MR. FULLER IN HIS CHURCH.
Mr. Fuller's main bent of practical thought was how to make his
position in the church as far as possible from a sinecure. If the
church was a reality at all, if it represented a vital body, every
portion of it ought to be instinct with life. Yet here was one of its
cells, to speak physiologically, all but inactive--a huge building of
no use all the week, and on Sundays filled with organ sounds, a few
responses from a sprinkling of most indifferent worshipers, and his
own voice reading prayers and crying "with sick assay" sometimes--to
move those few to be better men and women than they were. Now, so far
it was a center of life, and as such well worthy of any amount of
outlay of mere money. But even money itself is a holy thing; and from
the money point alone, low as that is, it might well be argued that
this church was making no adequate return for the amount expended upon
it. Not that one thought of honest comfort to a human soul is to be
measured against millions of expense; but that what the money did might
well be measured against what the money might do. To the commercial
mind such a church suggests immense futility, a judgment correct in so
far as it falls short of its possibilities. To tell the truth, and a
good truth it is to tell, Mr. Fuller was ashamed of St. Amos's, and was
thinking day and night how to retrieve the character of his church.
And he reasoned thus with himself, in the way mostly of question and
answer:
"What is a Sunday?" he asked, answering himself--"A quiet hollow
scooped out of the windy hill of the week." "Must a man then go for
six days shelterless ere he comes to the repose of the seventh? Are
there to be no great rocks to shadow him between?--no hiding-places
from the wind to let him take breath and heart for the next struggle?
And if there ought to be, where are they to be found if not in our
churches?--scattered like little hollows of sacred silence scooped
out of the roar and bustle of our cities, dumb to the questions--What
shall we eat? what shall we drink? and wherewithal shall we be
clothed?--but, alas! equally dumb to the question--Where shall I find
rest, for I am weary and heavy-laden? These churches stand absolute
caverns of silence amid the thunder of the busy city--with a silence
which does not remind men of the eternal silence of truth, but of
the carelessness of heart wherewith men regard that silence. Their
work is nowhere till Sunday comes, and nowhere after that till the
next Sunday or the next saint's day. How is this? Why should they not
lift up the voice of silence against the tumult of care? against the
dissonance of Comus and his crew? How is it that they do not--standing
with their glittering, silent cocks and their golden, unopening keys
high uplifted in sunny air? Why is it that their cocks do not crow,
and their keys do not open? Because their cocks are busy about how
the wind blows, and their keys do not fit their own doors. They may
be caverns of peace, but they are caverns without entrance--sealed
fountains--a mockery of the thirst and confusion of men." "But men
do not want entrance. What is the use of opening the doors of our
churches so long as men do not care to go in? Times are changed now."
"But does not the very word Revelation imply a something coming from
heaven--not certainly before men were ready for it, for God cannot be
precipitate--but before they had begun to pray for it?" Mr. Fuller
remembered how his own father used always to compel his children to eat
one mouthful of any dish he heard them say at table that they did not
like--whereupon they generally chose to go on with it. "But they won't
come in." "How can you tell till you try, till you fulfill the part of
the _minister_ (good old beautiful Christian word), and be 'the life
o' the building?'" "Presumption! Are not the prayers everything?" "At
least not till you get people to pray them." "You make too much of the
priest." "Leave him for God, and the true priest has all the seal of
his priesthood that he wants." At least so thought Mr. Fuller. "What is
the priest?" he asked, going on with the same catechism. "Just a man
to be among men what the Sunday is among the work-days of the week--a
man to remind you that there is a life within this life, or beyond
and about it, if you like that mode better--for extremes meet in the
truest figures--that care is not of God, that faith and confidence
are truer, simpler, more of common sense than balances at bankers'
or preference shares. He is a protest against the money-heaping
tendencies of men, against the desire of rank or estimation or any kind
of social distinction. With him all men are equal, as in the Church
