"The Hon. and Rev. George Spencer, brother to the present Earl, who was converted from Protestantism to the Catholic faith some years ago, has lately been passing some time at Paris, with Mr. Ambrose Phillipps, a gentleman of distinction of Leicestershire, eldest son of the late member for the northern division of the county. They have been busily occupied there in establishing an association of prayers for the conversion of this country to the Roman faith. They have had several interviews with the Archbishop of Paris on this subject, who has ordered all the clergy to say special prayers for this object in the memento. A number of the religious communities in France have already begun to follow the same practice."
This paragraph was taken up, of course, and commented upon by the second-rate papers. To be sure, the whole thing was magnified into nothing less than a grand stir for a Papal aggression, which, if it did not make the English shore glitter some day with French bayonets, was certain to cram every workshop and church with Jesuits in disguise.
The Bishops were all favourable to Father Spencer's zealous ideas; they gave him leave to speak on the subject with all the priests; they mentioned it in their pastorals: but they did not wish him to go too publicly to work, as they rather feared the spirit of the times, and did not know when another Gordon riot might arise and overthrow what they had been building up since the Emancipation. In the meantime, the work was progressing rapidly. A Dutch journal reached him which let him know that all the seminaries and convents in Holland had given their Thursday devotions for England. A good priest wrote from Geneva to say that the programme should be widened, and that all heretics and separatists ought to be included as well as England. To this Father Spencer consented after some deliberation, and in the space of about six months all the Continent were sending up prayers for England's conversion. He makes speeches at formal dinners and public meetings, and always introduces this topic; whereupon the reporters conceive a terrible rage, and puff the matter into all the taverns and offices of London, Liverpool, and Manchester. Of course, all this is accompanied with gross misrepresentations and personal abuse. Of the former point he thus speaks in a letter:—"The misrepresentations, as far as I have seen them in the public papers, by which they have endeavoured to obstruct the proposed good, are so glaring that I think all thinking persons must be benefited by reading them." "My notion was to ignore the English public altogether, and go on with my work as if it did not exist." "The opposite papers have certainly helped me and well, in making the matter as public as I could wish, without a farthing's cost to me, and in a way in which I cannot be accused of being the immediate agent of its publicity, as it was put about as though to annoy me, but they are pleasing me without intending it." This was the good-humoured way in which he took all that was personal in the journalistic tirades. It gives one an idea both of his great zeal and the great virtue with which he accompanied it.
He now writes to the Irish Archbishops, and receives very encouraging answers. So much did they enter into his sentiments that, in a meeting of the Irish episcopate in Dublin, they gave his proposals a good share of their attention, and approved of them.
This he accounted great gain. It was the prayer of the martyr for his persecutor, of Stephen for Saul, and of Our Lord for the Jews. Poor Ireland had groaned and writhed in Saxon bondage for centuries. She saw her children scattered to the winds, or ground by famine and injustice beneath the feet of the destroyer; and, at the voice of a Saxon priest, she turned round, wiped the tear from her eye, pitied the blindness of her oppressor, and offered up her sufferings to Heaven to plead for mercy for her persecutor. The cry was a solemn universal prayer, framed by her spiritual leaders, and carried to every fireside where the voice of the Church could drown the utterings of complaint. F. Spencer thought more of the prayers of the Irish than of all the Continent put together; these were good, but those were heroic. He began to love Ireland thenceforward with an ever-increasing love, and trusted chiefly to the faith and sanctity of her children for the fulfilment of his zealous intentions.
He pushed his exertions to Rome also, by writing to Dr. Wiseman, and asking him to see the devotion carried out in the Eternal City and the provinces. It met the same success as in France, Belgium, Holland, and Ireland. There is a letter extant which Dr. Wiseman wrote to F. Spencer about this time (it is dated Ash Wednesday, 1839), and it must be interesting, both for its intrinsic merit as well as the giving an evidence of the harmony of feeling and sentiment that bound the great cardinal and the zealous priest together since their first acquaintance until they both went, within a few months of each other, to enjoy the eternal reward of their labours in England and elsewhere, for God's glory:—
"Rome, Ash Wednesday, 1839.
