POINTS OF VIEW
Mark did not find that his guardian was much disturbed by his doubts of
the validity of Anglican Orders nor much alarmed by his suspicion that
the Establishment had no right to be considered a branch of the Holy
Catholic Church.
"The crucial point in the Roman position is their doctrine of
intention," said Mr. Ogilvie. "It always seems to me that this doctrine
is a particularly dangerous one for them to play with and one that may
recoil at any moment upon their own heads. There has been a great deal
of super-subtle dividing of intentions into actual, virtual, habitual,
and interpretative; but if you are going to take your stand on logic you
must be ready to face a logical conclusion. Let us agree for a moment
that Barlow and the other bishops who consecrated Matthew Parker had no
intention of consecrating him as a bishop for the purpose of ordaining
priests in the sense in which Catholics understand the word priest. Do
the Romans expect us to believe that all their prelates in the time of
the Renaissance had a perfect intention when they were consecrating? Or
leave on one side for a moment the sacrament of Orders; the validity of
other sacraments is affected by their extension of the doctrine beyond
the interpretation of St. Thomas Aquinas. However improbable it may be
that at one moment all the priests of the Catholic Church should lack
the intention let us say of absolution, it _is_ a _logical_ possibility,
in which case all the faithful would logically speaking be damned. It
was in order to guard against this kind of logical catastrophe that the
first split between an actual intention and a virtual intention was
made. The Roman Church teaches that the virtual intention is enough; but
if we argue that a virtual intention might be ascribed to the bishops
who consecrated Parker, the Roman controversialists present us with
another subdivision--the habitual intention, which is one that formerly
existed, but of the present continuance of which there is no trace. Now
really, my dear Mark, you must admit that we've reached a point very
near to nonsense if this kind of logical subtlety is to control Faith."
"As a matter of fact," said Mark, "I don't think I should ever want to
'vert over the question of the validity of Anglican Orders. I haven't
any doubts now of their validity, and I think it's improbable that I
shall have any doubts after I'm ordained. At the same time, there _is_
something wrong with the Church of England if a situation like that in
Chatsea can be created by the whim of a bishop. Our unhappy union
between Church and State has created a class of bishops which has no
parallel anywhere else in Christendom. In order to become a bishop in
England, at any rate of the kind that has a seat in the House of Lords,
it is necessary to be a gentleman, or rather to have the outward and
visible signs of being a gentleman, to be a scholar, or to be a
diplomat. Of course, there will be exceptions; but if you look at almost
all our bishops, you will find they have reached their dignity by social
attainments or by political utility or sometimes by intellectual
distinction, but hardly ever by religious fervour, or spiritual honesty,
or fearless opinion. I can sympathize with the dissenters of the
seventeenth century in blaming the episcopate for all spiritual
maladies. I expect there were a good many Dr. Cheesmans in the days of
Defoe. Look back and see how the bishops have always voted in the House
of Lords with enthusiastic unanimity against every proposal of reform
that was ever put forward. I wonder what will happen when they are
called upon to face a real national crisis."
"I'm perfectly ready to agree with everything you say about bishops,"
the Rector volunteered. "But more or less, I'm sorry to add, it is a
criticism that can be applied to all the orders of the priesthood
everywhere in Christendom. What can we, what dare we say in favour of
priests when we remember Our Lord?"
"When a man does try to follow the Gospel a little more closely than
the rest," Mark raged, "the bishops down him. They exist to maintain the
safety of their class. They have reached their present position by
knowing the right people, by condemning the wrong people, and by
balancing their fat bottoms on fences. Sometimes when their political
patrons quarrel over a pair of mediocrities, a saintly man who is either
very old or very ill like Bishop Crawshay is appointed as a stop-gap."
"Yes," the Rector agreed. "But our present bishops are only one more
aspect of Victorian materialism. The whole of contemporary society can
be criticized in the same way. After all, we get the bishops we deserve,
just as we get the politicians we deserve and the generals we deserve
and the painters we deserve."
"I don't think that's any excuse for the bishops. I sometimes dream of
worming myself up and stopping at nothing in order to be made a bishop,
and then when I have the mitre at last of appearing in my true colours."
"Our Protestant brethren think that is what many of our right reverend
fathers in God do now," the Rector laughed.
