY WEAR MUFTI

Dominion, Volume 12, Issue 262, 1 August 1919, Page 7

SHOULD THE CLERGY WEAR MUFTI

MEANS OF ACQUIRING WORLD ' WISDOM. (By T. C. Bridges, in the "Daily Mail.") The Bishop of Salisbury has been inveighing against the growing custom of clergy discarding their clerical dress when on'holiday or away from 'duty, ,Uniike a soldier, who discards his uniform when oil' duty, or a Judged wlio can put oif. his official robes, a clergyman, he adds, is on duty always, ana night. •. ■ ' While one quite appreciates the Bishop's point of View, there is another side to tho ease which does not, seem tn havo ouc'uiTcd to him. lliia is the curious isolation to which clerical dress condemns the wearer. Tho ordinary man is eeldom, it' ever, his natural self when in company with a clergyman. Instinctively 110 braces up, ho puts a guard upon his tongue; lie behaves, in fact, yory much as' he would if in the company of a lady.

Tho result—J;he obvious and natural result—is that The piirsou cannot know his fellow-men in the Mime sort of way in which one layman knows another. He belongs to a race apart. He loses touch with ills fellows, and by doing so is bound to lose some measure ot his usefulness.

i remember reading a story—it fl-as written, if I mistake not, by a parson--the principal character in which is a clergyman who has lived for years in a cathedral city, and though a good fellow in thi) main has become diotressiiijjlj narrow. This clergyjuuu goes oil' on his annual holiday to tjwitze.-land. and by some concatenation of circumstances — J. forgot the Actual details— losea all his luggage, and not only that, but he is also lorced to turn up at his destination -a big.hotel—iu a suit of "loud" checks which inaku him look like a bookmaker.

For the first tune, in his clerical career he meets wen as they are. meets tlioni'oii their own ground, hears swear words and other thingd which shock his too sensitive soul. But there <« sterling stuff in him, and tiio experience brings it out, The upshot is that he returns to Jiis home in England a greatly changed man, with an outlook so broadened Unit his work and life come rcallv to count.

Though this is fiction the incident might well have happened in real life. There, are churchmen who- would have their clergy a race apart, celibates and saints. But that is a counsel of perfection.

As a clergyman's son myseii, as one who has hud the luck to know some really white parsons. 1 Bay it is a pity t>at mors eiergymeu do not spend a little time each year in mixing with their fellow-men, and that without any outward mid distinguishing sign in the shape of black coat or white iie.