Part 16

It is not to be supposed that Father Jinks achieved his heart's desire without opposition, and he verified in his experience the fact that a man's bitterest foes are those of his own household. He was opposed by the people's churchwarden, who would not go elsewhere, declaring that he had been in St Agatha's before Jinks was born--which was not the case--and would be after Jinks had gone, which turned out sadly true. He was harassed by “aggrieved parishioners,” who declared by petitions in all quarters that they could no longer worship in St Agatha's, and that what with daily services, fine music, and decorations, the place was little better than a Papist chapel. His breakfast-table had daily one or two anonymous letters reminding Jinks of his ordination vows, and accusing him of perjury, insinuating charges against his moral character and threatening exposure, quoting texts regarding the condition of the unconverted and the doom of hypocrites. He was dragged before all kinds of Courts, this one little man, and received every form of censure and admonition; he was ordered to prison, and left the Vicarage one evening in a cab, while the choir boys, led by Bags, wanted to fight the officer. And when all these measures produced no effect, more forcible measures were taken to express the mind of the people and to re-establish the Reformation in the parish of St Agatha's. A leader was raised up in a gentleman who had earned an uncertain living by canvassing for the _Kings of England_ in forty-two parts, in selling a new invention in gas-burners, in replying to infidels in Hyde Park, and in describing the end of the world with the aid of a magic lantern. This man of varied talents saw it to be his duty--and who can judge another man's conscience?--to attend St Agatha's one Sunday forenoon, accompanied by a number of fellow-Protestants, who, owing to the restriction of the licensing laws, were out of employment at that hour, and they expressed their theological views during service in a very frank and animated fashion. Bigger men than Jinks might have been upset by the turmoil and menaces; but it shows what a spirit may dwell in small bulk, that this shy modest man did not stutter once that morning, and seemed indeed unconscious of the “Modern Luther's” presence; and after the floor of the church had been washed on Monday no trace remained that a testimony had been lifted up against the disguised Jesuit who was corrupting St Agatha's. Once only did Jinks publicly reply to the hurricane of charges which beat upon him during his short, hard service, and that was when he was accused of having introduced the confessional, with results which it was alleged were already well known in the district, and which would soon reduce its morality to the social level of the south of Ireland. A week afterwards Jinks explained in a sermon which he had rewritten three times: (1) That the practice of confession was, in his poor judgment, most helpful to the spiritual life by reminding us of the sins which do most easily beset us, and their horrible guilt before God; (2) That it was really the intention of the Church of England that her children should have this benefit; and (3) That he, John James Jinks, a duly ordained priest of the same Church, had power, under conditions, to hear confessions and declare the forgiveness of sins to all true penitents. Thereafter, he went on to state that he had not introduced confession as a practice in St Agatha's, because he had never been trained in confessional theology, because a confessor required authority from his bishop, and this the bishop would not give; and, finally, it seemed to him that any confessor must be a priest with a special knowledge of life, and of conspicuous holiness; and, as they knew well, he was neither, but only an ignorant and frail man, who was more conscious of his deficiencies every day, and who earnestly besought the aid of their prayers. This sermon was reported in the _Islington Mercury_, which circulated largely amongst us, and called forth an ingenious reply from the “Modern Luther,” who pointed out that if Mr. Jinks had not set up a confessional box in St Agatha's Church, it was only because his (the “Modern Luther's”) eye was upon him; that the confessional could likely be discovered in the Vicarage; that in so far as Mr. Jinks was not telling the truth he would receive absolution from the Jesuits, and that he very likely had already received a licence to tell as many lies as he saw would help his cause. Men, however, do count for something even in religious controversy, and the very people who had no belief in Jinks' doctrine could see some difference between his patient, charitable self-sacrificing life and the career of a windbag like the “Modern Luther,” and no one in the last year of his life accused Jinks of falsehood.

