At Prior Park, Father Spencer met Dr. Walsh, and he was appointed to begin a new mission in West Bromwich; he sets about it immediately, and gets an altar for it from Lord Dormer in Walsall. He met Dr. Wiseman, who came to England about this time, and they are both invited by Earl Spencer to spend a day at Althorp. The Earl was charmed with Dr. Wiseman, and Father Spencer exclaims, in a letter, "What a grand point was this! A Catholic priest, and a D.D., rector of a Catholic college, received with distinction at a Protestant nobleman's!" He met some of his old parishioners, and was welcomed by them with love and kind remembrances. His church in West Bromwich was opened on the 21st November, 1832, and he was settled down as a Catholic pastor near where he hunted as a Protestant layman, and preached heresy as a Protestant minister.
CHAPTER IV.
F. Spencer Begins His Missionary Life.
Far different is the position on which Mr. Spencer enters towards the close of 1832, from that which he was promoted to in 1825. Then he took the cure of souls with vague notions of his precise duty; now he took the cure of souls as a clearly defined duty, for the fulfilment of which he knew he should render a severe account. Then he received a large income from the bare fact of his being put in possession of his post; now he has to expend even what he has in trying to provide a place of worship for his flock. Then, there were eight hundred souls under his charge, most of them wealthy and comfortable, and all looking up to him with respect for being his father's son; now he could scarcely count half that number as his own, scattered among hovels and garrets; amid their more opulent neighbours, who mocked him for being a priest. He then dwelt with pleasure on his rich benefice, and on the rising walls of his handsome rectory; now he prayed the bishop to put him into the poorest mission in the diocese, and delighted in being housed like the poor. The life he led as a priest in West Bromwich is worthy of the ancient solitaries. He began by placing all his property in the bishop's hands, and his lordship appointed an Econome, who gave him now and again such sums as he needed to keep himself alive, give something to the poor, and supply his church with necessaries. He keeps an account of every farthing he spends, and shows it to the Bishop at the end of the quarter, to see if his lordship approves, or wishes anything to be retrenched for the future. His ordinary course of life was—rise at six, Meditation Office and Mass, hear some confessions, and, after breakfast, at ten, go out through the parish until six, when he came home to dinner, and spent the time that was left till supper in instructing catechumens, reading, praying, or writing. He had no luxuries, no comforts, he scarcely allowed himself any recreation, except in doing pastoral work. He leaves two rooms of his little house unfurnished, and says he has something else to do with the money that might be thus spent. Much as he loved Mr. Phillipps, he did not go to see him after his marriage, because he thought it was not necessary to spend money in that way which could alleviate the poverty of a parishioner; and because he did not like to be a day absent from his parish work as long as God gave him strength. During the first year of his residence at West Bromwich he opens three schools; one of them had been a pork-shop, and was bought for him by a Catholic tradesman. Here he used to come and lecture once or twice a week, and is surprised and pleased to find a well-ordered assembly ready to listen to him. He says in a letter at this time: "I go to bed weary every night, and enjoy my sleep more than great people do theirs; for it is the sleep of the labourer." He is rather sanguine in his hopes of converting Protestants; but, although he receives a good many into the Church, he finds error more difficult to root out than he imagined. He bears up, however, and a letter to Mr. Phillipps will tell us what he thought; he says: "Keep England's conversion always next your heart. It is no small matter to overturn a dynasty so settled and rooted as that of error in this country; and how are we possibly to expect that we shall be made instruments to effect this, unless we become in some measure conformable to the characters of the Saints who have done such things before us? Yet let us not give up the undertaking, for as, on the one hand, no one has succeeded without wonderful labour and patience, so, on the other, none ever has failed when duly followed up. Let us not be discouraged by opposition, but work the more earnestly: and as we see people about some hard bodily exertion begin with their clothes on, but, when they find the difficulty of their job, strip first the coat, then the waistcoat, then turn up their sleeves, and so on, we must do the same. God does not give success at once, because He wishes us better than to remain as we are, fettered and attached to the world. If we succeeded before all this encumbrance is stripped off, we should certainly not get rid of it afterwards." He did "turn up his sleeves," and toil, no doubt, at converting his neighbours; he opened a new mission in Dudley towards the Christmas of 1833; he first began in an old warehouse, which he fitted up with a chapel and seats, and turned one or two little houses adjoining into a sacristy and sitting-room for the priest who might come there to officiate.
