THE NEW BISHOP OF SILCHESTER
The Rector of Wych thought that Mark's wisest plan if he wished to be
ordained was to write and ask the Bishop of Silchester for an interview.
"The Bishop of Silchester?" Mark exclaimed. "But he's the last bishop I
should expect to help me."
"On the contrary," said the Rector, "you have lived in his diocese for
more than five years, and if you repair to another bishop, he will
certainly wonder why you didn't go first to the Bishop of Silchester."
"But I don't suppose that the Bishop of Silchester is likely to help
me," Mark objected. "He wasn't so much enamoured of Rowley as all that,
and I don't gather that he has much affection or admiration for
Burrowes."
"That's not the point; the point is that you have devoted yourself to
the religious life, both informally and formally, in his diocese. You
have shown that you possess some capacity for sticking to it, and I
fancy that you will find the Bishop less unsympathetic than you expect."
However, Mark was not given an opportunity to put the Bishop of
Silchester's good-will to the test, for no sooner had he made up his
mind to write to him than the news came that he was seriously ill, so
seriously ill that he was not expected to live, which in fact turned out
a true prognostication, for on the Feast of St. Philip and St. James the
prelate died in his Castle of High Thorpe. He was succeeded by the
Bishop of Warwick, much to Mark's pleasure and surprise, for the new
Bishop was an old friend of Father Rowley and a High Churchman, one who
might lend a kindly ear to Mark's ambition. Father Rowley had been in
the United States for nearly two years, where he had been treated with
much sympathy and where he had collected enough money to pay off the
debt upon the new St. Agnes'. He had arrived home about a week before
Mark left Malford, and in answer to Mark he wrote immediately to Dr.
Oliphant, the new Bishop of Silchester, to enlist his interest. Early in
June Mark received a cordial letter inviting him to visit the Bishop at
High Thorpe.
The promotion of Dr. Aylmer Oliphant to the see of Silchester was
considered at the time to be an indication that the political party then
in power was going mad in preparation for its destruction by the gods.
The Press in commenting upon the appointment did not attempt to cast a
slur upon the sanctity and spiritual fervour of the new Bishop, but it
felt bound to observe that the presence of such a man on the episcopal
bench was an indication that the party in power was oblivious of the
existence of an enraged electorate already eager to hurl them out of
office. At a time when thinking men and women were beginning to turn to
the leaders of the National Church for a social policy, a government
worn out by eight years of office that included a costly war was so
little alive to the signs of the times as to select for promotion a
prelate conspicuously identified with the obscurantist tactics of that
small but noisy group in the Church of England which arrogated to itself
the presumptuous claim to be the Catholic party. Dr. Oliphant's learning
was indisputable; his liturgical knowledge was profound; his eloquence
in the pulpit was not to be gainsaid; his life, granted his sacerdotal
eccentricities, was a noble example to his fellow clergy. But had he
shown those qualities of statesmanship, that capacity for moderation,
which were so marked a feature of his predecessor's reign? Was he not
identified with what might almost be called an unchristian agitation to
prosecute the holy, wise, and scholarly Dean of Leicester for appearing
to countenance an opinion that the Virgin Birth was not vital to the
belief of a Christian? Had he not denounced the Reverend Albert Blundell
for heresy, and thereby exhibited himself in active opposition to his
late diocesan, the sagacious Bishop of Kidderminster, who had been
compelled to express disapproval of his Suffragan's bigotry by
appointing the Reverend Albert Blundell to be one of his examining
chaplains?
"We view with the gravest apprehension the appointment of Dr. Aylmer
Oliphant to the historic see of Silchester," said one great journal.
"Such reckless disregard, such contempt we might almost say, for the
feelings of the English people demonstrates that the present government
has ceased to enjoy the confidence of the electorate. We have for Dr.
Oliphant personally nothing but the warmest admiration. We do not
venture for one moment to impugn his sincerity. We do not hesitate to
affirm most solemnly our disbelief that he is actuated by any but the
highest motives in lending his name to persecutions that recall the
spirit of the Star Chamber. But in these days when the rapid and
relentless march of Scientific Knowledge is devastating the plain of
Theological Speculation we owe it to our readers to observe that the
appointment of Dr. Aylmer Oliphant to the Bishopric of Silchester must
be regarded as an act of intellectual cowardice. Not merely is Dr.
