Chapter IX: Appendix: 241 (8)

“You didn’t come to see me before you went, and my heart was
too full to come and see you. I have not been to Church yet,
for I have been very poorly, for this job have pretty nigh
broke me up altogether, after sitting under you for ten years,
and never have been inside another church nor chapel since,
and I hope the Bishop won’t close his eyes to go to sleep till
he sends you back again, for I can’t sleep, and I don’t see
for why he should, but, please God, I shall go up to Church in
the week, and go to receive my Communion on Sunday the same as
usual, but I don’t know how I shall feel not to see you there,
nor Miss Dolling, nor nobody. You are gone, but you will never
be forgotten by me. Give my love to Miss Dolling and Miss Blair
and Miss Geraldine and Miss Rowan, and if we do not meet in this
world, I hope we shall in the next, where there won’t be no
sorrow.

“Yours affectionately.”

The Bishop referred to is the Bishop of Winchester.

“Dear rev. farther, the new priest that come is so nice he do
ofer up some beautful prayers and speaks so nice to us all but
ther will never be on that will be nearest our hearts as you
dear farther. O I bless the day I ented St. Agathas that wer I
was first converted and O how your prayers have reached my heart
I have cried may a time over them I have blessed you and I praye
for you and your dear sisters for they was always good and kind
to me a unworthy sinner but my dear Jesus will bless you all for
what you have done for me for he knowed I was one of his lost
sheep that was lost. O my dear Jesus good to me a sinner to take
me back to his foild. I often think of the text the Bishop gave
us. Yea I have loved thee with an everlasting love therefore
with loveing kindness have I drawn thee and it is quite true for
my dear Jesus how gently have he drawn me when I have been in
any trouble I have heard words in my ear ask the Savour to healp
you and he will carry you though, I never mean to neglect my
dear Savour any more I will allways bless him not only with my
lips but with all my live. so no more till I have the pleasure
of writing to you again.

from your most humble servant.”

The Bishop referred to is the Bishop of Guildford, who confirmed her.

“DEAR FATHER

“According to your request I am sending a few words, they will
be but few. I have not been to Church since Thursday Evening
until the 11 celebration this morning. It will, I know, greatly
please you to hear that the Church was quite full, mostly our
own people, and it was a very nice service, ‘Alike, but, oh, how
different.’ How my heart ached to see another priest in your
place, my heart and eyes were full, but I remembered that we had
to trust, wait patiently for the answer to the loving prayer
that was going up to God from every heart of your people, and,
oh, we do hope and pray that the time will soon come when we
shall have you all back again with us. We cannot let you stay
away from St. Agatha’s. Our best love and respects to you and
all the dear ladies. Trusting, dear Father, you will remember us
in all your prayers, I remain in all truth and loyalty,

“Your deeply grieving child in God.”

“DEAR MR. DOLLING,

“It seems like a dream to-day, more than ever, to be at St.
Agatha’s, without our good Father Dolling and other dear faces,
yet the fact remains but too true, and yet not without you in
the truest sense, for we met together in the Spirit this morning
in the blessed Sacrament, and may our united prayers ascend
to Almighty God to support you and yours and the whole of St.
Agatha’s in this our fiery trial and affliction, and that we
may come forth purged and glorified, and win the victory by His
dear mercy. Hoping yours and dear one’s health may be good, even
after the difficult task of leave taking. We have already made
the acquaintance of Mr. Bull, he is a very nice man indeed, he
preached a very appropriate sermon this morning from 1 Cor.
iii. 13. I think we had a good number of communicants this
morning at 7 o’clock, we were about 20 or 30, and, I believe,
many more at 8. This evening, instead of the Mission Service,
all the communicants who can will meet Mr. Bull in Church for
further acquaintance. Now, with earnest hope of seeing you back
at Portsmouth again very soon in good health, and with prayers
for your own and dear St. Agatha’s welfare,

“Believe me yours very sincerely.”

