A MERE BIT OF GOSSIP

The Ministers’ Meeting of the following Tuesday was pleasantly enlivened with gossip ­retained, of course, within seemly bounds.  There was absent the Reverend Dr. Linford, sometime rector of St. Antipas, said lately to have emerged from a state of spiritual chrysalis into a world made new with truths that were yet old.  It was concerning this circumstance that discreet expressions were oftenest heard during the function.

One brother declared that the Linfords were both extremists:  one with his absurdly radical disbelief in revealed religion; the other flying at last to the Mother Church for that authority which he professed not to find in his own.

Another asserted that in talking with Dr. Linford now, one brought away the notion that in renouncing his allegiance to the Episcopal faith he had gone to the extreme of renouncing marriage, in order that the Mother Church might become his only bride.  True, Linford said nothing at all like this; ­the idea was fleeting, filmy, traceable to no specific words of his.  Yet it left a track across the mind.  It seemed to be the very spirit of his speech upon the subject.  Certainly no other reason had been suggested for the regrettable, severance of this domestic tie.  Conjecture was futile and Mrs. Linford, secluded in her country home at Edom, had steadfastly refused, so said the public prints, to give any reason whatsoever.

His soup finished, the Reverend Mr. Whittaker unfolded the early edition of an evening paper to a page which bore an excellent likeness of Dr. Linford.

“I’ll read you some things from his letter,” he said, “though I’ll confess I don’t wholly approve his taste in giving it to the press.  However ­here’s one bit: 

“’When I was ordained a priest in the Episcopal Church I dreamed of wielding an influence that would tend to harmonise the conflicting schools of churchmanship.  It seemed to me that my little life might be of value, as I comprehended the essentials of church citizenship.  I will not dwell upon my difficulties.  The present is no time to murmur.  Suffice it to say, I have long held, I have taught, nearly every Catholic doctrine not actually denied by the Anglican formularies; and I have accepted and revived in St. Antipas every Catholic practice not positively forbidden.

“But I have lately become convinced that the Anglican orders of the ministry are invalid.  I am persuaded that a priest ordained into the Episcopal Church cannot consecrate the elements of the Eucharist in a sacrificial sense.  Could I be less than true to my inner faith in a matter touching the sacred verity of the Real Presence ­the actual body and blood of our Saviour?

“After conflict and prayer I have gone trustingly whither God has been pleased to lead me.  In my humble sight the only spiritual body that actually claims to teach truth upon authority, the only body divinely protected from teaching error, is the Holy, Catholic and Roman Church.

“For the last time I have exercised my private judgment, as every man must exercise it once, at least, and I now seek communion with this largest and oldest body of Christians in the world.  I have faced an emergency fraught with vital interest to every thinking man.  I have met it; the rest is with my God.  Praying that I might be adorned with the splendours of holiness, and knowing that the prayer of him that humbleth himself shall pierce the clouds, I took for my motto this sentence from Huxley:  ’Sit down before fact as a little child; be prepared to give up every preconceived notion; follow humbly wherever and to whatever abysses Nature leads.’  Presently, God willing, I shall be in communion with the See of Rome, where I feel that there is a future for me!”

The reader had been absently stabbing at his fish with an aimless fork.  He now laid down his paper to give the food his entire attention.

“You see,” began Floud, “I say one brother is quite as extreme as the other.”

Father Riley smiled affably, and begged Whittaker to finish the letter.

“Your fish is fresh, dear man, but your news may be stale before we reach it ­so hasten now ­I’ve a presentiment that our friend goes still farther afield.”

Whittaker abandoned his fish with a last thoughtful look, and resumed the reading.

“May I conclude by reminding you that the issue between Christianity and science falsely so called has never been enough simplified?  Christianity rests squarely on the Fall of man.  Deny the truth of Genesis and the whole edifice of our faith crumbles.  If we be not under the curse of God for Adam’s sin, there was never a need for a Saviour, the Incarnation and the Atonement become meaningless, and our Lord is reduced to the status of a human teacher of a disputable philosophy ­a peasant moralist with certain delusions of grandeur ­an agitator and heretic whom the authorities of his time executed for stirring up the people.  In short, the divinity of Jesus must stand or fall with the divinity of the God of Moses, and this in turn rests upon the historical truth of Genesis.  If the Fall of man be successfully disputed, the God of Moses becomes a figment of the Jewish imagination ­Jesus becomes man.  And this is what Science asserts, while we of the outer churches, through cowardice or indolence ­too often, alas! through our own skepticism ­have allowed Science thus to obscure the issue.  We have fatuously thought to surrender the sin of Adam, and still to keep a Saviour ­not perceiving that we must keep both or neither.

“There is the issue.  The Church says that man is born under the curse of God and so remains until redeemed, through the sacraments of the Church, by the blood of God’s only begotten Son.

“Science says man is not fallen, but has risen steadily from remote brute ancestors.  If science be right ­and by mere evidence its contention is plausible ­then original sin is a figment and natural man is a glorious triumph over brutehood, not only requiring no saviour ­since he is under no curse of God ­but having every reason to believe that the divine favour has ever attended him in his upward trend.

