Yet Even He Is Not Perfect.

But then, even in this bright supposed case--a case of which the Church of England contains hundreds of practical examples, thank God--appreciable temptations in the other direction, the wrong, unhappy, fatal direction, may very conceivably creep upon you with time. Your admirable Incumbent is all the while a mortal man, and as such, most certainly (he himself above all men knows and owns it), he is not perfect, not quite equal to himself in every way. Perhaps he has come to be not perfect in physical health, and thus he is obliged, to his own grief, to do less in this or that branch of activity than some of his people think he ought to do; and then you are tolerably sure to hear some not very just and generous complaints in the parish. Perhaps domestic sorrow, or domestic straits and care, may have come in to becloud his spirit and to make his energies for a season flag. Perhaps among his many gifts you may find some gift a little lacking; he may be manifestly less strong in the committee, or in the labours of arrangement generally, than in the pulpit or the class; or it may be just the other way. And you, my dear friend, may be (or may think yourself to be) somewhat strong where he is somewhat weak; an opportunity for many subtle temptations. The days and weeks go on; and if you let "the little rift" of criticism widen, and do not continually take it to your Lord to be examined and mended, other feelings--not born from above--may steal in between you and this good man, your elder and leader in Christ. Petty dislikes and impatience may rise in your heart about some trifling point of manner, some momentary failure of sympathy, some oblivion of arrangement or engagement due to a sore stress of work, some very small matter of Church order, or Christian dialect; or who can tell what?