“DEAR MR. DOLLING,

“It is not an easy thing to be off with the old love before you
are on with the new. The new clergy are here, and they appear
to be very earnest priests. Of course, one cannot judge how
things will go along yet, but I hope for the best. God never has
deserted St. Agatha’s, and never will. Knowing you will have a
great number of letters to read, I will not bore you with a long
one.

“Yours very truly.”

There was hardly a word of complaint out of four hundred letters, because they knew it would vex me; but everyone testified to the heartiness and affection with which they had met the tact and kindness and sympathy of Fr. Bull. Perhaps I ought not to write all this, but I feel so proud of them, so thankful to God for them. You will forgive me inserting a letter which Fr. Bull wrote me after he left.

“RADLEY VICARAGE, ABINGDON.

“DEAR FATHER DOLLING,

“I cannot leave the work at S. Agatha’s without writing to tell
you how deeply impressed I am by all that I have seen during
my six weeks’ charge. I came to the work with many misgivings,
expecting to find your people made sore and irritable by all
the troubles which brought your ministry at S. Agatha’s to a
close. But nothing could have been more beautiful than the
patience with which they bore their sorrow, and the loyalty and
courage with which they carried on the work of the parish.

“The points which made the profoundest impression on me were, I
think, these:

“1. First, the true depth and reality of their love for our dear
Redeemer. I dare not try to describe the manifestation of so
sacred a feeling, but it is enough to say that it made itself
felt in every detail of work and worship, sanctifying what is
sometimes looked upon as secular, inspiring every movement of
ritual, and filling the outward forms of religion with a real
outpouring of the heart.

“2. Then the very healthy type of devotion. It was ‘Jesus only’
in every variety of service; no wandering from the narrow way of
true devotion into the sentimental bye-paths of ‘fancy’ religion.

“3. Real faith in the power of prayer. People at S. Agatha’s had
thoroughly realised that prayer has a great influence on the
course of events, and they prayed with a readiness and fervour
unknown in those places where the spirit of prayer has been
strangled by _the exclusive_ use of unvarying forms. I am
sure that your people learned to pray so well, chiefly in the
training of those services supplementary to matins and evensong.

“4. The combination of discipline and independence. This was
most striking. Men of strong will and very decided character
worked together in perfect harmony, and carried on the work of
the parish with strength and vigour, because they recognised the
difference between liberty and licence and the duty of loyalty.
I found the parish practically self-working.

“5. The happy relationship between priest and people. The people
look on their priest as a father and a friend, and not merely
as a relieving officer to the parish. The account of your life
and work among them, which, I believe, you are preparing, will
explain how this was accomplished. But it will be a joy to you
to know that the lessons you taught are not forgotten, and that
your people readily extend the same confidence and love to any
priest who brings them the same faith and sacraments. This is
only one of many signs which show that you won these souls to
Christ, and not merely to yourself.

“6. I cannot conclude without bearing witness to a fact which
forces itself constantly on the attention of anyone who has seen
the inside of your work; namely, that your faithful teaching of
the doctrine of the Church about the future life, and our duty
to those who have been taken from us for a time, is undoubtedly
the secret of your work at S. Agatha’s. To quote only one of
many pathetic letters I received, one man writes thus: ‘Prayers
for and with our dear ones in paradise is the only thing that
has made life tolerable to me for the last twenty-six years.’
I felt all the time that I only saw a part of that dear family
which you have gathered together round their Father’s table, and
that by far the larger part of those who shared in our prayers
and Sacrifice were wanderers over sea and land in foreign
countries, or souls at rest in paradise.

“Forgive me if anything I have said may seem to be patronising.
You know my only wish is to bear witness to the depth and
soundness of your work, which has been so much misunderstood and
misrepresented. I will not dwell on the kind way in which you
did your best to make my work easy for me, nor on the wonderful
love and patience with which your people welcomed me; it was as
overwhelming as it was undeserved.

