The church of St. Asaph, more properly call St. Asaph's in the Fields,
stands among the elm trees of Plutoria Avenue opposite the university,
its tall spire pointing to the blue sky. Its rector is fond of saying
that it seems to him to point, as it were, a warning against the sins
of a commercial age. More particularly does he say this in his Lenten
services at noonday, when the businessmen sit in front of him in rows,
their bald heads uncovered and their faces stamped with contrition as
they think of mergers that they should have made, and real estate that
they failed to buy for lack of faith.
The ground on which St. Asaph's stands is worth seven dollars and a
half a foot. The mortgagees, as they kneel in prayer in their long
frock-coats, feel that they have built upon a rock. It is a beautifully
appointed church. There are windows with priceless stained glass that
were imported from Normandy, the rector himself swearing out the
invoices to save the congregation the grievous burden of the customs
duty. There is a pipe organ in the transept that cost ten thousand
dollars to install. The debenture-holders, as they join in the morning
anthem, love to hear the dulcet notes of the great organ and to reflect
that it is as good as new. Just behind the church is St. Asaph's Sunday
School, with a ten-thousand dollar mortgage of its own. And below that
again on the side street, is the building of the Young Men's Guild with
a bowling-alley and a swimming-bath deep enough to drown two young men
at a time, and a billiard-room with seven tables. It is the rector's
boast that with a Guild House such as that there is no need for any
young man of the congregation to frequent a saloon. Nor is there.
And on Sunday mornings, when the great organ plays, and the mortgagees
and the bond-holders and the debenture-holders and the Sunday school
teachers and the billiard-markers all lift up their voices together,
there is emitted from St. Asaph's a volume of praise that is
practically as fine and effective as paid professional work.
St. Asaph's is episcopal. As a consequence it has in it and about it
all those things which go to make up the episcopal church--brass
tablets let into its walls, blackbirds singing in its elm trees,
parishioners who dine at eight o'clock, and a rector who wears a little
crucifix and dances the tango.
On the other hand, there stands upon the same street, not a hundred
yards away, the rival church of St. Osoph--presbyterian down to its
very foundations in bed-rock, thirty feet below the level of the
avenue. It has a short, squat tower--and a low roof, and its narrow
windows are glazed with frosted glass. It has dark spruce trees instead
of elms, crows instead of blackbirds, and a gloomy minister with a
shovel hat who lectures on philosophy on week-days at the university.
He loves to think that his congregation are made of the lowly and the
meek in spirit, and to reflect that, lowly and meek as they are, there
are men among them that could buy out half the congregation of St.
Asaph's.
St. Osoph's is only presbyterian in a special sense. It is, in fact,
too presbyterian to be any longer connected with any other body
whatsoever. It seceded some forty years ago from the original body to
which it belonged, and later on, with three other churches, it seceded
from the group of seceding congregations. Still later it fell into a
difference with the three other churches on the question of eternal
punishment, the word "eternal" not appearing to the elders of St.
Osoph's to designate a sufficiently long period. The dispute ended in a
secession which left the church of St. Osoph practically isolated in a
world of sin whose approaching fate it neither denied nor deplored.
In one respect the rival churches of Plutoria Avenue had had a similar
history. Each of them had moved up by successive stages from the lower
and poorer parts of the city. Forty years ago St. Asaph's had been
nothing more than a little frame church with a tin spire, away in the
west of the slums, and St. Osoph's a square, diminutive building away
in the east. But the site of St. Asaph's had been bought by a brewing
company, and the trustees, shrewd men of business, themselves rising
into wealth, had rebuilt it right in the track of the advancing tide of
a real estate boom. The elders of St. Osoph, quiet men, but illumined
by an inner light, had followed suit and moved their church right
against the side of an expanding distillery. Thus both the churches, as
decade followed decade, made their way up the slope of the City till
St. Asaph's was presently gloriously expropriated by the street railway
company, and planted its spire in triumph on Plutoria Avenue itself.
But St. Osoph's followed. With each change of site it moved nearer and
nearer to St. Asaph's. Its elders were shrewd men. With each move of
their church they took careful thought in the rebuilding. In the
manufacturing district it was built with sixteen windows on each side
and was converted at a huge profit into a bicycle factory. On the
residential street it was made long and deep and was sold to a
moving-picture company without the alteration of so much as a pew. As a
last step a syndicate, formed among the members of the congregation
themselves, bought ground on Plutoria Avenue, and sublet it to
themselves as a site for the church, at a nominal interest of five per
cent per annum, payable nominally every three months and secured by a
nominal mortgage.
