The Altar Steps Part 30

"Your lordship prefers to force me to resign?"

"Force you to resign, Mr. Rowley?" the Bishop repeated in aggrieved accents. "What can I possibly have said that could lead you to suppose for one moment that I was desirous of forcing you to resign? I make allowance for your natural disappointment. I make every allowance.

Otherwise Mr. Rowley I should be tempted to characterize such a statement as cruel. As cruel, Mr. Rowley."

"What other alternative have I?"

"I should have said, Mr. Rowley, that you have one other very obvious alternative, and that is to accept my ruling upon the subject of this third altar or Holy Table. When I shall receive an a.s.surance that you will do so, I shall with pleasure, with great pleasure, give you a new licence."

"I could not possibly do that," said the Missioner. "I could not possibly go back to my people to-night and tell them this Holy Week that what I have been teaching them for ten years is a lie. I would rather resign a thousand times."

"That is a far more accurate statement than your previous a.s.sertion that I was forcing you to resign."

"When will you have found a priest to take my place temporarily?" the Missioner asked in a chill voice. "It is unlikely that the Silchester College authorities will find another missioner at once, and I think it rests with your lordship to find a loc.u.m tenens. I do not wish to disappoint my people about the date of the opening of their new church.

They have been looking forward to this Easter for so long now. Poor dears!"

Father Rowley sighed out the last e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n to himself, and his sigh ran through the Bishop's opulent library like a dull wind. Mark had a mad impulse to tell the Bishop the story of his father and the Lima Street Mission. His father had resigned on Palm Sunday. Oh, this ghastly dream. . . . Father Rowley leave Chatsea! It was unimaginable. . . .

But the Bishop was overthrowing the work of ten years with apparently as little consciousness of the ruin he was creating as a boar that has rooted up an ant-heap with his snout.

"Quite so. Quite so, Mr. Rowley. I certainly see your point," the Bishop declared. "I will do my best to secure a priest, but meanwhile . . . let me see. I need scarcely say how painful your decision has been, what pain it has caused me. Let me see, yes, in the circ.u.mstances I agree with you that it would be inadvisable to postpone the opening. I think from every point of view it would be wisest to proceed according to schedule. Could not this altar or Holy Table be railed off temporarily, I do not say m.u.f.fled up, but could not some indication be given of the fact that I do not sanction its use? In that case I should have no objection, indeed on the contrary I should be only too happy for you to carry on with your work either until I can find a temporary subst.i.tute or until the Silchester College authorities can appoint a new missioner.

Dear me, this is dreadfully painful for me."

Father Rowley stared at the Bishop in astonishment.

"You want me to continue?" he asked. "Really, my lord, you will excuse my plain speaking if I tell you that I am amazed at your point of view.

A moment ago you told me that I must either remove this altar or resign."

"Pardon me, Mr. Rowley. I did not mention the word 'resign.'"

"And now," the Missioner went on without paying any attention to the interruption. "You are ready to let me stay at St. Agnes' until a successor can conveniently be found. If my teaching is as pernicious as you think, I cannot understand your lordship's tolerating my officiating for another hour in your diocese."

"Mr. Rowley, you are introducing into this unhappy affair a great deal of extraneous feeling. I do not reproach you. I know that you are labouring under the stress of strong emotion. I overlook the manner which you have adopted towards me. I overlook it, Mr. Rowley. Before we close this interview, which I must once more a.s.sure you is as painful for me as for you, I want you to understand how deeply I regret having been forced to take the action I have. I ask your prayers, Mr. Rowley, and please be sure that you always have and always will have my prayers.

Have you anything more you would like to say? Do not let me give you the impression from my alluding to the heavy work of entering upon the duties and responsibilities of a new diocese that I desire to hurry you in any way this afternoon. You will want to catch the 4.10 back to Chatsea I have no doubt. Too early perhaps for tea. Good-bye, Mr.