“I am, yours very faithfully,
“PAUL B. BULL.”

Many younger clergy and people from a distance wounded by the Bishop’s action in insisting on a change in our services which had been in use for eight years, wrote to me about going to Rome, but no such word was even whispered in S. Agatha’s. And this was not to be wondered at; for neither from me, nor from my curates, nor from my helpers, had they ever learned anything distinctly Roman, unless reservation of the Blessed Sacrament can be so called. We tried to make our religion manly, natural, dignified, and yet, in the truest sense, homely. Every word from the altar was spoken plainly, so that everyone could hear it. There were no concealments from the Bishop or anyone else. If there had been, I should be there still.

Our one object was to translate into the new church all that there had been in the old. My first idea of the new church was that it should be built as plainly as possible. I, who had suffered so much from begging, deemed it wrong to add any further burden to myself. Besides, I felt I had already over-exhausted the generosity of my many friends. But then, God sent Mr. Ball, the architect; and directly I talked to him I saw how wrong this intention had been. If there is one place which needs a magnificent and impressive church, it is a slum. He had made a study of the church architecture which I liked best, and which I had learned to know in Northern Italy. Directly you enter the new S. Agatha’s you realise it is a temple of God--of God Eternal, of God Almighty; and, as it stands now, it has satisfied all my desires. Every act done at the altar can be seen through the whole church; every word spoken there, or from the pulpit, can be heard. There is no use my trying to describe it; I do not think even Mr. Ruskin ever made us understand what a building is like. I think one of the reasons why the people at once felt at home in it was because they had been working for it so long. For two years Miss Wright had been directing a number of ladies in getting the vestments complete. It is almost impossible for me to say what S. Agatha’s owes to Miss Wright. Then the people themselves had bought a chalice and paten, a set of Stations which cost £140, all of the cassocks; indeed, they had contributed over £330, all collected in small sums during the last three years. Winchester had done some special work for us, too. A little boy in Mr. Smith’s house, who died some years ago, gave us our oak lectern, which cost £75. College, past and present, clothed with alabaster one of the pillars of the sanctuary. Three houses gave me nearly £60 for the oak panelling, on which the names from the old church are translated into the new. The great central pillar was clothed in alabaster and marble, and its capital carved in memory of one of my dear lads--a middy--who died of scarlet fever on board ship, and who had made his first Communion in old S. Agatha’s. One of the granite pillars was paid for, and its capital carved in memory of a brother and sister very dear to me, who died within a year of one another. There is still a debt of £230 on the ornamentation of the church, part of it due to Messrs. Powell, who did the beautiful mosaic work in the Lady apse, and whom I am most anxious to pay off. It is wonderful how the magnificence of this mosaic work harmonises with the simplicity and beauty of Mr. Summer’s sgraffitto work. It was a great gift of God to discover an artist who does not only superintend, but actually, with his own hands, religiously perfects his work. I felt, as I took my last look at the church, that it was impossible for me to express in words what I felt I owe, and what Landport and Winchester people owe, to Mr. Ball and Mr. Light--a debt which we can never repay. But there is a debt which we can pay--£100 to Mr. Ball, £1400 to Mr. Light, and £350 to the Bank, which they have advanced to me on Mr. Light’s account.

My own pressing need of discharging these debts, perhaps, has made me forget one special benefit of a church like ours. It practically admits of continuous ornamentation. We have built but the roughest of brick walls. And I feel that this is of infinite importance, that each generation should be able to say, “my” church. That hideous desire to get things finished is the secret of the shoddy, ugly churches which disfigure Christianity, and having to pay nothing for them is one of the greatest wrongs that can be done to a congregation. These great wall-spaces of Italian architecture are designed for the very purpose of being the ignorant man’s Bible, and the poor man’s opportunity of offering his mite to God; and I have no doubt that S. Agatha’s people will, by degrees, create it, what Mr. Ruskin says S. Mark’s is to the Venetians--“an open Bible,” which even the most unlearned and ignorant may easily read.

