The chaplain of a general hospital should be a man of liberal ideas and wide sympathies; he should be capable of taking an interest in the daily life of his charges, and try to see the things that interest them as much as possible from their own points of view. Here he will meet with people who have perhaps had no instruction in religion whatever, and whose sole knowledge of its working has been gathered from the misrepresentations of a street infidel orator or the ignorant distortions of an atheist journal. To such he cannot be too human and unecclesiastical. He must not talk "Church" to them, but the simplest, most loving human words. One of the St. Bernard chaplains made a great mistake when he asked everybody "if they had said their prayers." He never got to their hearts, and no wonder. The new chaplain, Mr. Anderson, was a man of very different stamp; he was of Charles Kingsley's school, and seemed familiar with every calling and phase of the life of his people. He was a devoted son of the Church, but you did not find it out by any symbols or tone. The fact that no patient, whether heathen, Christian, or "unattached," left the hospital without being the better for knowing him, proved his fitness for his work.
He taught many an indifferent one the true spirit and method of prayer, and many thanked God for the accident or malady which had brought them under his happy influence. In him they had secured at least one friend for life, for discharge from the wards was not the usual termination of the friendship of Mr. Anderson. Before he came the chapel was seldom attended by the resident students; their pews were conspicuous by their emptiness, but he won even them, and helped many out of difficulties with the authorities. Mr. Horsley, the late chaplain of Clerkenwell prison, tells us he learned thieves' slang, the better to acquaint himself with his flock. Mr. Anderson had some very curious specimens of humanity to deal with who required almost as much skill on his part, for many men injured in unlawful proceedings are taken to hospitals and watched by the police till their recovery permits their removal. He neglected not even these.
So ignorant of man's whole, Of bodily organs plain to see-- So sage and certain, frank and free, About what's under lock and key-- Man's soul!--_Browning._