As the two churches moved, their congregations, or at least all that
was best of them--such members as were sharing in the rising fortunes
of the City--moved also, and now for some six or seven years the two
churches and the two congregations had confronted one another among the
elm trees of the Avenue opposite to the university.
But at this point the fortunes of the churches had diverged. St.
Asaph's was a brilliant success; St. Osoph's was a failure. Even its
own trustees couldn't deny it. At a time when St. Asaph's was not only
paying its interest but showing a handsome surplus on everything it
undertook, the church of St. Osoph was moving steadily backwards.
There was no doubt, of course, as to the cause. Everybody knew it. It
was simply a question of men, and, as everybody said, one had only to
compare the two men conducting the churches to see why one succeeded
and the other failed.
The Reverend Edward Fareforth Furlong of St. Asaph's was a man who
threw his whole energy into his parish work. The subtleties of
theological controversy he left to minds less active than his own. His
creed was one of works rather than of words, and whatever he was doing
he did it with his whole heart. Whether he was lunching at the
Mausoleum Club with one of his church wardens, or playing the
flute--which he played as only the episcopal clergy can play
it--accompanied on the harp by one of the fairest of the ladies of his
choir, or whether he was dancing the new episcopal tango with the
younger daughters of the elder parishioners, he threw himself into it
with all his might. He could drink tea more gracefully and play tennis
better than any clergyman on this side of the Atlantic. He could stand
beside the white stone font of St. Asaph's in his long white surplice
holding a white-robed infant, worth half a million dollars, looking as
beautifully innocent as the child itself, and drawing from every matron
of the congregation with unmarried daughters the despairing cry, "What
a pity that he has no children of his own!"
Equally sound was his theology. No man was known to preach shorter
sermons or to explain away the book of Genesis more agreeably than the
rector of St. Asaph's; and if he found it necessary to refer to the
Deity he did so under the name of Jehovah or Jah, or even Yaweh in a
manner calculated not to hurt the sensitiveness of any of the
parishioners. People who would shudder at brutal talk of the older
fashion about the wrath of God listened with well-bred interest to a
sermon on the personal characteristics of Jah. In the same way Mr.
Furlong always referred to the devil, not as Satan but as Su or Swa,
which took all the sting out of him. Beelzebub he spoke of as
Behel-Zawbab, which rendered him perfectly harmless. The Garden of Eden
he spoke of as the Paradeisos, which explained it entirely; the flood
as the Diluvium, which cleared it up completely; and Jonah he named,
after the correct fashion Jon Nah, which put the whole situation (his
being swallowed by Baloo or the Great Lizard) on a perfectly
satisfactory footing. Hell itself was spoken of as She-ol, and it
appeared that it was not a place of burning, but rather of what one
might describe as moral torment. This settled She-ol once and for all:
nobody minds moral torment. In short, there was nothing in the
theological system of Mr. Furlong that need have occasioned in any of
his congregation a moment's discomfort.
There could be no greater contrast with Mr. Fareforth Furlong than the
minister of St. Osoph's, the Rev. Dr. McTeague, who was also honorary
professor of philosophy at the university. The one was young, the other
was old; the one could dance the other could not; the one moved about
at church picnics and lawn teas among a bevy of disciples in pink and
blue sashes; the other moped around under the trees of the university
campus with blinking eyes that saw nothing and an abstracted mind that
had spent fifty years in trying to reconcile Hegel with St. Paul, and
was still busy with it. Mr. Furlong went forward with the times; Dr.
McTeague slid quietly backwards with the centuries.
Dr. McTeague was a failure, and all his congregation knew it. "He is
not up to date," they said. That was his crowning sin. "He don't go
forward any," said the business members of the congregation. "That old
man believes just exactly the same sort of stuff now that he did forty
years ago. What's more, he preaches it. You can't run a church that
way, can you?"
His trustees had done their best to meet the difficulty. They had
offered Dr. McTeague a two-years' vacation to go and see the Holy Land.
He refused; he said he could picture it. They reduced his salary by
fifty per cent; he never noticed it. They offered him an assistant; but
he shook his head, saying that he didn't know where he could find a man
to do just the work that he was doing. Meantime he mooned about among
the trees concocting a mixture of St. Paul with Hegel, three parts to
one, for his Sunday sermon, and one part to three for his Monday
lecture.
No doubt it was his dual function that was to blame for his failure.
