I
The Bishop's House was a comfortable, double dwelling of a smooth,
bright red brick and large, plate-glass windows, situated in a plot
at the western end of Waverley Place. It had been bought by the Diocese
in the nineties, and was representative of that transitional period in
American architecture when the mansard roof had been repudiated, when
as yet no definite types had emerged to take its place. The house had
pointed gables, and a tiny and utterly useless porch that served only to
darken the front door, made of heavy pieces of wood fantastically curved.
It was precisely ten o'clock in the morning when Hodder rang the bell and
was shown into the ample study which he had entered on other and less
vital occasions. He found difficulty in realizing that this pleasant
room, lined with well-worn books and overlooking a back lawn where the
clothes of the episcopal family hung in the yellow autumn sun, was to be
his judgment seat, whence he might be committed to trial for heresy.
And this was the twentieth century! The full force of the preposterous
fact smote him, and a consciousness of the distance he himself had
travelled since the comparatively recent days of his own orthodoxy.
And suddenly he was full again of a resentful impatience, not only that
he should be called away from his labours, his cares, the strangers who
were craving his help, to answer charges of such an absurd triviality,
but that the performance of the great task to which he had set his hand,
with God's help, should depend upon it. Would his enemies be permitted
to drive him out thus easily?
The old bishop came in, walking by the aid of a cane. He smiled at
Hodder, who greeted him respectfully, and bidding him sit down, took a
chair himself behind his writing table, from whence he gazed awhile
earnestly and contemplatively at the rugged features and strong shoulders
of the rector of St. John's. The effect of the look was that of a visual
effort to harmonize the man with the deed he had done, the stir he had
created in the city and the diocese; to readjust impressions.
A hint of humour crept into the bishop's blue eyes, which were watery,
yet strong, with heavy creases in the corners. He indicated by a little
gesture three bundles of envelopes, bound by rubber bands, on the corner
of his blotter.
"Hodder," he said, "see what a lot of trouble you have made for me in my
old age! All those are about you."
The rector's expression could not have been deemed stern, but it had met
the bishop's look unflinchingly. Now it relaxed into a responding smile,
which was not without seriousness.
"I am sorry, sir," Hodder answered, "to have caused you any worry--or
inconvenience."
"Perhaps," said the bishop, "I have had too much smooth sailing for a
servant of Christ. Indeed, I have come to that conclusion."
Hodder did not reply. He was moved, even more by the bishop's manner
and voice than his words. And the opening to their conversation was
unexpected. The old man put on his spectacles, and drew from the top
of one of the bundles a letter.
"This is from one of your vestrymen, Mr. Gordon Atterbury," he said, and
proceeded to read it, slowly. When he had finished he laid it down.
"Is that, according to your recollection, Mr. Hodder, a fairly accurate
summary of the sermon you gave when you resumed the pulpit at the end of
the summer?"
"Yes, sir," answered the rector, "it is surprisingly accurate, with the
exception of two or three inferences which I shall explain at the proper
moment."
"Mr. Atterbury is to be congratulated on his memory," the bishop observed
a little dryly. "And he has saved me the trouble of reading more. Now
what are the inferences to which you object?"
Hodder stated them. "The most serious one," he added, "is that which he
draws from my attitude on the virgin birth. Mr. Atterbury insists, like
others who cling to that dogma, that I have become what he vaguely calls
an Unitarian. He seems incapable of grasping my meaning, that the only
true God the age knows, the world has ever known, is the God in Christ,
is the Spirit in Christ, and is there not by any material proof, but
because we recognize it spiritually. And that doctrine and dogma,
ancient speculations as to how, definitely, that spirit came to be in
Christ, are fruitless and mischievous to-day. Mr. Atterbury and others
seem actually to resent my identification of our Lord's Spirit with the
social conscience as well as the individual conscience of our time."
The bishop nodded.
"Hodder," he demanded abruptly, leaning forward over his desk, "how did
this thing happen?"
"You mean, sir--"
There was, in the bishop's voice, a note almost pathetic. "Oh, I do not
mean to ask you anything you may deem too personal. And God forbid, as
I look at you, as I have known you, that I should doubt your sincerity.
I am not your inquisitor, but your bishop and your friend, and I am
asking for your confidence. Six months ago you were, apparently, one of
the most orthodox rectors in the diocese. I recognize that you are not
an impulsive, sensational man, and I am all the more anxious to learn
from your own lips something of the influences, of the processes which
have changed you, which have been strong enough to impel you to risk the
position you have achieved."
By this unlooked-for appeal Hodder was not only disarmed, but smitten
with self-reproach at the thought of his former misjudgment and
underestimation of the man in whose presence he sat. And it came over
him, not only the extent to which, formerly, he had regarded the bishop
as too tolerant and easygoing, but the fact that he had arrived here
today prepared to find in his superior anything but the attitude he was
showing. Considering the bishop's age, Hodder had been ready for a lack
of understanding of the step he had taken, even for querulous reproaches
and rebuke.