These discussions might have continued for ever without taking Mark any
further. His failure to experience Oxford had deprived him of the
opportunity to whet his opinions upon the grindstone of debate, and
there had been no time for academic argument in the three years of
Keppel Street. In Wych-on-the-Wold there never seemed much else to do
but argue. It was one of the effects of leaving, or rather of seeing
destroyed, a society that was obviously performing useful work and
returning to a society that, so far as Mark could observe performed no
kind of work whatever. He was loath to criticize the Rector; but he felt
that he was moving along in a rut that might at any moment deepen to a
chasm in which he would be spiritually lost. He seemed to be taking his
priestly responsibilities too lightly, to be content with gratifying his
own desire to worship Almighty God without troubling about his
parishioners. Mark did not like to make any suggestions about parochial
work, because he was afraid of the Rector's retorting with an implied
criticism of St. Agnes'; and that would have involved him in a bitter
argument for which he would afterward be sorry. Nor was it only in his
missionary duties that he felt his old friend was allowing himself to
rust. Three years ago the Rector had said a daily Mass. Now he was
content with one on Thursdays except on festivals. Mark began to take
walks far afield, which was a sign of irritation with the inaction of
the life round him rather than the expression of an interest in the life
beyond. On one of these walks he found himself at Wield in the diocese
of Kidderminster thirty miles or more away from home. He had spent the
night in a remote Cotswold village, and all the morning he had been
travelling through the level vale of Wield which, beautiful at the time
of blossom, was now at midsummer a landscape without line, monotonously
green, prosperous and complacent. While he was eating his bread and
cheese at the public bar of the principal inn, he picked up one of the
local newspapers and reading it, as one so often reads in such
surroundings, with much greater particularity than the journal of a
metropolis, he came upon the following letter:
To the Editor of the WIELD OBSERVER AND SOUTH WORCESTERSHIRE
COURANT,
SIR,--The leader in your issue of last Tuesday upon my sermon in
St. Andrew's Church on the preceding Sunday calls for some
corrections. The action of the Bishop of Kidderminster in
inhibiting Father Rowley from accepting an invitation to preach in
my church is due either to his ignorance of the facts of the case,
to his stupidity in appreciating them, or, I must regretfully add,
to his natural bias towards persecution. These are strong words for
a parish priest to use about his diocesan; but the Bishop of
Kidderminster's consistent support of latitudinarianism and his
consistent hostility towards any of his clergy who practise the
forms of worship which they feel they are bound to practise by the
rubrics of the Book of Common Prayer call for strong words. The
Bishop in correspondence with me declined to give any reason for
his inhibition of Father Rowley beyond a general disapproval of his
teaching. I am informed privately that the Bishop is suffering from
a delusion that Father Rowley disobeyed the Bishop of Silchester,
which is of course perfectly untrue and which is only one more sign
of how completely out of accord our bishops are with what is going
on either in their own diocese or in any other. My own inclination
was frankly to defy his Lordship and insist upon Father Rowley's
fulfilling his engagement. I am not sure that I do not now regret
that I allowed my church-wardens to overpersuade me on this point.
I take great exception to your statement that the offertories both
in the morning and in the evening were sent by me to Father Rowley
regardless of the wishes of my parishioners. That there are certain
parishioners of St. Andrew's who objected I have no doubt. But when
I send you the attached list of parishioners who subscribed no less
than £18 to be added to the two collections, you will I am sure
courteously admit that in this case the opinion of the parishioners
of St. Andrew's was at one with the opinion of their Vicar.--I am,
Sir, your obedient servant,
ADRIAN FORSHAW.
Mark was so much delighted by this letter that he went off at once to
call on Mr. Forshaw, but did not find him at home; he was amused to hear
from the housekeeper that his reverence had been summoned to an
interview with the Bishop of Kidderminster. Mark fancied that it would
be the prelate who would have the unpleasant quarter of an hour.
Presently he began to ponder what it meant for such a letter to be
written and published; his doubts about the Church of England returned;
and in this condition of mind he found himself outside a small Roman
Catholic church dedicated to St. Joseph, where hopeful of gaining the
Divine guidance within he passed through the door. It may be that he was
in a less receptive mood than he thought, for what impressed him most
was the Anglican atmosphere of this Italian outpost. The stale perfume
of incense on stone could not eclipse that authentic perfume of
respectability which has been acquired by so many Roman Catholic
churches in England. There were still hanging on the pillars the framed
numbers of Sunday's hymns. Mark pictured the choir boy who must have
slipped the cards in the frame with anxious and triumphant and
immemorial Anglican zeal; and while he was contemplating this symbolical
hymn-board, over his shoulder floated an authentic Anglican voice, a
voice that sounded as if it was being choked out of the larynx by the
clerical collar. It was the Rector, a stumpy little man with the purple
stock of a monseigneur, who showed the stranger round his church and
ended by inviting him to lunch. Mark, wondering if he had reached a
crossroad in his progress, accepted the invitation, and prepared himself
reverently to hear the will of God. Monseigneur Cripps lived in a little
Gothic house next to St. Joseph's, a trim little Gothic house covered
with the oiled curls of an ampelopsis still undyed by autumn's henna.