And this, perhaps, was the fault of Dr. Boomer, the president of the
university. Dr. Boomer, like all university presidents of today,
belonged to the presbyterian church; or rather, to state it more
correctly, he included presbyterianism within himself. He was of
course, a member of the board of management of St. Osoph's and it was
he who had urged, very strongly, the appointment of Dr. McTeague, then
senior professor of philosophy, as minister.
"A saintly man," he said, "the very man for the post. If you should ask
me whether he is entirely at home as a professor of philosophy on our
staff at the university, I should be compelled to say no. We are forced
to admit that as a lecturer he does not meet our views. He appears to
find it difficult to keep religion out of his teaching. In fact, his
lectures are suffused with a rather dangerous attempt at moral teaching
which is apt to contaminate our students. But in the Church I should
imagine that would be, if anything, an advantage. Indeed, if you were
to come to me and say, 'Boomer, we wish to appoint Dr. McTeague as our
minister,' I should say, quite frankly, 'Take him.'"
So Dr. McTeague had been appointed. Then, to the surprise of everybody
he refused to give up his lectures in philosophy. He said he felt a
call to give them. The salary, he said, was of no consequence. He wrote
to Mr. Furlong senior (the father of the episcopal rector and honorary
treasurer of the Plutoria University) and stated that he proposed to
give his lectures for nothing. The trustees of the college protested;
they urged that the case might set a dangerous precedent which other
professors might follow. While fully admitting that Dr. McTeague's
lectures were well worth giving for nothing, they begged him to
reconsider his offer. But he refused; and from that day on, in spite of
all offers that he should retire on double his salary, that he should
visit the Holy Land, or Syria, or Armenia, where the dreadful massacres
of Christians were taking place, Dr. McTeague clung to his post with a
tenacity worthy of the best traditions of Scotland. His only internal
perplexity was that he didn't see how, when the time came for him to
die, twenty or thirty years hence, they would ever be able to replace
him. Such was the situation of the two churches on a certain beautiful
morning in June, when an unforeseen event altered entirely the current
of their fortunes.
* * * * *
"No, thank you, Juliana," said the young rector to his sister across
the breakfast table--and there was something as near to bitterness in
his look as his saintly, smooth-shaven face was capable of
reflecting--"no, thank you, no more porridge. Prunes? no, no, thank
you; I don't think I care for any. And, by the way," he added, "don't
bother to keep any lunch for me. I have a great deal of business--that
is, of work in the parish--to see to, and I must just find time to get
a bite of something to eat when and where I can."
In his own mind he was resolving that the place should be the Mausoleum
Club and the time just as soon as the head waiter would serve him.
After which the Reverend Edward Fareforth Furlong bowed his head for a
moment in a short, silent blessing--the one prescribed by the episcopal
church in America for a breakfast of porridge and prunes.
It was their first breakfast together, and it spoke volumes to the
rector. He knew what it implied. It stood for his elder sister
Juliana's views on the need of personal sacrifice as a means of grace.
The rector sighed as he rose. He had never missed his younger sister
Philippa, now married and departed, so keenly. Philippa had had
opinions of her own on bacon and eggs and on lamb chops with watercress
as a means of stimulating the soul. But Juliana was different. The
rector understood now exactly why it was that his father had exclaimed,
on the news of Philippa's engagement, without a second's hesitation,
"Then, of course, Juliana must live with you! Nonsense, my dear boy,
nonsense! It's my duty to spare her to you. After all, I can always eat
at the club; they can give me a bite of something or other, surely. To
a man of my age, Edward, food is really of no consequence. No, no;
Juliana must move into the rectory at once."
The rector's elder sister rose. She looked tall and sallow and
forbidding in the plain black dress that contrasted sadly with the
charming clerical costumes of white and pink and the broad episcopal
hats with flowers in them that Philippa used to wear for morning work
in the parish.
"For what time shall I order dinner?" she asked. "You and Philippa used
to have it at half-past seven, did you not? Don't you think that rather
too late?"
"A trifle perhaps," said the rector uneasily. He didn't care to explain
to Juliana that it was impossible to get home any earlier from the kind
of _the dansant_ that everybody was giving just now. "But don't trouble
about dinner. I may be working very late. If I need anything to eat I
shall get a biscuit and some tea at the Guild Rooms, or--"
He didn't finish the sentence, but in his mind he added, "or else a
really first-class dinner at the Mausoleum Club, or at the Newberrys'
or the Rasselyer-Browns'--anywhere except here."
"If you are going, then," said Juliana, "may I have the key of the
church."
