The Case of Richard Meynell by Mrs. Humphry Ward

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He looked at her with an unusual vivacity in his hard, handsome face.
Theresa hastily excused herself, and the incident dropped. But when
breakfast was over and her father had left the room, Theresa remained
sitting idly by the table, her eyes fixed on the envelope of Maurice's
letter, which had fallen to the floor. Maurice's behaviour was
simply disgraceful! He had lost employment after employment by lazy
self-indulgence, trusting always to his father's boundless affection for
him, and abusing it time after time. Theresa was vaguely certain that he
was besmirched by all sorts of dreadful things--drinking, and betting--if
not worse. Her woman's instinct told her much more than his father had
ever discovered about him. Though at the same time she had the good sense
to remind herself that her own small knowledge of the world might lead
her to exaggerate Maurice's misdoings. And for herself and Stephen, no
less than for her father, Maurice was still the darling and Benjamin of
the family, commended to them by a precious mother whose death had left
the whole moral structure of their common life insecure.

She was still absorbed in uneasy thoughts about her brother, when the
library door opened violently and her father came in with the Markborough
_Post_ in his hand.

His face was discomposed; his hand shook. Theresa sprang up.

"What is the matter, father?"

He pointed to the first page of the paper, and to the
heading--"Extraordinary meeting at Markborough. Proceedings against the
Rector of Upcote. Other clergy and congregations rally to his support."

She read the account with stupefaction. It described a meeting summoned
by the "Reformers' Club" of Markborough to consider the announcement that
a Commission of Inquiry had been issued by the Bishop of Markborough in
the case of the Rector of Upcote Minor, and that legal proceedings
against him for heretical teaching and unauthorized services would be
immediately begun by certain promoters, as soon as the Bishop's formal
consent had been given.

The meeting, it seemed, had been so crowded and tumultuous that
adjournment had been necessary from the rooms of the Reformers' Club to
the Town Hall. And there, in spite of a strong orthodox opposition, a
resolution in support of the Rector of Upcote had been passed, amid
scenes of astonishing enthusiasm. Three or four well-known local clergy
had made the most outspoken speeches, declaring that there must be room
made within the church for the liberal wing, as well as for the Ritualist
wing; that both had a right to the shelter of the common and ancestral
fold; and that the time had come when the two forms of Christianity now
prevailing in Christendom should be given full and equal rights within
the Church of the nation.

Meynell himself had spoken, urging on the meeting the profound
responsibility resting on the Reformers--the need for gentleness no less
than for courage; bidding them remember the sacredness of the ground they
were treading, the tenacity and depth of the roots they might be thought
to be disturbing.

"Yet at the same time we must _fight!_--and we must fight with all our
strength. For over whole classes of this nation, Christianity is either
dying or dead; and it is only we--and the ideas we represent--that can
save it."

The speech had been received with deep emotion rather than applause; and
the meeting had there and then proceeded to the formation of a
"Reformers' League" to extend throughout the diocese. "It is already
rumoured," said the _Post_, "that at least sixteen or eighteen beneficed
clergy, with their congregations, have either joined, or are about to
join, the Reformers. The next move now lies with the Bishop, and with the
orthodox majority of the diocese. If we are not mistaken, Mr. Meynell and
his companions in heresy will very soon find out that the Church has
still power enough to put down such scandalous rebellions against her
power and authority as that of the Rector of Upcote, and to purge her
borders of disloyal and revolutionary priests." Theresa looked up. Her
face had grown pale. "How _terrible_, father! Did you know they were to
hold the meeting?"

"I heard something about a debate at this precious club. What does that
matter? Let them blaspheme in private as they please, it hurts nobody but
themselves. But a public meeting at the Bishop's very door--and eighteen
of his clergy!"

He paced the room up and down, in an excitement he could hardly control.
"The poor, poor Bishop!" said Theresa, softly, the tears in her eyes.

"He will have the triumph of his life!" exclaimed Barron, looking up. "If
there are dry bones on our side, this will put life into them. Those
fellows have given themselves into our hands!"

He paused in his walk, falling into a profound reverie in which he lost
all sense of his daughter's presence. She dared not rouse him; and indeed
the magnitude of the scandal and distress left her speechless. She could
only think of the Bishop--their frail, saintly Bishop whom every one
loved. At last a clock struck. She said gently:

"Father, I think it is time to go."

