CHAPTER V.

On the Choice of a Profession.

THE question of the choice of a profession is intensely important, and the choice is a veritable turning-point. It ought carefully to be kept in view for years in advance. Life is very like a battle or a game of chess, and there ought to be some plan of the campaign. These are especially days in which a man must make up his mind to be something. Men will go to the army or to the bar if only that they may be able to give the world some account of themselves. Those few men who do not enter a profession belong to a class which has the leisure and independence conferred by the possession of means and position, a class which has great duties imposed on it, and is so a profession in itself. A wise parent will watch his child carefully to see what his bias or tendency may be. Dr. Johnson has defined genius as strong natural talent accidentally directed in a particular direction. To say the least, this definition is not exhaustive. Great natural ability will doubtless enable a man to excel in almost any direction, but genius more ordinarily supposes a combination of abilities in a special direction. I believe a great deal is done in a child's education if you can discover a bias, and give shape and direction to it. Of course the preferences of youth are often imaginary, and are often subjected to revision. Still it is a great thing to get a lad to feel a distinct preference for any pursuit, to map out, even in outline, any thing like a chart of the future. It is pre-eminently the misfortune of the pres

ent day that so many young men are devoid of enthusiasm and have no object in life.

Let, however, a few words be said here which may assuage some anxious thoughts. I do not think that it really matters whether a young fellow has shining abilities or not. Of course there are some branches of life for which a man should have strong abilities and a strong bias, if he would indulge with fairness any high expectations of success. Such is author

ship as a profession, or the artist's calling. The most moneygetting departments of human life are those in which shining ability is not so much required as probity and common-sense. In most departments of life we have nothing more to expect than the manful performance of duty and its competent discharge. If a boy is not clever, this is a hint from nature to the parents not to assign him a path of life where superlative excellence is required with a view to success, but to find him an avocation amid the

"Girdles of the middle mountain, happy realms of fruit and flower; Distant from ignoble weakness, distant from the height of power." At the same time it is exceedingly difficult for parents to decide rightly on the question of the capacity of their children. Much misery is caused when a father thinks his son a fool and does not hesitate to tell him so. Again, if a son is found not to be doing well in any particular walk of life, that is simply a sign that there is some other walk in life in which he will probably do exceedingly well. There is the story of a father who found that his son was a great failure as a midshipman. He immediately concluded that he would do .very well as a lawyer, and as a lawyer he rose to the top of his profession.

Let us now rapidly review a man's chances in a profession. Take first of all the Church, a profession which lies outside other professions, which is sometimes entered from the highest

motives alone, sometimes from very low motives, and sometimes from mixed motives. A few words may here be added to what we have already said on the subject. There are those (the Sunt qui phrase which we so often have to use) who enter the Church because there is some valuable old ancestral living in store. The modern form of this abuse is that a worthy parent invests his savings for a son in a chancellor's living, which on the whole yields a very fair return as an investment, to which the young man succeeds in due course, after the process of waiting for a dead man's slippers. Then there are many young men who are easily persuaded or persuade themselves to enter Church as a fitting conclusion to a collegiate career. To a man who has taken his degree the Church is a profession easier of access than any other, and, unlike any other, yields immediately a modest income and a good social status.

The existence of a sordid element is a reproach and weakness of the Church. It is to be hoped that something in time may be done to remedy such a state of affairs: the remedy must chiefly be sought in the increased sense of responsibility among patrons and young men, and perhaps in some enactment that only curates of seven years' standing should be appointed to livings of a certain amount of value and population. Only a feeling of simple regard and reverence can exist for those who, urged by the loftiest motives irrespective of earthly considerations, devote themselves to their heavenly Master's work. And, taking human nature as it is, we will not think harshly of any who adopt this line of life, if only amid their mixed motives we recognize a humble and hearty desire to do good in the cause and service of Christ. Still it is of the utmost importance that the worldly aspect of the Church should be put clearly and honestly before those who from their inexperience are no judges of the position of life

and the worldly chances of the minister of religion. Of those chances, unless in the case of a family living, or of commanding influence, very little can be said. If a man has a fervent desire for the ministry, let any father be very careful before he dares to interpose obstacles. But it is the father's duty clearly to put before his son that secular view of the matter which the son from his inexperience might be incompetent to understand.

He will tell him, therefore, that his average pay as a curate will be a hundred a year, or one pound eighteen and fivepence a week. He will also explain to him that his length of service in the Church will for many years be of no use, and will afterward operate as a disqualification. He will tell him that any preferment might just as well come in his first year as his fifteenth, or that it may not come at all. He will explain that the more earnestly and singly a man applies to his work, the less likely is he to make friends, to move about in the world, to form a literary or scholastic connection. It is quite true that eloquent and clever men may possibly make their way to the front, and obtain recognition and reward. But it is a lottery even with them, and the average hard-working curate has barely a chance. His bishop will probably be willing to do something for him, but the patronage of a bishop is very limited compared to the number of claimants. The endowments, provided at a time when the country was poor and the population thin, are utterly inadequate to a time when the country is populous and enormously wealthy. It might therefore be thought that the obligations devolved by the Bible upon each generation of Christians toward each generation of ministers would be recognized, and that voluntary efforts would make up for the inadequate endowments of poor incumbents and the non-existent endowments of poorer curates. It would have to be explained, however, that though this may be the

case in some instances, there is not enough liberality and Christian obedience in the laity of the English Church to create any regular system of the kind, and that the scheme of a sustentation fund is unknown to the English Church. Moreover, the curate, as bred in gentle ways and unversed in the affairs of the world, will especially have to guard against the temptation to marriage and the meshes of debt.

One remedy for this state of things would be that the public patronage of the country now vested in the premier and the lord chancellor should not be left to their individual caprices, but be administered according to intelligible principles. Another and larger remedy would be that the area of work in which the clergy may occupy themselves should be indefinitely enlarged. There appears to be no valid objection why the clergy should not practice as doctors or surgeons. It is to be hoped that some corporate action will be taken in the matter, that some clerical school of medicine will be established. I also see no reason why those curates of the Establishment who may not be fit for intellectual work, or may not be able to find a market for it, should not enter into some kind of business. The apostle St. Paul was a tentmaker. I believe there is still a great deal of business done in tent-making, and should we be involved in war by-and-by, to purge us from our sins, there will doubtless be a great deal more. There should be some clerical tent-making company formed. It is better for clergymen to be employed in any sort of way than to cause scandal by running in debt.

I do not see that the Dissenting clergy, with all their boasts of the voluntary system, are really any better. At least we hear very great complaints, not ill-founded, of narrow income, and it has been the business of a whole class of able writers to acquaint us with the short-comings of the Dissenting ministerial position. The contrast seems to fail in the very point