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[Illustration:
[_Photo: Alfieri_
THE BISHOP OF LONDON PHOTOGRAPHED AT FULHAM PALACE]
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AS
BISHOP OF LONDON
BY
CHARLES HERBERT
LONDON
WELLS GARDNER, DARTON & CO. LTD.
3 AND 4 PATERNOSTER BUILDINGS, E.C. 4
A great life is the reflection of
the age in which it is lived.
[Illustration]
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
WELLS GARDNER, DARTON & CO., LTD.
INTRODUCTION
The first quarter of the twentieth-century moon is noticeable for
the number of men and women who have rightly gained reputation and
influence in all departments of life. It is more noticeable when it is
remembered how difficult the process must have been.
It is not as if the ordinary level of attainment during this period was
low. But it was a time when ordinary standards of fitness were very
high. This fact carried with it as a corollary, that to surpass them
meant the possession of very special gifts. We may, therefore, take it
for granted that those who have been accorded position as leaders in
the world of art, literature or drama, science or medicine, invention
and industry, philosophy and religion, politics and sociology, have
been really great men, whose lives will be worth while careful study.
But there is a further reason for such a study. This is that during the
eventful period referred to, every department of human life has been
changing. Points of view have changed; methods of appeal and work have
changed; the conditions of life have changed; the problems presented by
life have changed. It follows that those who, in such a period have
been able successfully to lead others must have possessed great gifts
of adaptability on the one hand, and a readiness for adventure on the
other. They must accurately have gauged the times in which they lived;
rightly interpreted its needs; fearlessly answered its questions, and
provided methods for the expression of its spirit. As a consequence, to
study them means that one is also studying the present age--the story
of their personal efforts is the reflected history of the period which
produced and directed them. In telling one, you are telling the other.
That is the justification for this short biography of the Right
Reverend Arthur Foley Winnington Ingram, the present Bishop of London.
In himself--as one of the most remarkable men in a remarkable Age--his
life calls for a detailed study; and, beyond this, the story of his
career is the reflected history of the Church of England, and the City
problems it has had to face during three reigns--the latter part of
Queen Victoria’s, then King Edward’s, and, finally, in the days of our
own gracious King George.
CHARLES HERBERT.
PUBLISHERS’ NOTE
There have been many Bishops of London, but few who have occupied
the See for twenty-five years, and when it was suggested that the
celebration of Dr. Winnington Ingram’s twenty-five years’ Episcopacy
called for some record of his work, and some description of the great
changes in religious life during the last thirty years, it seemed very
fitting that such a volume should bear the imprint of the publishers
who have issued the Bishop’s books since the days before he was Bishop
of Stepney.
At the same time, the name of Wells Gardner, Darton and Company, Ltd.,
upon the title-page necessitates an explanation that this book is,
in no sense, official, nor is it issued with the Bishop’s authority.
Rather it is a tribute, from an outside source, to Dr. Winnington
Ingram, both as London’s loved Bishop, and as a man.
CONTENTS
PAGE
INTRODUCTION iii
PUBLISHERS’ NOTE v
CHAPTER
I. BIRTH AND PARENTAGE--SCHOOL DAYS
AT MARLBOROUGH--KEBLE COLLEGE 1
II. ST. MARY’S, SHREWSBURY--LICHFIELD 21
III. OXFORD HOUSE 42
IV. BETHNAL GREEN 59
V. STEPNEY 70
VI. THE BISHOPRIC OF LONDON 86
VII. THE BISHOP DURING THE WAR 107
VIII. PERSONALIA 112
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS AS BISHOP OF LONDON
CHAPTER I
BIRTH AND PARENTAGE--SCENES OF BOYHOOD--FAMILY HISTORY--CLERICAL
ANCESTRY
Arthur Foley Winnington Ingram was born on January 26, 1858, at
Stanford Rectory, in Worcestershire.
This statement, brief as it is, is indicative of certain facts: for the
names “Foley,” “Winnington,” and “Ingram” given him hint at particular
family connections. It would appear that in the eighteenth century
Sir Edward Winnington, the first baronet, married a Miss Ingram, of
Ribbesford House, one of twenty children who all lived to grow up, and
came to reside at Stanford Court, in the County of Worcester. Thus the
“Ingram” connection was established.