"You've chosen a bad day to come to lunch," said Monseigneur with a
warning shake of the head. "It's Friday, you know. And it's hard to get
decent fish away from the big towns."
While his host went off to consult the housekeeper about the extra place
for lunch, a proceeding which induced him to make a joke about extra
'plaice' and extra 'place,' at which he laughed heartily, Mark
considered the most tactful way of leading up to a discussion of the
position of the Anglican Church in regard to Roman claims. It should not
be difficult, he supposed, because Monseigneur at the first hint of his
guest's desire to be converted would no doubt welcome the topic. But
when Monseigneur led the way to his little Gothic dining-room full of
Arundel prints, Mark soon apprehended that his host had evidently not
had the slightest notion of offering an _ad hoc_ hospitality. He paid no
attention to Mark's tentative advances, and if he was willing to talk
about Rome, it was only because he had just paid a visit there in
connexion with a school of which he was a trustee and out of which he
wanted to make one kind of school and the Roman Catholic Bishop of
Dudley wanted to make another.
"I had to take the whole question to headquarters," Monseigneur
explained impressively. "But I was disappointed by Rome, oh yes, I was
very disappointed. When I was a young man I saw it _couleur de rose_. I
did enjoy one thing though, and that was going round the Vatican. Yes,
they looked remarkably smart, the Papal Guards; as soon as they saw I
was _Monsignore_, they turned out and presented arms. I'm bound to admit
that I _was_ impressed by that. But on the way down I lost my pipe in
the train. And do you think I could buy a decent pipe in Rome? I
actually had to pay five _lire_--or was it six?--for this inadequate
tube."
He produced from his pocket the pipe he had been compelled to buy, a
curved briar all varnish and gold lettering.
"I've been badly treated in Wield. Certainly, they made me Monseigneur.
But then they couldn't very well do less after I built this church.
We've been successful here. And I venture to think popular. But the
Bishop is in the hands of the Irish. He cannot grasp that the English
people will not have Irish priests to rule them. They don't like it, and
I don't blame them. You're not Irish, are you?"
Mark reassured him.
"This plaice isn't bad, eh? I ordered turbot, but you never get the fish
you order in these Midland towns. It always ends in my having plaice,
which is good for the soul! Ha-ha! I hate the Irish myself. This school
of which I am the chief trustee was intended to be a Catholic
reformatory. That idea fell through, and now my notion is to turn it
into a decent school run by secular clergy. All the English Catholic
schools are in the hands of the regular clergy, which is a mistake. It
puts too much power in the hands of the Benedictines and the Jesuits and
the rest of them. After all, the great strength of the Catholic Church
in England will always be the secular clergy. And what do we get now? A
lot of objectionable Irishmen in Trilby hats. Last time I saw the Bishop
I gave him my frank opinion of his policy. I told him my opinion to his
face. He won't get me to kowtow to him. Yes, I said to him that, if he
handed over this school to the Dominicans, he was going to spoil one of
the finest opportunities ever presented of educating the sons of decent
English gentlemen to be simple parish priests. But the Bishop of Dudley
is an Irishman himself. He can't think of anything educationally better
than Ushaw. And, as I was telling you, I saw there was nothing for it
but to take the whole matter right up to headquarters, that is to Rome.
Did I tell you that the Papal Guards turned out and presented arms? Ah,
I remember now, I did mention it. I was extraordinarily impressed by
them. A fine body. But generally speaking, Rome disappointed me after
many years. Of course we English Catholics don't understand that way of
worshipping. I'm not criticizing it. I realize that it suits the
Italians. But suppose I started clearing my throat in the middle of
Mass? My congregation would be disgusted, and rightly. It's an
astonishing thing that I couldn't buy a good pipe in Rome, don't you
think? I must have lost mine when I got out of the carriage to look at
the leaning tower of Pisa, and my other one got clogged up with some
candle grease. I couldn't get the beastly stuff out, so I had to give
the pipe to a porter. They're keen on English pipes, those Italian
porters. Poor devils, I'm not surprised. Of course, I need hardly say
that in Rome they promised to do everything for me; but you can't trust
them when your back is turned, and I need hardly add that the Bishop was
pulling strings all the time. They showed me one of his letters, which
was a tissue of mis-statements--a regular tissue. Now, suppose you had a
son and you wanted him to be a priest? You don't necessarily want him to
become a Jesuit or a Benedictine or a Dominican. Where can you send him
now? Stonyhurst, Downside, Beaumont. There isn't a single decent school
run by the secular clergy. You know what I mean? A school for the sons
of gentlemen--a public school. We've got magnificent buildings, grounds,
everything you could wish. I've been promised all the money necessary,
and then the Bishop of Dudley steps in and says that these Dominicans
ought to take it on."
