The Case of Richard Meynell

by Mrs. Humphry Ward

Such at least was the Bishop's confidence, and in the position in which he found himself—with seven Modernist evictions pending in his diocese, and many more than seven recalcitrant parishes to deal with, he was not the man to make needless friction.

In Meynell's view, indeed, the Bishop's confidence was excessive; and the triumph of the orthodox majority in the Church, if indeed it were to triumph, was neither so near, nor likely to be so complete, as the Bishop believed. He had not yet been able to resume all the threads of leadership, but he was clear that there had been no ebbing whatever of the Modernist tide. On the contrary, it seemed to him that the function at Dunchester might yet ring through England, and startle even such an optimist as Bishop Craye.

The next few days he spent among his own people, and with the Flaxmans. The old red sandstone church of Upcote Minor was closely packed on Sunday; and the loyalty of the parish to their Rector, their answer to the Arches judgment, was shown in the passion, the loving intelligence with which every portion of the beautiful Modernist service was followed by an audience of working men and women gathered both from Upcote itself and from the villages round, who knew very well—and gloried in the fact—that from their midst had started the flame now running through the country. Many of them had been trained by Methodism, and were now returning to the Church that Wesley had been so loath to leave. "The Rector's changed summat," said men to each other, puzzled by that aspect—that unconscious aspect—of spiritual dignity that falls like a robe of honour, as life goes on, about the Knights of the Spirit. But they knew, at least, from their newspapers, how and when that beautiful girl who had grown up from a child in their midst had perished; they remembered the winter months of calumny and persecution; and their rough, kind hearts went out to the man who was so soon, against their will and their protest, to be driven out from the church where for twenty years he had preached to his people a Christ they could follow, and a God they could adore.

The week passed, and the Dunchester meeting was at hand. Meynell was to spend the night before the great service with the old Bishop, against whom—together with the whole of his Chapter—Privy Council action was now pending. Mary was to be the guest of one of the Canons in the famous Close.

Meynell arrived to find the beautiful old town in commotion. As a protest against the Modernist demonstration, all the students from a famous Theological College in a neighbouring diocese under a High Church bishop had come over to attend a rival service in the second church of the town, where the congregation was to be addressed "on this outrage to our Lord" by one of the ablest and most saintly of the orthodox leaders—the Rev. Cyril Fenton, of the Markborough diocese—soon, it was rumoured, to be appointed to a Canonry of St. Paul's. The streets were full of rival crowds, jostling each other. Three hundred Modernist clergy were staying in or near the town; the old Cathedral city stared at them amazed; and from all parts had come, besides, the lay followers of the new Movement thronging to a day which represented for them the first fruits of a harvest, whereof not they perhaps but their children would see the full reaping.

On the evening before the function Meynell went into the Cathedral with Mary just as the lengthening March afternoon was beginning to wane. They stepped through the western doors set open to the breeze and the sunshine into a building all opal and ebony, faintly flooded with rose from the sky without; a building of infinite height and majesty, where clustered columns of black marble, incredibly light, upheld the richness of the bossed roof, where every wall was broidered history, where every step was on "the ruined sides of Kings," and the gathered fragments of ancient glass, jewels themselves, let through a jewelled light upon the creamy stone.

For the first time, since Hester's death, Meynell's sad face broke into joy. The glorious church appeared to him as the visible attestation of the Divine creative life in men, flowing on endlessly, from the Past, through the Present, to the unknown Future.

From the distance came a sound of chanting. They walked slowly up the nave, conscious of a strange tumult in the pulse, as though the great building with its immemorial history were half lending itself to, half resisting, the emotion that filled them. In the choir a practice was going on. Some thirty young clergy were going through the responses and canticles of the new service-book, with an elder man, also in clerical dress, directing them. At the entrance of the southern choir aisle stood the senior verger of the Cathedral in his black gown—open-mouthed and motionless, listening to the strange sounds.

Meynell and Mary knelt for a moment of impassioned prayer, and then sat down to listen. Through the fast darkening church, chanted by half the choir, there stole those words of noblest poetry:

"A new commandment—a new commandment—I give unto you …" To be answered by the voices on the other side—"That ye love—ye love one another!"