Sir Edward had an only son, Edward, who married the youngest daughter
of Lord Foley, and thus the link with the Foleys was formed. For
family reasons his second son was induced by the then Mr. Ingram, of
Ribbesford House, to adopt the double-barrelled name of “Winnington
Ingram.” That is why in the personal name bestowed upon the future
Bishop there is a hint of the far-reaching family connections and
traditions of “Winningtons,” “Foleys,” and “Ingrams.”
The second fact that he was born at Stanford Rectory is not surprising.
His father, the Rev. Edward Winnington Ingram, of Ribbesford House,
Worcestershire, was also actually Rector of Stanford-on-Teme at
the time of his birth; so that even in his earliest childhood his
environment was that of the clergy. His mother had inherited similar
traditions, being herself the daughter of Bishop Pepys, Bishop of
Worcester; another influence, which, unconsciously, set the course of
the boy towards his future career. Both from his mother’s and father’s
side, the pre-natal factors in his nature made for the religious
temperament.
The surroundings of his early years must have steeped his boyhood in an
ecclesiastical atmosphere. The Rectory itself must have been the centre
of parochial matters, and some of the parish problems must have emerged
in table-talk; while from the mother’s relatives and friends must have
come much of the gossip of the Cathedral Close at Worcester. The boy,
of course, could not adequately understand all that was said; but, if
it dawned upon him that there was a great struggle being waged in the
Church of England, it would not have been surprising. Certain it is
that he must have grown up alive to many facts in which other boys had
no concern, and with a mind unconsciously affected by the priestly life
of his father, and the episcopal life of his grandfather.
From his mother he would probably learn how the Church in
Worcestershire had been a great help in uplifting the people. How the
monks of Malvern Priory had begun the forest clearing which reached
from the hills to the Severn; and, how many other religious houses had
spread over the county; until, at last, most of the land in it was
owned by them. So it came to pass that the Bishop of Worcester became
the real head of the county, and had to be a “battling bishop” in order
to defend it. She would tell him that the See was founded nearly 1,200
years before, much to the annoyance of the then Bishop of Lichfield.
Perhaps he heard from her the story of how, when St. Wulfstan began to
rebuild the ancient Church of St. Oswald, one of his monks noticed him
standing in sad silence in the corner of the cemetery, and rallied him
with the old-fashioned words: “Wherefore look ye so sadly to-day?” And
Wulfstan replied: “We are pulling down the labours of holy men that we
may gain honour and reputation for ourselves. The good old time was
when men knew not how to build magnificently, but thought any roof good
enough, if under it they could offer themselves a willing sacrifice to
God. It is a miserable change if we neglect the souls of men and pile
together stones.”
There were many such tales to tell--tales of the pilgrims who thronged
from far and near to the shrines of the departed saints, St. Oswald and
St. Wulfstan, and if the telling added a touch of the mystical in the
development of the lad, we should not wonder.
When he was about ten years old he would hear much said about the work
which was just being begun of restoring Worcester Cathedral. Seven long
years did the work take, and it was completed and re-opened, Easter
week, 1874. The choir between the tower and the eastern transept was
restored, redecorated and adapted to the needs of a more dignified
ritual. Surely when the growing lad saw the glory of the restored
church, with its wonderful reredos, it was another lesson! Yes, from
the buildings he knew best, and the people he loved most, and the
visitors he met most often, there must always have been impressions
being absorbed at an age when the mind is “like wax to receive, but
like marble to retain.”
So much for the environment hinted at in the brief statement that
Arthur Foley Winnington Ingram was born at Stanford Rectory! The name
indicates the social environment of Winningtons, Foleys, and Ingrams,
and the place the ecclesiastical environment.
But there is another factor which counts for a great deal: I mean the
actual nature-surroundings. Here again, he was most fortunate!
Stanford itself was described by Mrs. Sherwood, who lived there in her
early girlhood, as a sweet place “utterly impossible to give an idea
of through the medium of any words which could be selected. I have
travelled far, but I have never seen any region of the earth to be
compared with Stanford--the verdant and rich English scenery, where
every feature of the landscape of a somewhat northern climate is so
assembled as to compose the most extraordinary beauty.”
But the Rectory itself in which the boy now tabernacled for a time was
actually in the very centre of all this sylvan beauty.
