The Studies of Oxford Vindicated, in a Sermon Preached Before the University, on ACT Sunday, June 29, 1845

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1845. Excerpt: ... stretch of mind being involved in the wish, of providing himself with a curate, or an additional curate to his present one. If he cannot afford one, still he thinks it feasible to get one in some way or other. He therefore thinks himself responsible for the want, so long as it exists. He thinks and talks about it. His desire is expressed on all occasions. Imagine some hundred separate incumbents, up and down the country, all arrived at this wish for their own respective localities, and all expressing themselves anxiously about it, and you have before long a public feeling created, of which the formation of some charitable society is the result. The reason is, that so many separate responsibilities are working, and, therefore, so many hundred minds, and so many hundred sets of lungs, all engaged in a particular object. But what is one vicar, with a parish of 50,000, to do? He has only his one mind and his one set of lungs with which to publish his desire for assistance. His neighbours may see the want as well, but they are not the responsible persons for supplying it. If it be thought that the greater amount of the desideratum in his case will give him the greater energy in the determination to supply it, I beg to observe that this increase of stimulus is not to be depended on to more than a certain degree. Persons are as anxious, and feel themselves as responsible, for a moderate population as they do for a much larger 'one. Look over, for example, the letters addressed to such a society as the Curates' Fund, and you will find that a moderately over-large population, one for which the incumbent thinks just one more curate is wanted to enable him to have a fair control over it, has supplied the stimulus and the demand for assistance nearly as often as the ...