Painted Windows: Studies in Religious PersonalityBegbie, Harold
Religion
Painted Windows: Studies in Religious Personality
Begbie, Harold
Clergy -- England
Dr. Gore lives in a small and decent London horse which at all points in
its equipment perfectly expresses a pure taste and a wholly unstudied
refinement. Nothing there offends the eye or oppresses the mind. It is
the dignified habitation of a poor gentleman, breathing a charm not to
be found in the house of a rich parvenu. He has avoided without effort
the conscious artistry of Chelsea and the indifference to art of the
unæsthetic vulgarian. As to the manner of his life, it is reduced to an
extreme of simplicity, but his asceticism is not made the excuse for
domestic carelessness. A sense of order distinguishes this small
interior, which is as quiet as a monk's cell, but restful and gracious,
as though continually overlooked by a woman's providence.
Here Dr. Gore reads theology and the newspaper, receives and embraces
some of his numerous disciples, discusses socialism with men like Mr.
Tawney, church government with men like Bishop Temple, writes his books
and sermons, and on a cold day, seated on a cushion with his feet in the
fender and his hands stretched over a timorous fire, revolves the many
problems which beset his peace of mind[4].
[Footnote 4: Concerning modernising tendencies, Father Ronald Knox says,
"I went to a meeting about it in Margaret Street, where crises in the
Church are invested with a peculiar atmosphere of delicious
trepidation."]
Somewhere, in speaking of the Church's attitude towards rich and poor,
he has confessed to carrying about with him "a permanently troubled
conscience." The phrase lives in his face. It is not the face of a man
who is at peace with himself. If he has peace of mind, it is a Peace of
Versailles.
One cannot look at that tall lean figure in its purple cassock, with the
stooping head, the somewhat choleric face, the low forehead deeply
scored with anxiety, the prominent light-coloured and glassy eyes
staring with perplexity under bushy brows, which are as carefully combed
as the hair of his head, the large obstinate nose with its challenging
tilt and wide war-breathing nostrils, the broad white moustache and
sudden pointed beard sloping inward; nor can one listen to the deep,
tired, and ghostly voice slowly uttering the laborious ideas of his
troubled mind with the somewhat painful pronunciation of the
elocutionist (he makes _chapell_ of Chapel); nor mark his languorous
movements and the slow swaying action of the attenuated body; one cannot
notice all this without feeling that in spite of his great courage and
his iron tenacity of purpose, he is a little weary of the battle, and
sometimes even perhaps conscious of a check for the cause which is far
dearer to him than his own life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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