Rowley. Good-bye, Mr. . . ." the Bishop paused and looked inquiringly at Mark. "Lidderdale, ah, yes," he said. "For the moment I forgot.

Good-bye, Mr. Lidderdale. A simple railing will, I think be sufficient for the altar in question, Mr. Rowley. I perfectly appreciate your motive in asking the Bishop of Barbadoes to officiate at the opening. I quite see that you did not wish to commit me to an approval of a ritual which might be more advanced than I might consider proper in my diocese.

. . . Good-bye, good-bye."

Father Rowley and Mark found themselves once more in the drive. The episcopal standard floated in the wind, which had sprung up while they were with the Bishop. They walked silently to the railway station under a fast clouding sky.

CHAPTER XX

FATHER ROWLEY

The first episcopal act of the Bishop of Silchester drove many poor souls away from G.o.d. It was a time of deep emotional stress for all the St. Agnes' workers, and Father Rowley could not show himself in Keppel Street without being surrounded by a crowd of supplicants who with tears and lamentations begged him to give up the new St. Agnes' and to remain in the old mission church rather than be lost to them for ever. There were some who even wished him to surrender the Third Altar; but in his last sermon preached on the Sunday night before he left Chatsea, he spoke to them and said:

"In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

The 15th verse of the 21st Chapter of the Holy Gospel according to Saint John: _Feed my lambs._

"It is difficult for me, dear people, to preach to you this evening for the last time as your missioner, to preach, moreover, the last sermon that will ever be preached in this little mission church which has meant so much to you and so much to me. By the mercy of G.o.d man does not realize at the moment all that is implied by an occasion like this. He speaks with his mouth words of farewell; but his heart still beats to what was and what is, rather than to what will be.

"When I took as my text to-night those three words of Our Lord to St.

Peter, _Feed my Lambs_, I took them as words that might be applied, first to the Lord Bishop of this diocese, secondly to the priest who will take my place in this Mission, and thirdly and perhaps most poignantly of all to myself. I cannot bring myself to suppose that in this moment of grief, in this moment of bitterness, almost of despair I am able to speak fairly of the Bishop of Silchester's action in compelling me to resign what has counted for all that is most precious in my life on earth. And already, in saying that the Bishop has compelled me to resign, I am not speaking with perfect accuracy, inasmuch as if I had been willing to surrender what I considered one of the essential articles of our belief, the Bishop would have been glad to licence the new St. Agnes' and to give his countenance and his support to me, the unworthy priest in charge of it.

"I want you therefore, dear people, to try to look at the matter from the standpoint of the Bishop. I want you to try to understand that in objecting to our little altar for the dead he is objecting not so much to the altar itself as to the services said at that altar. If it had merely been a question between us of a third altar, whether here or in the new St. Agnes', I should have found it possible, however unwillingly, to ask you--you, who out of your hard-earned savings built that altar--to allow it to be removed. Yes, I should have been selfish enough to ask you to make that great sacrifice on my account. But when the Bishop insisted that I and the priests who have borne with me and worked with me and preached with me and prayed with me all these years should abstain from saying those Ma.s.ses which we believe and which you believe help our dear ones waiting for the Day of Judgment--why, then, I felt that my surrender would have been a denial of our dear Lord, such a denial as St. Peter himself uttered in the hall of the high-priest's house. But the Bishop does not believe that our prayers here below have any efficacy or can in any way help the blessed dead. He does not believe in such prayers, and he believes that those who do believe in such prayers are wrong, not merely according to the teaching of the Prayer Book, but also according to the revelation of Almighty G.o.d. I do not want you to say, as you will be tempted to say, that the Bishop of Silchester in condemning our method of services at St. Agnes' is condemning them with an eye to public opinion or to political advantage.