Barron started, drew a long breath, gathered up the newspaper, and took a
letter from his pocket.

"That is for Maurice. Put in anything you like, but don't miss the
morning post."

"Do you see the Bishop this morning, father?"

"No--this afternoon. But there will be plenty to do this morning." He
named two or three heads of the church party in Markborough on whom he
must call. He must also see his solicitor, and find out whether the
counsel whom the promoters of the writ against Meynell desired to secure
had been already retained.

He kissed his daughter absently and departed, settling all his home
business before he left the house in his usual peremptory manner, leaving
behind him indeed in the minds of his butler and head gardener, who had
business with him, a number of small but smarting wraths, which would
ultimately have to be smoothed away by Theresa.

But when Theresa explored the open envelope he had given her for her
brother, she found in it a cheque for L50, and a letter which seemed to
Maurice's sister--unselfish and tender as she was--deplorably lacking in
the scolding it ought to have contained. If only her father had ever
shown the same affection for Stephen!

Meanwhile as Barron journeyed to Markborough, under the shadow of the
great Cathedral, quite another voice than his was in possession of the
episcopal ear. Precisely at eleven o'clock Richard Meynell appeared on
the doorstep of the Palace, and was at once admitted to the Bishop's
study.

As he entered the large book-lined room his name was announced in a tone
which did not catch the Bishop's attention, and Meynell, as he
hesitatingly advanced, became the spectator of a scene not intended for
his eyes. On the Bishop's knee sat a little girl of seven or eight. She
was crying bitterly, and the Bishop had his arms round her and was
comforting her.

[Illustration: "Meynell, as he hesitatingly advanced, became the
spectator of a scene not intended for his eyes"]

"There _was_ bogies, grandfather!--there _was!_--and Nannie said I told
lies--and I didn't tell lies."

"Darling, there aren't bogies anywhere--but I'm sure you didn't tell
lies. What did you think they were like?"

"Grandfather, they was all black--and they jumped--and wiggled--and
spitted--o-o-oh!"

And the child went off in another wail, at which moment the Bishop
perceived Meynell. His delicate cheek flushed, but he held up his hand,
in smiling entreaty; and Meynell disappeared behind a revolving bookcase.

The Bishop hastily returned to the charge, endeavouring to persuade his
little granddaughter that the "bogie" had really been "cook's black cat,"
generally condemned to the kitchen and blackbeetles, but occasionally let
loose to roam the upper floors in search of nobler game. The child dried
her eyes, and listened, gravely weighing his remarks. Her face gradually
cleared, and when at the end he said slyly, "And even if there were
bogies, little girls shouldn't throw hairbrushes at their Nannies!" she
nodded a judicial head, adding plaintively:

"But then Nannies mustn't talk _all_ the time, grandfather! Little girls
must talk a itty itty bit. If Nannies not let them, little girls _must_
frow somefing at Nannies."

The Bishop laughed--a low, soft sound, from which Meynell in the distance
caught the infection of mirth.

A few murmured words--no doubt a scolding--and then:

"Are you good, Barbara?"

"Ye-s," said the child, slowly--"not very."

"Good enough to say you're sorry to Nannie?"

The child smiled into his face.

"Go along then, and say it!" said the Bishop, "and mind you say it
nicely."

Barbara threw her arm round his neck and hugged him passionately. Then he
set her down, and she ran happily away, through a door at the farther end
of the room.

Meynell advanced, and the Bishop came to meet him. Over both faces, as
they approached each other, there dropped a sudden shadow--a tremor as of
men who knew themselves on the brink of a tragical collision--decisive
of many things. And yet they smiled, the presence of the child still
enwrapping them.

"Excuse these domesticities," said the Bishop, "but there was such woe
and lamentation just before you came. And childish griefs go deep.
Bogies--of all kinds--have much to answer for!"

Then the Bishop's smile disappeared. He beckoned Meynell to a chair, and
sat down himself.