all have equal rights, and rank ceases on the threshold of the same,
overpowered by the presence of the Son of Mary, who was married to a
carpenter--overpowered by the presence of the God of the whole earth,
who wrote the music for the great organ of the spheres, after he had
created them to play the same." Such was the calling of the clergyman,
as Mr. Fuller saw it. Rather a lofty one, and simply a true one. If
the clergyman cannot rouse men to seek his God and their God, if he
can only rest in his office, which becomes false the moment he rests
in it, being itself for a higher end; if he has no message from the
infinite to quicken the thoughts that cleave to the dust, the sooner he
takes to grave-digging or any other honest labor, the sooner will he
get into the kingdom of heaven, and the higher will he stand in it. But
now came the question--from the confluence of all these considerations,
"Why should the church be for Sundays only? And of all places in the
world, what place wanted a week-day reminder of truth, of honesty,
of the kingdom of heaven, more than London? Why should the churches
be closed all the week, to the exclusion of the passers-by, and open
on the Sunday to the weariness of those who entered? Might there not
be too much of a good thing on the Sunday, and too little of it on a
week-day?" Again Mr. Fuller said to himself, "What is a parson?" and
once more he answered himself, that he was a man to keep the windows of
heaven clean, that its light might shine through upon men below. What
use, then, once more, could he make of the church of St. Amos?
And again, why should the use of any church be limited to the Sunday?
Men needed religious help a great deal more on the week-day than on
the Sunday. On the Sunday, surrounded by his family, his flowers, his
tame animals, his friends, a man necessarily, to say the least of it,
thinks less of making great gains, is more inclined to the family
view of things generally; whereas, upon the week-day, he is in the
midst of the struggle and fight; it is catch who can, then, through
all the holes and corners, highways and lanes of the busy city: what
would it not be then if he could strike a five minutes'--yea, even
a one minute's--silence into the heart of the uproar? if he could
entice one vessel to sail from the troubled sea of the streets,
shops, counting-houses, into the quiet haven of the church, the doors
of whose harbor stood ever open? There the wind of the world would
be quiet behind them. His heart swelled within him as he thought of
sitting there keeping open door of refuge for the storm-tossed, the
noise-deafened, the crushed, the hopeless. He would not trouble them
with many words. There should be no long prayers. "But," thought he,
"as often as one came in, I would read the collect for the day; I would
soothe him with comfort out of Handel or Mendelssohn, I would speak
words of healing for the space of three minutes. I would sit at the
receipt of such custom. I would fish for men--not to make churchmen
of them--not to get them under my thumb"--(for Mr. Fuller used such
homely phrases sometimes that certain fledgling divines feared he was
vulgar)--"not to get them under the Church's thumb, but to get them out
of the hold of the devil, to lead them into the presence of Him who is
the Truth, and so can make them free."
Therefore he said to himself that his church, instead of accumulating a
weary length of service on one day, should be open every day, and that
there he would be ready for any soul upon which a flask of silence had
burst through the clouds that ever rise from the city life and envelop
those that have their walk therein.
It was not long before his cogitations came to the point of action;
for with men of Mr. Fuller's kind all their meditations have action
for their result: he opened his church--set the door to the wall, and
got a youth to whom he had been of service, and who was an enthusiast
in music, to play about one o'clock, when those who dined in the city
began to go in search of their food, such music as might possibly
waken the desire to see what was going on in the church. For he said
to himself that the bell was of no use now, for no one would heed it;
but that the organ might fulfill the spirit of the direction that "the
curate that ministereth in every parish church shall say the morning
and evening prayer--where he ministereth, and shall cause a bell to be
tolled thereunto a convenient time before he begins, that the people
may come to hear God's word and to pray with him."
Over the crowded street, over the roar of omnibuses, carts, wagons,
cabs, and all kinds of noises, rose the ordered sounds of consort.
