lay before me--to go on as if nothing had occurred. My mind, however,
since the opening of the church, had altered upon one point. If the
Bishop permitted it, I should be forced to remain much longer than
Easter. I was told of a petition of over 5000 people, signed by all
classes, and by people of all shades of opinion, wanting me to stay
in Portsmouth. I discovered that the debt upon the church would be
much greater than I had anticipated, so many things having to be added
at the end. But, above all, I felt that it would take a considerable
time to make new S. Agatha’s really the home of the people. I knew,
of course, that other priests could work much more consistently and
successfully than I had done. That I never doubted for a moment. But
I knew, too, that I was the only one who had ten years of experience
teaching me how to deal with these particular people. On December 7th
the Bishop’s judgment came, and it left me, I conceived, no alternative
but to resign, which I did the next day. I believed directly I read
it that the judgment forbade us to say our Mass for the Dead, or to
have Celebrations without Communicants. The surrender of these two
points I felt it impossible to make. An error has largely arisen that
I left because I could not have a third altar in my church, but this
is quite incorrect. The Bishop, at the very commencement, said it
was not a red-tape question of a third altar, but a question of the
services said at that altar, and I myself, and my communicants, and
a magistrate in the town, who thought that I had not been explicit
in making it, made the offer that the altar should be moved, but the
services maintained. I am condemned also, by many, for having been
disobedient to the Bishop. Indeed, I think this was the reason why the
Bishop of Durham prevented me preaching a Mission in his diocese.
But I am sure that the Bishop of Winchester would be the first to say
that this was not the case. In one sense, if I had wished to stay,
it would have been very difficult to put me out. For I have created
almost everything that exists at S. Agatha’s, and I am either joint
or sole trustee for all the property; and I am, even now, responsible
for £3000 incurred either on the church or on property which has been
recently acquired for the Mission purposes. I say this in no spirit of
boasting, but only to set myself right with the public. If I were to
express my private opinion, I should say it would have been much wiser
for a Bishop just entering on his diocese to have let S. Agatha’s,
at any rate for a year or two, be ruled by the decision of his
predecessor; but Bishop Davidson had every right to take a different
view of the case, and, doubtless, he only put into action what is the
mature judgment of many English Churchmen. One of the most learned and
devoted of the High Church school has said that it is for the good of
the body that excrescences should be cut off. I am an excrescence,
ergo, when an opportunity arises, it is wise to lop me off. But,
if mine is intended as an object-lesson, I fear it will hardly be
so accepted by the other excrescences. They are all well sheltered
by their freeholds, and few bishops to-day would like to undertake
the odium of a ritual prosecution, far less the expense it entails.
After all, too, the excrescence is not so unlike the healthy limb. It
differs more in expression than in fact. By my resignation the Bishop
gains two points. First, though my successor will, every Friday, say
Mass for the Dead, he will only use outwardly the words of the Book
of Common Prayer. Secondly, he has asked the communicants to arrange
amongst themselves that there shall be three communicants at both the
10 and 11 o’clock Masses on Sundays. And this being so, he will say
the part of the service relating to communicants. But he requests that
they will come fasting, and give him notice beforehand. His desire to
obey the Prayer Book has, I think, landed him rather on the horns of
a dilemma. If no one gives him notice, will he have the Celebration,
using the Exhortation, Confession, and Absolution, knowing that no
communicants will be present? Or, will he give up the 10 and 11 o’clock
Celebrations? The same difficulty will apply to the week-day Masses.
We condemn as a fundamental error the idea that men were created for
the sake of the Sacraments. We believe that the Sacraments were created
for the sake of men. But it seems that, by this new theory, men were
created for the sake of the rubrics of the Book of Common Prayer. I
make no complaint whatsoever. I have no right to make a complaint. And
if, on the one hand, my conscience would have allowed me to say, for
instance, this week the service for the second Sunday after Lent, in
black vestments, or to have used a collect from the Visitation of the
Sick, or from the Burial of the Dead, either saying them in a sense
not intended by the Book of Common Prayer, or interpolating words
of my own, and secretly to say the rest of the Office for the Dead;
and, on the other, to invite people to make the most solemn of all
our public confessions, and to pronounce Absolution over them, when I
knew that not one of them was going to receive that Communion, which
necessitated such a confession and warranted such an absolution, I
should be still at S. Agatha’s. There is one solemn question which I
should like to ask those who lop us off. Do they wish that we should
go into lay-communion, and our work, as priests, be lost to the Church
of England? Or do they want us to exercise our priesthood in another
Communion? Before the old diocesans gaily commence their course of
lopping, or a new diocesan, refusing to walk in the safer paths of his
predecessors, proceeds to lop, I pray them pause and consider.