"My Dear Friend,—I must not delay any longer answering your kind and interesting letter. Its subject is one which has long occupied my thoughts, though I never contemplated the possibility of enlisting foreign Churches in prayer for it, but turned my attention more to exciting a spirit of prayer among ourselves. I will enter on the matter in hand with the most insignificant part of it, that is, my own feelings and endeavours, because I think they may encourage you and suggest some thoughts upon the subject. In our conference this time last year, I spoke very strongly to the students upon the wants of England, and the necessity of a new system in many things. One of the points on which I insisted was the want of systematic prayer for the conversion of England, and, at the same time, of reparation for her defection. I observed that it is the only country which has persisted in and renewed, in every generation, formal acts of apostacy, exacting from every sovereign, in the name of the nation, and from all that aspired to office or dignity, specific declarations of their holding Catholic truths to be superstitious and idolatrous. This, therefore, assumes the form of a national sin of blasphemy and heresy—not habitual, but actual; it is a bar to the Divine blessing, an obstacle of a positive nature to God's grace. It calls for contrary acts, as explicit and as formal, to remove its bad effects. Now what are the points on which this blasphemous repetition of national apostacy has fastened? They are chiefly two: Transubstantiation and the worship of the Blessed Virgin. These, consequently, are the points towards which the reparation and, for it, the devotion of Catholics should be directed in England. I therefore proposed, and have continued to inculcate this two-fold devotion, to our students on every occasion. I have for a year made it my daily prayer that I might be instrumental in bringing back devotion to the Blessed Eucharist, its daily celebration, frequent Communion, and public worship in England; and, at the same time, devotion to the Blessed Virgin, chiefly through the propagation of the Rosary. (My reasons for the choice of the Rosary I shall, perhaps, not be able to explain in this letter.) Allow me to mention, as I write to you, quite confidentially, that the idea struck me one afternoon that I happened to be alone in the Church of St. Eustachio, observing that the altar of the Blessed Sacrament was that of the Madonna; this led me to earnestly praying on the subject of uniting those two objects in a common devotion in England, and offering myself to promote it. Several things led me to feel strongly on the subject which, being trifles to others if not to myself, I omit. First, as to the Blessed Eucharist, my plan was different from yours in one respect, that, instead of fixing on one day, I proposed to engage priests to say mass for the conversion of England on different days, so that every day twenty or thirty masses might be said for its conversion, and in expiation to the Blessed Sacrament. At such a distance from the field of action, I could do but little; I therefore made the few priests who have left since last year at this time put down their names for two days a month, for mass for these purposes, intending to fill up my list as I could. One of them, Mr. Abraham, writes that he observes his engagement most punctually. With all deference, I submit to you whether, while Thursday remains the day for general prayer, every priest (for I should think none would refuse) would choose a couple of days a month, or a day each week, for these purposes. In a sermon in the Gesù e Maria, last spring, I alluded to a hope I fondly cherished, that public reparation would before long be made in England to the Blessed Sacrament, and this brought me a letter from a devout lady, earnestly begging I would try to have something done in that way, and naming persons in England most anxious to cooperate in anything of the sort. My idea was borrowed from my excellent friend, Charles Weld, and consisted in Quarant' Ore, not confined to one town, but making the circuit of all England, so that by day and night the Adorable Sacrament might be worshipped through the year. I have proposed it to Lord Shrewsbury, for I think it should commence with the colleges, convents, gentlemen's chapels, and large towns, in which I trust each chapel would consent. As the Exposition at each place lasts two days, it would require 182 changes in the year, or, if each would take it twice a year, 91. There are about twenty-five religious communities and colleges; the chapels in large towns could afford to make up other twenty-five. I think that many pious people would like to have the Exposition, and gladly contribute the expense, and the giro might be published for the year in each directory. I must say I should set myself against the common practice of keeping the Blessed Sacrament in a cupboard in the vestry, without a light even, and never having an act of adoration paid to it, except at mass. Security from sacrilege must be purchased, but not by a sort of sacrilege which it always looked to me; the faithful should be encouraged to visit the Blessed Sacrament during the day. Secondly, as to the devotion to the Blessed Virgin, I proposed the forming of Confraternities of the Rosary, and, while Saturday should be the general day for the devotion, I would have different congregations fix on different days, so that each day the powerful intercession of the Blessed Virgin might be invoked upon us and upon our labours, and reparation be made to her for the outrages committed against her. I offered Mr. Oxley and Mr. Procter to write a little treatise on the Rosary, if they would disseminate it. One of my reasons for preferring the Rosary, both for myself and English Catholics, is what ordinarily forms an objection to it. Pride, when we come to pray, is our most dangerous