Ill Manners among Ministers.
By E. J. F.
THEODORE TILTON makes some good comments in his paper on the manners of clergymen. He gives several examples of boorishness among this class, of which these two may be repeated in The Examiner with profit to some, perhaps: “A lady who was very sick was urged to receive a visit from a minister in the neighborhood. She consented, and he came stamping into her room as though sick people were destitute of nerves, with his clothes so saturated with tobacco smoke that the poor sufferer choked, coughed, turned over in pain, and asked to have a window opened. Then he began talking to her in a loud voice about dying, and after enduring his heartless, brazen speech as long as she could, she raised her thin hand and motioned him to go. ‘I thought you wanted to see a clergyman!’ said he, as he rose to go. ‘I—I would like to see a gentleman,’ gasped the woman in despair. “As one of the local trains crowded with women was coming to the city, a man with two ladies entered at a way station and looked anxiously for seats, though several ladies were standing. By sharp and some heroic practice he presently succeeded in ousting two gentlemen from their seats; but no sooner were the ladies provided for than he fixed his eyes upon a place in the long row of passengers, and motioning the occupants to move, turned his back to sit down, saying, ‘I guess you can make room for one more; ministers and women are privileged, you know.’ One of the ladies thus imposed upon preferred standing to being squeezed in that way, and remarked to her companion as she rose, ‘If the boor had not said he was a minister, I should have taken him for one. Gentlemen never do such things.’” “These may be extreme cases, but we meet just such characters, and their boorishness is as positive a denial of the teaching of the gospel as are the worldly lives of some professors, only in another way. Some ministers seem to feel that their office gives them a lawless position, exempts them from good manners and courteous ways; they are privileged to walk in by the side-door at any hour without knocking, to put their feet on chairs or sofas, to put their arm around a lady in company, to take the high seats or the best seats. All this is simply abominable. It ought to be understood that the office of ministry confers no privilege upon the man, not even to have goods sold to him at reduced prices, or to ride at half-fare, or to receive free tickets to lectures or concerts. If the world and the church are disposed to grant any privileges, it is well—the minister may accept them without compromising the honor of the Master or that of his high office; but to demand them or to expect them is contemptible, and dishonoring to the gospel itself. “And then a minister needs grace in his manners as well as in his heart; his religion ought to diffuse gentleness and refinement over his outward life, it ought not only to civilize but to polish him, and make him a Christian gentleman of the noblest type. Some one has given this definition of a clergyman, ‘A Christian gentleman teaching religion.’”—E. J. F.