"It must be a very great source of edification to you to be the companion of Mr. Spencer, and I well know he has got in you a friend willing and ready to imitate his holy example. I am sorry that illness obliges him to retire from you for the present, but it will be a consolation for you to think that he has gone to gather more strength for the contest. Many a time I have dwelt with delight on the idea of being at some future period his fellow missioner, for I feel it would be a source of zeal and fervour to me to live with such a person, and I hope and pray God my wishes may be fulfilled, and that I may have such a companion, or rather such a director, during the first years of my missionary career."

This letter must have been an answer to the account the priest sent his young friend of the holiness of his companion.

Again, Father Spencer never heeded what we call the public, as he said himself he wished to ignore its existence; and strange enough by that very means he gained its esteem. This is best illustrated by what happened on his return from France, in '38. He saw the clergy there of course go about in their soutanes and full ecclesiastical costume; and he did not see why he might not do the same. He ignored the public, put on his cassock, and went in full priestly costume everywhere. He went to towns, into trains and omnibuses, walks the streets, and he gives the result in a letter to a friend thus: "This has not procured me one disrespectful word, which is worthy of remark here, for I do not think I ever passed two or three weeks in this place without being hooted after by boys or men somewhere."

Thus we have the servant following his Master, drinking in insults as sweet draughts in silence and humility; and when he was supposed to be ground to the very earth by ignominy, gaining a respect, a love, and a reputation that is as fresh to-day in his old parish among not only those who knew him but their children who heard of him. Yes, this day, more than 25 years in distance of time, he is, if possible, more venerated and more regretted than the day he resigned the pastoral charge of West Bromwich.

CHAPTER X.
Father Spencer Comes To Oscott.

The Bishop, Dr. Walsh, calls Mr. Spencer to Oscott College towards the end of April or perhaps in the beginning of May, 1839. The object of this change was, to give him the spiritual care of the students, in order that he might shape their characters, and infuse into them that apostolic spirit of which he had already given such proofs. Here is one other instance of the true way to real distinction in greatness in the Catholic Church, lying through the road humility and its concomitant virtues points out. Father Spencer sought to be unknown; he petitioned for the poorest and the most unprovided mission. In his little parish he found his earthly paradise, and the toils and troubles he went through, to make his practice keep pace with his fervour, formed the links of his happiness. He prayed, he lectured, he heard confessions; he sought the stragglers in their haunts of idleness; he had no idea of extending his sphere of action beyond the limits of his mission, and, he even made the half of that over to another, that his working could be the more effectual as its space was narrowed. Every plan he devised for doing good on a large scale was fated to become abortive. His natural means of influence he had cast aside; he gave up writing in newspapers, and let dogs bark at him without stooping to notice them; his high connections were virtually sundered when he gave up paying visits to his family; his property he divested himself of altogether, and grieved that the steward who was appointed to look after him took too much care of him, and did not let him feel what it was to be poor indeed. Here then is the young nobleman transformed into the priest, and stripped of everything, which priests who were not noble often pursue as necessary for their position; ay, thoroughly shorn to the bare condition of a priest. He was a priest and nothing more, and that is saying a great deal. If priests were always mere priests they would always be great saints. But when a priest dips his sacred character into worldly pursuits, riches, human aims and ways; when that sublime dignity he has received is trampled upon by his own self, and is saturated in the deep dye of worldliness, he ceases to be great, inasmuch as he ceases to be a priest in sentiment and action. It is often supposed that a priest has to do many things in consideration of "his cloth." Many actions that humility dictates are considered infra dig. It would be so, for instance, to carry one's own bundle, polish one's shoes, allow a navvy to spit in one's face, or a ragamuffin to tear one's coat, without handing him over to the police. St. Francis Xavier did not think it infra dig to wash his own shirt, and Father Spencer was very much of that saint's way of thinking on this and kindred points.

When, however, he had arrived at the lowest depth of humiliation he could possibly reach, like his Divine Master, he began to shine forth and to move the whole world. We have traced above how this change came about. He used to speak to every one, merely as agreeable matter of hopeful conversation, about the conversion of England, and get them also to pray for it. His crusade was quite accidental as far as his own preconceived notions were concerned. He went to France with Mr. Phillipps, much against his will, and found himself all of a sudden launched into the great work of his life, by the encouraging words of French prelates. He was not the man to lose an opportunity of doing good through lack of energy or fear of opposition. He could brave everything for God's glory. If there was anything that helped him best in his work, it was the opposition he encountered. He knew that, and therefore every new stroke levelled against him from friends or foes was a fresh impetus to new exertions. Hence he is now the correspondent of the heads of the Catholic Church at home and on the continent; all the religious orders have heard of him and his zeal for England; seculars have heard; priests, nuns, monks, all chime in with his notions; many because they were glad to have the opportunity, many because they did not wish to be behind their neighbours, and all because it was a good, holy, and laudable thing to pray for the conversion of heretics.

He says little about his property or what is being done with it in any of the letters that remain after him; but a bishop in whose diocese he lived has told us something. Mr. Spencer had from his father's will and testament £3,600 in some funds, besides an annuity of £300 for life, to which £300 were added ad beneplacitum dantis. His moderate way of living took very little from this sum every year, so all the remainder, with the interest of some years, was at the bishop's disposal. Two missions, Dudley and West Bromwich, were founded by him with this property, at least for the greater part; and the ground upon which the present college of Oscott stands was bought chiefly with what Father Spencer gave the bishop. He gave a pension to his old housekeeper, which she still receives, and whilst his property was thus doing good for others and the Church, he would not travel in a first-class carriage on the railway, and often walked from Oscott to Birmingham, in order to be able to give the fare for his journey to some persons along the way.

He had done more than this: he was in close correspondence with Dr. Gentili and Father Dominic. He paved their way, and worked upon the opinions of many whose influence was required for their introduction into England. Dr. Gentili was a personal friend of his, and so was Father Dominic; but Father Spencer thought the claims of the former somewhat stronger for reasons which can only be surmised. Mrs. Gaming, his cousin, to whose letters we owe a great deal of the information we are able to glean concerning their transactions, was the great advocate of the Passsionists. She so pressed the matter upon him that he gets rather impatient, and tells her to mind her prayers and leave these things to others. Our Fathers agreed in General Chapter, in 1839, to send a colony to England; but as there was no provision made nor opening offered, for some years more this decision, was not carried into effect. The Passionists refer their coming to England, under God, to Cardinal Wiseman, acknowledging at the same time that Father Spencer did something towards the work. He also had a good deal to do with the coming of the Trappists to Loughborough, near Mr. Phillipps's. In all these three events he works in his own quiet way, beneath the surface, writing and advising, and doing what lay in his power consistent with other duties.