A look of pain passed over the rector's face. He knew perfectly well
what Juliana wanted the key for. She meant to go into his church and
pray in it.
The rector of St. Asaph's was, he trusted, as broad-minded a man as an
Anglican clergyman ought to be. He had no objection to any reasonable
use of his church--for a thanksgiving festival or for musical recitals
for example--but when it came to opening up the church and using it to
pray in, the thing was going a little too far. What was more, he had an
idea from the look on Juliana's face that she meant to pray for _him_.
This, for a clergy man, was hard to bear. Philippa, like the good girl
that she was, had prayed only for herself, and then only at the proper
times and places, and in a proper praying costume. The rector began to
realize what difficulties it might make for a clergyman to have a
religious sister as his house-mate.
But he was never a man for unseemly argument. "It is hanging in my
study," he said.
And with that the Rev. Fareforth Furlong passed into the hall took up
the simple silk hat, the stick and gloves of the working clergyman and
walked out on to the avenue to begin his day's work in the parish.
The rector's parish viewed in its earthly aspect, was a singularly
beautiful place. For it extended all along Plutoria Avenue, where the
street is widest and the elm trees are at their leafiest and the motors
at their very drowsiest. It lay up and down the shaded side streets of
the residential district, darkened with great chestnuts and hushed in a
stillness that was almost religion itself. There was not a house in the
parish assessed at less than twenty-five thousand, and in very heart of
it the Mausoleum Club, with its smooth white stone and its Grecian
architecture, carried one back to the ancient world and made one think
of Athens and of Paul preaching on Mars Hill. It was, all considered, a
splendid thing to fight sin in such a parish and to keep it out of it.
For kept out it was. One might look the length and breadth of the broad
avenue and see no sign of sin all along it. There was certainly none in
the smooth faces of the chauffeurs trundling their drowsy motors; no
sign of it in the expensive children paraded by imported nursemaids in
the chequered light of the shaded street; least of all was there any
sign of it in the Stock Exchange members of the congregation as they
walked along side by side to their lunch at the Mausoleum Club, their
silk hats nodding together in earnest colloquy on Shares Preferred and
Profits Undivided. So might have walked, so must have walked, the very
Fathers of the Church themselves.
Whatever sin there was in the City was shoved sideways into the roaring
streets of commerce where the elevated railway ran, and below that
again into the slums. Here there must have been any quantity of sin.
The rector of St. Asaph's was certain of it. Many of the richer of his
parishioners had been down in parties late at night to look at it, and
the ladies of his congregation were joined together into all sorts of
guilds and societies and bands of endeavour for stamping it out and
driving it under or putting it into jail till it surrendered.
But the slums lay outside the rector's parish. He had no right to
interfere. They were under the charge of a special mission or
auxiliary, a remnant of the St. Asaph's of the past, placed under the
care of a divinity student, at four hundred dollars per annum. His
charge included all the slums and three police courts and two music
halls and the City jail. One Sunday afternoon in every three months the
rector and several ladies went down and sang hymns for him in his
mission-house. But his work was really very easy. A funeral, for
example, at the mission, was a simple affair, meaning nothing more than
the preparation of a plain coffin and a glassless hearse and the
distribution of a few artificial everlasting flowers to women crying in
their aprons; a thing easily done: whereas in St. Asaph's parish, where
all the really important souls were, a funeral was a large event,
requiring taste and tact, and a nice shading of delicacy in
distinguishing mourners from beneficiaries, and private grief from
business representation at the ceremony. A funeral with a plain coffin
and a hearse was as nothing beside an interment, with a casket
smothered in hot-house syringas, borne in a coach and followed by
special reporters from the financial papers.
It appeared to the rector afterwards as almost a shocking coincidence
that the first person whom he met upon the avenue should have been the
Rev. Dr. McTeague himself. Mr. Furlong gave him the form of amiable
"good morning" that the episcopal church always extends to those in
error. But he did not hear it. The minister's head was bent low, his
eyes gazed into vacancy, and from the movements of his lips and from
the fact that he carried a leather case of notes, he was plainly on his
way to his philosophical lecture. But the rector had no time to muse
upon the abstracted appearance of his rival. For, as always happened to
him, he was no sooner upon the street than his parish work of the day
began. In fact, he had hardly taken a dozen steps after passing Dr.
McTeague when he was brought up standing by two beautiful parishioners
with pink parasols.