Day after day, day after day, arose the sounds of hope and prayer;
and not a soul in the streets around took notice of the same. Why
should they? The clergy had lost their hold of them. They believed
that the clergy were given to gain and pleasure just as much as they
were themselves. Those even of the passers-by who were ready to
acknowledge worth where they saw it, were yet not ready to acknowledge
the probability of finding it in the priesthood; for their experience,
and possibly some of their prejudices, were against it. They were
wrong; but who was to blame for it? The clergy of the eighteenth
century, because so many of them were neither Christians nor gentlemen;
and the clergy of the present century, because so many of them are
nothing but gentlemen--men ignorant of life, ignorant of human needs,
ignorant of human temptations, yea, ignorant of human aspirations;
because in the city pulpits their voice is not uplifted against city
vices--against speculation, against falsehood, against money-loving,
against dishonesty, against selfishness; because elsewhere their voices
are not uplifted against the worship of money and rank and equipage;
against false shows in dress and economy; against buying and not
paying; against envy and emulation; against effeminacy and mannishness;
against a morality which consists in discretion. Oh! for the voice of
a St. Paul or a St. John! But it would be of little use: such men
would have small chance of being heard. They would find the one-half of
Christendom so intent upon saving souls instead of doing its duty, that
the other half thought it all humbug. The organ sounded on from day to
day, and no one heeded.
But Mr. Fuller had the support of knowing that there were clergymen
east and west who felt with him; men who, however much he might differ
from them in the details of belief, yet worshiped the Lord Christ, and
believed him to be the King of men, and the Saviour of men whose sins
were of the same sort as their own, though they had learned them in the
slums, and not at Oxford or Cambridge. He knew that there were greater
men, and better workers than himself, among the London clergy; and he
knew that he must work like them, after his own measure and fashion,
and not follow the multitude. And the organ went on playing--I had
written _praying_--for I was thinking of what our Lord said, that men
ought always to pray, and not to faint.
At last one day, about a quarter past one o'clock, a man came into the
church. Mr. Fuller, who sat in the reading-desk, listening to the music
and praying to God, lifted up his eyes and saw Mr. Kitely.
The bookseller had been passing, and, having heard the organ, thought
he would just look in and see what was doing in the church. For this
church was a sort of link between him and his daughter now that she was
away.
The moment he entered Mr. Fuller rose, and knelt, and began to read the
collect for the day, in order that Mr. Kitely might pray with him. As
soon as his voice arose the organ, which was then playing very softly,
ceased; Mr. Kitely knelt, partly, it must be allowed, out of regard for
Mr. Fuller; the organist came down and knelt beside him; and Mr. Fuller
went on with the second and third collects. After this he read the
Epistle and the Gospel for the foregoing Sunday, and then he opened his
mouth and spoke--for not more than three minutes, and only to enforce
the lesson. Then he kneeled and let his _congregation_ depart with a
blessing. Mr. Kitely rose and left the chapel, and the organist went
back to his organ.
Now all this was out of order. But was it as much out of order as
the omission of prayer altogether, which the Church enjoins shall be
daily? Times had changed: with them the order of prayer might possibly
be changed without offense. At least Mr. Fuller was not such a slave
to the letter as to believe that not to pray at all was better than
to alter the form by choice of parts. And although in the use of
prayers the Church had made great changes upon what had been first
instituted, he did not care to leave present custom for the sake
merely of reverting to that which was older. He had no hope of getting
business men to join in a full morning service--even such as it was at
first--upon any week-day.
Mr. Kitely dropped in again before long, and again Mr. Fuller read the
collect and went through the same form of worship. Thus he did every
time any one appeared in the church, which was very seldom for the
first month or so. But he had some friends scattered about the city,
and when they knew of his custom they would think of it as they passed
his church, until at length there were very few days indeed upon which
two or three persons did not drop in and join in the collects, Epistle,
and Gospel. To these he always spoke for a few minutes, and then
dismissed them with the blessing.