What was most remarkable in his father’s house at Stanford was that it
commanded four different views from the four sides, so distinct that it
could hardly be conceived how these could be combined in a panorama. On
the front of the house, toward the east, a great lawn, with many fair
orchards beyond, sloped down to the bed of the Teme, from which arose
on the opposite side a range of bold heights, richly diversified, at a
distance so considerable as to show only the most pleasing features,
with copses, farm-houses, fields of corn, villages with churches, and
ancient manor-houses, the heights being terminated by the range of the
Abberley and Woodbury hills.
On the south his father’s house looked over Stanford Court--through a
series of woody valleys beyond to the remote heights of Malvern, and
still more distant Broadway; this range of valleys being no other than
the bed of the Teme.
The hills and woods on the west rose up almost precipitously, or rather
seemed to do, for the shrubberies and gardens lay between from the
windows of his father’s house, and there was such a rich mass of forest
scenery, and such inequalities of ground, such magnificent dingles and
waterfalls, such abrupt and bold heights, as years could not exhaust in
examining; and these formed the third view.
The fourth was unlike all the rest, and presented itself at the north
of the house; it commanded a deep dingle, or valley, rich with orchard
and cultivated fields, from the bottom of which arose a lofty ridge of
land which presented its side to the eye, and which, in its character,
as far as it went, had all the appearance of some vast mountain, being
partly covered with thick coppices, the fields under these coppices
being almost precipitous in the manner in which they were disposed.
And, as without the house, so within; the superintending genius of Dr.
Butt, Mrs. Sherwood’s father, who improved it years before, had given a
character to every room. There was a hall of considerable height, with
a hanging staircase. The rooms were all spacious, and the apartments
upstairs commanded a fine view of the high woods. So that within and
without, space, beauty and elegance were the settings of the future
Bishop’s boyhood.
One local story he would be sure to hear, which would impress the mind
of any growing boy with a sense of injustice. It would be certain to
be told him, as he, with the rest of the family, visited the wonderful
Southstone Rock, near Stanford.
The people there were very interesting from the very old stories they
could tell of ancient Stanford. They would point out that where there
was now a magnificent lake, there once stood a village; all the former
inhabitants of which were simply turned out of their cottages to enable
“the improvements” to be carried out. The villagers were left to find
a refuge as they could. He would hear that the church at Stanford
once stood on the lawn, between Stanford Court, and what is now the
pool, and that there under the green sward were still the bones of the
forefathers of the villagers. But the then lord of the manor moved the
church to the hill where it now stands, with the coffins of the family,
and levelled all the graves in the old churchyard, thus incurring much
local odium. He succeeded in his determination to make a solitude round
his mansion, and improved the view from his windows, but it was done
at the expense of much suffering entailed upon others. Years before the
future bishop heard the tale, it had been told to an impressionable
girl, Mrs. Sherwood, and the burst of sympathy it caused in her for the
unfortunate villagers was probably repeated in the growing boy. It is
the very kind of incident which would fire a juvenile imagination, and
perhaps laid the foundation of that extraordinary sympathy with the
poorer classes that has ever characterised the career of the lad when
he became a man.
It was in beautiful sylvan scenery such as this that the early days of
the boy were passed; so that it is certain that his first impressions
were not the swift, fleeting, panoramic, confused ones of a city boy.
Country life may be uneventful, but its world is a microcosmos and all
that is seen is noted.
But there was another factor at work in his life, and that was that in
the rectory where he lived there was a crowd. The Rector of Stanford
had ten children, Arthur being the fourth son; and that means that
every one of them lived under the perpetual necessity of “give and
take” and regarding themselves rather as part of a family than as mere
individuals. There is little chance for the growth of egoism in a
family of ten.
Then came his school days. He went at first to Hartford House,
Winchfield, Hampshire, to undergo a preparatory training for a Public
School, and when he was twelve years old he secured a Foundation
scholarship at Marlborough and proceeded there in his thirteenth year.
Winnington Ingram himself, preaching many years after at his old
school, indicates what this experience meant to him. “A little boy
has to leave home for the first time. He says good-bye to father and
mother, and the old servants, and the landmarks of his home disappear
one by one; and as the train at last fairly steams out of the station,
he feels he has launched upon a great unknown. He leaves the private
school to come up to Marlborough, and it is a launching into the deep!
The private school had become like a little home to him: he is called,
perhaps, even by his Christian name. Then he comes up, and finds
himself in the mass of a great school, with the sound of the ocean as
it were in his ears, lost among the crowd again. All his individuality
seems almost swamped in the mass of humanity in which he finds himself.