"Oh, Mr. Furlong," exclaimed one of them, "so fortunate to happen to
catch you; we were just going into the rectory to consult you. Should
the girls--for the lawn tea for the Guild on Friday, you know--wear
white dresses with light blue sashes all the same, or do you think we
might allow them to wear any coloured sashes that they like? What do
you think?"
This was an important problem. In fact, there was a piece of parish
work here that it took the Reverend Fareforth half an hour to attend to
standing the while in earnest colloquy with the two ladies under the
shadow of the elm trees. But a clergyman must never be grudging of his
time.
"Goodbye then," they said at last. "Are you coming to the Browning Club
this morning? Oh, so sorry! but we shall see you at the musicale this
afternoon, shall we not?"
"Oh, I trust so," said the rector.
"How dreadfully hard he works," said the ladies to one another as they
moved away.
Thus slowly and with many interruptions the rector made his progress
along the avenue. At times he stopped to permit a pink-cheeked infant
in a perambulator to beat him with a rattle while he inquired its age
of an episcopal nurse, gay with flowing ribbons. He lifted his hat to
the bright parasols of his parishioners passing in glistening motors,
bowed to episcopalians, nodded amiably to presbyterians, and even
acknowledged with his lifted hat the passing of persons of graver forms
of error.
Thus he took his way along the avenue and down a side street towards
the business district of the City, until just at the edge of it, where
the trees were about to stop and the shops were about to begin, he
found himself at the door of the Hymnal Supply Corporation, Limited.
The premises as seen from the outside combined the idea of an office
with an ecclesiastical appearance. The door was as that of a chancel or
vestry; there was a large plate-glass window filled with Bibles and
Testaments, all spread open and showing every variety of language in
their pages. These were marked, Arabic, Syriac, Coptic, Ojibway, Irish
and so forth. On the window in small white lettering were the words,
HYMNAL SUPPLY CORPORATION, and below that, HOSANNA PIPE AND STEAM ORGAN
INCORPORATED, and Still lower the legend BIBLE SOCIETY OF THE GOOD
SHEPHERD LIMITED.
There was no doubt of the sacred character of the place. Here laboured
Mr. Furlong senior, the father of the Rev. Edward Fareforth. He was a
man of many activities; president and managing director of the
companies just mentioned, trustee and secretary of St. Asaph's,
honorary treasurer of the university, etc.; and each of his occupations
and offices was marked by something of a supramundane character,
something higher than ordinary business. His different official
positions naturally overlapped and brought him into contact with
himself from a variety of angles. Thus he sold himself hymn books at a
price per thousand, made as a business favour to himself, negotiated
with himself the purchase of the ten-thousand-dollar organ (making a
price on it to himself that he begged himself to regard as
confidential), and as treasurer of the college he sent himself an
informal note of enquiry asking if he knew of any sound investment for
the annual deficit of the college funds, a matter of some sixty
thousand dollars a year, which needed very careful handling. Any
man--and there are many such--who has been concerned with business
dealings of this sort with himself realizes that they are more
satisfactory than any other kind.
To what better person, then, could the rector of St. Asaph's bring the
quarterly accounts and statements of his church than to Mr. Furlong
senior.
The outer door was opened to the rector by a sanctified boy with such a
face as is only found in the choirs of the episcopal church. In an
outer office through which the rector passed were two sacred
stenographers with hair as golden as the daffodils of Sheba, copying
confidential letters on absolutely noiseless typewriters. They were
making offers of Bibles in half-car-load lots at two and a half per
cent reduction, offering to reduce St. Mark by two cents on condition
of immediate export, and to lay down St. John f.o.b. San Francisco for
seven cents, while regretting that they could deliver fifteen thousand
Rock of Ages in Missouri on no other terms than cash.
The sacred character of their work lent them a preoccupation beautiful
to behold.
In the room beyond them was a white-haired confidential clerk,
venerable as the Song of Solomon, and by him Mr. Fareforth Furlong was
duly shown into the office of his father.
"Good morning, Edward," said Mr. Furlong senior, as he shook hands. "I
was expecting you. And while I think of it, I have just had a letter
from Philippa. She and Tom will be home in two or three weeks. She
writes from Egypt. She wishes me to tell you, as no doubt you have
already anticipated, that she thinks she can hardly continue to be a
member of the congregation when they come back. No doubt you felt this
yourself?"
"Oh, entirely," said the rector. "Surely in matters of belief a wife
must follow her husband."
"Exactly; especially as Tom's uncles occupy the position they do with
regard to--" Mr. Furlong jerked his head backwards and pointed with his
thumb over his shoulder in a way that his son knew was meant to
indicate St. Osoph's Church.
