The Altar Steps by Compton MacKenzie

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You know enough about Father Rowley yourself to understand how
impossible it would be for me to give any impression of his
personality in a letter. I have never felt so strongly the absolute
goodness of anybody. I suppose that some of the great mediaeval
saints like St. Francis and St. Anthony of Padua must have been
like that. One reads about them and what they did, but the facts
one reads don't really tell anything. I always feel that what we
really depend on is a kind of tradition of their absolute
saintliness handed on from the people who experienced it. I suppose
in a way the same applies to Our Lord. I always feel it wouldn't
matter a bit to me if the four Gospels were proved to be forgeries
to-morrow, because I should still be convinced that Our Lord was
God. I know this is a platitude, but I don't think until I met
Father Rowley that I ever realized the force and power that goes
with exceptional goodness. There are so many people who are good
because they were born good. Richard Ford, for example, he couldn't
have ever been anything else but good, but I always feel that
people like him remain practically out of reach of the ordinary
person and that the goodness is all their own and dies with them
just as it was born with them. What I feel about a man like Father
Rowley is that he probably had a tremendous fight to be good. Of
course, I may be perfectly wrong and he may have had no fight at
all. I know one of the people at the Mission House told me that,
though there is nobody who likes smoking better than he or more
enjoys a pint of beer with his dinner, he has given up both at St.
Agnes merely to set an example to weak people. I feel that his
goodness was with such energy fought for that it now exists as a
kind of complete thing and will go on existing when Father Rowley
himself is dead. I begin to understand the doctrine of the treasury
of merit. I remember you once told me how grateful I ought to be to
God because I had apparently escaped the temptations that attack
most boys. I am grateful; but at the same time I can't claim any
merit for it! The only time in my life when I might have acquired
any merit was when I was at Haverton House. Instead of doing that,
I just dried up, and if I hadn't had that wonderful experience at
Whitsuntide in Meade Cantorum church nearly three years ago I
should be spiritually dead by now.

This is a very long letter, and I don't seem to have left myself
any time to tell you about St. Agnes' Church. It reminds me of my
father's mission church in Lima Street, and oddly enough a new
church is being built almost next door just as one was being built
in Lima Street. I went to the children's Mass last Sunday, and I
seemed to see him walking up and down the aisle in his alb, and I
thought to myself that I had never once asked you to say Mass for
his soul. Will you do so now next time you say a black Mass? This
is a wretched letter, and it doesn't succeed in the least in
expressing what I owe to you and what I already owe to Father
Rowley. I used to think that the Sacred Heart was a rather material
device for attracting the multitude, but I'm beginning to realize
in the atmosphere of St. Agnes' that it is a gloriously simple
devotion and that it is human nature's attempt to express the
inexpressible. I'll write to you again next week. Please give my
love to everybody at the Rectory.

Always your most affectionate

Mark.

Father Rowley had been at St. Agnes' seven or eight years when Mark
found himself attached to the Mission, in which time he had transformed
the district completely. It was a small parish (actually of course it
was not a parish at all, although it was fast qualifying to become one)
of something over a thousand small houses, few of which were less than a
century old. The streets were narrow and crooked, mostly named after
bygone admirals or forgotten sea-fights; the romantic and picturesque
quarter of a great naval port to the casual glance of a passer-by, but
heartbreaking to any except the most courageous resident on account of
its overcrowded and tumbledown condition. Yet it lacked the dreariness
of an East End slum, for the sea winds blew down the narrowest streets
and alleys, sailors and soldiers were always in view, and the windows of
the pawnbrokers were filled with the relics of long voyages, with idols
and large shells, with savage weapons and the handiwork of remote
islands.

When Mark came to live in Keppel Street, most of the brothels and many
of the public houses had been eliminated from the district, and in their
place flourished various clubs and guilds. The services in the church
were crowded: there was a long roll of communicants; the civilization of
the city of God was visible in this Chatsea slum. One or two of the lay
helpers used to horrify Mark with stories of early days there, and when
he seemed inclined to regret that he had arrived so late upon the scene,
they used to tease him about his missionary spirit.

