A MERE BIT OF GOSSIP
The Ministers' Meeting of the following Tuesday was pleasantly enlivened
with gossip--retained, of course, within seemly bounds. There was absent
the Reverend Dr. Linford, sometime rector of St. Antipas, said lately to
have emerged from a state of spiritual chrysalis into a world made new
with truths that were yet old. It was concerning this circumstance that
discreet expressions were oftenest heard during the function.
One brother declared that the Linfords were both extremists: one with
his absurdly radical disbelief in revealed religion; the other flying at
last to the Mother Church for that authority which he professed not to
find in his own.
Another asserted that in talking with Dr. Linford now, one brought away
the notion that in renouncing his allegiance to the Episcopal faith he
had gone to the extreme of renouncing marriage, in order that the Mother
Church might become his only bride. True, Linford said nothing at all
like this;--the idea was fleeting, filmy, traceable to no specific words
of his. Yet it left a track across the mind. It seemed to be the very
spirit of his speech upon the subject. Certainly no other reason had
been suggested for the regrettable, severance of this domestic tie.
Conjecture was futile and Mrs. Linford, secluded in her country home at
Edom, had steadfastly refused, so said the public prints, to give any
reason whatsoever.
His soup finished, the Reverend Mr. Whittaker unfolded the early edition
of an evening paper to a page which bore an excellent likeness of Dr.
Linford.
"I'll read you some things from his letter," he said, "though I'll
confess I don't wholly approve his taste in giving it to the press.
However--here's one bit:
"'When I was ordained a priest in the Episcopal Church I dreamed of
wielding an influence that would tend to harmonise the conflicting
schools of churchmanship. It seemed to me that my little life might be
of value, as I comprehended the essentials of church citizenship. I will
not dwell upon my difficulties. The present is no time to murmur.
Suffice it to say, I have long held, I have taught, nearly every
Catholic doctrine not actually denied by the Anglican formularies; and I
have accepted and revived in St. Antipas every Catholic practice not
positively forbidden.
"But I have lately become convinced that the Anglican orders of the
ministry are invalid. I am persuaded that a priest ordained into the
Episcopal Church cannot consecrate the elements of the Eucharist in a
sacrificial sense. Could I be less than true to my inner faith in a
matter touching the sacred verity of the Real Presence--the actual body
and blood of our Saviour?
"After conflict and prayer I have gone trustingly whither God has been
pleased to lead me. In my humble sight the only spiritual body that
actually claims to teach truth upon authority, the only body divinely
protected from teaching error, is the Holy, Catholic and Roman Church.
"For the last time I have exercised my private judgment, as every man
must exercise it once, at least, and I now seek communion with this
largest and oldest body of Christians in the world. I have faced an
emergency fraught with vital interest to every thinking man. I have met
it; the rest is with my God. Praying that I might be adorned with the
splendours of holiness, and knowing that the prayer of him that humbleth
himself shall pierce the clouds, I took for my motto this sentence from
Huxley: 'Sit down before fact as a little child; be prepared to give up
every preconceived notion; follow humbly wherever and to whatever
abysses Nature leads.' Presently, God willing, I shall be in communion
with the See of Rome, where I feel that there is a future for me!"
The reader had been absently stabbing at his fish with an aimless fork.
He now laid down his paper to give the food his entire attention.
"You see," began Floud, "I say one brother is quite as extreme as the
other."
Father Riley smiled affably, and begged Whittaker to finish the letter.
"Your fish is fresh, dear man, but your news may be stale before we
reach it--so hasten now--I've a presentiment that our friend goes still
farther afield."
Whittaker abandoned his fish with a last thoughtful look, and resumed
the reading.
"May I conclude by reminding you that the issue between Christianity and
science falsely so called has never been enough simplified? Christianity
rests squarely on the Fall of man. Deny the truth of Genesis and the
whole edifice of our faith crumbles. If we be not under the curse of God
for Adam's sin, there was never a need for a Saviour, the Incarnation
and the Atonement become meaningless, and our Lord is reduced to the
status of a human teacher of a disputable philosophy--a peasant moralist
with certain delusions of grandeur--an agitator and heretic whom the
authorities of his time executed for stirring up the people. In short,
the divinity of Jesus must stand or fall with the divinity of the God of
Moses, and this in turn rests upon the historical truth of Genesis. If
the Fall of man be successfully disputed, the God of Moses becomes a
figment of the Jewish imagination--Jesus becomes man. And this is what
Science asserts, while we of the outer churches, through cowardice or
indolence--too often, alas! through our own skepticism--have allowed
Science thus to obscure the issue. We have fatuously thought to
surrender the sin of Adam, and still to keep a Saviour--not perceiving
that we must keep both or neither.
"There is the issue. The Church says that man is born under the curse of
God and so remains until redeemed, through the sacraments of the Church,
by the blood of God's only begotten Son.
"Science says man is not fallen, but has risen steadily from remote
brute ancestors. If science be right--and by _mere evidence_ its
contention is plausible--then original sin is a figment and natural man
is a glorious triumph over brutehood, not only requiring no
saviour--since he is under no curse of God--but having every reason to
believe that the divine favour has ever attended him in his upward
trend.