He goes on in this even course for the whole of the two first years of his life in West Bromwich, without any striking event to bring one part more prominently forward than another. His every day work was not, however, all plain sailing; in proportion as his holiness of life increased the reverence Catholics began to conceive for him, it provoked the persecution and contempt of the Protestants. He was pensive generally, and yet had a keen relish for wit and humour. He was one day speaking with a brother priest in his sacristy, with sad earnestness, about the spiritual destitution of the poor people around him, who neither knew God, nor would listen to those who were willing to teach them. A poor woman knocked at the sacristy door, and was ordered to come in; she fell on her knees very reverently, to get Father Spencer's blessing, as soon as she approached him. His companion observed that this poor woman reminded him of the mother of the sons of Zebedee, who came to Our Saviour adorans. "Yes," replied Father Spencer, with a very arch smile, "and not only adorans, but petens aliquid ah eo" Such was his usual way; he would season his discourse on the most important subject—even go a little out of his way for that purpose—with a pointed anecdote, or witty remark.
All did not feel inclined to follow the old woman's example in the first part of the above scene, though many were led to do so through their love and practice of the second. A person sent us the following letter, who still lives on the spot that was blessed by this holy priest's labours, and as it bears evidence to some of the statements we have made from other sources, it may be well to give it insertion:—
"I was one of his first converts at West Bromwich, and a fearful battle I had; but his sublime instructions taught me how to pray for the grace of God to guide me to his true Church. He was ever persecuted, and nobly overcame his enemies. I remember one morning when he was going his accustomed rounds to visit the poor and sick, he had to pass a boys' school, at Hill Top; they used to hoot after him low names, but, seeing he did not take any notice, they came into the road and threw mud and stones at him; he took no notice. Then they took hold of his coat, and ripped it up the back. He did not mind, but went on all day, as usual, through Oldbury, Tipton Oudley, and Hill Top, visiting his poor people. He used to leave home every morning, and fill his pockets with wine and food for the poor sick, and return home about six in the evening, without taking any refreshment all day, though he might have walked twenty miles in the heat of summer. One winter's day he gave all his clothes away to the poor, except those that were on him. He used to say two Masses on Sunday, in West Bromwich, and preach. I never saw him use a conveyance of any kind in his visits through his parish."
It could not be expected that the newspapers would keep silence about him. He gets a little in that way, which he writes about, as follow:—"Eliot (an apostate) has been writing in divers quarters that I know of, and I dare say in many others (for he was very fond of letter-writing), the most violent abuse of the Catholic Church, and of all her priests, excepting me, whom he pities as a wretched victim of priest-craft. I still hope there is some strange infatuation about him which may dissipate, and let him return; but if not, the Church has ramparts enough to stand his battering, and I am not afraid of my little castle being shaken by him. I feel desirous rather than not that he should publish the worst he can about me and mine in the Protestant papers. It will help to correct us of some faults, and bring to light, perhaps, at the same time, something creditable to our cause."
He must have felt the extraordinary change in his state of mind and duty now to what he experienced some four or five years before. There are no doubts about doctrines, nor difficulties about Dissenters; his way is plain and clear, without mist or equivocal clause; there is but one way for Catholics of being united with heretics—their unconditional submission to the Church. There is no going half-way to meet them, or sacrificing of principles to soothe their scruples; either all or none—the last definition of the Council of Trent, as well as the first article of the Apostles' Creed. If he has difficulties about any matter, he will not find Bishops giving him shifting answers, and seemingly ignorant themselves of what is the received interpretation of a point of faith. He will be told at once by the next priest what is the doctrine of the Church, and if he refuses to assent to it he ceases to be a Catholic. This looks an iron rule in the Church of God, and those outside her cannot understand how its very unbending firmness consoles the doubtful, cheers the desponding, strengthens the will and expands and nourishes the intellect.
A priest has many consolations in his little country parish that few can understand or appreciate. It is not the number and efficiency of his schools, the round of his visits, or the frequency of his instructions. No; it is the offering of the Victim of Salvation every morning for his own and his people's sins, and it is the conveying the precious blood of his Saviour to their souls, through the Sacraments he administers. Only a priest can understand what it is to feel that a creature kneels before him, steeped in vice and sin, and, after a good confession, rises from his knees, restored to God's grace and friendship. All his labours have this one object—the putting of his people into the grace of God, and keeping them in it until they reach to their reward. There is a reality in all this which faith alone can give that makes him taste and feel the good he is doing. A reality that will make him fly without hesitation to the pestilential deathbed, and glory in inhaling a poison that may end his own days, in the discharge of his duty. He must be ever ready to give his life for his sheep, not in fancy or in words, but in very deed, and thus seal by his martyrdom both the truth which he professes, and his love for the Master whom he has been chosen to serve.