Alas, I have myself been tempted to say bitter words about him, to think bitter thoughts; but at this moment, with that last _Nunc Dimittis_ ringing in my ears, _Lord now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace_, I realize that the Bishop is acting honestly and sincerely, however much he may be acting wrongly and hastily. It is dreadful for me at this moment of parting to feel that some of you here to-night may be turned from the face of G.o.d because you are angered against one of G.o.d's ministers. If any poor words of mine have power to touch your hearts, I beg you to believe that in giving us this great trial of our faith G.o.d is acting with that mysterious justice and omniscience of which we speak idly without in the least apprehending what He means. I shall say no more in defence and explanation of the Bishop's action, and if he should consider my defence and explanation of it a piece of presumption I send him at this solemn moment of farewell a message that I shall never cease to pray that he may long guide you on the way that leads up to eternal happiness.

"I can speak more freely of what your att.i.tude should be towards Father Hungerford, the priest who is coming to take my place and who is going with G.o.d's help to do far more for you here than ever I have been able to do. I want you all to put yourselves in his place; I want you all to think of him to-night wondering, fearing, doubting, hoping, and praying.

I want you to imagine how difficult he must be feeling the situation is for him. He will come here to-morrow conscious that there is n.o.body in this district of ours who does not feel, whether he be a communicant or not, that the Bishop had no right to intervene so soon and without greater knowledge of his new diocese in a district like ours. I cannot help knowing how much I myself am to blame in this particular; but, my dear people, it has been very hard for me during these last two weeks always to be brave and hopeful. Often I have found those entreaties on my doorstep almost more than I could endure to hear, those letters on my desk almost more than I could bear to read. So, if you want to do the one thing that can comfort me in this bitter hour of mine I entreat you to show Father Hungerford that your faith and your hope and your love do not depend on your affection for an unworthy priest, but upon that deeper, greater, n.o.bler affection for the word of G.o.d. There is only one way in which you can show Father Hungerford that Jesus Christ lives in your hearts, and that is by going to Confession and to Communion and by hearing Ma.s.s as you have done all this time. Show him by your behaviour in the street, by your kindness and consideration at home, by your devotion and reverence in church, that you appreciate the mercies of G.o.d, that you appreciate what it means to have Jesus Christ upon your altar, that you are, in a word, Christians.

"And now at last I must think of those words of our dear Lord as they apply to myself: _Feed my lambs._ And as I repeat them, I ask myself again if I have done right, for I am troubled in spirit, and I wonder if I ought to have given up that third altar and to have remained here. But even as I wonder this, even as at this moment I stand in this pulpit for the last time, a voice within me forbids me to doubt. No, my clear folk, I cannot surrender that altar. I cannot come to you and say that what I have been teaching for ten years was of so little value, of so little importance, of so little worth, that for the sake of policy it can be abandoned with a stroke of the pen or a nod of the head. I stand here looking out into the future, hearing like angelic trumpets those three words sounding and resounding upon the great void of time: _Feed my lambs!_ I ask myself what work lies before me, what lambs I shall have to feed elsewhere; I ask myself in my misery whether G.o.d has found me unworthy of the trust He gave me. I feel that if I leave St. Agnes'

to-morrow with the thought that you still cherish angry and resentful feelings I shall sink to a lower depth of humiliation and depression than I have yet reached. But if I can leave St. Agnes' with the a.s.surance that my work here will go steadily forward to the glory of G.o.d from the point at which I renounced it, I shall know that G.o.d must have some other purpose for the remainder of my life, some other mission to which He intends to call me. To you, my dear people, to you who have borne with me patiently, to you who have tolerated so sweetly my infirmities, to you who have been kind to my failings, to you who have taught me so much more of our dear Lord Jesus Christ than I have been able to teach you, to you I say good-bye. I cannot harrow your feelings or my own by saying any more. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen."

Notwithstanding these words, the first episcopal act of the Bishop of Silchester drove many poor souls away from G.o.d.