enemy, and I think no better security can be given against it than to pray as the poor and ignorant do. Do we then wish that God should judge us by the standard of the wise who know their duty, or by that of the poor little ones? If by the latter, why spurn the prayers instituted for them, and say, 'We will not use them, but the prayers better suited to the learned.' The 'Our Father' was appointed and drawn up for men who said 'Lord, teach us how to pray.' It is a prayer for the ignorant, as is the Rosary. But more of this another time. It was my intention to have begun daily prayers for England last St. George's Day; I was prevented from drawing them up, but hope to begin this year. In the meantime, I took out of our archives a printed paper, of which I enclose a copy, showing that prayers for the conversion of England, &c., have in former times occupied the attention of our college, which blessed beads, &c., for the purpose of encouraging them, and that the Holy See conferred ample spiritual privileges upon the practice. You will see how the Rosary is particularly privileged. This paper, through Giustiniani, I laid before the Congregation of Indulgences to get them renewed for prayers for England, and was told that it would be better to draw up something new, suited to present times, when Indulgences would be granted. So far as to my views and ideas before your better ones reached me, and I willingly resign all my views and intentions in favour of yours. Now, as to what is doing here. On the Feast of St. Thomas we distributed to all the cardinals that came, a copy of your sermon received that morning, with a beautiful lithograph of St. Thomas, Cant., executed in the house at some of the students' expense, to propagate devotion to him. Cardinal Orioli declared that he had for years made a memento for England in his mass, and Cardinal Giustiniani told me the other day that every Thursday he offers up mass for its conversion. There is a little religious weekly journal published here for distribution among the poor, and it has lately been in almost every number soliciting prayers for the same purpose. Its principal editor, an ex-Jesuit, Padre Basiaco, called on me the other evening, and told me, as a singular coincidence, that since he was in his noviciate he has made it a practice to pray on Thursday for that object. To show you to what an extent the pious custom is spreading, the Austrian Ambassador the other evening told me that his little boys (about seven and eight years old) prayed every Thursday morning for the conversion of England; and that having been asked by their mother on that day if he had prayed for it, one of the little fellows replied, 'No, mamma; it is not Thursday.' Surely God must intend to grant a mercy when He stirs up so many to pray for it, and that, too, persons having no connection with the object, except by zeal or charity. I am going, in a day or two, to concert with Pallotta the best means of propagating this devotion, both in communities and among the people. I perfectly approve of enlarging your original plan so as to embrace all that are in error. I am in favour of giving expansion to charities in any way, and Catholicising our feelings as much as our faith. We are too insular in England in religion as in social ideas. This was one of my reasons for wishing to have the oeuvre unconnected with domestic purposes, which would, however, be benefited by the greater energy which the spirit of charity would receive by being extended. I am endeavouring to excite in the students as much as I can the missionary spirit; all the meditations are directed to this. By the missionary spirit I do not mean merely a parochial, but an apostolic spirit, where each one, besides his own especial flock, takes an interest in, and exerts himself for the benefit of the entire country, according to the gifts he has received. Remember me in your prayers, and believe me your sincere and affectionate friend,
"N. Wiseman."
CHAPTER IX.
His Last Days In West Bromwich.
The account given of Father Spencer's zealous labours for the conversion of England would be incomplete if something were not added to show how he succeeded in bringing persons into the Church in the locality of which he had the spiritual charge. There is no record of the number he received, and only from stray notes, from various sources, can some instances of his way of working be given. He was not a great preacher, as all knew; but there was a peculiar spirit in what he said which seemed to impress his discourse upon the hearer as if it came not from himself. This want of human eloquence was a drawback to him inasmuch as it was not likely to bring crowds to hear him. An anecdote or two will illustrate this. Once he was asked to preach in Manchester, and many Catholics who heard of it went, of course, to hear the convert who was talked and written about so much. Among the rest, one young man who had beforehand built castles in his own mind about the glowing eloquence he should hear. To his disappointment, the preacher was cold, dry, and tame. He was not too pleased, but some way or another every word took effect upon him, and he could not quit thinking of the sermon, and the peculiar way in which many things were said. The end of it was, that he became, some time after, a Passionist, and was one of those in whom Father Ignatius found great consolation, on account of the zeal he showed and continues still to show, in the pursuit of the darling objects of Father Ignatius's life. A lady was more pointed in her remarks. She went to hear him on some other great occasion, and she said:—"I saw him go into the pulpit; I heard him address the people, and I was waiting all the time thinking when will he have done talking and begin to preach, until, to my surprise, I found what purported to be a sermon coming to a conclusion, yet I can remember to this day almost everything he said."