Francis Craye, Bishop of Markborough, was physically a person of great
charm. He was small--not more than five foot seven; but so slenderly and
perfectly made, so graceful and erect in bearing, that his height, or
lack of it, never detracted in the smallest degree from his dignity, or
from the reverence inspired by the innocence and unworldliness of his
character. A broad brow, overshadowing and overweighting the face,
combined, with extreme delicacy of feature, a touch of emaciation, and a
pure rose in the alabaster of the cheeks, to produce the aspect of a most
human ghost--a ghost which had just tasted the black blood, and recovered
for an hour all the vivacity of life. The mouth, thin-lipped and mobile
to excess, was as apt for laughter as for tenderness; the blue eyes were
frankness and eagerness itself. And when the glance of the spectator
pursued the Bishop downward, it was to find that his legs, in the
episcopal gaiters, were no less ethereal than his face; while his silky
white hair added the last touch of refinement to a personality of spirit
and fire.

Meynell was the first to speak.

"My lord! let me begin this conversation by once more thanking you--from
my heart--for all the personal kindness that you have shown me in the
last few months, and in the correspondence of the last fortnight."

His voice wavered a little. The Bishop made no sign.

"And perhaps," Meynell resumed, "I felt it the kindest thing of all
that--after the letters I have written you this week--after the meeting
of yesterday--you should have sent me that telegram last night, saying
that you wished to see me to-day. That was like you--that touched me
indeed!" He spoke with visible emotion.

The Bishop looked up.

"There can be no question, Meynell, of any personal enmity between
yourself and me," he said gravely. "I shall act in the matter entirely as
the responsibilities of my office dictate--that you know. But I have owed
you much in the past--much help--much affection. This diocese owes you
much. I felt I must make one last appeal to you--terrible as the
situation has grown. You could not have foreseen that meeting of
yesterday!" he added impetuously, raising his head.

Meynell hesitated.

"No, I had no idea we were so strong. But it might have been foreseen.
The forces that brought it about have been rising steadily for many
years."

There was no answer for a moment. The Bishop sat with clasped hands, his
legs stretched out before him, his white head bent. At last, without
moving, he said:

"There are grave times coming on this diocese, Meynell--there are grave
times coming on the Church!"

"Does any living church escape them?" said Meynell, watching him--with a
heavy heart.

The Bishop shook his head.

"I am a man of peace. Where you see a hope of victory for what you think,
no doubt, a great cause, I see above the melee, Strife and Confusion and
Fate--"red with the blood of men." What can you--and those who were at
that meeting yesterday--hope to gain by these proceedings? If you could
succeed, you would break up the Church, the strongest weapon that exists
in this country against sin and selfishness--and who would be the
better?"

"Believe me--we sha'n't break it up."

"Certainly you will! Do you imagine that men who are the spiritual sons
and heirs of Pusey and Liddon are going to sit down quietly in the same
church with you and the eighteen who started this League yesterday? They
would sooner die."

Meynell bore the onslaught quietly.

"It depends upon our strength," he said slowly, "and the strength we
develop, as the fight goes on."

"Not at all!--a monstrous delusion!" The Bishop raised an indignant
brow. "If you overwhelmed us--if you got the State on your side, as in
France at the Revolution--you would still have done nothing toward your
end--nothing whatever! We refuse--we shall always refuse--to be unequally
yoked with those who deny the fundamental truths of the Faith!"

"My lord, you are so yoked at the present moment," said Meynell
firmly--the colour had flashed back into his cheeks--"it is the
foundation of our case that half the educated men and women we gather
into our churches to-day are--in our belief--Modernists already. Question
them!--they are with us--not with you. That is to say, they have tacitly
shaken off the old forms--the Creeds and formularies that bind the
visible, the legal, church. They do not even think much about them.
Forgive me if I speak plainly! They are not grieving about the old. Their
soul--those of them, I mean that have the gift of religion--is
travailing--dumbly travailing--with the new. Slowly, irresistibly, they
are evolving for themselves new forms, new creeds, whether they know it
or not. You--the traditional party--you, the bishops and the orthodox
majority--can help them, or hinder them. If you deny them organized
expression and outlet, you prolong the dull friction between them and the
current Christianity. You waste where you might gather--you quench where
you might kindle. But there they are--in the same church with you--and
you cannot drive them out!"

The Bishop made a sound of pain.

"I wish to drive no one out," he said, lifting a diaphanous hand. "To his
own master let each man stand or fall. But you ask us--_us_, the
appointed guardians of the Faith--the _ecclesia docens_--the historic
episcopate--to deny and betray the Faith! You ask us to assent formally
to the effacing of all difference between Faith and Unfaith--you bid us
tell the world publicly that belief matters nothing--that a man may deny
all the Divine Facts of Redemption, and still be as good a Christian as
any one else. History alone might tell you--and I am speaking for the
moment as a student to a student--that the thing is inconceivable!"