"I'm afraid I've somehow given you a wrong impression," Mark interposed
when Monseigneur Cripps at last filled his mouth with plaice. "I'm not a
Roman Catholic."
"Oh, aren't you?" said Monseigneur indifferently. "Never mind, I expect
you see my point about the necessity for the school to be run by secular
clergy. Did I tell you how I got the land for my church here? That's
rather an interesting story. It belonged to Lord Evesham who, as perhaps
you may know, is very anti-Catholic, but a thorough good sportsman. We
always get on capitally together. Well, one day I said to his agent,
Captain Hart: 'What about this land, Hart? Don't you think you could get
it out of his lordship?' 'It's no good, Father Cripps,' said Hart--I
wasn't Monseigneur then of course--'It's no good,' he said, 'his
lordship absolutely declines to let his land be used for a Catholic
church.' 'Come along, Hart,' I said, 'let's have a round of golf.' Well,
when we got to the eighteenth hole we were all square, and we'd both of
us gone round three better than bogie and broken our own records. I was
on the green with my second shot, and holed out in three. 'My game,' I
shouted because Hart had foozled his drive and wasn't on the green. 'Not
at all,' he said. 'You shouldn't be in such a hurry. I may hole out in
one,' he laughed. 'If you do,' I said, 'you ought to get Lord Evesham to
give me that land.' 'That's a bargain,' he said, and he took his mashie.
Will you believe it? He did the hole in two, sir, won the game, and beat
the record for the course! And that's how I got the land to build my
church. I was delighted! I was delighted! I've told that story
everywhere to show what sportsmen are. I told it to the Bishop, but of
course he being an Irishman didn't see anything funny in it. If he could
have stopped my being made Monseigneur, he'd have done so. But he
couldn't."
"You seem to have as much trouble with your bishops as we do with ours
in the Anglican Church," said Mark.
"We shouldn't, if we made the right men bishops," said Monseigneur. "But
so long as they think at Westminster that we're going to convert England
with a tagrag and bobtail mob of Irish priests, we never shall make the
right men. You were looking round my church just now. Didn't it remind
you of an English church?"
Mark agreed that it did very much.
"That's my secret: that's why I've been the most successful mission
priest in this diocese. I realize as an Englishman that it is no use to
give the English Irish Catholicism. When I was in Rome the other day I
was disgusted, I really was. I was disgusted. I thoroughly sympathize
with Protestants who go there and are disgusted. You cannot expect a
decent English family to confess to an Irish peasant. It's not
reasonable. We want to create an English tradition."
"What between the Roman party in the Anglican Church and the Anglican
party in the Roman Church," said Mark, "It seems a pity that some kind
of reunion cannot be effected."
"So it could," Monseigneur declared. "So it could, if it wasn't for the
Irish. Look at the way we treat our English converts. The clergy, I
mean. Why? Because the Irish do not want England to be converted."
Mark did not raise with Monseigneur Cripps the question of his doubts.
Indeed, before the plaice had been taken away he had decided that they
no longer existed. It became clear to him that the English Church was
England; and although he knew in his heart that Monseigneur Cripps was
suffering from a sense of grievance and that his criticism of Roman
policy was too obviously biased, it pleased him to believe that it was a
fair criticism.
Mark thanked Monseigneur Cripps for his hospitality and took a friendly
leave of him. An hour later he was walking back through the pleasant
vale of Wield toward the Cotswolds. As he went his way among the green
orchards, he thought over his late impulse to change allegiance,
marvelling at it now and considering it irrational, like one astonished
at his own behaviour in a dream. There came into his mind a story of
George Fox who drawing near to the city of Lichfield took off his shoes
in a meadow and cried three times in a loud voice "Woe unto the bloody
city of Lichfield," after which he put on his shoes again and proceeded
into the town. Mark looked back in amazement at his lunch with
Monseigneur Cripps and his own meditated apostasy. To his present mood
that intention to forsake his own Church appeared as remote from
actuality as the malediction of George Fox upon the city of Lichfield.
Here among these green orchards in the heart of England Roman
Catholicism presented itself to Mark's imagination as an exotic. The two
words "Roman Catholicism" uttered aloud in the quiet June sunlight gave
him the sensation of an allamanda or of a gardenia blossoming in an
apple-tree. People who talked about bringing the English Church into
line with the trend of Western Christianity lacked a sense of history.