Then in a few years, Marlborough is quite familiar to him. He is in
the Sixth; he is in the Eleven; his last term has come; he is quite
surprised to think he ever looked on Marlborough as a great deep.”
His elder brother, Francis Herbert Winnington Ingram, had been there
already for about twenty months, and Arthur must, therefore, have been
well acquainted with the life of the school to which he was now going.
The School at Marlborough had been founded years before, chiefly for
the sons of the clergy; and had kept its character ever since. When
Francis entered it it was under the Headship of Dr. Cotton, afterwards
a well-known missionary Bishop in India; but at the time of Arthur’s
entrance, Dr. Farrar had accepted the post.
A slight digression as to Marlborough itself will not be out of place
here.
When Dr. Farrar’s predecessor, Dr. Cotton, went to Marlborough, the
school was at a crisis of its history. But he faced the difficulties,
and strove to gather around him a band of enthusiastic students as
masters. For this purpose he watched degree lists, and one of the
results was that he approached F. W. Farrar, inviting him to take a
mastership, which he did.
The school itself at that time had an unenviable reputation for the
insubordination of its pupils, which had proved too much for the old
régime, and had culminated in an open rebellion. Beyond that, the
college was overwhelmed with debt, and one of the first remarks the
Head made to Farrar was: “You know, any day the school may disappear in
blue smoke.”
The great difficulty was the commissariat department, and one of
Farrar’s earliest recollections was seeing a huge chalk inscription on
the wall, “Bread or Blood!” But the masters, headed by Cotton, took the
finances into their own hands, out of those of the then bursar, and in
one year’s crisis saved the school.
Even in those days the outstanding characteristic of the place
was its number of parsons’ sons, who afterwards had distinguished
ecclesiastical careers. Mr. Farrar tells us he remembers seeing “a
boy chasing another who wore a scarlet cap, and shouting after him,
‘_Keblépuris! Keblépuris!_’--Greek for the ‘Redcap,’ and the boy had
taken it from ‘The Birds of Aristophanes,’ which we were then reading.”
The boy who was the pursuer became the Rt. Rev. the Primate of
Australia; the boy in the red cap became the Rt. Rev. the Lord Bishop
of Glasgow. On this incident Farrar remarks that it reminded him of
Shenstone’s lines, the mere quoting of which reveals the trend of the
master’s mind:
“Yet, nursed with skill, what dazzling fruits appear!
E’en now sagacious foresight points to show
A little bench of heedless Bishops here
And there a Chancellor in embryo.”
I wonder if he ever recalled the same quatrain as he thought of Arthur
Foley Winnington Ingram in later years.
But this was before the boy was born, and as assistant-master he
remained until Harrow stole him away, and kept him fifteen years. Then
he returned as Head of the Marlborough School, and among the first
batch of entrants who looked upon him with awe, not only as the new
Head, but _their_ new Head, was young Winnington Ingram. Practically
Dr. Farrar and he started their life at Marlborough together.
It was the height of good fortune which brought this Worcestershire boy
under the influence of such a man, though, of course, for years that
influence would be indirect, and Farrar actually left a year before
Winnington Ingram. He was only thirteen years old at the time; but that
even then Dr. Farrar’s effect on him may have been great is suggested
by the words of another Marlburian, who was at school with Winnington
Ingram. “No one who heard the sermons ‘In the Days of thy Youth’ can
wholly forget the overpowering intensity of conviction, or the fiery
eloquence with which the master drove home to his boys the great truths
of righteousness. I was a lad of fifteen when I heard these sermons
preached.”
The Bishop himself relates: “I remember so well that Dr. Farrar used
to tell us the famous old story of the two figures which once appeared
before a youth--the attractive, alluring figure that led him down the
path of pleasure, and the dull, unattractive figure that pointed to the
path of duty. And even to this day I remember how, with a word-power
which I would not attempt to imitate for a moment, he narrated how that
dull, unattractive figure at last flung back the veil, and there was a
face of immortal and eternal loveliness.”
It was under such a man that this other lad of thirteen came to live.
Fifty-five others came in with him; another dozen joined up in April;
fifty-two more in August; and nine more in September--one hundred and
twenty-eight new boys in all to make impact on one another. Out of them
it is characteristic to notice that fifty-eight hailed from rectory and
vicarage, and were the sons of priests.
