Untitled - Electric Scotland

60 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP TAIT [CH. in.
and Mr. C. P. Golightly of Oriel. They
rendered him
efficient help for several years, especially during the long
vacations, but he retained the sole responsibility for the
parish, riding or walking
from Oxford several times a
week, usually sleeping on Saturday nights in the hired
cottage which served as an apology for a parsonage, and
returning to Balliol in time for the College Service on
Sunday afternoon. For five years he carried on this work
with unremitting care, and in all the changes of his after
life the recollections and the lessons of March Baldon
never passed away. To the very close of his life he used
to recount with a certain humorous pathos the quiet
obstruction offered by the farmers to his Sunday-school,
and the difficulties of a rustic congregation on a hot
summer s day, and the petty quarrels and flirtations and
ambitions of his village choir. When inaugurating in the
diocese of London his then novel and unconventional
plans of Home Mission work among the poor, he helped
to justify them by a special reminiscence of his Baldon
days, using these words from the pulpit
his Primary Diocesan Charge :
"
of St. Paul s in
I cannot but remember how, when a curate in a small
village in Oxfordshire,
I marvelled at the excitement raised in a
quiet and dull place by the gathering of the Methodists on a fine
summer s day on the Common, under the shadow of the old
trees ; how the voice of their preacher, sounding through the
stillness of a listening crowd, and the burst of their hymns peal
ing far and wide through the village, seemed well suited to attract
and raise the hearts of many who never entered within the
Church to join in its measured devotion, and listen to its calm
l
teaching."
Assuredly no picture of his Oxford life is a true one
which regards him merely as a busy college tutor, and
forgets his steady and persevering
1
Charge of 1858, p. 83.
work under most