He had, therefore, to pull himself together, to adjust himself to the
unexpected greatness of soul with which he was being received before he
began to sketch the misgivings he had felt from the early days of his
rectorship of St. John's; the helplessness and failure which by degrees
had come over him. He related how it had become apparent to him that by
far the greater part of his rich and fashionable congregation were
Christians only in name, who kept their religion in a small and
impervious compartment where it did not interfere with their lives.
He pictured the yearning and perplexity of those who had come to him for
help, who could not accept the old explanations, and had gone away empty;
and he had not been able to make Christians of the poor who attended the
parish house. Finally, trusting in the bishop's discretion, he spoke of
the revelations he had unearthed in Dalton Street, and how these had
completely destroyed his confidence in the Christianity he had preached,
and how he had put his old faith to the test of unprejudiced modern
criticism, philosophy, and science. . .
The bishop listened intently, his head bent, his eyes on he rector.
"And you have come out--convinced?" he asked tremulously. "Yes, yes,
I see you have. It is enough."
He relapsed into thought, his wrinkled hand lying idly on the table.
"I need not tell you, my friend," he resumed at length, "that a great
deal of pressure has been brought to bear upon me in this matter, more
than I have ever before experienced. You have mortally offended, among
others, the most powerful layman in the diocese, Mr. Parr, who complains
that you have presumed to take him to task concerning his private
affairs."
"I told him," answered Holder, "that so long as he continued to live the
life he leads, I could not accept his contributions to St. John's."
"I am an old man," said the bishop, "and whatever usefulness I have had
is almost finished. But if I were young to-day, I should pray God for
the courage and insight you have shown, and I am thankful to have lived
long enough to have known you. It has, at least, been given one to
realize that times have changed, that we are on the verge of a mighty
future. I will be frank to say that ten years ago, if this had happened,
I should have recommended you for trial. Now I can only wish you
Godspeed. I, too, can see the light, my friend. I can see, I think, though
dimly, the beginnings of a blending of all sects, of all religions in the
increasing vision of the truth revealed in Jesus Christ, stripped, as you
say, of dogma, of fruitless attempts at rational explanation. In Japan
and China, in India and Persia, as well as in Christian countries, it is
coming, coming by some working of the Spirit the mystery of which is
beyond us. And nations and men who even yet know nothing of the Gospels
are showing a willingness to adopt what is Christ's, and the God of
Christ."
Holder was silent, from sheer inability to speak.
"If you had needed an advocate with me," the bishop continued, "you could
not have had one to whose counsel I would more willingly have listened,
than that of Horace Bentley. He wrote asking to come and see me, but I
went to him in Dalton Street the day I returned. And it gives me
satisfaction, Mr. Holder, to confess to you freely that he has taught me,
by his life, more of true Christianity than I have learned in all my
experience elsewhere."
"I had thought," exclaimed the rector, wonderingly, "that I owed him more
than any other man."
"There are many who think that--hundreds, I should say," the bishop
replied . . . . "Eldon Parr ruined him, drove him from the church....
It is strange how, outside of the church, his influence has silently and
continuously grown until it has borne fruit in--this. Even now," he
added after a pause, "the cautiousness, the dread of change which comes
with old age might, I think, lead me to be afraid of it if I--didn't
perceive behind it the spirit of Horace Bentley."
It struck Holder, suddenly, what an unconscious but real source of
confidence this thought had likewise been to him. He spoke of it.
"It is not that I wouldn't trust you," the bishop went on. "I have
watched you, I have talked to Asa Waring, I have read the newspapers.
In spite of it all, you have kept your head, you have not compromised the
dignity of the Church. But oh, my friend, I beg you to bear in mind that
you are launched upon deep waters, that you have raised up many enemies
--enemies of Christ--who seek to destroy you. You are still young. And
the uncompromising experiment to which you are pledged, of freeing your
church, of placing her in the position of power and influence in the
community which is rightfully hers, is as yet untried. And no stone will
be left unturned to discourage and overcome you. You have faith,--you
have made me feel it as you sat here,--a faith which will save you from
bitterness in personal defeat. You may not reap the victory, or even see
it in your lifetime. But of this I am sure, that you will be able to
say, with Paul, 'I have planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the
increase.' Whatever happens, you may count upon my confidence and
support. I can only wish that I were younger, that my arm were stronger,
and that I had always perceived the truth as clearly as I see it now."
Holder had risen involuntarily while these words were being spoken. They
were indeed a benediction, and the intensity of his feeling warned him of
the inadequacy of any reply. They were pronounced in sorrow, yet in
hope, and they brought home to him, sharply, the nobility of the bishop's
own sacrifice.
"And you, sir?" he asked.
"Ah," answered the bishop, "with this I shall have had my life. I am
content. . . ."
"You will come to me again, Hodder? some other day," he said,
after an interval, "that we may talk over the new problems. They are
constructive, creative, and I am anxious to hear how you propose to meet
them. For one thing, to find a new basis for the support of such a
parish. I understand they have deprived you of your salary."
"I have enough to live on, for a year or so," replied the rector,
quickly. "Perhaps more."
"I'm afraid," said the bishop, with a smile in his old eyes, "that you
will need it, my friend. But who can say? You have strength, you have
confidence, and God is with you."