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 {265} 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 {266} 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 {267} 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.

He keeps up correspondence by letter with some of his old friends at college, and with one or two of the Tractarians, Mr. Palmer, the author of the "Church of Christ," among the number. An old friend of his writes to him from among the Irvingites, and Father Spencer writes to another in these terms:--"The supposed miraculous voice, to which that party (the Irvingites) attend, has named 12 men as Apostles, who expect shortly to be endued with miraculous powers to enable them to restore the Church in its perfect beauty. Drummond the banker is one. Spencer Percival, and my great friend Henry Bridgman, Lord Bradford's brother, others." It is not a little strange that this Mr. Bridgman comes into the journal of Father Ignatius's Cambridge life very frequently, and mostly in the character of a Mentor.

Father Ignatius never gained much from correspondence, sought on his part, with leading men in the great religious movements of the period. But whenever others sought his advice, they generally became Catholics. They were disposed for truth, and he could remove objections, tell them of books, and pray for them. He broke off this kind of unasked-for correspondence at this time, but he resumed it again on a different footing, as shall be related in its place.

He had another means of doing good now, which could not come into his line while simple pastor of a country district. The college of Oscott was a place worth seeing, if not as a specimen of architecture, at least as being the stronghold of Catholicism, and the centre of a great deal of {268} intellectual and moral training. Many of his great friends, who could not hitherto devise any plausible plea for visiting him in his retirement, could find one immediately now, from the place he dwelt in as well as the position he there held. His name was also noised abroad, and persons would feel some curiosity for the acquaintance of one who was moving heaven and earth for their conversion. Accordingly, we find that he entertains his two brothers, the then earl and his successor, on one day; Lord Lyttelton and Mr. Gladstone on another day, and so forth. Thus, that particular power he possessed in his conversation had a field upon which it could be brought into requisition, in a manner which former arrangements had debarred to him.

Several of the sermons he preached were published and distributed. There was no faculty of his, natural or supernatural, no good deed he was capable of doing, that did not come into play far better by his late transfer to Oscott. He was also practised in the drudgery of a missionary priest--that sphere of action which fills up a priest's ordinary life; and he was able from experience to teach others, not only how to prepare themselves, but how to succeed with profit to themselves and others in this work. He had also peculiar advantages here; he could give the young ecclesiastics not only the abstract rules for missionary labour, but a taste and relish for it, for very seldom can one succeed well if his tastes run counter to his duties. He did this by continuing in Oscott his old parish work; he visited the sick, brought them the sacraments; he gave a portion of every day to his favourite work, and by the incidents he came across, and the results of his labours, he raised up the young gentlemen's notions to the looking upon that as the poetic side of their ministry which is generally supposed to be the most prosaic. This is a great secret in the training of young men; to tell them best is best, and prove it to them, will convince them of course; but it will not lead them; there must be some grace, some romantic aspect put upon the thing, and then it entices them of itself. This was Father Spencer's secret, and, indeed, it might be said that it was his rule. He writes in a letter now, that he condemns asperity in controversy, {269} and that civility and good breeding, with pity and love, is the way to confound opponents; and that he would rather see a clever argument unanswered than met with pungency and acrimony. This might be quarrelled with, for in war all things are lawful; but the real state of opinion to which he came on these matters was, that opponents were surer to be conquered by being enticed than driven. Let the Catholic religion but be seen in its native beauty, and thousands will be led to examine it.

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