Apart from the question whether the English Church before the
Reformation had accepted the pretensions of the Papacy, it was absurd
to suppose that contemporary Romanism had anything in common with
English Catholicism of the early sixteenth century. English Catholicism
long before the Reformation had been a Protestant Catholicism, always in
revolt against Roman claims, always preserving its insularity. It was
idle to question the Catholic intentions of a priesthood that could
produce within a century of the Reformation such prelates as Andrews and
Ken. It was ridiculous at the prompting of the party in the ascendancy
at Westminster to procure a Papal decision against English Orders when
two hundred and fifty years ago there was a cardinal's hat waiting for
Laud if he would leave the Church of England. And what about Paul IV and
Elizabeth? Was he not willing to recognize English Orders if she would
recognize his headship of Christendom?
But these were controversial arguments, and as Mark walked along through
the pleasant vale of Wield with the Cotswold hills rising taller before
him at every mile he apprehended that his adhesion to the English Church
had been secured by the natural scene rather than by argument.
Nevertheless, it was interesting to speculate why Romanism had not made
more progress in England, why even now with a hierarchy and with such a
distinguished line of converts beginning with Newman it remained so
completely out of touch with the national life of the country. While the
Romans converted one soul to Catholicism, the inheritors of the Oxford
Movement were converting twenty. Catholicism must be accounted a
disposition of mind, an attitude toward life that did not necessarily
imply all that was implied by Roman Catholicism. What was the secret of
the Roman failure? Everywhere else in the world Roman Catholicism had
known how to adapt itself to national needs; only in England did it
remain exotic. It was like an Anglo-Indian magnate who returns to find
himself of no importance in his native land, and who but for the flavour
of his curries and perhaps a black servant or two would be utterly
inconspicuous. He tries to fit in with the new conditions of his
readopted country, but he remains an exotic and is regarded by his
neighbours as one to whom the lesson must be taught that he is no
longer of importance. What had been the cause of this breach in the
Roman Catholic tradition, this curious incompetency, this Anglo-Indian
conservatism and pretentiousness? Perhaps it had begun when in the
seventeenth century the propagation of Roman Catholicism in England was
handed over to the Jesuits, who mismanaged the country hopelessly. By
the time Rome had perceived that the conversion of England could not be
left to the Jesuits the harm was done, so that when with greater
toleration the time was ripe to expand her organization it was necessary
to recruit her priests in Ireland. What the Jesuits had begun the Irish
completed. It had been amusing to listen to the lamentations of
Monseigneur Cripps; but Monseigneur Cripps had expressed, however
ludicrous his egoism, the failure of his Church in England.
Mark's statement of the Anglican position with nobody to answer his
arguments except the trees and the hedgerows seemed flawless. The level
road, the gentle breeze in the orchards on either side, the scent of the
grass, and the busy chirping of the birds coincided with the main point
of his argument that England was most inexpressibly Anglican and that
Roman Catholicism was most unmistakably not. His arguments were really
hasty foot-notes to his convictions; if each one had separately been
proved wrong, that would have had no influence on the point of view he
had reached. He forgot that this very landscape that was seeming
incomparable England herself had yesterday appeared complacent and
monotonous. In fact he was as bad as George Fox, who after taking off
his shoes to curse the bloody city of Lichfield should only have put
them on again to walk away from it.
The grey road was by now beginning to climb the foothills of the
Cotswolds; a yellow-hammer, keeping always a few paces ahead, twittered
from quickset boughs nine encouraging notes that drowned the echoes of
ancient controversies. In such a countryside no claims papal or
episcopal possessed the least importance; and Mark dismissed the subject
from his mind, abandoning himself to the pleasure of the slow ascent.
Looking back after a while he could see the town of Wield riding like a
ship in a sea of verdure, and when he surveyed thus England asleep in
the sunlight, the old ambition to become a preaching friar was kindled
again in his heart. He would re-establish the extinct and absolutely
English Order of St. Gilbert so that there should be no question of
Roman pretensions. Doubtless, St. Francis himself would understand a
revival of his Order without reference to existing Franciscans; but
nobody else would understand, and it would be foolish to insist upon
being a Franciscan if the rest of the Order disowned him and his
followers. If anybody had asked Mark at that moment why he wanted to
restore the preaching friars, he might have found it difficult to
answer. He was by no means imbued with the missionary spirit just then;
his experience at Chatsea had made him pessimistic about missionary
effort in the Church of England. If a man like Father Rowley had failed
to win the support of his ecclesiastical superiors, Mark, who possessed
more humility than is usual at twenty-one, did not fancy that he should
be successful. The ambition to become a friar was revived by an
incomprehensible, or if not incomprehensible, certainly by an
inexplicable impulse to put himself in tune with the landscape, to
proclaim as it were on behalf of that dumb heart of England beating down
there in the flowery Vale of Wield: _God rest you merry gentlemen, let
nothing you dismay!_ There was revealed to him with the assurance of
absolute faith that all the sorrows, all the ugliness, all the
soullessness (no other word could be found) of England in the first year
of the twentieth century was due to the Reformation; the desire to
become a preaching friar was the dramatic expression of this inspired
conviction. Before his journey through the Vale of Wield Mark in any
discussion would have been ready to argue the mistake of the
Reformation: but now there was no longer room for argument. What
formerly he thought now he knew. The song of the yellow-hammer was
louder in the quickset hedge; the trees burned with a sharper green; the
road urged his feet.