The Overend brothers, who were Tom's uncles (his name being Tom
Overend) were, as everybody knew, among the principal supporters of St.
Osoph's. Not that they were, by origin, presbyterians. But they were
self-made men, which put them once and for all out of sympathy with
such a place as St. Asaph's. "We made ourselves," the two brothers used
to repeat in defiance of the catechism of the Anglican Church. They
never wearied of explaining how Mr. Dick, the senior brother, had
worked overtime by day to send Mr. George, the junior brother, to
school by night, and how Mr. George had then worked overtime by night
to send Mr. Dick to school by day. Thus they had come up the business
ladder hand over hand, landing later on in life on the platform of
success like two corpulent acrobats, panting with the strain of it.
"For years," Mr. George would explain, "we had father and mother to
keep as well; then they died, and Dick and me saw daylight." By which
he meant no harm at all, but only stated a fact, and concealed the
virtue of it.
And being self-made men they made it a point to do what they could to
lessen the importance of such an institution as St. Asaph's Church. By
the same contrariety of nature the two Overend brothers (their business
name was Overend Brothers, Limited) were supporters of the dissentient
Young Men's Guild, and the second or rival University Settlement, and
of anything or everything that showed a likelihood of making trouble.
On this principle they were warm supporters and friends of the Rev. Dr.
McTeague. The minister had even gone so far as to present to the
brothers a copy of his philosophical work "McTeague's Exposition of the
Kantian Hypothesis." and the two brothers had read it through in the
office, devoting each of them a whole morning to it. Mr. Dick, the
senior brother, had said that he had never seen anything like it, and
Mr. George, the junior, had declared that a man who could write that
was capable of anything.
On the whole it was evident that the relations between the Overend
family and the presbyterian religion were too intimate to allow Mrs.
Tom Overend, formerly Miss Philippa Furlong, to sit anywhere else of a
Sunday than under Dr. McTeague.
"Philippa writes," continued Mr. Furlong "that under the circumstances
she and Tom would like to do something for your church. She would
like--yes, I have the letter here--to give you, as a surprise, of
course, either a new font or a carved pulpit; or perhaps a cheque; she
wishes me on no account to mention it to you directly, but to ascertain
indirectly from you, what would be the better surprise."
"Oh, a cheque, I think," said the rector; "one can do so much more with
it, after all."
"Precisely," said his father; he was well aware of many things that can
be done with a cheque that cannot possibly be done with a font.
"That's settled then," resumed Mr. Furlong; "and now I suppose you want
me to run my eye over your quarterly statements, do you not, before we
send them in to the trustees? That is what you've come for, is it not?"
"Yes," said the rector, drawing a bundle of blue and white papers from
his pocket. "I have everything with me. Our showing is, I believe,
excellent, though I fear I fail to present it as clearly as it might be
done."
Mr. Furlong senior spread the papers on the table before him and
adjusted his spectacles to a more convenient angle. He smiled
indulgently as he looked at the documents before him.
"I am afraid you would never make an accountant, Edward," he said.
"I fear not," said the rector.
"Your items," said his father, "are entered wrongly. Here, for example,
in the general statement, you put down Distribution of Coals to the
Poor to your credit. In the same way, Bibles and Prizes to the Sunday
School you again mark to your credit. Why? Don't you see, my boy, that
these things are debits? When you give out Bibles or distribute fuel to
the poor you give out something for which you get no return. It is a
debit. On the other hand, such items as Church Offertory, Scholars'
Pennies, etc., are pure profit. Surely the principle is clear."
"I think I see it better now," said the Rev. Edward.
"Perfectly plain, isn't it?" his father went on. "And here again.
Paupers' Burial Fund, a loss; enter it as such. Christmas Gift to
Verger and Sexton, an absolute loss--you get nothing in return. Widows'
Mite, Fines inflicted in Sunday School, etc., these are profit; write
them down as such. By this method, you see, in ordinary business we can
tell exactly where we stand: anything which we give out without return
or reward we count as a debit; all that we take from others without
giving in return we count as so much to our credit."
"Ah, yes," murmured the rector. "I begin to understand."
"Very good. But after all, Edward, I mustn't quarrel with the mere form
of your accounts; the statement is really a splendid showing. I see
that not only is our mortgage and debenture interest all paid to date,
but that a number of our enterprises are making a handsome return. I
notice, for example, that the Girls' Friendly Society of the church not
only pays for itself, but that you are able to take something out of
its funds and transfer it to the Men's Book Club. Excellent! And I
observe that you have been able to take a large portion of the Soup
Kitchen Fund and put it into the Rector's Picnic Account. Very good
indeed. In this respect your figures are a model for church accounts
anywhere."
