Page:The English Peasant.djvu/213

 But let the clergy look well to it, for by some means or other the hearts of the poor are more often than not alienated from them.

Not far from Cross-in-Hand I had a talk with a wheelwright, who was at work in his shop by the road-side. Most of the people thereabouts, he said, went to chapel. He went to a Wesleyan place of worship, where the congregation sometimes numbered two Hundred people. "Why did the people prefer chapel to church?" "Because they could understand better; the preaching was plainer than at church; they spoke more to the soul. You see, clergymen do it more for a living." "Do not people think it a benefit to have some one in the parish to whom they can always go?" "Never knew any one who did," was the answer. "The clergyman here is not bad to people when they are sick, but," continued the wheelwright, "I would not go to church for that sort of thing; it must end bad. What'll such people do when they come to die?"

This prejudice against the clergy on the part of those who are just beginning to realize their power to think and act with independence, arises from the fact that the rural clergy, as a class, have so closely identified themselves with the gentry as to give rise to the impression that they regard themselves as a sort of spiritual squirearchy.

When they shall have the courage to descend from their high social position, and to claim no status but a heavenly one; when they shall become willing to be regarded quite as much as labouring men as squires; when, in fact, they shall absolutely refuse to take any particular position in the social scale, but shall claim equality and fellowship with all, then they will be in a fair way to recover their influence with every class, and to find it tenfold greater than it ever has been.

If, too, the rural clergy would recover and retain their influence as pastors of the whole flock, they must strive in a spirit of deep sympathy to understand the real faith and character of those amongst their parishioners who dissent from the National Church.

Throughout Sussex the hyper-Calvinists are the most numerous body. Their churches were no doubt founded to maintain