[Illustration: THE THIRD ALTAR.]
XII.
=Our Money-Grubbing.=
You so often hear it said now, “Only a rich man can afford to take
that living.” I doubt if there could be any more dangerous idea about
the position of the parish priest. Once let the parishioners, and the
Church at large, imagine that the Vicar is going to pay everything out
of his own pocket, and you destroy that most needed of all Christian
duties--systematic giving. The false idea, so largely believed--that
the clergy are all State-paid, and, therefore, well paid--is one of
the reasons why, in so many places, members of the Church of England
are utterly wanting in the duty of almsgiving. When Dr. Fearon chose
me, he chose the poorest man in England. As I have told you, I had
to pawn my watch on my first visit to the Bishop. And I believe that
this is the very reason why God has so wonderfully blessed us with
money. If we lived in mediæval times, people might almost believe of
the Mission the old legends of the miraculous multiplication of food
and money, for there have been many occasions when we were literally
without a penny; but those were the very times when money came to us
the most strangely. And why should we doubt that miracles are wrought
to-day? Though I could nearly always make a shrewd guess as to where
the money came from, even if it came anonymously, still I know it
came in answer to those two powers by which all miracles have been
wrought--faith and prayer; not my own, indeed, for that often failed,
but those of my helpers and my own people. I think the Bishop of
Winchester must have felt something like this when he kindly came and
saw round the Mission the week before we left. I could not, of course,
show to him our real treasures--men and women, clothed, and in their
right mind, sitting at the Saviour’s feet, a few years back lost to
all sense of shame and decency. I could not show him our Communicants’
Society: it would have been putting too great a strain upon my people’s
patience. But I could show him the outward signs of our success--the
changed streets, and the unmurmuring attitude of those who at once
saw that he was the Bishop. Many years before I had helped to save
his predecessor, when he was Bishop of Rochester, from being stoned
in Lorimer Square; but I had no fear that even one rude word would be
spoken to him. This, at any rate, was a discipline that our people had
learned. I was able to show him, too, our wonderful gymnasium, the
parsonage, the day-schools, the alms-houses, the Mission-house, old
S. Agatha’s, and new S. Agatha’s, nearly all of which had been built
by my begging. I wonder if any thought passed through his mind that
he was actually, at that moment, killing the goose that had laid the
golden eggs--truly a goose, for was it wise to lay out ten years of
one’s life in effecting all this; indeed, to entail upon one’s self
future years of begging, without any assurance more than the implied
consent of the Bishop for the time being that I should be permitted
to finish it? But, surely, it is only the faithless who would think it
was foolish. For to labour, and to know that others will enter into
your labour, is but a necessary consequence of being the servant of
a Church whose work is one and continuous, whomsoever it is done by;
and our part is only to be as grateful as our niggardly natures allow
us, because we have been permitted to share, ever so little, in the
glorious work by which, to-day, the Church of England is restoring to
herself her lapsed children. Whether it is prudent of rulers to kill
the goose, is a different question; they know their own business best,
and, at any rate, one admires those who have the courage to act upon
their convictions. They, too, who see the poor at second-hand--that
is, through the appeals which come to them--can hardly be expected to
realise the awful burden and difficulty of begging. I calculate that I
have devoted one day out of every week that I spent at Portsmouth to
this work alone.
You will notice in the accounts, which I hope you will read, a very
large item for postage and for travelling. This represents my begging
machinery. Every quarter I sent out to every subscriber, and to every
man at Winchester, an account of the quarter’s work. Few duties were
more irksome than the writing of these reports. One was bound to tell
the truth, and to tell it so as to interest. The days of writing these
reports will be remembered by every inmate of our house. I have often
heard new inmates told by old ones, “I would not ask him anything. He
is in a raging temper to-day.” At meals we all sat perfectly silent;
even George Kerr, drinking his cod-liver oil between meat and pudding,
or the antics and blandishments of the latest Buddha, could not make us
smile. And if Mary heard a piano-organ coming anywhere near, she would
run out with twopence to bribe them to go away. Everyone knew I was
writing the report; everyone knew how much depended upon its success. I
expect lots of the subscribers never read them; I am sure the majority
of Winchester men did not. But, still, I believe they were the great
means of keeping alive the knowledge of the Mission, and interest in it.