During all these troubled days he never lost his temper, or said bitter things: he believed, as he once told me in all modesty, that if he suffered it was for his sins, and that persecution was only a call to harder labour; and it appeared afterwards that he had gone out of his way to do a good turn to certain of his bitterest enemies. Indeed, I am now certain that they did not injure him at all; but one is also quite as certain that he was hindered and made ridiculous by certain of his own supporters. Certain young women of uncertain age who had been district visitors and carried tracts under the revered Canon, or had been brought up in various forms of Dissent, responded with enthusiasm to the Catholic Reformation. They wore large gold (or gilt) crosses, and were careful to use heavily crossed prayer-books; they attended early celebration, and were horrified at people taking the sacrament not fasting; they not only did obeisance to the altar, where there was no sacrament, and bowed at the name of Jesus, and crossed themselves in a very diligent and comprehensive fashion, but invented forms of devotion which even Jinks could not comprehend, and so scandalized the old clerk, who stuck by St. Agatha's, that he asked them one day during service if they were ill, and suggested that they should leave the church before things came to the worst Personally, as a close observer of this drama, I had no sympathy with the ill-natured suggestion that these devout females were moved by the fact that the priest of St Agatha's was unmarried, because no man was ever more careful in his intercourse with the other sex than my friend, and because this kind of woman--till she marries, and with modifications afterwards--has a mania for ritual and priests. This band, who called themselves the Sisters of St Agatha, and severely tried our unsentimental district, were a constant embarrassment to Jinks. They made the entire attendance at the daily services; they insisted on cleaning the chancel on their knees; they fluttered round the confused little man in the street; they could hardly be kept out of the Vicarage; they talked of nothing but saints' days and offices and vestments, till Jinks, the simplest and honestest of men, was tempted, for his sake and their own salvation, to entreat them to depart and return whence they had come.

V

The strongest and most honourable opponent the Vicar had was my other friend, Pastor Jump, who would not condescend to the methods or company of the “Modern Luther,” but who was against both Jinks and Jinks' Church, whether it was Low, High, Broad, or anything else, on grounds of reason and conscience. He did not believe in creeds, whether they were made in Rome or Geneva, and considered a Presbyter just a shade better than a priest His one book of theology was the Bible, which he knew from Genesis to Revelation in the English Version (he also knew far more about the Hebrew and Greek than the Canon did), and he found his ecclesiastical model in the Acts of the Apostles. It was indeed the Pastor's firm conviction that the Christian Church had only had two periods of purity in her history--one under the charge of the Apostle Paul, and the other under the Puritans; and that if, during her whole history, bishops and such-like people had been replaced by Puritan ministers, it would have been much better for Christianity and for the world. His idea of a Christian was a person who knew the day that he had been converted, and who afterwards had been baptized; and of the Church, that it was so many of these people with a pastor to teach them. He detested Established Churches, priests, and liturgies, as well as the House of Lords, capitalists, and all privileged persons. His radicalism was however tempered by a profound belief in himself and his own opinions. He was fond of insisting on the rights of the masses; but when the working people wished to have the Park open on Sunday that they might walk there with their children, the Pastor fought them tooth and nail, and he regarded their desire to see pictures on Sunday as the inspiration of Satan. No man was ever more eloquent upon the principles of religious liberty, but he would have put an infidel into prison without compunction and he drave forth a deacon from his own congregation with contumely, who held unsound views on the Atonement The tyranny of the Papacy was a favourite theme at Ebenezer, as well as the insolence of priests; but every one knew that Pastor Jump as Pope was infallible without the aid of any Council, and that his little finger was heavier in personal rule than both Jinks' arms. When the Pastor, who had the voice of a costermonger and the fist of a prize-fighter, was carried away at a Liberation Society meeting by his own undoubted eloquence, and described himself as a conscientious Dissenter, despised by the proud priests of the Anglican Church, and next day one saw Jinks, thinner than ever, hurrying along the street, and concealing beneath his shabby cloak some dainty for a sick child, then one had a quite convincing illustration of the power and utility of rhetoric.

