I
When I give him this title, I am perfectly aware that his right to
it was at the best very doubtful, and that the Romans at St. Francis
Xavier's laughed openly at his conceit; but he was always greatly
encouraged by any one calling him “Father”; and now that he is gone
I, for one, who knew both his little eccentricities and his hard
sacrifices, will not throw stones at his grave--plenty were thrown at
himself in his lifetime--nor shall I wound his memory by calling him
Mr. Jinks. My opinion, as a layman, unattached and perhaps not even
intelligent, is of very small account, but it is that of many other
laymen; and to us it is of no importance what the servant of the Master
is called, whether, like my dear old friend Father Pat Reilly, who has
brought back more prodigals from the far country and rescued more waifs
from the streets than any man I can hear of, or after the fashion of
that worthy man, Pastor John Jump, as he delights to describe himself,
who attends to business all the week--something in tinned meats, I
think--and on Sunday preaches to a congregation of “baptized believers”
with much force and earnestness, also without money or price. Both
the Father and the Pastor had some doubts about my salvation--the one
because I was not a member of the Anglican Communion, and the other
because I was not a “strait Baptist”; but I never had any doubt about
theirs--much less indeed than they had of one another's--and of the two
I liked... but no, there is no use of comparisons, especially as the
Pastor, as well as the Father, has gone to the land where, doubtless,
many surprises are waiting for us all.
Nor does it seem of grave concern to some of us--but here again we may
only be displaying our own ignorance of ecclesiastical subtleties--how a
minister of religion is set apart to his office, if so be that he is
an educated man and does the work put to his hand faithfully. Jinks was
priested--I think that was what he called it, but he is not responsible
for my mistakes--in a cathedral by a Right Rev. Father in God, and he
used often to insist that only through such a channel could the grace of
Orders come; but when the successor of the apostles advised Jinks in
a most kindly, fatherly spirit to cease from some of his amiable
extravagances--he had added a bran-new chasuble to his other bravery,
which greatly pleased his female devotees--“the dear Father do look so
pretty in his new chalice,” one of his admirers said--Jinks repaid the
Episcopal counsel with thinly-veiled scorn, and preached a sermon which
ran to the unwonted length of twenty minutes to show that the bishop
was himself a law-breaker and little better than a Protestant My friend
Carmichael, again, was ordained in the little Free Kirk of Drumtochty by
the Presbytery of Muirtown,--that heavy body of Church Law and Divinity,
Dr. Dowbiggin, being Moderator,--and I cannot recollect Carmichael once
referring to his Orders but he regarded his spiritual superiors with
profound respect, and was very much relieved when his heresy case was
dismissed--knowing very well that if they took it into their heads he
would be turned out of his Church without delay and deposed from the
ministry beyond human remedy. Carmichael was in the custom of denouncing
priestcraft, and explaining that he had no claim to be a priest; but
he administered a ghostly discipline so minute and elaborate, with sins
which could be loosed by him, and reserved sins which could only be
loosed by a higher authority, that the Father would have regarded it
with envy. And Carmichael exercised an unquestioned authority among the
hard-headed and strong-willed people of Drumtochty which Jinks would
have cheerfully given ten years of his life to possess in the parish of
St Agatha's. Between the two there was this difference, that the vicar
of St Agatha's had the form of authority without the power, and the
minister of Drumtochty had the power of authority without the form; and,
as no man could be personally more humble or in heart more sincere than
Jinks, this was the weary pity of the situation for my little Father.
Had St. Agatha's been in the West End, where his ritualism would have
been accepted with graceful enthusiasm because it was fashionable--which
would, however, have caused him much searching of heart: or in the East
End, where it would have been condoned with a wink on account of his
almsgiving, which would have wounded him deeply--Father Jinks had not
been a subject of mockery and reproach. As it was Providence had
dealt severely with the good man in sending him to the obdurate and
stiff-necked parish of St Agatha's, where the people were anything but
open soil for his teaching. The houses ranged from twenty pounds of
rent up to forty, and were inhabited by foremen artisans, clerks,
shopkeepers, single women letting lodgings, and a few people retired on
a modest competence. The district had not one rich man, although it was
wonderful what some of the shopkeepers gave to special efforts at
their chapels, nor any person in the remotest contact with society, but
neither were there any evil livers or wastrels. Every one worked hard,
lived frugally--with a special Sunday dinner--paid his taxes promptly,
as well as his other debts, and lived on fairly good terms with his
neighbours. The parish had certainly no enthusiasms, and would not
have known what an ideal was, but it had a considerable stock of common
sense, and most people possessed a traditional creed which they were
prepared to defend with much obstinacy. St. Agatha's parish was a very
home of Philistinism, and, as everybody knows, the Philistines have
always had an instinctive dislike to Catholic usages and teachings.