"If he can't reform the people," said Cartwright, one of the lay
helpers, a tall thin young man with a long nose and a pleasant smile,
"he still has us to reform."

"Come along, Mark Anthony," said Warrender, another lay helper, who
after working for seven years among the poor had at last been charily
accepted by the Bishop for ordination. "Come along. Why don't you try
your hand on us?"

"You people seem to think," said Mark, "that I've got a mania for
reforming. I don't mean that I should like to see St. Agnes' where it
was merely for my own personal amusement. The only thing I'm sorry about
is that I didn't actually see the work being done."

Father Rowley came in at this moment, and everybody shouted that Mark
was going to preach a sermon.

"Splendid," said the Missioner whose voice when not moved by emotion was
rich in a natural unction that encouraged everyone round to suppose he
was being successfully humorous, such a savour did it add to the most
innutritious chaff. Those who were privileged to share his ordinary life
never ceased to wonder how in the pulpit or in the confessional or at
prayer this unction was replaced by a remote beauty of tone, a plangent
and thrilling compassion that played upon the hearts of all who heard
him.

"Now really, Father Rowley," Mark protested. "Do I preach a great deal?
I'm always being chaffed by Cartwright and Warrender about an alleged
mania for reforming people, which only exists in their imagination."

Indeed Mark had long ago grown out of the desire to reform or to convert
anybody, although had he wished to keep his hand in, he could have had
plenty of practice among the guests of the Mission House. Nobody had
ever succeeded in laying down the exact number of casual visitors that
could be accommodated therein. However full it appeared, there was
always room for one more. Taking an average, day in, day out through the
year, one might fairly say that there were always eight or nine casual
guests in addition to the eight or nine permanent residents, of whom
Mark was soon glad to be able to count himself one. The company was
sufficiently mixed to have been offered as a proof to the sceptical that
there was something after all in simple Christianity. There would
usually be a couple of prefects from Silchester, one or two 'Varsity
men, two or three bluejackets or marines, an odd soldier or so, a naval
officer perhaps, a stray priest sometimes, an earnest seeker after
Christian example often, and often a drunkard who had been dumped down
at the door of St. Agnes' Mission House in the hope that where everybody
else had failed Father Rowley might succeed. Then there were the tramps,
some who had heard of a comfortable night's lodging, some who came
whining and cringing with a pretence of religion. This last class was
discouraged as much as possible, for one of the first rules of the
Mission House was to show no favour to any man who claimed to be
religious, it being Father Rowley's chief dread to make anybody's
religion a paying concern. Sometimes a jailbird just released from
prison would find in the Mission House an opportunity to recover his
self-respect. But whoever the guest was, soldier, sailor, tinker,
tailor, apothecary, ploughboy, or thief, he was judged at the Mission
House as a man. Some of the visitors repaid their host by theft or
fraud; but when they did, nobody uttered proverbs or platitudes about
mistaken kindness. If one lame dog bit the hand that was helping him
over the stile, the next dog that came limping along was helped over
just as freely.

"What right has one miserable mortal to be disillusioned by another
miserable mortal?" Father Rowley demanded. "Our dear Lord when he was
nailed to the cross said 'Father, forgive them, for they know not what
they do.' He did not say, 'I am fed up with these people I have come
down from Heaven to save. I've had enough of it. Send an angel with a
pair of pincers to pull out these nails.'"

If the Missioner's patience ever failed, it was when he had to deal with
High Church young men who made pilgrimages to St. Agnes' because they
had heard that this or that service was conducted there with a finer
relish of Romanism than anywhere else at the moment in England. On one
occasion a pietistic young creature, who brought with him his own lace
cotta but forgot to bring his nightshirt, begged to be allowed the joy
of serving Father Rowley at early Mass next morning. When they came back
and were sitting round the breakfast table, this young man simpered in a
ladylike voice:

"Oh, Father, couldn't you keep your fingers closed when you give the
_Dominus vobiscum_?"

