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CLERICAL CHARACTERISTICS

A Scots proverb avers that ‘A minister’s legs should never be seen,’ meaning that he should not be met with out of the pulpit. So long as he remains there, he stands invested with ‘such divinity as doth hedge a king’: unassailable, uncontradictable, and wielding the authority of a messenger from God to man. The very isolation and eminence of this position call attention to any merely human qualities or frailties which he may disclose in ordinary life. His parishioners, though inwardly glad if he can shed upon them ‘the gracious dew of pulpit eloquence,’ at the same time delight to find him, when divested of his gown and bands, after all, one of themselves; and while they enjoy his humour, when he possesses that saving grace, they are not unwilling sometimes to take his little peculiarities as subjects for their own mirthful but not ill-natured remarks. He may thus be like Falstaff, ‘not only witty himself, but the cause that wit is in other men.’ Hence the clerical stories may be divided into two kinds: those in which the humour is that of the ministers, and those in which it is that of the people, with the ministers as its object. In the first series, there is perhaps no particular flavour different from that characteristic of the ordinary middle-class Scot, though of course the many anecdotes of a professional nature take their colour from the calling of those to whom they relate. In the second division, however, a greater individuality may be recognised. Whether it be from a sort of good-humoured revenge for his incontestible superiority in the pulpit, there seems to be a proneness to make the most of any oddities in the minister’s manners or character. The contrast between the preacher on Sunday and the same man during the week—it may be absent-minded, or irascible, or making mistakes, or getting into ludicrous situations—appeals powerfully to the Scotsman’s sense of humour. He seizes the oddity of this contrast, expresses it in some pithy words, and thus, often unconsciously, launches another ‘story’ into the world. His humour, as in Swift’s definition,