From among “his year” there sprang twenty-two military officers,
amongst them Major-General Kekewich; twenty priests, amongst them the
Very Rev. Dean Kite, of Hobart, Tasmania; and Arthur Winnington Ingram,
Lord Bishop of London; while two years later, Arthur Chandler, who
became the Rt. Rev. the Bishop of Bloemfontein, joined the school.
There were also fourteen future members of the legal profession, four
others who became doctors, amongst them Archibald Edward Garrod,
M.D., who later gained fame as a physician, and an authority on
rheumatic affections. Nine of young Winnington Ingram’s year became
assistant-masters in great public schools, or Heads themselves. As for
the rest, taking the year as a whole, it distinguished itself rather
by producing boys who in architecture, stock-broking, business, farming
and civil engineering, served their day and generation, as they were
called on to play the part.
One may look in vain for any mention of the name of Arthur Foley
Winnington Ingram in the calendar of Marlborough as a prize-winner;
or as having outstanding excellence in cricket or football, rackets
or swimming. He appears to have produced no impression during his
residence there beyond that of a boy who plodded on for the sake of
keeping up with the others. But it was at Marlborough he gained that
love of sport which never left him.
A year later his brother Francis left the school, and in the following
year he had the pleasure of introducing to the school life and ways his
own younger brother, George Frederick, eighteen months younger than
himself.
He found himself placed in the New House under the house-mastership of
Mr. F. Storr.
The assistant-masters during his residence there were, in 1871, George
Farrer Rodwell, Gabriel Henry Cremer. In 1872, William Joseph Toye,
Henry Marty Lindsell, Walter Percy Smith. In 1873, Rev. Philip Read,
Frederic John Boden, Edward Ferdinando Sutton Tylecote, Henry D’Olier
Drury, Rev. Stirling Cookesley Voules, George Henry Dawson, Frederic
Lewis Barnwell, Granville Sharp. In 1874, the Rev. William Mordaunt
Furneaux, Rev. Darwin Wilmot, Charles Hepworth Gibson, Thomas Oliver
Harding, Nevil Masterman, William James Fourneaux Bashon Baker, Lewis
Edward Upcott, John Pearce Way, Manus Herbert Gould, Robert Alford,
William Henry Payne-Smith, Charles Copeland Perry. Then came the
mastership of the Rev. J. C. Bell in Winnington Ingram’s final year,
and as _his_ assistants, George William Rundall, William White, William
Justice Ford, Fred Some Hewson, Herbert Leaf.
It must be clear from this account of the school and “the boys
who started with him” that young Winnington Ingram had entered an
institution which was deservedly becoming famous, under a deservedly
famous Head. The influences behind the thirteen-year-old boy were, as
we have already seen, mighty--the influences around him now were many
and stimulating; it only remained to see how the boy would react to
the pull and the push. The effect of the life of Marlborough upon Dr.
Winnington Ingram has been very great. Marlburians have always appealed
to him, and he to them. He has made his old connection with the school
a bond which has strengthened through the years. He has visited the
school again and again: he is a prominent member of the council, and
has annually addressed the boys for a long period. One of the first
visits he paid after his appointment to the See of London was to
Marlborough, and he told the boys that in undertaking the duties he had
just entered upon he did it feeling that Marlborough would be behind
him. He stayed at the school till 1877, and then at nineteen years of
age he gained a leaving scholarship and went up to Oxford with its aid.
But his choice of a college there already showed the trend of his mind,
for he entered himself at Keble College.
Keble College, Oxford, was founded in pious memory of John Keble
“Sometime a Priest in the Church of God.” It was intended to be “A
school of simplicity.” The idea was to provide the opportunity of a
frugal life for young men, differing from the standards prevailing
in so many Oxford colleges. “Some thought at the time that it would
turn out a monkish institution, and would breed young monks who would
do a great deal of mischief in England. Such suspicions speedily
disappeared; but the very spirit of the college was to show that the
highest character of an Englishman is that of the cultivated and
religious man to whom wealth is a mere accident.”[A]
[A] Archbishop of Canterbury’s speech at Keble College, St. Mark’s Day,
1876.