Upon occasion the Pastor felt it his duty to depart from his usual course of evangelical doctrine, and to enlighten his people on some historical subject and the district was once shaken by a discourse on Oliver Cromwell, whom he compared to Elijah, and whose hatred of the Baal worship was held up for imitation in our own day. Jinks committed the one big mistake of his ministry by replying with a sermon on St. Charles the Blessed Martyr--I think he said St.--which was a very weak performance, and left the laurels altogether with Ebenezer. It must indeed be admitted that Jump exactly expressed the mind of an Englishman of the lower middle class, who understands the Evangelical system and no other, and likes extempore prayer, with its freedom, variety, warmth, and surprises, who suspects priests of wishing to meddle with his family affairs, and dislikes all official pretensions, although willing to be absolutely ruled by a strong man's personality. Both were extreme men, and both were needed to express the religious sense of an English parish. Jump considered the Canon an indefensible humbug, neither one thing nor another, and the Canon used to pass Jump on the street; but the Sunday after Jinks' death the Pastor, who had a warm heart in his big body, and testified of things he had seen, passed a eulogium on the late Vicar of St Agatha's, so generous and affecting, that beside it the peeping little sermon preached in St Agatha's by a “Father” of the “Anglican Friars” was as water to wine. The Pastor declared that although he did not agree with his doctrine, he knew no man who had lived nearer his Lord, or had done more good works than the Vicar of St Agatha's; and that if every priest had been like him, he would never say a word against the class. The people heard his voice break as he spoke, and two deacons wiped their eyes, and the angels set down the sermon in that Book where the record of our controversies is blotted out by their tears, and our deeds of charity are written in gold.

Perhaps, however, our poor priest suffered most in some ways at the hands of a handful of Scots who had settled in the parish. They did not oppose any of his proceedings, for they never condescended to cross the door of St. Agatha's, and they accepted any extravagances of ritual as things to be expected of an Episcopalian. Nor had they, like the Pastor, a hereditary feud with the Anglican Church, for neither they nor their fathers ever had anything to do with it They were indeed inclined to believe that the Prayer-Book, where the officiating clergyman is called a Minister and a Priest alternately, is admirably suited to the English mind, to which the Almighty has been pleased to deny the gift of logic. What touched, and (almost) nettled, the little Father was the tacit and immovable superiority of the Scots, which made conversion impossible, and even pastoral conversation difficult. It was Jinks' conscientious conviction that he was responsible for the spiritual charge of all the people in the parish, and so he visited laboriously among the Scots schismatics, if haply he might bring them to the true faith, with mortifying results. Old Andrew MacKittrick seemed to Jinks' innocent mind a promising case, because Andrew had retired on a pension after keeping the books of a drysalter's firm for forty years, and now had nothing to do but argue. In fact, on the Vicar's first visit, the bookkeeper fairly smacked his lips, seeing whole afternoons of intellectual diversion before him; and Jinks, who was ever optimistic, already imagined the responsible-looking figure of the Scot sustaining a procession. It turned out a lamentable instance of cross-purposes, for Jinks was burning to prove, with all tenderness, that the Kirk had no Orders; while the idea that Dr. Chalmers was not a real minister and Archbishop Sharpe was, seemed to Andrew unworthy of discussion by any sane person; and Andrew, on his part, was simply longing for some one to attack Jonathan Edward's _Freedom of the Will,_ while Jinks had never heard of the book, and was quite blameless of philosophy. After two conferences, Andrew was sadly convinced of their futility, and would not waste time on a third.

“Jess wumman,” he said to his housekeeper, rolling himself hurriedly up in a plaid and lying down on the sofa, “there's that curate body at the door again; a've nae satisfaction arguin' wi' him, for he's no fit to tak' up ony serious subject Just say that a'm no feelin' verra weel the day, and, see here, slip ten shillings into his hand to gie awa', for he's a fine bit craturie amang the poor, but he's no head for argument.”

With Mrs. Gillespie, who kept lodgings, and was as a mother to two Scots bank clerks pushing their way up to be managers, Father Jinks was not more successful, but his discomfiture was of another kind.