"If only everybody in England could move as I am moving now," he
thought. "If only I could be granted the power to show a few people, so
that they could show others, and those others show all the world. How
confidently that yellow-hammer repeats his song! How well he knows that
his song is right! How little he envies the linnet and how little the
linnet envies him! The fools that talk of nature's cruelty, the blind
fatuous sentimental coxcombs!"
Thus apostrophizing, Mark came to a wayside inn; discovering that he was
hungry, he took his seat at a rustic table outside and called for bread
and cheese and beer. While he was eating, a vehicle approached from the
direction in which he would soon be travelling. He took it at first for
a caravan of gipsies, but when it grew near he saw that it was painted
over with minatory texts and was evidently the vehicle of itinerant
gospellers. Two young men alighted from the caravan when it pulled up
before the door of the inn. They were long-nosed sallow creatures with
that expression of complacency which organized morality too often
produces, and in this quiet countryside they gave an effect of being
overgrown Sunday-school scholars upon their annual outing. Having cast a
censorious glance in the direction of Mark's jug of ale, they sat down
at the farther end of the bench and ordered food.
"The preaching friars of to-day," Mark thought gloomily.
"Excuse me," said one of the gospellers. "I notice you've been looking
very hard at our van. Excuse me, but are you saved?"
"No, are you?" Mark countered with an angry blush.
"We are," the gospeller proclaimed. "Or I and Mr. Smillie here," he
indicated his companion, "wouldn't be travelling round trying to save
others. Here, read this tract, my friend. Don't hurry over it. We can
wait all day and all night to bring one wandering soul to Jesus."
Mark looked at the young men curiously; perceiving that they were
sincere, he accepted the tract and out of courtesy perused it. The tale
therein enfolded reminded him of a narrative testifying to the efficacy
of a patent medicine. The process of conversation followed a stereotyped
formula.
_For three and a half years I was unable to keep down any sins for more
than five minutes after I had committed the last one. I had a dizzy
feeling in the heart and a sharp pain in the small of the soul. A friend
of mine recommended me to try the good minister in the slum. . . . After
the first text I was able to keep down my sins for six minutes . . .
after twenty-two bottles I am as good as I ever was. . . . I ascribe my
salvation entirely to_. . . . Mark handed back the tract with a smile.
"Do you convert many people with this literature?" he asked.
"We don't often convert a soul right off," said Mr. Smillie. "But we sow
the good seed, if you follow my meaning; and we leave the rest to Jesus.
Mr. Bullock and I have handed over seven hundred tracts in three weeks,
and we know that they won't all fall on stony ground or be choked by
tares and thistles."
"Do you mind my asking you a question?" Mark said.
The gospel bearers craned their necks like hungry fowls in their
eagerness to peck at any problems Mark felt inclined to scatter before
them. A ludicrous fancy passed through his mind that much of the good
seed was pecked up by the scatterers.
"What are you trying to convert people to?" Mark solemnly inquired.
"What are we trying to convert people to?" echoed Mr. Bullock and Mr.
Smillie in unison. Then the former became eloquent. "We're trying to
wash ignorant people in the blood of the Lamb. We're converting them
from the outer darkness, where there is weeping and wailing and gnashing
of teeth, to be rocked safe for ever in the arms of Jesus. If you'd have
read that tract I handed you a bit more slowly and a bit more carefully,
you wouldn't have had any call to ask a question like that."
"Perhaps I framed my question rather badly," Mark admitted. "I
understand that you want to bring people to believe in Our Lord; but
when by a tract or by a personal exhortation or by an emotional appeal
you've induced them to suppose that they are converted, or as you put it
saved, what more do you give them?"
"What more do we give them?" Mr. Smillie shrilled. "What more can we
give them after we've given them Christ Jesus? We're sitting here
offering you Christ Jesus at this moment. You're sitting there mocking
at us. But Mr. Bullock and me don't mind how much you mock. We're ready
to stay here for hours if we can bring you safe to the bosom of
Emmanuel."
"Yes, but suppose I told you that I believe in Our Lord Jesus Christ
without any persuasion from you?" Mark inquired.