Then the begging by word of mouth. How extraordinarily kind people have
been to us in this respect. I have got offertories in no less than
eighty-one churches, and have spoken in drawing-rooms and public halls;
I have been sandwiched into classical concerts and comic concerts; I
have lectured in boys’ schools and girls’ schools, and have collected
in this way £3137, and yet this sum does not all represent the actual
amount received, for many a cheque came afterwards. I remember once
preaching at a little church at Nice, and being very much annoyed
with the clergyman for asking me, as there were only about ten people
present; and yet there I discovered Mr. Dyer-Edwardes, who has been
one of our greatest helpers, not only giving us money but supplying
most delightful holidays for the clergy in his beautiful home in
Gloucestershire. People at the meetings have always been so kind, but
they generally remarked, “Oh, it evidently gives you no trouble to
speak, you require no preparation.” They little knew the sleepless
nights which evolved perhaps one single joke, and the tremendous
difficulty of speaking time after time on the same subject without
getting exaggerated or inaccurate. This living in the train, too, is
terribly distressing, especially if you always want to get home at
night, and I never felt that I slept at ease away from home. A house
like ours was a responsibility, even greater than getting the money
to keep it going. In Lent preaching seven or eight courses in London
besides all my sermons at home, I have come home two or three times a
week by the midnight train, so much so that at last I found it cheaper
to have a season ticket. Yet even this was a reproach, for people
seeing me travel second class thought I was proud and extravagant;
as was also a fur coat, which one of my sisters gave me, as I suffer
greatly from the cold when travelling at night, for I heard a lady,
who passed me when coming out of a vestry, say, “If I had known he
had a coat like that, I should not have put five shillings in the
collection.” Then think of the moral deterioration of oneself. You
look at everyone from the point of view, What shall I get out of him?
Sneaking in at the vestry door you look round the corner to see if
there are any carriages. And yet one does not grudge all this, for it
means the larger part of £50,000 collected for the Church of England
during ten years.
Of course in all this collecting Winchester has been our chief
contributor. The men and masters were responsible for £150 of my
salary. There is an offertory three times a year in chapel. The balance
goes to a Central Wykehamist Fund, which is managed by a committee
of members elected by present Wykehamists, with the Headmaster as
chairman. This committee has sent me £11,292. But this does not
represent at all what I have received from Wykehamists, past and
present. Looking over the names of subscribers I should say I have
received £15,000 more. I cannot be grateful enough for this money. Much
of it has come from those, whom I know gave with difficulty. Much of it
came from those who did not agree, some with my social, some with my
religious, some with any of my opinions. But they gave it because they
believed that a good work was being done in Landport, which reacted
even upon the school itself.
A great deal of it has come, far more than one would believe, from
the people of S. Agatha’s. Gold is an unknown quantity almost in S.
Agatha’s offertories. When White and Claxon, who always counted the
money, discovered a five-shilling piece, they nearly had a fit. And
yet mostly in coppers, threepences, sixpences, and a few shillings,
we averaged over £4 on general Sundays, with a considerable addition
on any special day. Four years ago we started a parochial fund, every
regular communicant subscribing to it each quarter any sum they liked,
some a penny, some threepence, and some a half-crown. There were 286
members, and their subscriptions amounted to £380 in the four years.
The benefit of this fund does not consist in the amount of money,
but in the sense of having a stake in the parish, the possibility of
using with reality the word “my,” as “my church,” “my service,”
“my clergy.” The number would have been increased, but in many cases
whole families are communicants, and the father would give for all, or
at any rate for his wife, even if the children who were in work gave
themselves.
[Illustration: NEW S. AGATHA’S.]
Then the special funds were mostly collected in the parish; for a poor
scavenger who was killed, £130; for Mr. Osborne, when he left us, £123;
for the _Victoria_ catastrophe, £114, the mothers giving up their
treat that year; in the parochial sales also, both in the buying and
selling departments, parishioners were largely represented. The last
fund that they collected, amounting to £100 14s. 6d. in six months, was
to buy a new altar for the church, and when, on leaving, I asked them
whether I might use this for paying off part of the beautifying of the
Lady Chapel, every subscriber but one willingly gave me leave. If the
widow, who cast her mite into the Treasury, brought joy into the heart
of the great Watcher of all men’s deeds, surely that heart has received
joy over and over again in our poor Landport slum, for His eye saw the
self-denial entailed. There are some who give that which costs them
nothing. There are some who give that which costs them their pleasure.