XVI.

=A Plea for Toleration.=

My work in Landport is finished. I hand over to the Bishop of Winchester all necessary plant for the future of S. Agatha’s--Church, Schools, Mission House, Parsonage, Gymnasium, Clubs, Almshouses--which the generosity of Wykehamists and my own friends has enabled me to build for the Church of England. I hand him over a parish with a communicants’ roll of 441, so united that for ten years there has never been a difference amongst us, so full of zeal for Holy Religion that they have created admiration and wonder in the heart of that most experienced missioner Father Maturin, and who welcomed, without one single murmur, Father Bull, who took my place, when the Bishop’s demand for alteration in the services caused me to resign. Into the Bishop’s hands, and the hands of my successor appointed by Winchester College, I place this great trust to which God appointed me ten and a half years ago, and I pray God that they may be able to administer it with greater zeal, self-denial, and success than I have been able.

I have taken it for granted that this book will generally be read by those who know S. Agatha’s, and therefore I have frequently spoken about persons and things without any introduction, knowing that these readers would know what I meant; but for the sake of others who do not know me or the work, I should like to make a few explanations. In the first place “I” always stands for “we,” and “my” always stands for “ours”; for I have had round me a body of the most devoted helpers that parish priest ever had, not only my own sisters and the ladies who lived with them, my fellow-clergy, and the laymen who lived with me, but the day-school and Sunday-school teachers, the district visitors, all who served in the church, either on the altar or in the choir, my own personal clerks, the servants in my own and Miss Dolling’s house, our shopwoman, and many more too numerous to mention. Every parochial plan was well discussed by those who had to administer it; objections were stated, differences were heard, but when once we had arrived at what was deemed to be the right course, one mouth spoke the judgment--one brain, one hand, executed it. There was no degradation of service, there was no unstinted labour, there was no demand on heart and enthusiasm that I have ever asked and been refused by one of my workers. I could almost dare to use some of S. Paul’s expressions with regard to the unselfish loyalty with which I have been supported; and I know the parish felt that, whether it was they or I; so we preached, and so they believed. Might I give two instances?

As I have said before, I am an unlearned man, unable to pass even my “little go” at Cambridge. When Charles Osborne came to me, I had no knowledge of exact theology at all, except what I had been able to scrape together during one year at Salisbury Theological College, where the Rev. E. B. Ottley was particularly kind and patient with me. But Osborne devoted an hour a day all the time he was with me to talking theology with me. There is no method of learning so easy as the conversational method, especially such conversation as his, and when the opportunity came to me to occupy London pulpits, he prepared the notes of many of my sermons, and looked up the references; and ever since he left me, though he now has work almost as time-exhausting as my own, he has never failed to send me at Lent, and at other times when I needed them, courses of sermons. I have often felt little better than a humbug, delivering sermons which are the fruit of his brain. And when I left Portsmouth, my then secretary followed me to London, and has remained with me, so as to prevent the compositors who set up this book committing suicide, or the world being scandalised with my bad spelling. These are but two little instances of countless acts of love and devotion which it has been our extraordinary privilege for the last ten years to enjoy; and when you hear of trades’ unions of curates and vicars, and of disloyalty on the one side, and humiliations on the other, I should like you to realise that our work was successful because, though I was the apparent doer of it, I merely represented a community bound together by the tenderest ties of mutual service. People take a very exaggerated view of mission work. It is not only the pleasantest and most rewarding, but it is really the easiest done. Preaching about a great deal, and giving retreats and missions, enables one to judge, I think, pretty fairly of the difficulties of other clergymen’s work, and I am quite sure that I am speaking only the literal truth when I say that I have never been in any parish where the work was as easy as in my own. Of course, we added to ourselves many things that were not strictly parochial; and if these had not been begun, and we had merely stuck to working amongst our own people, this truth would have been even more apparent. Faith in humanity is the foundation of all mission work, very easy to be attained in a slum where, every single day, some soul reveals to you progress; very difficult to attain in a parish where your church is well filled by a respectable congregation. Then a greater elasticity of method is allowed, and it was just the attempt to check this that never could have occurred if Bishop Thorold had lived. And yet I think that if reasonable people, unprejudiced and unbiassed, would consider the Prayer Book, and the methods by which it has been interpreted for the last fifty years, they would be less anxious to desire to curtail this greater liberty of method.

