Children of clergy -- Fiction; Clergy -- England -- Fiction
Mark's window looked out on Keppel Street; and the May night being warm
and his head aching from the effects of the meeting, he sat for nearly
an hour at the open window gazing down at the passers by. There was not
much to see, nothing more indeed than couples wandering home, a
bluejacket or two, an occasional cat, and a few women carrying jugs of
beer. By eleven o'clock even this slight traffic had ceased, and there
was nothing down the silent street except a salt wind from the harbour
that roused a memory of the beach at Nancepean years ago when he had sat
there watching the glow-worm and decided to be a lighthouse-keeper
keeping his lamps bright for mariners homeward bound. It was of streets
like Keppel Street that they would have dreamed, with the Stag Light
winking to port, and the west wind blowing strong astern. What a
lighthouse-keeper Father Rowley was! How except by the grace of God
could one explain such goodness as his? Fashions in saintliness might
change, but there was one kind of saint that always and for every creed
spoke plainly of God's existence, such saints as St. Francis of Assisi
or St. Anthony of Padua, who were manifestly the heirs of Christ. With
what a tender cynicism Our Lord had called St. Peter to be the
foundation stone of His Church, with what a sorrowful foreboding of the
failure of Christianity. Such a choice appeared as the expression of
God's will not to be let down again as He was let down by Adam. Jesus
Christ, conscious at the moment of what He must shortly suffer at the
hands of mankind, must have been equally conscious of the failure of
Christianity two thousand years beyond His Agony and Bloody Sweat and
Crucifixion. Why, within a short time after His life on earth it was
necessary for that light from heaven to shine round about Saul on the
Damascus road, because already scoffers, while the disciples were still
alive, may have been talking about the failure of Christianity. It must
have been another of God's self-imposed limitations that He did not give
to St. John that capacity of St. Paul for organization which might have
made practicable the Christianity of the master Who loved him. _Woman,
behold thy son! Behold thy mother!_ That dying charge showed that Our
Lord considered John the most Christlike of His disciples, and he
remained the most Christlike man until twelve hundred years later St.
Francis was born at Assisi. St. Paul, St. Augustine, St. Dominic, if
Christianity could only produce mighty individualists of Faith like
them, it could scarcely have endured as it had endured. _And now abideth
faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is
charity._ There was something almost wistful in those words coming from
the mouth of St. Paul. It was scarcely conceivable that St. John or St.
Francis could ever have said that; it would scarcely have struck either
that the three virtues were separable.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account