The Christmas Bishop

by Winifred Margaretta Kirkland

Oh, there were powers of evil militant against the faith, the work, to which he had given his life! He had tried not to see them, to believe each man good, especially this man. Yet in this moment it seemed to him that this Newbold, seated there, was the very cause of it all, of this dark Judas spirit that everywhere throughout the diocese mocked the loveliness of Christ within His very church! Again denunciation trembled like a lash, then again was restrained because of a certain dignity in the soul gazing so grimly from the bright-blue eyes, testing the Bishop. It was a face the Bishop had loved and it was haggard as a face in a fever picture.

With all the power of vision innate in him the Bishop saw the facts of his failure. This was the man with whom, more than with any other, he had sought to share his service and his soul. They wore both of them the badge of God’s ministry, they were both of them the stewards of Christ’s mysteries; they sat now, after twenty years of friendship, two men girt in by four brief walls, yet far apart as two who do not speak each other’s tongue.

The Bishop’s brow grew tense at the hard thought that it must have been all his own fault! He had walked, as he had thought, beside the Christ, the Friend, yet a man close to him as Newbold had perceived in the Bishop himself no reflection of that Beauty! Oh, it could not be! Newbold must understand! For the very loneliness of it, the Bishop’s face grew all wistfulness, as if a child, lost on a city street, should lift its face to a stranger, hungry for kinship. But for all his seeking the Bishop could not find the lad Newbold in the face before him, grown steel-tense with scrutiny.

There was worse than this, too, as the Bishop looked, clear-eyed, on his failure. He must one day leave to this man his Westbury, if not, as chance and choice might direct, his diocese. It had been the Bishop’s comfort to believe, sensitive as he had been to the great currents of unrest and indifference in the world at large, that Westbury had remained exquisitely old-fashioned. Yet it was by the will of the congregation of St. John’s that the Southside Mission had been closed, the mission the Bishop had seen their fathers found, with free outpouring of themselves and their purses. Had the Westbury of to-day grown Judas-jealous of squandering both self and money? The Bishop must one day go forth from Westbury leaving it—nothing! And whose could be the fault but his own?

And his failure with Newbold, his failure with Westbury, they were but typical of the failure of his work at large. Of all the gifts of mystery that God gives to man, surely the greatest is the mystery of failure! Wisdom inscrutable that commands work, yet enjoins failure! Mystery of mysteries, that a burning love for that Love Incarnate born at Bethlehem, could not break through the flesh to solace a world a-thirst! The Bishop had loved, yet he had failed to serve. He did not even know how to give peace, as from a chalice, to this harried soul before him.

The worn gray face, intent, gave small clue to the thoughts within. Always Newbold watched, watched, waiting for a word. Which way would it swing, that word? His soul also was poised, waiting.

The Bishop bowed his head upon his hand. He had never felt so utterly alone. Involuntarily, from sheer force of habit belonging to all his moments of unbearable solitude, the Bishop’s thought turned to the Friend. He had always understood, would He understand now, despair at failure to God’s trust?

Suddenly the Bishop’s eyes opened wide and strange. He saw a storm-scourged hill, a mob. Understand failure? What man had ever loved like the Nazarene? What man had ever failed in such transcendent loneliness?

The room fell quiet as a sanctuary. Awed with understanding, the Bishop closed his eyes, to be alone. His thought said, “All other things He has shared with me. He shares also this.”

Quiet, long quiet, that at last grew a-throb with pulses. So many the mountains of Transfiguration, and at the bottom always the tumult and the faithlessness. The mental habit of many years steadied the Bishop as he drew slowly back to the actual: when some sorrow of his own grew too poignant to be borne, he always forced himself to go forth to the person nearest at hand, compelling his mind to the other’s affairs. Such effort, although at first it might be so perfunctory that he was ashamed, ended in full sincerity. Too tired to speak now, he smiled over to Newbold his old sunny smile, meaning that all was well between them.