At best surely the Prayer Book is a compromise, for which, indeed, we may be most grateful to Almighty God, when we consider the character of those who constructed it, and the Court pressure under which many of them were continually coerced. But surely a compromise, fond as we are of them in England, is never a lasting arrangement. Fifty years ago people might conscientiously call our Liturgy incomparable, because, as a witty Irishman said, they had no others to compare it with. But now, when the inexhaustible treasures of both East and West have been rediscovered by us, and when those Catholic doctrines, long hidden away in the hearts of a few learned clerics, were, by the Oxford movement, scattered broadcast over England, the method by which those doctrines alone could be understanded of the people, was by interpreting the Prayer Book according to Catholic ceremonial, and the progress which has been made in this interpretation is a fact that we, who see its effects, can hardly appreciate. Is it not true to say that fifty years ago almost every single Bishop on the English bench would have proclaimed the priest a traitor, and endeavoured to deprive him, for doctrines that are taught, and for ceremonies which are performed, in twenty-five per cent. of the churches in their dioceses to-day? Remember, the things which have been condemned in S. Agatha’s are done in a large number of churches in England. Earnest souls everywhere are crying out for Masses to be said for their dear dead. There is no service in the Prayer Book appointed for this purpose. But the Catholic priest who understands and appreciates the piety of this desire, who believes himself that he has this treasure committed to him by God, will not surely be deemed disloyal to the Church of England if he ventures to use either the service in the Prayer Book of Edward VI., which our own Prayer Book declares “doth not contain anything contrary to the Word of God, or to sound doctrine,” or chooses from some ancient source a like office. It seems to me that this is a far more honest practice than to use in a forced sense the Commendatory Prayer from the Visitation of the Sick, the first prayer in the Burial Service, or the first Good Friday collect, the use which my successor has adopted in deference, I suppose, to the Bishop’s wish. I know his great integrity of purpose, and his utter honesty of mind, and, therefore, I am sure that he considers his method a more honest one than mine. But the chief thing which commended S. Agatha’s to Bishop Thorold, to my numerous supporters, and to my poor people, was the plainness of speech and calling things by their names, which oftentimes superficial gazers may deem unwise, but which I have ever found to pay in the long run. But if it might be said that putting in a new prayer is disloyal, no one can say that leaving out a prayer, or disregarding a rubric is disloyal. I do not suppose that there is any church in England where every prayer is said, and every rubric obeyed; nay, the service would be intolerable, impossible, if it were so. People have, however, a convenient way of saying, “This rubric is obsolete; that prayer may be lawfully left out, that exhortation never read.” Who is the best judge of that? The parish priest who has laboured ten years amongst his people, and knows every one of them, and the Bishop who has visited, loved, and blessed that work for four years, or the Bishop who has been in the diocese for three weeks? Two rubrics stand side by side in the Book of Common Prayer. One of them as to having notice given of Communion I obeyed, the other as to the number of communicants I disobeyed. Ninety-nine clergy out of a hundred disobey the one I obeyed, eighty obey the one that I disobeyed. Let me illustrate, by my successor’s action, the enormous difficulty of obeying both. He says, You must give notice if you are coming to the Holy Communion, and he has told the people that, unless notice is given so that he may know that there will be communicants, the Children’s Mass at 10, and the High Mass at 11, must be given up. The notice is to be given in on Saturday night. If two communicants give notice, or one, or none, what would his action be? Would he wait till people came to church and tell them that there would be a different kind of service, and thus prevent many of his faithful from being present at a Celebration, which many of them believe to be a Christian obligation, or would he get certain people to promise, three for 10, and three for 11 each Sunday?--a strain on their loyalty that I, whom they loved and knew, would never have dared to demand, for the working woman with children an utter impossibility, for the District Visitor from Southsea a walk of a mile and a half there and back, entailing most likely an illness and a breakdown, for the working man living with all his children round him, breakfast a common meal shared by all on Sunday--I am not talking of the irreligious man who eats his breakfast, and lies in bed till one or two p.m.--the binding upon him of a burden, which we ourselves, who are often forced to say late Masses, can hardly sustain. This line of thought applies just as well to the daily Masses in a place in which it was utterly impossible, with all my workers round me, to manufacture six communicants every day.