"Well, then you're saved," said Mr. Bullock decidedly. "And you can ask
the landlord for our bill, Mr. Smillie."
"But is nothing more necessary?" Mark persisted.
"_By faith are ye justified_," Mr. Bullock and Mr. Smillie shouted
simultaneously.
Mark paused for a moment to consider whether argument was worth while,
and then he returned to the attack.
"I'm afraid I think that people like you do a great deal of damage to
Christianity. You only flatter human conceit. You get hold of some
emotional creature and work upon his feelings until in an access of
self-absorption he feels that the universe is standing still while the
necessary measures are taken to secure his personal salvation. You
flatter this poor soul, and then you go away and leave him to work out
his own salvation."
"If you're dwelling in Christ Jesus and Christ Jesus is dwelling in you,
you haven't got to work out your own salvation. He worked out your
salvation on the Cross," said Mr. Bullock contemptuously.
"And you think that nothing more is necessary from a man? It seems to me
that the religion you preach is fatal to human character. I'm not trying
to be offensive when I tell you that it's the religion of a tapeworm.
It's a religion for parasites. It's a religion which ignores the Holy
Ghost."
"Perhaps you'll explain your assertion a little more fully?" Mr. Bullock
invited with a scowl.
"What I mean is that, if Our Lord's Atonement removed all responsibility
from human nature, there doesn't seem much for the Holy Ghost to do,
does there?"
"Well, as it happens," said Mr. Bullock sarcastically, "Mr. Smillie and
I here do most of our work with the help of the Holy Ghost, so you've
hit on a bad example to work off your sneers on."
"I'm not trying to sneer," Mark protested. "But strangely enough just
before you came along I was thinking to myself how much I should like to
travel over England preaching about Our Lord, because I think that
England has need of Him. But I also think, now you've answered my
question, that _you_ are doing more harm than good by your
interpretation of the Holy Ghost."
"Mr. Smillie," interrupted Mr. Bullock in an elaborately off-hand voice,
"if you've counted the change and it's all correct, we'd better get a
move on. Let's gird up our loins, Mr. Smillie, and not sit wrestling
here with infidels."
"No, really, you must allow me," Mark persisted. "You've had it so much
your own way with your tracts and your talks this last few weeks that by
now you must be in need of a sermon yourselves. The gospel you preach is
only going to add to the complacency of England, and England is too
complacent already. All Northern nations are, which is why they are
Protestant. They demand a religion which will truckle to them, a
religion which will allow them to devote six days of the week to what is
called business and on the seventh day to rest and praise God that they
are not as other men."
"_Render unto Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's and unto God the things
that are God's_," said Mr. Smillie, putting the change in his pocket and
untying the nosebag from the horse.
"_Ye cannot serve God and mammon_," Mark retorted. "And I wish you'd let
me finish my argument."
"Mr. Smillie and I aren't touring the Midlands trying to find grapes on
thorns and figs on thistles," said Mr. Bullock scathingly. "We'd have
given you a chance, if you'd have shown any fruits of the Spirit."
"You've just said you weren't looking for grapes or figs," Mark laughed.
"I'm sorry I've made you so cross. But you began the argument by asking
me if I was saved. Think how annoyed you would have been if I had begun
a conversation by asking you if you were washed."
"My last words to you is," said Mr. Bullock solemnly, looking out of
the caravan window, "my last words to you are," he corrected himself,
"is to avoid beer. You can touch up the horse, Mr. Smillie."
"I'll come and touch you up, you big-mouthed Bible thumpers," a rich
voice shouted from the inn door. "Yes, you sit outside my public-house
and swill minerals when you're so full of gas already you could light a
corporation gasworks. Avoid beer, you walking bellows? Step down out of
that travelling menagerie, and I'll give you 'avoid beer.' You'll avoid
more than beer before I've finished with you."
But the gospel bearers without paying any attention to the tirade went
on their way; and Mark who did not wait to listen to the innkeeper's
abuse of all religion and all religious people went on his way in the
opposite direction.
Swinging homeward over the Cotswolds Mark flattered himself on a victory
over heretics, and he imagined his adversaries entering Wield that
afternoon, the prey of doubt and mortification. At the highest point of
the road he even ventured to suppose that they might find themselves at
Evensong outside St. Andrew's Church and led within by the grace of the
Holy Spirit that they might renounce their errors before the altar.
Indeed, it was not until he was back in the Rectory that the futility of
his own bearing overwhelmed him with shame. Anxious to atone for his
self-conceit, Mark gave the Rector an account of the incident.
"It seems to me that I behaved very feebly, don't you think?"
"That kind of fellow is a hard nut to crack," the Rector said
consolingly. "And you can't expect just by quoting text against text to
effect an instant conversion. Don't forget that your friends are in
their way as great enthusiasts probably as yourself."