There are some who give that which costs them their daily bread. At
that cost over and over again many of our people have cast into the
Treasury of God.
On the day before I left, and they had only been collecting about three
weeks, they gave me £175, making me promise to spend it upon myself.
I need not say the great Godsend it has been to me, for I left S.
Agatha’s as poor as I went there, even poorer, for once, when in dire
necessity, I had to sell all my books. And so, as I am now without
salary or employment, I am living on that money. I remember their
generosity at every meal I eat, and every time I lie down in bed, and
it is a joy to me beyond all joys that I owe this, as very nearly all
else during this last ten years, to their love and forethought. For I
still have to be very busy. You will see by this account that I have
a debt of over £3000 to pay. I thought at one moment of his interview
that the Bishop would have said something about this debt, for I am
paying for the church in which I shall never minister again, for an
increased playground for the school in which I shall never teach again,
for the bad house next the parsonage, so that it may be enlarged,
though I may never live there again, for an organ for the new church.
And then there are some boys whom I am still bound to help, and one
or two other cases, which I consider depend on me. At any rate, the
practical question arises, the builder, the lawyer, and the architect
must be paid. I am specially anxious about the builder. The head of the
firm is just dead, and of necessity they must arrange business matters.
They have been most upright and honourable, completing their business
in a most satisfactory manner. I have overdrawn my bank account, I have
borrowed from friends, I have even borrowed from money which was given
me to spend upon myself, and by these means I have paid £800 more than
I have received. I still owe them £1200. I am preaching ten courses of
sermons a week this Lent to try and raise this money.
An old Wykehamist, overcoming his shyness, penetrated into the vestry
of a church where I was preaching, and asked me if he could do anything
for me. He had only just left school, so he could not give me money,
but he proposed that his mother should get up a drawing-room meeting.
Lord Encombe kindly came and took the chair, and Mrs. Burton sent me
£58, the proceeds of the meeting. I think I am proudest of all that
her servants, who hear me preach in London, all contributed to that
result. A kind friend has taken the Pump-room at Tunbridge Wells,
to give me an opportunity of lecturing, as well as preaching at S.
Barnabas there. A lady is giving me her drawing-room in Chester Street
early in May. I cannot take the holiday which I need so much, far less
think of undertaking any new work, even if anybody would offer it me,
until I have collected this £3000. And I am afraid that it will be very
hard for me to get this money. The action of the Bishops of Durham and
Worcester, and of the Rector of Croydon, not only prevent me getting
money in these actual places (though I have just heard from the Vicar
of Evesham, where the Bishop inhibited me, that the good people there,
whom I have never seen, are going to send me their Lent savings), but
have a tendency to prejudice me in the minds of other people. But I
am sure if anybody would go down to see S. Agatha’s, walk round the
parish, examine our buildings, etc., they would discover that there has
been no waste in our expenditure, and that we have taught our people
not only to give, for they subscribe to all our funds, but, however
mistaken I may be myself in my own opinions, to be loyal and dutiful
members of the Church of England. Of course, if I had left after
another two years there would have been no difficulty about the money;
indeed, I do not think that, even if I had left at Easter, there would
have been much. At any rate, everything that is there now belongs to
the Church of England. The Bishop has approved of the priest-in-charge.
If I wished it, I could not interfere in one single ceremony, or give
one single instruction, and so I do think that, if there is anyone who
admires our work, or thinks it has been useful and done good, now is
the time that they should prove it by helping me to pay these debts.
A meeting was once held to sympathise with a poor woman, who had lost
her husband. Two gentlemen delivered very eloquent speeches, which drew
tears from the eyes of those who heard them. The third speaker said, “I
have no eloquence, but I sympathise £10,” which he put down upon the
table. The kindest things imaginable have been said about me by all
sorts of people, and written in all sorts of papers. I am extremely
grateful and gratified, but I think I should now appreciate a little of
the other kind of speaking.
BALANCE SHEET.