"Et cum spiritu tuo," shouted Father Rowley. "I can keep my fingers
closed when I box your ears."

And he proved it.

It was a real box on the ears, so hard a blow that the ladylike young
man burst into tears to the great indignation of a Chief Petty Officer
staying in the Mission House, who declared that he was half in a mind to
catch the young swab such a snitch on the conk as really would give him
something to blubber about. Father Rowley evidently had no remorse for
his violence, and the young man went away that afternoon saying how
sorry he was that the legend of the good work being done at St. Agnes'
had been so much exaggerated.

Mark wrote an account of this incident, which had given him intense
pleasure, to Mr. Ogilvie. Perhaps the Rector was afraid that Mark in his
ambition to avoid "churchiness" was inclining toward the opposite
extreme; or perhaps, charitable and saintly man though he was, he felt a
pang of jealousy at Mark's unbounded admiration of his new friend; or
perhaps it was merely that the east wind was blowing more sharply than
usual that morning over the wold into the Rectory garden. Whatever the
cause, his answering letter made Mark feel that the Rector did not
appreciate Father Rowley as thoroughly as he ought.

The Rectory,

Wych-on-the-Wold.

Oxon.

Dec. 1.

My dear Mark,

I was glad to get your long and amusing letter of last week. I am
delighted to think that as the months go by you are finding work
among the poor more and more congenial. I would not for the world
suggest your coming back here for Christmas after what you tell me
of the amount of extra work it will entail for everybody in the
Mission House; at the same time it would be useless to pretend that
we shan't all be disappointed not to see you until the New Year.

On reading through your last letter again I feel just a little
worried lest, in the pleasure you derive from Father Rowley's
treatment of what was no doubt a very irritating young man, you may
be inclined to go to the opposite extreme and be too ready to laugh
at real piety when it is not accompanied by geniality and good
fellowship, or by an obvious zeal for good works. I know you will
acquit me of any desire to defend extreme "churchiness," and I have
no doubt you will remember one or two occasions in the past when I
was rather afraid that you were tending that way yourself. I am not
in the least criticizing Father Rowley's method of dealing with it,
but I am a trifle uneasy at the inordinate delight it seems to have
afforded you. Of course, it is intolerable for any young man
serving a priest at Mass to watch his fingers all the time, but I
don't think you have any right to assume because on this occasion
the young man showed himself so sensitive to mere externals that he
is always aware only of externals. Unfortunately a very great deal
of true and fervid piety exists under this apparent passion for
externals. Remember that the ordinary criticism by the man in the
street of Catholic ceremonies and of Catholic methods of worship
involves us all in this condemnation. I suppose that you would
consider yourself justified, should the circumstances permit (which
in this case of course they do not), in protesting against a
priest's not taking the Eastward Position when he said Mass. I was
talking to Colonel Fraser the other day, and he was telling me how
much he had enjoyed the ministrations of the Reverend Archibald
Tait, the Leicestershire cricketer, who throughout the "second
service" never once turned his back on the congregation, and, so
far as I could gather from the Colonel's description, conducted
this "second service" very much as a conjuror performs his tricks.
When I ventured to argue with the Colonel, he said to me: "That is
the worst of you High Churchmen, you make the ritual more important
than the Communion itself." All human judgments, my dear Mark, are
relative, and I have no doubt that this unpleasant young man (who,
as I have already said, was no doubt justly punished by Father
Rowley) may have felt the same kind of feeling in a different
degree that I should feel if I assisted at the jugglery of the
Reverend Archibald Tait. At any rate you, my dear boy, are bound to
credit this young man with as much sincerity as yourself, otherwise
you commit a sin against charity. You must acquire at least as much
toleration for the Ritualist as I am glad to notice you are
acquiring for the thief. When you are a priest yourself, and in a
comparatively short time you will be a priest, I do hope you won't,
without his experience, try to imitate Father Rowley too closely in
his summary treatment of what I have already I hope made myself
quite clear in believing to be in this case a most insufferable
young man. Don't misunderstand this letter. I have such great hopes
of you in the stormy days to come, and the stormy days are coming,
that I should feel I was wrong if I didn't warn you of your
attitude towards the merest trifles, for I shall always judge you
and your conduct by standards that I should be very cautious of
setting for most of my penitents.