“Come in, come in; it's an awfu' day to be oot, an' ye dinna look strong; na, na, a dinna gang to Saint Agatha's, for ye ken we've a Kirk o' oor ain, an' a properly ordained minister, but a'm gled to see ye; a'm thankfu' for my ain preevileges, but a'm no bigoted.

“Sit doon there by the fire an' dry yersel; a cudna manage wi' a prayer-book masel, but we've had mony advantages in Scotland, and it suits the English fouk. A hed a cousin' at married an Episcopalian, and she gied wi' him as long as he lived, though of course it was a deprivation.

“'A schismatic?'--a've heard the word: they used to misca' the English bishops that way in the North--an' ye called to warn me. Noo that was kind, and, of coorse, ye did na know that a sit under Mr. McCaw; but Losh keep us! ye're juist dreeping; a'll get ye a pair o' the lad's slippers an' mak ye a warm cup o' tea.

“A hed a laddie juist your age, an' ma heart warms to young men that are na verra strong. Say awa'; a'll hear ye though a'm in the next room. There noo, drink up your tea, an' that's short-bread frae Edinburgh, Let's hear noo aboot yer Kirk; somebody was sayin' that ye carried on the same antics as the Papists; but a'm no believin' that. Are ye feelin' warmer noo, ma puir wee mannie?” and the good woman encompassed Jinks with motherly attentions, but refused to take seriously his efforts to convert her from the Kirk to the Church. Nor did he think it an encouraging sign that Mrs. Gillespie pressed him to give her “a cry” every time he was in the street, and sent him three pots of black currant jam for his chest The most disappointing encounter was with our Scots doctor, who had looked into St Agatha's one evening in passing and found Jinks warning Dissenters of all kinds, among whom the Doctor found to his amusement that he was included of their doom if they died in schism. The Doctor's delight reached its height when Jinks, standing at his full height of five feet four, and looking more than ever like a dear little boy, opened his arms and invited every wandering prodigal to return to the bosom of Mother Church.

“Jinksy”--and the Doctor laid hold of the Father next day on the street--“what sort of nonsense was yon ye were talking in your kirk last night?

“Hurt my feelings”--as Jinks was explaining that he had only been declaring the truth, and that he did not wish to offend any one--“it would take three men of your size to offend me. But I say, Jinksy, do you ever take a holiday in Scotland? You hope to do some day. Then I'll give ye a bit of advice: if you ever feel a turr-murring in your inside, take the first train for Carlisle. Why? Because if you die in Scotland, you'll die a Dissenter; and then, my little man, you know where you'll go to”; for the Doctor's hand in humour was heavy, and his style was that of an elephant crashing through a wood.

VI

Next time the Anglican and the Scot met it was in circumstances where differences of creed are forgotten and good men stand shoulder to shoulder. In one room of the house a clerk's wife was seriously ill with influenza, and in another the Doctor was examining her husband--a patient, hard working, poorly paid drudge, who had come home from the City very ill. “My wife thinks that it's nothing but a bad 'eadache. Don't tell 'er, Doctor, else it might go bad with 'er, an* she 'asn't much strength; but I say, tell me, 'aven't I got diphtheria?”

“What makes everybody that gets a sore throat think he has diphtheria? Well, I believe you have some grit in you, and don't want to be treated like a child. You have, I'm sorry to say, and pretty bad; but you have the spirit to make a fight, and I'll do my best.

“Yes, I'll see that no one in this house comes near you, and I'll try to get a nurse for to-night, but they're hard to get just now. I'll come back with medicine in half an hour; and, look here, Holmes, mind your wife and bairns, and keep up your heart.

“No, Jinks, you must not come into this house: it's more than influenza. Holmes has got diphtheria very bad; ought to have been in bed two days ago, but the stupid ass stuck to his work. The mischief is that I can't get a nurse, and he should not be left alone at night.”

“You, man alive, you're no fit for such work, and you would maybe catch it.. I know you're not afraid, but... well, it's real gude o' ye, an' I'll see ye settled for the night about eight.”