"Yes, but it's humiliating to be imagining oneself leading a revival of
the preaching friars and then to behave like that. What strikes me now,
when it's too late, is that I ought to have waited and taken the
opportunity to tackle the innkeeper. He was just the ordinary man who
supposes that religion is his natural enemy. You must admit that I
missed a chance there."
"I don't want to check your missionary zeal," said the Rector. "But I
really don't think you need worry yourself about an omission of that
kind so long before you are ordained. If I didn't know you as well as I
do, I might even be inclined to consider such a passion for souls at
your age a little morbid. I wish with all my heart you'd gone to
Oxford," he added with a sigh.
"Well, really, do you know," said Mark, "I don't regret that. Whatever
may be the advantages of a public school and university, the education
hampers one. One becomes identified with a class; and when one has
finished with that education, the next two or three years have to be
spent in discovering that public school and university men form a very
small proportion of the world's population. Sometimes I almost regret
that my mother did not let me acquire that Cockney accent. You can say a
lot of things in a Cockney accent which said without any accent sound
priggish. You must admit, Rector, that your inner comment on my tale of
the gospellers and the innkeeper is 'Dear me! I am afraid Mark's turning
into a prig.'"
"No, no. I laid particular stress on the point that if I didn't know you
as well as I do I might perhaps have thought that," the Rector
protested.
"I don't think I am a prig," Mark went on slowly. "I don't think I have
enough confidence in myself to be a prig. I think the way I argued with
Mr. Bullock and Mr. Smillie was a bit priggish, because at the back of
my head all the time I was talking I felt in addition to the arrogance
of faith a kind of confounded snobbishness; and this sense of
superiority came not from my being a member of the Church, but from
feeling myself more civilized than they were. Looking back now at the
conversation, I can remember that actually at the very moment I was
talking of the Holy Ghost I was noticing how Mr. Bullock's dicky would
keep escaping from his waistcoat. I wonder if the great missionary
saints of the middle ages had to contend with this accumulation of
social conventions with which we are faced nowadays. It seems to me
that in everything--in art, in religion, in mere ordinary everyday life
and living--man is adding daily to the wall that separates him from
God."
"H'm, yes," said the Rector, "all this only means that you are growing
up. The child is nearer to God than the man. Wordsworth said it better
than I can say it. Similarly, the human race must grow away from God as
it takes upon itself the burden of knowledge. That surely is inherent in
the fall of man. No philosopher has yet improved upon the first chapter
of Genesis as a symbolical explanation of humanity's plight. When man
was created--or if you like to put it evolved--there must have been an
exact moment at which he had the chance of remaining where he was--in
other words, in the Garden of Eden--or of developing further along his
own lines with free will. Satan fell from pride. It is natural to assume
that man, being tempted by Satan, would fall from the same sin, though
the occasion, of his fall might be the less heroic sin of curiosity.
Yes, I think that first chapter of Genesis, as an attempt to sum up the
history of millions of years, is astoundingly complete. Have you ever
thought how far by now the world would have grown away from God without
the Incarnation?"
"Yes," said Mark, "and after nineteen hundred years how little nearer it
has grown."
"My dear boy," said the Rector, "if man has not even yet got rid of
rudimentary gills or useless paps he is not going to grow very visibly
nearer to God in nineteen hundred years after growing away from God for
ninety million. Yet such is the mercy of our Father in Heaven that,
infinitely remote as we have grown from Him, we are still made in His
image, and in childhood we are allowed a few years of blessed innocency.
To some children--and you were one of them--God reveals Himself more
directly. But don't, my dear fellow, grow up imagining that these
visions you were accorded as a boy will be accorded to you all through
your life. You may succeed in remaining pure in act, but you will find
it hard to remain pure in heart. To me the most frightening beatitude is
_Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God._ What your
present state of mind really amounts to is lack of hope, for as soon as
you find yourself unable to be as miraculously eloquent as St. Anthony
of Padua you become the prey of despair."
"I am not so foolish as that," Mark replied. "But surely, Rector, it
behoves me during these years before my ordination to criticize myself
severely."
"As severely as you like," the Rector agreed, "provided that you only
criticize yourself, and don't criticize Almighty God."
"But surely," Mark went on, "I ought to be asking myself now that I am
twenty-one how I shall best occupy the next three years?"
"Certainly," the Rector assented. "Think it over, and be sure that, when
you have thought it over and have made your decision with the help of
prayer, I shall be the first to support that decision in every way
possible. Even if you decide to be a preaching friar," he added with a
smile. "And now I have some news for you. Esther arrives here tomorrow
to stay with us for a fortnight before she is professed."