UNSELFISH SERVICE

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIII, 23 July 1929, Page 6

UNSELFISH SERVICE

"I know that there is much now to explain, perhaps even to excuse, a belittling of the clergy," Dr. Hensley Henson, Bishop of Durham, wrote recently in an English church magazine. "They ore very poor, and poverty is rarely respected. They are often inadequately educated, and sometimes they carry v themselves with little wisdom and less dignity. The cause of religion, for which they stand, is not popular in a secularist age. The circumstances in which they work do not disclose the best aspects of their ministry, but may emphasise even grossly their failures and faults. Yet, as I look back on my career, garnering its lessons, and look round on my contemporaries, appraising their influence, I think I am not mistaken when I say that the normal parish parson's life is less charged with selfregarding employments, and more habitually devoted to unrecognised and unselfish service than that of anv other description of men. And what is true of the parson is certainly not Jess true of his wife. The nation, does not often remember, and does not commonly realise, the debt it owes to these good women, self-dedicated to service, who, from hundreds of vicarages and rectories, living too often under the unlifting burdens of narrow means and besieging cares, are quietly carrying into the life of the people the salutary graces of Christian character and example."