I have ventured to go into this question again at length, because I am anxious that the public should understand it. If the Bishops are going to make an attack all round on beneficed as well as unbeneficed clergy, on High, Low, and Broad equally, then I and my people would have no right to complain. But I doubt very much whether the Church of England could stand the strain of such an attack. If such an attack is to be made it must be uniform, and not according to the individual mind of the Bishop; Bishop Perowne might succeed Bishop King, Bishop Ryle might succeed Bishop Temple. And surely this danger ought to be realised before fresh power is put into the Bishops’ hands, such power as is proposed in the recent Patronage Act, which would have meant in my case that if I had been presented to a living, either in the diocese of Durham or of Worcester, I should not only have been refused by the Bishop, but--as I read the Act--my patron would have lost his nomination, and the prelate would have appointed his own nominee. Far more dangerous would it be, as a recent bill in Convocation proposed, to allow the Bishop to be sole judge of what rubrics are obsolete, and what must of necessity be observed.

We are told that these are days when every Church Society is being starved, when the Bishops can neither get money nor men for their great overgrown dioceses, and therefore that the masses are in a large extent lost to the Church of England. Here is a place where over £50,000 has been spent in ten years, only £760 of it coming from a Diocesan Fund. Here is a place where three clergy, and many earnest laymen and women, have been working at no cost to the official resources of the Church at all. Here is a place where large numbers of the poorest and most ignorant have been instructed in the saving truths of Holy Religion. Here is a place which the late Bishop of the diocese fostered with truest tenderness and care. I do not venture to ask the question which I was going to ask, but I leave it to the judgment of my readers to answer the question themselves. I know that one answer is conceivable. “No work, no labour, no success is any excuse, when disobedience to the Prayer Book is practised alongside of it.” But does anyone pretend to believe that this is the consistent method of the Church of England; or, if it had been so for the last fifty years, would one spark of life have been left in her?

If this little book has interested you at all, I would earnestly ask you to help me to pay off my debt. During the last three months people have been very generous to me, and I have paid off £800. This leaves me still owing £2290. Many Winchester men are very anxious, I know, that the Wykehamist Committee should become responsible for this debt, and I shall be very grateful if they do, because that might enable me to raise from the bank the money that I require to pay the builders. But even if they make themselves responsible, I feel it to be my bounden duty to do all I can to get this money together, for all the time that they are collecting it, they will be able to give my successor very little for his Mission work. I know that in many things he excels me, but I know that I am a better beggar than he is. He will require every penny that he can possibly scrape together, and so I am most anxious to set all Wykehamical resources free, by paying off this sum as quickly as possible.

Many people write and ask me, What are you going to do yourself? The answer to that rests in other hands than mine. When this debt is paid, if the Church of England offers me work, and I believe that it is God’s intention that I should accept it, I will at once. In the meantime I am trying to learn a little lesson that one of my dearest children, a Jesuit priest, wrote down for me, “God allows you to build the fibre of your brain, the blood of your heart, into a temple for His glory, and then with one breath of His nostril o’erturns it, that He may see whether you will bear this also.”