Your ever affectionate,

Stephen Ogilvie.

My mother and Miriam send you much love. We miss you greatly at
Wych. Esther seems happy in her convent and will soon be clothed as
a novice.

When Mark read this letter, he was prompt to admit himself in the
wrong; but he could not bear the least implied criticism of Father
Rowley.

St. Agnes' House,

Keppel Street,

Chatsea.

Dec. 3.

My dear Mr. Ogilvie,

I'm afraid I must have expressed myself very badly in my last
letter if I gave you the least idea that Father Rowley was not
always charity personified. He had probably come to the conclusion
that the young man was not much good and no doubt he deliberately
made it impossible for him to stay on at the Mission House. We do
get an awful lot of mere loafers here; I don't suppose that anybody
who keeps open house can avoid getting them. After all, if the
young man had been worth anything he would have realized that he
had made a fool of himself and by the way he took his snubbing have
re-established himself. What he actually did was to sulk and clear
out with a sneer at the work done here. I'm sorry I gave you the
impression that I was triumphing so tremendously over his
discomfiture. By writing about it I probably made the incident
appear much more important than it really was. I've no doubt I did
triumph a little, and I'm afraid I shall never be able not to feel
rather glad when a fellow like that is put in his place. I am not
for a moment going to try to argue that you can carry Christian
charity too far. The more one meditates on the words, and actions
of Our Lord, the more one grasps how impossible it is to carry
charity too far. All the same, one owes as much charity to Father
Rowley as to the young man. This sounds now I have written it down
as if I were getting in a hit at you, and that is the worst of
writing letters to justify oneself. What I am trying to say is that
if I were to have taken up arms for the young man and supposed him
to be ill-used or misjudged I should be criticizing Father Rowley.
I think that perhaps you don't quite realize what a saint he is in
every way. This is my fault, no doubt, because in my letters to you
I have always emphasized anything that would bring into relief his
personality. I expect that I've been too much concerned to draw a
picture of him as a man, in doing which I've perhaps been
unsuccessful in giving you a picture of him as a priest. It's
always difficult to talk or write about one's intimate religious
feelings, and you've been the only person to whom I ever have been
able to talk about them. However much I admire and revere Father
Rowley I doubt if I could talk or write to him about myself as I do
to you.

Until I came here I don't think I ever quite realized all that the
Blessed Sacrament means. I had accepted the Sacrifice of the Mass
as one accepts so much in our creed, without grasping its full
implication. If anybody were to have put me through a catechism
about the dogma I should have answered with theological exactitude,
without any appearance of misapprehending the meaning of it; but it
was not until I came here that its practical reality--I don't know
if I'm expressing myself properly or not, I'm pretty sure I'm not;
I don't mean practical application and I don't mean any kind of
addition to my faith; perhaps what I mean is that I've learnt to
grasp the mystery of the Mass outside myself, outside that is to
say my own devotion, my own awe, as a practical fact alive to these
people here. Sometimes when I go to Mass I feel as people who
watched Our Lord with His disciples and followers must have felt. I
feel like one of those people who ran after Him and asked Him what
they could do to be saved. I feel when I look at what has been done
here as if I must go to each of these poor people in turn and beg
them to bring me to the feet of Christ, just as I suppose on the
shores of the sea of Galilee people must have begged St. Peter or
St. Andrew or St. James or St. John to introduce them, if one can
use such a word for such an occasion. This seems to me the great
work that Father Rowley has effected in this parish. I have only
had one rather shy talk with him about religion, and in the course
of it I said something in praise of what his personality had
effected.

"My personality has effected nothing," he answered. "Everything
here is effected by the Blessed Sacrament."