According to the Marquis of Salisbury, speaking at the same meeting
already referred to, Keble had fulfilled its aim. It had shown that it
was not necessary, in order to enjoy the advantages of college life,
that expenses hitherto associated with college life should be added as
a drawback.
It was also founded with the object of doing more in Oxford for the
training of the clergy. But the careers of the college students, the
place they made for themselves in the athletic life of the University
also proved that the devotional life of Keble, did not tend to mere
pietism, but existed synchronously with physically vigorous manhood.
Canon Liddon said: “The day will come, I suppose--when young men
looking at the buildings will ask the question, ‘Who was Keble?’ To
have made it inevitable that that question should be asked is to have
added to the moral wealth of the world. For the answer to that question
cannot but do good commanding wealth, or great public exploits or wide
popularity of opinions, which explain the foundation of this college.
It was raised to the memory of a quiet country clergyman, with a very
moderate income, who held tenaciously to an unpopular school all his
life. Keble College is a witness to the homage which goodness carried
into the world of thought, or, indeed, any other sphere of activity,
extorts from all of us. It is a proof that neither station, nor wealth,
nor conspicuousness, nor popularity, is the truest and ultimate test
of greatness. True greatness is to be recognised in character, and in
a place like this character is largely, if not chiefly, shaped by the
degree in which moral qualities are brought to bear upon the activities
of mind.”
It was to “a place like this” that Arthur Foley Winnington Ingram now
came!
When Arthur Winnington Ingram came up from Marlborough to Keble, Keble
College was under the wardenship of the Rev. Edward Stuart Talbot, who
had already been there for seven years, and who was destined to remain
there for another eleven. He little dreamed that the student who had
entered would one day meet him again and have close relationships with
him as a fellow Bishop. But so it was, for from 1905 to 1911 he was
Bishop of Southwark, where his diocese touched that of his old student
on its southern borders; and for ten years previously he had been
Bishop of Rochester, a See where in Metropolitan Kent he had to share a
great deal of the Bishop of London’s episcopal work. But, nevertheless,
he certainly was one of the first men to be impressed with the promise
of this young student; he never lost sight of him and it was at his
instigation that later on he became Head of Oxford House, Bethnal Green.
For the first two years of Winnington Ingram’s residence in Oxford,
the Dean of the College and his tutor was the Rev. Francis Jayne,
afterwards the Bishop of Chester. But the man who was to have a mighty
influence over the young student was Canon King, then a Lecturer in
Pastoral Theology at Oxford. He was afterwards referred to by him as
“one of my great spiritual masters.” Over and over again in Winnington
Ingram’s published utterances occur quotations from phrases of Canon
King, such as this:
“I remember so well dear old Bishop King saying to us--I have often
quoted it: it remains in my mind after thirty years: it must be an
inspired seed thought--‘Now, gentlemen,’ he said, ‘remember, when you
are ordained you are ordained for the world!’”
He was also very fond of telling how once when Canon King was warning
them against being nervous, or yielding to presentiments, he said:
“I had a presentiment that I should die when I was twenty-six. And sure
enough, after I was ordained, it happened that in the parish where I
was working, smallpox broke out. Here, I thought, is my presentiment
coming true: I am twenty-six. But I had to go to the patients in
pursuance of my duty. I had to sit up with them. I had to bury one
myself. But,” smiling, “here I am, gentlemen, this morning. Nothing
should be allowed to stand between us and doing our duty.”
Amongst the men who had gone from Marlborough immediately before him,
Winnington Ingram found J. B. Kite; while R. E. Fiske and Ernest
Frederic Newman, of his own year at Marlborough, went up with him, and
a little later they were followed by Herbert J. Glennie.
His work at Oxford was not distinguished by any outstanding
proficiency in scholarship, nor in athletics. His life was practically
a continuation of the old Marlborough plodding combined with the
cultivation of every form of healthful exercise. He entered readily
into all sport, especially fives, and did his best on the river. He
became honorary secretary of Keble College Boating Club, and was
appointed to the coxswainship of his College eight. At the end of 1881
he gained his B.A., taking a First Class in Classical Mods. and a
Second Class in Greats.