"But if one finds _mere evidence_ insufficient to outweigh that most
glorious death on Calvary, if one regards that crucifixion as a tear of
faith on the world's cold cheek of doubt to make it burn forever, then
one must turn to the only church that safeguards this rock of Original
Sin upon which the Christ is builded. For the ramparts of Protestantism
are honeycombed with infidelity--and what is most saddening, they are
giving way to blows from within. Protestantism need no longer fear the
onslaughts of atheistic outlaws: what concerns it is the fact that the
stronghold of destructive criticism is now within its own ranks--a
stronghold manned by teachers professedly orthodox.
"It need cause little wonder, then, that I have found safety in the
Mother Church. Only there is one compelled by adequate authority to
believe. There alone does it seem to be divined that Christianity cannot
relinquish the first of its dogmas without invalidating those that rest
upon it.
"For another vital matter, only in the Catholic Church do I find
combated with uncompromising boldness that peculiarly modern and vicious
sentimentality which is preached as 'universal brotherhood.' It is a
doctrine spreading insidiously among the godless masses outside the true
Church, a chimera of visionaries who must be admitted to be dishonest,
since again and again has it been pointed out to them that their
doctrine is unchristian--impiously and preposterously unchristian.
Witness the very late utterance of His Holiness, Pope Pius X, as to
God's divine ordinance of prince and subject, noble and plebeian, master
and proletariat, learned and ignorant, all united, indeed, but not in
_material_ equality--only in the bonds of love to help one another
attain their _moral_ welfare on earth and their last end in heaven. Most
pointedly does his Holiness further rebuke this effeminacy of universal
brotherhood by stating that equality exists among the social members
only in this: that all men have their origin in God the Creator, have
sinned in Adam, and have been equally redeemed into eternal life by the
sacrifice of our Lord.
"Upon these two rocks--of original sin and of prince and subject, riches
and poverty--by divine right, the Catholic Church has taken its stand;
and within this church will the final battle be fought on these issues.
Thank God He has found my humble self worthy to fight upon His side
against the hordes of infidelity and the preachers of an unchristian
social equality!"
There were little exclamations about the table as Whittaker finished and
returned at last to his fish. To Father Riley it occurred that these
would have been more communicative, more sentient, but for his presence.
In fact, there presently ensued an eloquent silence in lieu of remarks
that might too easily have been indiscreet.
"Pray, never mind me at all, gentlemen--I'll listen blandly whilst I
disarticulate this beautiful bird."
"I say one is quite as extreme as the other," again declared the
discoverer of this fact, feeling that his perspicacity had not been
sufficiently remarked.
"I dare say Whittaker is meditating a bitter cynicism," suggested Father
Riley.
"Concerning that incandescent but unfortunate young man," remarked the
amiable Presbyterian--"I trust God's Providence to care for children and
fools--"
"And yet I found his remarks suggestive," said the twinkling-eyed
Methodist. "That is, we asked for the belief of the average
non-church-goer--and I dare say he gave it to us. It occurs to me
further that he has merely had the wit to put in blunt, brutal words
what so many of us declare with academic flourishes. We can all name a
dozen treatises written by theologians ostensibly orthodox which
actually justify his utterances. It seems to me, then, that we may
profit by his blasphemies."
"How?" demanded Whittaker, with some bluntness.
"Ah--that is what the Church must determine. We already know how to
reach the heathen, the unbookish, the unthinking--but how reach the
educated--the science-bitten? It is useless to deny that the brightest,
biggest minds are outside the Church--indifferentists or downright
opponents of it. I am not willing to believe that God meant men like
these to perish--I don't like to think of Emerson being lost, or Huxley,
or Spencer, or even Darwin--Question: has the Church power to save the
educated?"
"Sure, I know one that has never lacked it," purled Father Riley.
"There's an answer to you in Linford's letter," added Whittaker.
"Gentlemen, you jest with me--but I shall continue to feel grateful to
our slightly dogmatic young friend for his artless brutalities. Now I
know what the business man keeps to himself when I ask him why he has
lost interest in the church."
"There's a large class we can't take from you," said Father Riley--"that
class with whom religion is a mode of respectability."
"And you can't take our higher critics, either--more's the pity!"
"On my word, now, gentlemen," returned the Catholic, again, "that was a
dear, blasphemous young whelp! You know, I rather liked him. Bless the
soul of you, I could as little have rebuked the lad as I could punish
the guiltless indecence of a babe--he was that shockingly naïf!"
"He is undoubtedly the just fruit of our own toleration," repeated the
high-church rector.
"And he stands for our knottiest problem," said the Presbyterian.
"A problem all the knottier, I suspect," began Whittaker--
"Didn't I _tell_ you?" interrupted Father Riley. "Oh, the outrageous
cynic! Be braced for him, now!"
"I was only going to suggest," resumed the wicked Unitarian, calmly,
"that those people, Linford and his brother--and even that singularly
effective Mrs. Linford, with her inferable views about divorce--you know
I dare say that they--really you know--that they possess the courage
of--"
"Their _convictions_!" concluded little Floud, impatient alike of the
speaker's hesitation and the expected platitude.
"No--I was about to say--the courage--of ours."
A few looked politely blank at this unseasonable flippancy. Father Riley
smiled with rare sweetness and murmured, "So cynical, even for a
Unitarian!" as if to himself in playful confidence.
But the amiable Presbyterian, of the cheerful auburn beard and the
salient nose, hereupon led them tactfully to safe ground in a discussion
of the ethnic Trinities.