That is why he surely has the right without any consideration for
the dignity of churchy young men to box their ears if they question
his outward respect for the Blessed Sacrament. Even Our Lord found
it necessary at least on one occasion to chase the buyers and
sellers out of the Temple, and though it is not recorded that He
boxed the ears of any Pharisee, it seems to me quite permissible to
believe that He did! He lashed them with scorn anyway.

To come back to Father Rowley, you know the great cry of the
so-called Evangelical party "Jesus only"? Well, Father Rowley has
really managed to make out of what was becoming a sort of
ecclesiastical party cry something that really is evangelical and
at the same time Catholic. These people are taught to make the
Blessed Sacrament the central fact of their lives in a way that I
venture to say no Welsh revivalist or Salvation Army captain has
ever made Our Lord the central fact in the lives of his converts,
because with the Blessed Sacrament continually before them, Which
is Our Lord Jesus Christ, their conversion endures. I could fill a
book with stories of the wonderful behaviour of these poor souls.
The temptation is to say of a man like Father Rowley that he has
such a natural spring of human charity flowing from his heart that
by offering to the world a Christlike example he converts his
flock. Certainly he does give a Christlike example and undoubtedly
that must have a great influence on his people; but he does not
believe, and I don't believe, that a Christlike example is of any
use without Christ, and he gives them Christ. Even the Bishop of
Silchester had to admit the other day that Vespers of the Blessed
Sacrament as held at St. Agnes' is a perfectly scriptural service.
Father Rowley makes of the Blessed Sacrament Christ Himself, so
that the poor people may flock round Him. He does not go round
arguing with them, persuading them, but in the crises of their
lives, as the answer to every question, as the solution of every
difficulty and doubt, as the consolation in every sorrow, he offers
them the Blessed Sacrament. All his prayers (and he makes a great
use of extempore prayer, much to the annoyance of the Bishop, who
considers it ungrammatical), all his sermons, all his actions
revolve round that one great fact. "Jesus Christ is what you need,"
he says, "and Jesus Christ is here in your church, here upon your
altar."

You can't go into the little church without finding fifty people
praying before the Blessed Sacrament. The other day when the "King
Harry" was sunk by the "Trafalgar," the people here subscribed I
forget how many pounds for the widows and children of the
bluejackets and marines of the Mission who were drowned, and when
it was finished and the subscription list was closed, they
subscribed all over again to erect an altar at which to say Masses
for the dead. And the old women living in Father Rowley's free
houses that were once brothels gave up their summer outing so that
the money spent on them might be added to the fund. When the Bishop
of Silchester came here last week for Confirmation he asked Father
Rowley what that altar was.

"That is the ugliest thing I've ever seen," he said. But when
Father Rowley told him about the poor people and the old women who
had no money of their own, he said: "That is the most beautiful
thing I've ever heard."

I am beginning to write as if it was necessary to convince you of
the necessity of making the Blessed Sacrament the central feature
of the religious life to-day and for ever until the end of the
world. But, I know you won't think I'm doing anything of the kind,
for really I am only trying to show you how much my faith has been
strengthened and how much my outlook has deepened and how much more
than ever I long to be a priest to be able to give poor people
Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament.

Your ever affectionate

Mark.

CHAPTER XVII

THE DRUNKEN PRIEST

Gradually, Mark found to his pleasure and his pride that he was
becoming, if not indispensable to Father Rowley (the Missioner found no
human being indispensable) at any rate quite evidently useful. Perhaps
Father Rowley though that in allowing himself to rely considerably upon
Mark's secretarial talent he was indulging himself in a luxury to which
he was not entitled. That was Father Rowley's way. The moment he
discovered himself enjoying anything too much, whether it was a cigar or
a secretary, he cut himself off from it, and this not in any spirit of
mortification for mortification's sake, but because he dreaded the
possibility of putting the slightest drag upon his freedom to criticize
others. He had no doubt at all in his own mind that he was perfectly
justified in making use of Mark's intelligence and energy. But in a
place like the Mission House, where everybody from lay helper to casual
guest was supposed to stand on his own feet, the Missioner himself felt
that he must offer an example of independence.

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