"I can speak more freely of what your attitude should be towards Father Hungerford, the priest who is coming to take my place and who is going with God's help to do far more for you here than ever I have been able to do. I want you all to put yourselves in his place; I want you all to think of him to-night wondering, fearing, doubting, hoping, and praying. I want you to imagine how difficult he must be feeling the situation is for him. He will come here to-morrow conscious that there is nobody in this district of ours who does not feel, whether he be a communicant or not, that the Bishop had no right to intervene so soon and without greater knowledge of his new diocese in a district like ours. I cannot help knowing how much I myself am to blame in this particular; but, my dear people, it has been very hard for me during these last two weeks always to be brave and hopeful. Often I have found those entreaties on my doorstep almost more than I could endure to hear, those letters on my desk almost more than I could bear to read. So, if you want to do the one thing that can comfort me in this bitter hour of mine I entreat you to show Father Hungerford that your faith and your hope and your love do not depend on your affection for an unworthy priest, but upon that deeper, greater, nobler affection for the word of God. There is only one way in which you can show Father Hungerford that Jesus Christ lives in your hearts, and that is by going to Confession and to Communion and by hearing Mass as you have done all this time. Show him by your behaviour in the street, by your kindness and consideration at home, by your devotion and reverence in church, that you appreciate the mercies of God, that you appreciate what it means to have Jesus Christ upon your altar, that you are, in a word, Christians.
"And now at last I must think of those words of our dear Lord as they apply to myself: Feed my lambs. And as I repeat them, I ask myself again if I have done right, for I am troubled in spirit, and I wonder if I ought to have given up that third altar and to have remained here. But even as I wonder this, even as at this moment I stand in this pulpit for the last time, a voice within me forbids me to doubt. No, my clear folk, I cannot surrender that altar. I cannot come to you and say that what I have been teaching for ten years was of so little value, of so little importance, of so little worth, that for the sake of policy it can be abandoned with a stroke of the pen or a nod of the head. I stand here looking out into the future, hearing like angelic trumpets those three words sounding and resounding upon the great void of time: Feed my lambs! I ask myself what work lies before me, what lambs I shall have to feed elsewhere; I ask myself in my misery whether God has found me unworthy of the trust He gave me. I feel that if I leave St. Agnes' to-morrow with the thought that you still cherish angry and resentful feelings I shall sink to a lower depth of humiliation and depression than I have yet reached. But if I can leave St. Agnes' with the assurance that my work here will go steadily forward to the glory of God from the point at which I renounced it, I shall know that God must have some other purpose for the remainder of my life, some other mission to which He intends to call me. To you, my dear people, to you who have borne with me patiently, to you who have tolerated so sweetly my infirmities, to you who have been kind to my failings, to you who have taught me so much more of our dear Lord Jesus Christ than I have been able to teach you, to you I say good-bye. I cannot harrow your feelings or my own by saying any more. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen."
Notwithstanding these words, the first episcopal act of the Bishop of Silchester drove many poor souls away from God.
The effect upon Mark, had his religion been merely a pastime of adolescence, would have been disastrous. Owing to human nature's respect for the conspicuous there is nothing so demoralizing to faith as the failure of a leader of religion to set forth in his own actions the word of God. Mark, however, looked at the whole business more from an ecclesiastical angle. He had reason to condemn the Bishop for unchristian behaviour; but he preferred to condemn him for uncatholic behaviour. Dr. Cheesman and the many other Dr. Cheesmans of whom the Anglican episcopate was at this period composed never succeeded in shaking his belief in Christ; they did succeed in shaking for a short time his belief in the Church of England. There are few Anglo-Catholics, whether priests or laymen, who have never doubted the right of their Church to proclaim herself a branch of the Holy Catholic Church. This phase of doubt is indeed so common that in ecclesiastical circles it has come to be regarded as a kind of mental chicken-pox, not very alarming if it catches the patient when young, but growing more dangerous in proportion to the lateness of its attack. Mark had his attack young. When Father Rowley left Chatsea, he was anxious to accompany him on what he knew would be an exhausting time of travelling round to preach and collect the necessary money to pay off what was actually a personal debt. It seemed that there must be something fundamentally wrong with a Church that allowed a man to perambulate England in an endeavour to pay off the debt upon a building from ministrating in which he had been debarred. This debt, moreover, was presumably going to be paid by people who fully subscribed to teaching which had been officially condemned.
When Mark commented on this, Father Rowley pointed out that as a matter of fact a great deal of money had been sent by people who admired the practical side, or what they would have called the practical side of his work among the poor, but who at the same time thoroughly disapproved of its ecclesiastical form.
"In justice to the poor old Church of England," he said to Mark, "it must be pointed out that a good deal of this money has been given by devout Anglicans under protest."
"Yes, but that doesn't seriously affect the argument," said Mark. "You collect I don't know how many thousands of pounds to put up a magnificent church from which the Bishop of Silchester sees fit to turn you out, but for the debt on which you are still personally responsible. It's fantastic!"
"Mark Anthony," the priest said with a laugh, "you lack the legal mind. The Bishop did not turn me out. The Bishop can perfectly well say I turned myself out."
"It is all too subtle for me," said Mark. "But I'm not going to worry you with any more arguments. You've had enough of them to last you for ever. I do wish you'd let me stick to you personally and help you in any way possible."
"No, Mark Anthony," the priest replied. "I've done my work at St. Agnes', and you've done yours. Your business now is to take advantage of what has happened and to get back to your books, which whatever you may say have been more and more neglected lately. You'll find it of enormous help to be a good theologian. I have never ceased to regret my own shortcomings in that respect. Besides, I think you ought to spend a certain amount of time with Ogilvie before you go to Glastonbury. There is quite a lot of work to do if you look for it in a country parish like—what's the name of the place? Wych. Oh, yes, quite a lot of work. Don't bother your head about Anglican Orders and Roman Claims and the Catholicity of the Church of England. Your business is to save souls, your own included. Go back and read and get to know the people in Ogilvie's parish. Anybody can tackle a district like St. Agnes'; anybody that is who has the suitable personality. How many people can tackle an English country parish? I hardly know one. I should like to have you with me. I'm fond of you, and you're useful; but at your age to travel round from town to town listening to my begging would be all wrong. I might even go to America. I've had most cordial invitations from several American bishops, and if I can't raise the money in England I shall have to go there. If God has any more work for me to do I shall be offered a cure some day somewhere. I want you to be one of my assistant priests, and if you're going to be useful to me as an assistant priest, you really must have some theology behind you. These bishops get more and more difficult to deal with every year. Now, it's no good arguing. My mind's made up. I won't take you with me."