"Unless--_solvitur vivendo_!" said Meynell in a low voice. "What great
change in the religious life of men has not seemed inconceivable--till it
happened? Think of the great change that brought this English Church into
being! Within a couple of generations men had to learn to be baptized,
and married, and buried, with rites unknown to their fathers--to stand
alone and cut off from the great whole of Christendom--to which they
had once belonged--to see the Mass, the cult of Our Lady and the Saints,
disappear from their lives. What change that any Modernist proposes could
equal that? But England lived through it!--England emerged!--she
recovered her equilibrium. Looking back upon it all now, we see--you and
I agree there--that it was worth while--that the energizing, revealing
power behind the world was in the confusion and the dislocation; and that
England gained more than she lost when she made for herself an English
and a national Church in these islands, out of the shattered debris of
the Roman System."

He bent forward, and looked intently into the Bishop's face. "What if
another hour of travail be upon us? And is any birth possible without
pain?"

"Don't let us argue the Reformation!" said the Bishop, with a new
sharpness of note. "We should be here all night. But let me at least
point out to you that the Church kept her Creeds!--the Succession!--the
four great Councils!--the unbroken unity of essential dogma. But you"--he
turned with renewed passion on his companion--"what have you done with
the Creeds? Every word in them steeped in the heart's blood of
generations!--and you put them aside as a kind of theological
bric-a-brac that concerns us no more. Meynell!--you have no conception of
the forces that this movement of yours, if you persist in it, will
unchain against you! You are like children playing with the lightning!"

Denunciation and warning sat with a curious majesty on the little Bishop
as he launched these words. It was with a visible effort that Meynell
braced himself against them.

"Perhaps I estimate the forces for and against differently from yourself,
Bishop. But when you prophesy war, I agree. There will be war!--and that
makes the novelty of the situation. Till now there has never been
equality enough for war. The heretic has been an excrescence to be cut
away. Now you will have to make some terms with him! For the ideas behind
him have invaded your inmost life. They are all about you and around
you--and when you go out to fight him, you will discover that you are
half on his side!"

"If that means," said the Bishop impatiently, "that the Church is
accessible to new ideas--that she is now, as she has always been, a
learned Church--the Church of Westcott and Lightfoot, of a host of
younger scholars who are as well acquainted with the ideas and
contentions of Modernism--as you call it--as any Modernist in Europe--and
are still the faithful servants and guardians of Christian dogma--why,
then, you say what is true! We perfectly understand your positions--and
we reject them."

Through Meynell's expression there passed a gleam--slight and gentle--of
something like triumph.

"Forgive me!--but I think you have given me my point. Let me recall to
you the French sayings--'Comprendre, c'est pardonner--Comprendre, c'est
aimer.' It is because for the first time you do understand them--that,
for the first time, the same arguments play upon you as play upon us--it
is for that very reason that we regard the field as half won, before the
battle is even joined."

The Bishop gazed upon him with a thin, dropping lip--an expression of
suffering in the clear blue eyes.

"That Christians"--he said under his breath--"should divide the forces of
Christ--with the sin and misery of this world devouring and defiling our
brethren day by day!"

"What if it be not 'dividing'--but doubling--the forces of Christ!" said
Meynell, with pale resolution. "All that we ask is the Church should
recognize existing facts--that organization should shape itself to
reality. In our eyes, Christendom is divided to-day--or is rapidly
dividing itself--into two wholly new camps. The division between Catholic
and Protestant is no longer the supreme division; for the force that is
rising affects both Protestant and Catholic equally. Each of the new
divisions has a philosophy and a criticism of its own; each of them has
an immense hold on human life, though Modernism is only now slowly
realizing and putting out its power. Two camps!--two systems of
thought!--both of them _Christian_ thought. Yet one of them, one only,
_is in possession_ of the churches, the forms, the institutions; the
other is everywhere knocking at the gates. 'Give us our portion!'--we
say--'in Christ's name.' But _only our portion!_ We do not dream of
dispossessing the old--it is the last thing, even, that we desire. But
for the sake of souls now wandering and desolate, we ask to live side by
side with the old--in brotherly peace, in equal right--sharing what the
past has bequeathed! Yes, even the loaves and fishes!--they ought to be
justly divided out like the rest. But, above all, the powers, the
opportunities, the trials, the labours of the Christian Church!"

