Page:The Eternal Priesthood (4th ed).djvu/257

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
THE PRIEST'S HOUSE.
245

(1) That the rector or head priest is trustee of the whole mission, church, people, school, presbytery, goods, and clergy. The last is the only point we need now to notice. The rector is responsible for his brother priests, for their personal, priestly, and pastoral life. He is answerable to the Bishop for them. And they are bound to recognise that responsibility. As they bear themselves to him, so some day their assistants will bear themselves in turn to them.

(2) That they ought all to live together under one roof. Priests dwelling alone are in an abnormal, unecclesiastical, unsacerdotal state, which often has grave dangers, and is never free from many disadvantages. The liberty of living alone is not wholesome; and the loss of the daily discipline of self-abnegation in living with others is a privation of much good.

(3) That the rector is bound by the highest obligations of charity and consideration towards those under him, and they also are bound by the duty of obedience, brotherly love, and mutual respect as king's sons to each other, and above all to him.

(4) That a presbytery ought to be a pastoral seminary, to keep alive the training of their youth, and to perfect it in the maturity of their manhood