EMBER DAYS
Mark, having been notified that he had been successful in passing the
Bishop's examination for Deacons, was summoned to High Thorpe on
Thursday. He travelled down with the other candidates from Silchester on
an iron-grey afternoon that threatened snow from the louring North, and
in the atmosphere of High Thorpe under the rule of Dr. Oliphant he found
more of the spirit of preparation than he would have been likely to find
in any other diocese at this date. So many of the preliminaries to
Ordination had consisted of filling up forms, signing documents, and
answering the questions of the Examining Chaplain that Mark, when he was
now verily on the threshold of his new life, reproached himself with
having allowed incidental details and petty arrangements to make him for
a while oblivious of the overwhelming fact of his having been accepted
for the service of God. Luckily at High Thorpe he was granted a day to
confront his soul before being harassed again on Ember Saturday with
further legal formalities and signing of documents. He was able to spend
the whole of Ember Friday in prayer and meditation, in beseeching God to
grant him grace to serve Him worthily, strength to fulfil his vows, and
that great _donum perseverantiæ_ to endure faithful unto death.
"Not everyone that saith unto me, Lord, Lord," Mark remembered in the
damasked twilight of the Bishop's Chapel, where he was kneeling. "Let me
keep those words in my heart. Not everyone," he repeated aloud. Then
perversely as always come volatile and impertinent thoughts when the
mind is concentrated on lofty aspirations Mark began to wonder if he had
quoted the text correctly. He began to be almost sure that he had not,
and on that to torment his brain in trying to recall what was the exact
wording of the text he desired to impress upon his heart. "Not everyone
that saith unto me, Lord, Lord," he repeated once more aloud.
At that moment the tall figure of the Bishop passed by.
"Do you want me, my son?" he asked kindly.
"I should like to make my confession, reverend father in God," said
Mark.
The Bishop beckoned him into the little sacristy, and putting on rochet
and purple stole he sat down to hear his penitent.
Mark had few sins of which to accuse himself since he last went to his
duties a month ago. However, he did have upon his conscience what he
felt was a breach of the Third Commandment in that he had allowed
himself to obscure the mighty fact of his approaching ordination by
attaching too much importance to and fussing too much about the
preliminary formalities.
The Bishop did not seem to think that Mark's soul was in grave peril on
that account, and he took the opportunity to warn Mark against an
over-scrupulousness that might lead him in his confidence to allow sin
to enter into his soul by some unguarded portal which he supposed firmly
and for ever secure.
"That is always the danger of a temperament like yours?" he mused. "By
all means keep your eyes on the high ground ahead of you; but do not
forget that the more intently you look up, the more liable you are to
slip on some unnoticed slippery stone in your path. If you abandoned
yourself to the formalities that are a necessary preliminary to
Ordination, you did wisely. Our Blessed Lord usually gave practical
advice, and some of His miracles like the turning of water into wine at
Cana were reproofs to carelessness in matters of detail. It was only
when people worshipped utility unduly that He went to the other extreme
as in His rebuke to Judas over the cruse of ointment."
The Bishop raised his head and gave Mark absolution. When they came out
of the sacristy he invited him to come up to his library and have a
talk.
"I'm glad that you are going to Galton," he said, wagging his long neck
over a crumpet. "I think you'll find your experience in such a parish
extraordinarily useful at the beginning of your career. So many young
men have an idea that the only way to serve God is to go immediately to
a slum. You'll be much more discouraged at Galton than you can imagine.
You'll learn there more of the difficulties of a clergyman's life in a
year than you could learn in London in a lifetime. Rowley, as no doubt
you've heard, has just accepted a slum parish in Shoreditch. Well, he
wrote to me the other day and suggested that you should go to him. But I
dissented. You'll have an opportunity at Galton to rely upon yourself.
You'll begin in the ruck. You'll be one of many who struggle year in
year out with an ordinary parish. There won't be any paragraphs about
St. Luke's in the Church papers. There won't be any enthusiastic
pilgrims. There'll be nothing but the thought of our Blessed Lord to
keep you struggling on, only that, only our Blessed Lord Jesus Christ."
The Bishop's head wagged slowly to and fro in the silence that succeeded
his words, and Mark pondering them in that silence felt no longer that
he was saying "Lord, Lord," but that he had been called to follow and
that he was ready without hesitation to follow Him whithersoever He
should lead.