The effect upon Mark, had his religion been merely a pastime of adolescence, would have been disastrous. Owing to human nature's respect for the conspicuous there is nothing so demoralizing to faith as the failure of a leader of religion to set forth in his own actions the word of G.o.d. Mark, however, looked at the whole business more from an ecclesiastical angle. He had reason to condemn the Bishop for unchristian behaviour; but he preferred to condemn him for uncatholic behaviour. Dr. Cheesman and the many other Dr. Cheesmans of whom the Anglican episcopate was at this period composed never succeeded in shaking his belief in Christ; they did succeed in shaking for a short time his belief in the Church of England. There are few Anglo-Catholics, whether priests or laymen, who have never doubted the right of their Church to proclaim herself a branch of the Holy Catholic Church. This phase of doubt is indeed so common that in ecclesiastical circles it has come to be regarded as a kind of mental chicken-pox, not very alarming if it catches the patient when young, but growing more dangerous in proportion to the lateness of its attack. Mark had his attack young.

When Father Rowley left Chatsea, he was anxious to accompany him on what he knew would be an exhausting time of travelling round to preach and collect the necessary money to pay off what was actually a personal debt. It seemed that there must be something fundamentally wrong with a Church that allowed a man to perambulate England in an endeavour to pay off the debt upon a building from ministrating in which he had been debarred. This debt, moreover, was presumably going to be paid by people who fully subscribed to teaching which had been officially condemned.

When Mark commented on this, Father Rowley pointed out that as a matter of fact a great deal of money had been sent by people who admired the practical side, or what they would have called the practical side of his work among the poor, but who at the same time thoroughly disapproved of its ecclesiastical form.

"In justice to the poor old Church of England," he said to Mark, "it must be pointed out that a good deal of this money has been given by devout Anglicans under protest."

"Yes, but that doesn't seriously affect the argument," said Mark. "You collect I don't know how many thousands of pounds to put up a magnificent church from which the Bishop of Silchester sees fit to turn you out, but for the debt on which you are still personally responsible.

It's fantastic!"

"Mark Anthony," the priest said with a laugh, "you lack the legal mind.

The Bishop did not turn me out. The Bishop can perfectly well say I turned myself out."

"It is all too subtle for me," said Mark. "But I'm not going to worry you with any more arguments. You've had enough of them to last you for ever. I do wish you'd let me stick to you personally and help you in any way possible."

"No, Mark Anthony," the priest replied. "I've done my work at St.

Agnes', and you've done yours. Your business now is to take advantage of what has happened and to get back to your books, which whatever you may say have been more and more neglected lately. You'll find it of enormous help to be a good theologian. I have never ceased to regret my own shortcomings in that respect. Besides, I think you ought to spend a certain amount of time with Ogilvie before you go to Glas...o...b..ry. There is quite a lot of work to do if you look for it in a country parish like--what's the name of the place? Wych. Oh, yes, quite a lot of work.

Don't bother your head about Anglican Orders and Roman Claims and the Catholicity of the Church of England. Your business is to save souls, your own included. Go back and read and get to know the people in Ogilvie's parish. Anybody can tackle a district like St. Agnes'; anybody that is who has the suitable personality. How many people can tackle an English country parish? I hardly know one. I should like to have you with me. I'm fond of you, and you're useful; but at your age to travel round from town to town listening to my begging would be all wrong. I might even go to America. I've had most cordial invitations from several American bishops, and if I can't raise the money in England I shall have to go there. If G.o.d has any more work for me to do I shall be offered a cure some day somewhere. I want you to be one of my a.s.sistant priests, and if you're going to be useful to me as an a.s.sistant priest, you really must have some theology behind you. These bishops get more and more difficult to deal with every year. Now, it's no good arguing.

My mind's made up. I won't take you with me."

So Mark went back to Wych-on-the-Wold and brooded upon the non-Catholic aspects of the Anglican Church.

CHAPTER XXI

POINTS OF VIEW