Mr. Furlong continued his scrutiny of the accounts. "Excellent," he
murmured, "and on the whole an annual surplus, I see, of several
thousands. But stop a bit," he continued, checking himself; "what's
this? Are you aware, Edward, that you are losing money on your Foreign
Missions Account?"
"I feared as much," said Edward.
"It's incontestable. Look at the figures for yourself: missionary's
salary so much, clothes and books to converts so much, voluntary and
other offerings of converts so much why, you're losing on it, Edward!"
exclaimed Mr. Furlong, and he shook his head dubiously at the accounts
before him.
"I thought," protested his son, "that in view of the character of the
work itself--"
"Quite so," answered his father, "quite so. I fully admit the force of
that. I am only asking you, is it worth it? Mind you, I am not speaking
now as a Christian, but as a businessman. Is it worth it?"
"I thought that perhaps, in view of the fact of our large surplus in
other directions--"
"Exactly," said his father, "a heavy surplus. It is precisely on that
point that I wished to speak to you this morning. You have at present a
large annual surplus, and there is every prospect under Providence--in
fact, I think in any case--of it continuing for years to come. If I may
speak very frankly I should say that as long as our reverend friend,
Dr. McTeague, continues in his charge of St. Osoph's--and I trust that
he may be spared for many years to come--you are likely to enjoy the
present prosperity of your church. Very good. The question arises, what
disposition are we to make of our accumulating funds?"
"Yes," said the rector, hesitating.
"I am speaking to you now," said his father "not as the secretary of
your church, but as president of the Hymnal Supply Company which I
represent here. Now please understand, Edward, I don't want in any way
to force or control your judgment. I merely wish to show you
certain--shall I say certain opportunities that present themselves for
the disposal of our funds? The matter can be taken up later, formally,
by yourself and the trustees of the church. As a matter of fact, I have
already written to myself as secretary in the matter, and I have
received what I consider a quite encouraging answer. Let me explain
what I propose."
Mr. Furlong senior rose, and opening the door of the office,
"Everett," he said to the ancient clerk, "kindly give me a Bible."
It was given to him.
Mr. Furlong stood with the Bible poised in his hand.
"Now we," he went on, "I mean the Hymnal Supply Corporation, have an
idea for bringing out an entirely new Bible."
A look of dismay appeared on the saintly face of the rector.
"A new Bible!" he gasped.
"Precisely!" said his father, "a new Bible! This one--and we find it
every day in our business--is all wrong."
"All wrong!" said the rector with horror in his face.
"My dear boy," exclaimed his father, "pray, pray, do not misunderstand
me. Don't imagine for a moment that I mean wrong in a religious sense.
Such a thought could never, I hope, enter my mind. All that I mean is
that this Bible is badly made up."
"Badly made up?" repeated his son, as mystified as ever.
"I see that you do not understand me. What I mean is this. Let me try
to make myself quite clear. For the market of today this Bible"--and he
poised it again on his hand, as if to test its weight, "is too heavy.
The people of today want something lighter, something easier to get
hold of. Now if--"
But what Mr. Furlong was about to say was lost forever to the world.
For just at this juncture something occurred calculated to divert not
only Mr. Furlong's sentence, but the fortunes and the surplus of St.
Asaph's itself. At the very moment when Mr. Furlong was speaking a
newspaper delivery man in the street outside handed to the sanctified
boy the office copy of the noonday paper. And the boy had no sooner
looked at its headlines than he said, "How dreadful!" Being sanctified,
he had no stronger form of speech than that. But he handed the paper
forthwith to one of the stenographers with hair like the daffodils of
Sheba, and when she looked at it she exclaimed, "How awful!" And she
knocked at once at the door of the ancient clerk and gave the paper to
him; and when he looked at it and saw the headline the ancient clerk
murmured, "Ah!" in the gentle tone in which very old people greet the
news of catastrophe or sudden death.
But in his turn he opened Mr. Furlong's door and put down the paper,
laying his finger on the column for a moment without a word.
Mr. Furlong stopped short in his sentence. "Dear me!" he said as his
eyes caught the item of news. "How very dreadful!"
"What is it?" said the rector.
"Dr. McTeague," answered his father. "He has been stricken with
paralysis!"
"How shocking!" said the rector, aghast. "But when? I saw him only this
morning."