RECEIPTS. £ _s._ _d._
Central Wykehamist Committee 11,292 3 0
Church Societies 1,074 7 1
Diocesan Societies 759 12 6
Special Funds 899 12 4
S. Agatha’s Offertories 3,032 13 11
Sales and Collections in Parish 1,786 1 11
Profit of Shop 646 1 0
Rents and Club Dues 499 4 11
Debts Repaid and sums under £1 471 16 1
Winchester Houses 121 17 11
R. R. D. 313 7 0
Offertories, Meetings, Concerts, etc. 3,137 0 8
Anonymous Donations 6,428 1 9
Subscribers 17,352 14 8
Debt (for which Rev. R. R. Dolling is
responsible) 3,090 0 0
----------------------
£50,904 14 9
======================
EXPENDITURE. £ _s._ _d._
Travelling 446 6 5
Postage, Stationery, Bank Charges 863 16 7
Clubs 984 3 7
Mission 5,530 18 0
Charity 3,258 13 8
Salaries 5,591 17 9
Chapel Expenses 1,317 10 7
Buildings Bought 5,325 14 1
Special Offertories 1,226 13 7
Penitentiary 1,360 9 0
Emigration 1,115 5 1
Building Schools 3,384 11 10
Sunday Schools 397 1 10
Special Funds 662 11 4
Building Parsonage 1,381 17 1
S. Agatha’s Orphanage 4,500 0 0
New Church 11,308 11 4
Endowment 1,300 0 0
Remitted to J. G. Talbot, Esq., _re_
New Church 948 13 0
----------------------
£50,904 14 9
======================
XIII.
=Winchester.=
In this book, which tries to tell of the Winchester College Mission,
you will perhaps be disappointed that so little is said actually about
Winchester; but that was the most distinctive part of their method;
from first to last they never wanted to intrude. They put me in charge
of the Mission, they paid me my salary, they entrusted me, as you will
have seen, with large sums of money; but they never from first to last
desired to dictate methods, or to hinder even when my methods were not
quite at one with their own. It was an extraordinary generosity, and I
am afraid that I have oftentimes put it to the test.
Placing the Mission at Landport was a stroke of genius on the part
of the late Headmaster, Dr. Ridding. It enabled the men to become
quite familiar with the work which was being carried on in their
name. Prefects could come down from Saturday to Sunday night, and on
leave-out days any man in the school could come down. Recently some
change as to leave-out days has made this more difficult, but it is a
matter of great congratulation to me that most of the elder men, both
present and past, do not know the Mission merely by hearsay. Bedrooms
were always kept ready for them, and I think, as a rule, they enjoyed
themselves when they stayed with us, or, at least, they had the grace
to appear to do so. When I speak of this, people always say, “What
did they do?” I am afraid I have to answer, they did not do anything.
Someone used to take them round the parish on Saturday night, and show
them the different clubs, or they stayed in the gymnasium, or they came
up to my own room and talked. Sometimes, if there was a great stress of
work, they would help us in directing envelopes, or copying circulars.
On Sunday they went to church, and took their meals with us--a plain
breakfast of bread and butter, which we have to have on Sundays because
so many breakfast with us, was never objected to by them; and the
Sunday dinner was shared with thirty or forty other people, mostly of
a different rank of life to which they were accustomed. Writing it
down now in cold blood it does not seem anything, but I am sure it was
everything--a liberal education, a discovery that all men are pretty
much the same, that even the grossest sin, the direst poverty, has not
the power of annihilating true manhood--above all the lesson that true
worth consists not in what a man has, but what a man is; and perhaps
they just guessed at the higher lesson that union with God is not only
the power of a perfect cleansing, but the power of a renewed life,
which renders him who possesses it true and beautiful. Of course, some
men grasped all this easily, others saw things only as they were; but
I do not believe that any man ever stayed with us who did not go away
better for the visit.
I have been astonished oftentimes, when men came back long after they
left school to stay with us how much more deeply such thoughts had
penetrated their souls than I at the moment had believed. It seemed
to them very difficult to realise that almost all our inmates were of
what are called the lower, oftentimes of the degraded, classes; but men
are strangely imitative, and our inmates naturally adopted the customs
of those amongst whom they lived. The boy, too, of the lower class is
generally wanting in self-consciousness. He talks freely and easily.
The things he talks about are generally matters of experience to him.
He seldom theorises. He is desirous of making those in his company
feel at ease. I have seen Winchester men coming to us very anxious to
condescend, to be polite, and I have seen them utterly nonplussed at
the extraordinary good manners, simplicity, and powers of conversation
of the fellows sitting round our table. Practically they came to teach,
they remained to learn. I do not suppose that they were conscious of
their intention, or of the result of their visit.