Oliphant a notorious extremist in religious matters, one who for the
sake of outworn forms and ceremonies is inclined to keep alive the
unhappy dissensions that tear asunder our National Church, but he is
also what is called a Christian Socialist of the most advanced type, one
who by his misreading of the Gospel spreads the unwholesome and perilous
doctrine that all men are equal. This is not the time nor the place to
break a controversial lance with Dr. Oliphant. We shall content
ourselves with registering a solemn protest against the unparagoned
cynicism of a Conservative government which thus gambles not merely with
its own security, but what is far more unpardonable with the security of
the Nation and the welfare of the State."
The subject of this ponderous censure received Mark in the same room
where two and a half years ago the late Bishop had decided that the
Third Altar in St. Agnes' Church was an intolerable excrescence.
Nowadays the room was less imposing, not more imposing indeed than the
room of a scholarly priest who had been able to collect a few books and
buy such pieces of ancient furniture as consorted with his severe taste.
Dr. Oliphant himself, a tall spare man, seeming the taller and more
spare in his worn purple cassock, with clean-shaven hawk's face and
black bushy eyebrows most conspicuous on account of his grey hair, stood
before the empty summer grate, his long lean neck out-thrust, his arms
crossed behind his back, like a gigantic and emaciated shadow of
Napoleon. Mark felt no embarrassment in genuflecting to salute him; the
action was spontaneous and was not dictated by any ritualistic
indulgence. Dr. Oliphant, as he might have guessed from the anger with
which his appointment had been received, was in outward semblance all
that a prelate should be.
"Why do you want to be a priest?" the Bishop asked him abruptly.
"To administer the Sacraments," Mark replied without hesitation.
The Bishop's head and neck wagged up and down in grave approbation.
"Mr. Rowley, as no doubt he has told you, wrote to me about you. And so
you've been with the Order of St. George lately? Is it any good?"
Mark was at a loss what to reply to this. His impulse was to say firmly
and frankly that it was no good; but after not far short of two years at
Malford it would be ungrateful and disloyal to criticize the Order,
particularly to the Bishop of the diocese.
"I don't think it is much good yet," Mark said. He felt that he simply
could not praise the Order without qualification. "But I expect that
when they've learnt how to combine the contemplative with the active
side of their religious life they will be splendid. At least, I hope
they will."
"What's wrong at present?"
"I don't know that anything's exactly wrong."
Mark paused; but the Bishop was evidently waiting for him to continue,
and feeling that this was perhaps the best way to present his own point
of view about the life he had chosen for himself he plunged into an
account of life at Malford.
"Capital," said the Bishop when the narrative was done. "You have given
me a very clear picture of the present state of the Order and
incidentally a fairly clear picture of yourself. Well, I'm going to
recommend you to Canon Havelock, the Principal of the Theological
College here, and if he reports well of you and you can pass the
Cambridge Preliminary Theological Examination, I will ordain you at
Advent next year, or at any rate, if not in Advent, at Whitsuntide."
"But isn't Silchester Theological College only for graduates?" Mark
asked.
"Yes, but I'm going to suggest that Canon Havelock stretches a point in
your favour. I can, if you like, write to the Glastonbury people, but in
that case you would be out of my diocese where you have spent so much of
your time and where I have no doubt you will easily find a beneficed
priest to give you a title. Moreover, in the case of a young man like
yourself who has been brought up from infancy upon Catholic teaching, I
think it is advisable to give you an opportunity of mixing with the
moderate man who wishes to take Holy Orders. You can lose nothing by
such an association, and it may well happen that you will gain a great
deal. Silchester Theological College is eminently moderate. The
lecturers are men of real learning, and the Principal is a man whom it
would be impertinent for me to praise for his devout and Christian
life."
"I hardly know how to thank you, my lord," said Mark.
"Do you not, my son?" said the Bishop with a smile. Then his head and
neck wagged up and down. "Thank me by the life you lead as a priest."
"I will try, my lord," Mark promised.
"Of that I am sure. By the way, didn't you come across a priest at St.
Agnes' Mission House called Mousley?"
"Oh rather, I remember him well."
"You'll be glad to hear that he has never relapsed since I sent him to
Rowley. In fact only last week I had the satisfaction of recommending
him to a friend of mine who had a living in his gift."
Mark spent the three months before he went to Silchester at the Rectory
where he worked hard at Latin and Greek and the history of the Church.
At the end of August he entered Silchester Theological College.