The quiet Ember Friday came to an end, and on the Saturday there were
more formalities, of which Mark dreaded most the taking of the oath
before the Registrar. He had managed with the help of subtle High Church
divines to persuade himself that he could swear he assented to the
Thirty-nine Articles without perjury. Nevertheless he wished that he was
not bound to take that oath, and he was glad that the sense in which the
Thirty-nine Articles were to be accepted was left to the discretion of
him who took the oath. Of one thing Mark was positive. He was assuredly
not assenting to those Thirty-nine Articles that their compilers
intended when they framed them. However, when it came to it, Mark
affirmed:
"I, Mark Lidderdale, about to be admitted to the Holy Order of Deacons,
do solemnly make the following declaration:--I assent to the Thirty-nine
Articles of Religion, and to the Book of Common Prayer, and the
ordering of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons. I believe the doctrine of the
Church of England, as therein set forth, to be agreeable to the Word of
God; and in Public Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments I will
use the Form in the said Book prescribed, and none other, except so far
as shall be ordered by lawful authority.
"I, Mark Lidderdale, about to be admitted to the Holy Order of Deacons,
do swear that I will be faithful and bear true Allegiance to His Majesty
King Edward, his heirs and successors according to law.
"So help me God."
"But the strange thing is," Mark said to one of his fellow candidates,
"nobody asks us to take the oath of allegiance to God."
"We do that when we're baptized," said the other, a serious young man
who feared that Mark was being flippant.
"Personally," Mark concluded, "I think the solemn profession of a monk
speaks more directly to the soul."
And this was the feeling that Mark had throughout the Ordination of the
Deacons notwithstanding that the Bishop of Silchester in cope and mitre
was an awe-inspiring figure in his own Chapel. But when Mark heard him
say:
_Receive the Holy Ghost for the office and work of a Priest in the
Church of God_,
he was caught up to the Seventh Heaven and prayed that, when a year
hence he should be kneeling thus to hear those words uttered to him and
to feel upon his head those hands imposed, he should receive the Holy
Ghost more worthily than lately he had received authority to execute the
office of a Deacon in the Church of God.
Suddenly at the back of the chapel Mark caught sight of Miriam, who must
have travelled down from Oxfordshire last night to be present at his
Ordination. His mind went back to that Whit-Sunday in Meade Cantorum
nearly ten years ago. Miriam's plume of grey hair was no longer visible,
for all her hair was grey nowadays; but her face had scarcely altered,
and she sat there at this moment with that same expression of austere
sweetness which had been shed like a benison upon Mark's dreary boyhood.
How dear of Miriam to grace his Ordination, and if only Esther too could
have been with him! He knelt down to thank God humbly for His mercies,
and of those mercies not least for the Ogilvies' influence upon his
life.
Mark could not find Miriam when they came out from the chapel. She must
have hurried away to catch some slow Sunday train that would get her
back to Wych-on-the-Wold to-night. She could not have known that he had
seen her, and when he arrived at the Rectory to-morrow as glossy as a
beetle in his new clerical attire, Miriam would listen to his account of
the Ordination, and only when he had finished would she murmur how she
had been present all the time.
And now there was still the oath of canonical obedience to take before
lunch; but luckily that was short. Mark was hungry, since unlike most of
the candidates he had not eaten an enormous breakfast that morning.
Snow was falling outside when the young priests and deacons in their new
frock coats sat down to lunch; and when they put on their sleek silk
hats and hurried away to catch the afternoon train back to Silchester,
it was still falling.
"Even nature is putting on a surplice in our honour," Mark laughed to
one of his companions, who not feeling quite sure whether Mark was being
poetical or profane, decided that he was being flippant, and looked
suitably grieved.
It was dusk of that short winter day when Mark reached Silchester, and
wandered back in a dream toward Vicar's Walk. Usually on Sunday evenings
the streets of the city pattered with numerous footsteps; but to-night
the snow deadened every sound, and the peace of God had gone out from
the Cathedral to shed itself upon the city.
"It will be Christmas Day in a week," Mark thought, listening to the
Sabbath bells muffled by the soft snow-laden air. For the first time it
occurred to him that he should probably have to preach next Sunday
evening.
_And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us._
That should be his text, Mark decided; and, passing from the snowy
streets, he sat thinking in the golden glooms of the Cathedral about his
sermon.
EXPLICIT PRÆLUDIUM