"In other words, so far as the English Church is concerned, you propose
to reduce us within our own borders to a peddling confusion of sects,
held together by the mere physical link of our buildings and our
endowments!" said the Bishop, as he straightened himself in his chair.

He spoke with a stern and contemptuous force which transformed the small
body and sensitive face. In the old room, the library of the Palace, with
its rows of calf-bound folios, and its vaulted fifteenth century roof, he
sat as the embodiment of ancient, inherited things, his gentleness lost
in that collective, that corporate, pride which has been at once the
noblest and the deadliest force in history.

Meynell's expression changed, in correspondence. It, too, grew harder,
more challenging.

"My lord--is there no loss already to be faced, of another kind?--is
all well with the Church? How often have I found you here--forgive
me!--grieving for the loss of souls--the decline of faith--the empty
churches--the dwindling communicants--the spread of secularist
literature--the hostility of the workmen! And yet what devotion, what
zeal, there is in this diocese, beginning with our Bishop. Have we not
often asked ourselves what such facts could possibly mean--why God seemed
to have forsaken us?"

"They mean luxury and selfishness--the loss of discipline at home and
abroad," said the Bishop, with bitter emphasis. "It is hard indeed to
turn the denial of Christ into an argument against His Gospel!"

Meynell was silent. His heart was burning within him with a passionate
sense at once of the vast need and hungry unrest so sharply dismissed by
the Bishop, and of the efficacy of that "new teaching" for which he
stood. But he ceased to try and convey it by argument. After a few
moments he began in his ordinary voice to report various developments of
the Movement in the diocese of which he believed the Bishop to be still
ignorant.

"We wish to conceal nothing from you," he said at last with emotion; "and
consistently with the trial of strength that must come, we desire to
lighten the burden on our Bishop as much as we possibly can. This will be
a solemn testing of great issues--we on our side are determined to do
nothing to embitter or disgrace it."

The Bishop, now grown very white, looked at him intently.

"I make one last appeal, Meynell, to your obedience--and to the promises
of your ordination."

"I was a boy then"--said Meynell slowly--"I am a man now. I took those
vows sincerely, in absolute good faith; and all the changes in me have
come about, as it seems to me, by the inbreathing of a spirit not my
own--partly from new knowledge--partly in trying to help my people to
live--or to die. They represent to me things lawfully--divinely--learnt.
So that in the change itself, I cannot acknowledge or feel wrongdoing.
But you remind me--as you have every right to do--that I accepted certain
rules and conditions. Now that I break them, must I not resign the
position dependent on them? Clearly, if it were a question of any
ordinary society. But the Christian Church is not an ordinary society! It
is the sum of Christian life!"

The Bishop raised a hand of protest, but without speaking. Meynell
resumed:

"And that Life makes the Church--moulds it afresh, from age to age. There
are times--we hold--when the Church very nearly expresses the Life; there
are others when there are great discordances between the Life, and its
expression in the Church. We believe that there are such discordances now
because--once more--of a New Learning. And we believe that to withdraw
from the struggle to make the Church more fully represent the Life would
be sheer disloyalty and cowardice. We must stay it out, and do our best.
We are not dishonest, for, unlike many Liberals of the past and the
present--we speak out! We are inconsistent indeed with a past pledge; but
are we any more inconsistent than the High Churchman who repudiates the
'blasphemous fables' of the Mass when he signs the Articles, and then
encourages adoration of the Reserved Sacrament in his church?"

The Bishop made no immediate reply. He was at that moment involved in a
struggle with an incumbent in Markborough itself who under the very
shadow of the Cathedral had been celebrating the Assumption of the
Blessed Virgin in flat disobedience to his diocesan. His mind wandered
for a minute or two to this case. Then, rousing himself, he said
abruptly, with a keen look at Meynell:

"I know of course that, in your case, there can be no question of
clinging to the money of the Church."

Meynell flushed.

"I had not meant to speak of it--but your lordship knows that all I
receive from my living is given back to church purposes. I support myself
by what I write. There are others of us who risk much more than I--who
risk indeed their all!"

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