One might have expected he would quite naturally have proceeded at once
to take Holy Orders. But here occurred a curious break in the apparent
direction of his career. In some of his later public utterances he
refers to a period of doubt which had existed in his life. Speaking
quite frankly he appealed to his audience, as one who had faced in his
own soul, in private, every doubt which he thought it was possible
to have about the Christian faith. It can be readily understood that
at this particular period, all manner of doubts would appeal to any
thoughtful young man before he decided on seeking ordination in the
Church of his fathers. In a history of the last hundred years of the
Church of England, afterwards referred to by the Bishop, he says:
“There were 800 pages, about 400 devoted to the Ritual question, the
struggles as to the real meaning of the Ornaments Rubric: Are vestments
to be worn or not? Is incense to be burnt or not? Is a stole legal?
What is the real worth of a Privy Council judgment? The Gorham Case;
the Mackonochie case; the Peter Green case were still agitating
clerical minds. There had been the Colenso controversy, and then the
controversy about _Lux Mundi_.”
“Now,” said the Bishop, referring to this period, many years
afterwards, when he was preaching to an audience on “New Wine in
Old Bottles,” “I should be the last to deny the importance of some
of these controversies, but it is hard to realise how trivial, how
petty, many of them must have seemed to the toiling millions of our
fellow-countrymen, or how, at any rate, far above their heads the whole
hurly-burly sounded.
“There they were fighting and struggling for daily bread; here we were
convulsed with a question of whether a stole was legal. There they were
working out their own salvation as best they might; here we were ranged
into two rival camps of High Church and Low Church, and too intent upon
defeating one another to have time to attend to their growing hunger
for a life which could be in any sense called real life, and a home
which was indeed a home.”
That was the position as Bishop Winnington Ingram described it years
later, on looking back. Perhaps when he left Oxford the short break in
his strictly ecclesiastical career may have been occasioned by some
such line of reasoning, prompting him to ask if it were worth while.
More than this he himself hints that even when he was a boy in the
Sixth at Marlborough he went through a “most distressing time.” By
his nickname of Chuckles, it is clear he was supposed to be one of the
lightest-hearted boys in his school--and yet, referring to this period
in after life, he says: “I remember hours of sadness when I was by
myself. I remember the time when I wandered about in the playground,
or elsewhere, and wondered what was behind everything: could I believe
there was a God at all? I see now it was the questioning mind of the
boy. I was bound to ask as a boy before I could believe as a man.”
Well, imagine that boy, with this reflective type of mind placed in
the very midst of the intellectual difficulties of Oxford, and faced
by the special problems of the Church, which were sure to urge for
a solution at Keble, and it is not wonderful if he craved a period
in which to find out his own mind and to settle whether he could be
obedient to the call to give himself to serve the Church. The very fact
that Canon King’s dictum already referred to made such an impression on
his mind, before he was ordained--“Remember when you are ordained you
are ordained for the world”--reveals the mental attitude of the young
undergraduate. So it is not surprising that Winnington Ingram did not
seek ordination at once, but turned his attention to private tutorial
work.
The greater part of the next three years after leaving Oxford was spent
in Continental travel, and it was then that he acquired his taste
for Alpine climbing. But all this time his mind was at work, and the
direction in which it was working is indicated by his own story of a
lengthy paragraph which he read in a book which had been written by a
strange character--William Law--who had been a clerk in Holy Orders a
hundred and seventy years before. He had been a tutor to the father of
Gibbon, the historian, and lived for years in his house at Putney. The
book which he issued, “The Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life,” in
1729, became a deep influence, and it was not surprising that when it
fell into the hands of Winnington Ingram some of its passages produced
the same effect it had had upon so many others, including the Wesleys.
The Bishop says: “I can never forget a story that made the deepest
impression on me which I read in Law’s ‘Serious Call’ when I was a
young man before I was ordained. Here is the passage: ‘A young man was
dying, and his family and friends were round him, and they thought
he could not hear what they were saying, as they remarked what a sad
thing it was that he should die like this. “Why,” they said, “he was
the best man at a bargain in the City, and had everything to live for.”
But he raised himself in the bed and spoke to them thus: “I heard what
you have been saying, but if you could change places with me, and knew
that not all the gold in the world could buy back five minutes of life,
and that in five minutes you had to meet your God, you would speak
differently. I have to meet my God empty handed with nothing to show
for my life.”’”
This sense that he must have something to show for his life weighed
with Mr. Winnington Ingram, and he determined to take Holy Orders. He
was ordained Deacon in 1884; became a curate at St. Mary’s, Shrewsbury,
and was ordained priest at the end of the year.