“But if one finds mere evidence insufficient to outweigh that most glorious death on Calvary, if one regards that crucifixion as a tear of faith on the world’s cold cheek of doubt to make it burn forever, then one must turn to the only church that safeguards this rock of Original Sin upon which the Christ is builded.  For the ramparts of Protestantism are honeycombed with infidelity ­and what is most saddening, they are giving way to blows from within.  Protestantism need no longer fear the onslaughts of atheistic outlaws:  what concerns it is the fact that the stronghold of destructive criticism is now within its own ranks ­a stronghold manned by teachers professedly orthodox.

“It need cause little wonder, then, that I have found safety in the Mother Church.  Only there is one compelled by adequate authority to believe.  There alone does it seem to be divined that Christianity cannot relinquish the first of its dogmas without invalidating those that rest upon it.

“For another vital matter, only in the Catholic Church do I find combated with uncompromising boldness that peculiarly modern and vicious sentimentality which is preached as ‘universal brotherhood.’  It is a doctrine spreading insidiously among the godless masses outside the true Church, a chimera of visionaries who must be admitted to be dishonest, since again and again has it been pointed out to them that their doctrine is unchristian ­impiously and preposterously unchristian.  Witness the very late utterance of His Holiness, Pope Pius X, as to God’s divine ordinance of prince and subject, noble and plebeian, master and proletariat, learned and ignorant, all united, indeed, but not in material equality ­only in the bonds of love to help one another attain their moral welfare on earth and their last end in heaven.  Most pointedly does his Holiness further rebuke this effeminacy of universal brotherhood by stating that equality exists among the social members only in this:  that all men have their origin in God the Creator, have sinned in Adam, and have been equally redeemed into eternal life by the sacrifice of our Lord.

“Upon these two rocks ­of original sin and of prince and subject, riches and poverty ­by divine right, the Catholic Church has taken its stand; and within this church will the final battle be fought on these issues.  Thank God He has found my humble self worthy to fight upon His side against the hordes of infidelity and the preachers of an unchristian social equality!”

There were little exclamations about the table as Whittaker finished and returned at last to his fish.  To Father Riley it occurred that these would have been more communicative, more sentient, but for his presence.  In fact, there presently ensued an eloquent silence in lieu of remarks that might too easily have been indiscreet.

“Pray, never mind me at all, gentlemen ­I’ll listen blandly whilst I disarticulate this beautiful bird.”

“I say one is quite as extreme as the other,” again declared the discoverer of this fact, feeling that his perspicacity had not been sufficiently remarked.

“I dare say Whittaker is meditating a bitter cynicism,” suggested Father Riley.

“Concerning that incandescent but unfortunate young man,” remarked the amiable Presbyterian ­“I trust God’s Providence to care for children and fools ­”

“And yet I found his remarks suggestive,” said the twinkling-eyed Methodist.  “That is, we asked for the belief of the average non-church-goer ­and I dare say he gave it to us.  It occurs to me further that he has merely had the wit to put in blunt, brutal words what so many of us declare with academic flourishes.  We can all name a dozen treatises written by theologians ostensibly orthodox which actually justify his utterances.  It seems to me, then, that we may profit by his blasphemies.”

“How?” demanded Whittaker, with some bluntness.

“Ah ­that is what the Church must determine.  We already know how to reach the heathen, the unbookish, the unthinking ­but how reach the educated ­the science-bitten?  It is useless to deny that the brightest, biggest minds are outside the Church ­indifferentists or downright opponents of it.  I am not willing to believe that God meant men like these to perish ­I don’t like to think of Emerson being lost, or Huxley, or Spencer, or even Darwin ­Question:  has the Church power to save the educated?”

“Sure, I know one that has never lacked it,” purled Father Riley.

“There’s an answer to you in Linford’s letter,” added Whittaker.

“Gentlemen, you jest with me ­but I shall continue to feel grateful to our slightly dogmatic young friend for his artless brutalities.  Now I know what the business man keeps to himself when I ask him why he has lost interest in the church.”

“There’s a large class we can’t take from you,” said Father Riley ­“that class with whom religion is a mode of respectability.”

“And you can’t take our higher critics, either ­more’s the pity!”

“On my word, now, gentlemen,” returned the Catholic, again, “that was a dear, blasphemous young whelp!  You know, I rather liked him.  Bless the soul of you, I could as little have rebuked the lad as I could punish the guiltless indécence of a babe ­he was that shockingly naif!”

“He is undoubtedly the just fruit of our own toleration,” repeated the high-church rector.

“And he stands for our knottiest problem,” said the Presbyterian.

“A problem all the knottier, I suspect,” began Whittaker ­

“Didn’t I tell you?” interrupted Father Riley.  “Oh, the outrageous cynic!  Be braced for him, now!”

“I was only going to suggest,” resumed the wicked Unitarian, calmly, “that those people, Linford and his brother ­and even that singularly effective Mrs. Linford, with her inferable views about divorce ­you know I dare say that they ­really you know ­that they possess the courage of ­”

“Their convictions!” concluded little Floud, impatient alike of the speaker’s hesitation and the expected platitude.

“No ­I was about to say ­the courage ­of ours.”

A few looked politely blank at this unseasonable flippancy.  Father Riley smiled with rare sweetness and murmured, “So cynical, even for a Unitarian!” as if to himself in playful confidence.

But the amiable Presbyterian, of the cheerful auburn beard and the salient nose, hereupon led them tactfully to safe ground in a discussion of the ethnic Trinities.