“That's the medicine, every three hours”--the doctor was giving his directions to Nurse Jinks in the sick-room--“and let him have some brandy and water when he's thirsty. Toots, Holmes, I know you could get a bottle for yourself, but this is a special brand for sick folk. Oh, yes, it'll go in the bill, risk me for that: every Scot looks after himself. The minister is to stay all night with you, and what between the two of us well see ye through.

“Here's a cordial for yourself, Jinks”--this outside the door--“and for ony sake keep clear of his breath. If he takes a turn for the worse, send the servant lass for me. I may be out, but they will know where to get me. And, Jinks, old man, I withdraw that about Carlisle.... Ye'll go to Heaven from either side o' the Tweed. God bless you, old man; you're doin' a good turn the night...

“Yes, he's much worse than he was last morning; but it's not the blame of your nursing: there's just one chance, and I'll try it. How do you know about it? Well, yes, if you must know, I am going to use suction. Get diphtheria myself? Maybe I may, and why should I not run the risk as well as you, Mr. Jinks?... It's all right, man. I'm not angry. Neither you nor me are cowards,” said the Doctor; “neither is Holmes, and he must have his chance, poor chap. Yes, I would be glad of your help.

“No, you will not be needed at Holmes's to-night, and you've had enough of it, Jinks. I've got a nurse, and Holmes is coming round first rate. It's all right about paying the nurse; I'll see to that Man, ye would pay for all the nurses in the district, if ye were allowed.

“Me, I'm as fit as a fiddle. Doctors can't afford to be ill; but you're no the thing, Jinks. Come back to the manse with me this minute, I want to have a look at ye. Yon were three hard nichts ye had”--the Doctor dropped into Scots when he was excited....

“Sir Andrew's gone, and I wish we had better news for you and ourselves. Don't thank me for telling the truth; no man would tell you a lie. ... You're all right, whatever happens, Jinks,” and he dropped his hand within reach of the Father's, on whose face the shadow was fast falling.

“It will not be for some hours, may be not till morning, and I hope you'll not suffer much... I'll come back after the minister has left and stay with you till, till...”

“Daybreak,” said Jinks.

“Doctor,” Jinks whispered, during the night as they watched by his bed, the Scot on one side and Peter, who would allow no nurse, on the other, “the Scots kirk has seemed to me... as Samaria, but the Lord chose... a Samaritan in His parable, and you are...that Samaritan,” and the Father looked at the Doctor with eyes full of love. Just before sunrise he glanced at the Doctor enquiringly.

“Yes, it's no far off now, an' the worst's past. Ye'll have an easy passage.” They passed each an arm round his neck, and each took one of his hands.

“Till Jesus comes Himself,” whispered Jinks, thanking them with his eyes.

“O Saviour of the world, who by Thy cross and precious blood hast redeemed us, save us, and help us, we humbly beseech Thee, O Lord.” This which he had often offered for others, he now prayed for himself very slowly. The light stole into the room and woke him from a brief unconsciousness.

“I believe”... he said, “in the Life Everlasting,” and the soul of the faithful servant was with the Lord, Whom, not having seen, he had loved.

When the Doctor left the Vicarage, although still very early, Bags, the choir-boy, was on the doorstep and was weeping bitterly.

THE PASSING OF DOMSIE

It was an ancient custom that Domsie and Drumsheugh should dine with Doctor Davidson in the Manse after the distribution of prizes at the school, and his companions both agreed afterwards that the Dominie was never more cheerful than on those days. There was always a review of stories when the Doctor and Domsie brought out their favourites, with Drumsheugh for an impartial and appreciative audience, and every little addition or improvement was noted in a spirit of appreciative criticism.

During the active operations of dinner, talk was disjointed and educational, hinging on the prospects of the calf crop in the school, and the golden glories of the past, ever better than the present, when the end of each University session showered medals on Drumtochty. When the Doctor had smacked his first glass of port, having examined it against the light, and the others had prepared their toddy in a careful silence, broken only by wise suggestions from the host, it was understood that genuine conversation might begin.