"It has just happened," said his father, following down the column of
the newspaper as he spoke, "this morning, at the university, in his
classroom, at a lecture. Dear me, how dreadful! I must go and see the
president at once."
Mr. Furlong was about to reach for his hat and stick when at that
moment the aged clerk knocked at the door.
"Dr. Boomer," he announced in a tone of solemnity suited to the
occasion.
Dr. Boomer entered, shook hands in silence and sat down.
"You have heard our sad news, I suppose?" he said. He used the word
"our" as between the university president and his honorary treasurer.
"How did it happen?" asked Mr. Furlong.
"Most distressing," said the president. "Dr. McTeague, it seems, had
just entered his ten o'clock class (the hour was about ten-twenty) and
was about to open his lecture, when one of his students rose in his
seat and asked a question. It is a practice," continued Dr. Boomer,
"which, I need hardly say, we do not encourage; the young man, I
believe, was a newcomer in the philosophy class. At any rate, he asked
Dr. McTeague, quite suddenly it appears; how he could reconcile his
theory of transcendental immaterialism with a scheme of rigid moral
determinism. Dr. McTeague stared for a moment, his mouth, so the class
assert, painfully open. The student repeated the question, and poor
McTeague fell forward over his desk, paralysed."
"Is he dead?" gasped Mr. Furlong.
"No," said the president. "But we expect his death at any moment. Dr.
Slyder, I may say, is with him now and is doing all he can."
"In any case, I suppose, he could hardly recover enough to continue his
college duties," said the young rector.
"Out of the question," said the president. "I should not like to state
that of itself mere paralysis need incapacitate a professor. Dr. Thrum,
our professor of the theory of music, is, as you know, paralysed in his
ears, and Mr. Slant, our professor of optics, is paralysed in his right
eye. But this is a case of paralysis of the brain. I fear it is
incompatible with professorial work."
"Then, I suppose," said Mr. Furlong senior, "we shall have to think of
the question of a successor."
They had both _been_ thinking of it for at least three minutes. "We
must," said the president. "For the moment I feel too stunned by the
sad news to act. I have merely telegraphed to two or three leading
colleges for a _locum tenens_ and sent out a few advertisements
announcing the chair as vacant. But it will be difficult to replace
McTeague. He was a man," added Dr. Boomer, rehearsing in advance,
unconsciously, no doubt, his forthcoming oration over Dr. McTeague's
death, "of a singular grasp, a breadth of culture, and he was able, as
few men are, to instil what I might call a spirit of religion into his
teaching. His lectures, indeed, were suffused with moral instruction,
and exercised over his students an influence second only to that of the
pulpit itself."
He paused.
"Ah yes, the pulpit," said Mr. Furlong, "there indeed you will miss
him."
"That," said Dr. Boomer very reverently, "is our real loss, deep,
irreparable. I suppose, indeed I am certain, we shall never again see
such a man in the pulpit of St. Osoph's. Which reminds me," he added
more briskly, "I must ask the newspaper people to let it be known that
there will be service as usual the day after tomorrow, and that Dr.
McTeague's death will, of course, make no difference--that is to say--I
must see the newspaper people at once."
* * * * *
That afternoon all the newspaper editors in the City were busy getting
their obituary notices ready for the demise of Dr. McTeague.
"The death of Dr. McTeague," wrote the editor of the _Commercial and
Financial Undertone_, a paper which had almost openly advocated the
minister's dismissal for five years back, "comes upon us as an
irreparable loss. His place will be difficult, nay, impossible, to
fill. Whether as a philosopher or a divine he cannot be replaced."
"We have no hesitation in saying," so wrote the editor of the
_Plutorian Times_, a three-cent morning paper, which was able to take a
broad or three-cent point of view of men and things, "that the loss of
Dr. McTeague will be just as much felt in Europe as in America. To
Germany the news that the hand that penned 'McTeague's Shorter
Exposition of the Kantian Hypothesis' has ceased to write will come
with the shock of poignant anguish; while to France--"
The editor left the article unfinished at that point. After all, he was
a ready writer, and he reflected that there would be time enough before
actually going to press to consider from what particular angle the blow
of McTeague's death would strike down the people of France.
So ran in speech and in writing, during two or three days, the requiem
of Dr. McTeague.
Altogether there were more kind things said of him in the three days
during which he was taken for dead, than in thirty years of his
life--which seemed a pity.
And after it all, at the close of the third day, Dr. McTeague feebly
opened his eyes.
But when he opened them the world had already passed on, and left him
behind.