CHAPTER SIX: The Rival Churches of St. Asaph and St.
Osoph
The church of St. Asaph, more properly call St. Asaph's
in the Fields, stands among the elm trees of Plutoria
Avenue opposite the university, its tall spire pointing
to the blue sky. Its rector is fond of saying that it
seems to him to point, as it were, a warning against the
sins of a commercial age. More particularly does he say
this in his Lenten services at noonday, when the businessmen
sit in front of him in rows, their bald heads uncovered
and their faces stamped with contrition as they think of
mergers that they should have made, and real estate that
they failed to buy for lack of faith.
The ground on which St. Asaph's stands is worth seven
dollars and a half a foot. The mortgagees, as they kneel
in prayer in their long frock-coats, feel that they have
built upon a rock. It is a beautifully appointed church.
There are windows with priceless stained glass that were
imported from Normandy, the rector himself swearing out
the invoices to save the congregation the grievous burden
of the customs duty. There is a pipe organ in the transept
that cost ten thousand dollars to install. The
debenture-holders, as they join in the morning anthem,
love to hear the dulcet notes of the great organ and to
reflect that it is as good as new. Just behind the church
is St. Asaph's Sunday School, with a ten-thousand dollar
mortgage of its own. And below that again on the side
street, is the building of the Young Men's Guild with a
bowling-alley and a swimming-bath deep enough to drown
two young men at a time, and a billiard-room with seven
tables. It is the rector's boast that with a Guild House
such as that there is no need for any young man of the
congregation to frequent a saloon. Nor is there.
And on Sunday mornings, when the great organ plays, and
the mortgagees and the bond-holders and the
debenture-holders and the Sunday school teachers and the
billiard-markers all lift up their voices together, there
is emitted from St. Asaph's a volume of praise that is
practically as fine and effective as paid professional
work.
St. Asaph's is episcopal. As a consequence it has in it
and about it all those things which go to make up the
episcopal church--brass tablets let into its walls,
blackbirds singing in its elm trees, parishioners who
dine at eight o'clock, and a rector who wears a little
crucifix and dances the tango.
On the other hand, there stands upon the same street,
not a hundred yards away, the rival church of St.
Osoph--presbyterian down to its very foundations in
bed-rock, thirty feet below the level of the avenue. It
has a short, squat tower--and a low roof, and its narrow
windows are glazed with frosted glass. It has dark spruce
trees instead of elms, crows instead of blackbirds, and
a gloomy minister with a shovel hat who lectures on
philosophy on week-days at the university. He loves to
think that his congregation are made of the lowly and
the meek in spirit, and to reflect that, lowly and meek
as they are, there are men among them that could buy out
half the congregation of St. Asaph's.
St. Osoph's is only presbyterian in a special sense. It
is, in fact, too presbyterian to be any longer connected
with any other body whatsoever. It seceded some forty
years ago from the original body to which it belonged,
and later on, with three other churches, it seceded from
the group of seceding congregations. Still later it fell
into a difference with the three other churches on the
question of eternal punishment, the word "eternal" not
appearing to the elders of St. Osoph's to designate a
sufficiently long period. The dispute ended in a secession
which left the church of St. Osoph practically isolated
in a world of sin whose approaching fate it neither denied
nor deplored.
In one respect the rival churches of Plutoria Avenue had
had a similar history. Each of them had moved up by
successive stages from the lower and poorer parts of the
city. Forty years ago St. Asaph's had been nothing more
than a little frame church with a tin spire, away in the
west of the slums, and St. Osoph's a square, diminutive
building away in the east. But the site of St. Asaph's
had been bought by a brewing company, and the trustees,
shrewd men of business, themselves rising into wealth,
had rebuilt it right in the track of the advancing tide
of a real estate boom. The elders of St. Osoph, quiet
men, but illumined by an inner light, had followed suit
and moved their church right against the side of an
expanding distillery. Thus both the churches, as decade
followed decade, made their way up the slope of the City
till St. Asaph's was presently gloriously expropriated
by the street railway company, and planted its spire in
triumph on Plutoria Avenue itself. But St. Osoph's
followed. With each change of site it moved nearer and
nearer to St. Asaph's. Its elders were shrewd men. With
each move of their church they took careful thought in
the rebuilding. In the manufacturing district it was
built with sixteen windows on each side and was converted
at a huge profit into a bicycle factory. On the residential
street it was made long and deep and was sold to a
moving-picture company without the alteration of so much
as a pew. As a last step a syndicate, formed among the
members of the congregation themselves, bought ground on
Plutoria Avenue, and sublet it to themselves as a site
for the church, at a nominal interest of five per cent
per annum, payable nominally every three months and
secured by a nominal mortgage.
As the two churches moved, their congregations, or at
least all that was best of them--such members as were
sharing in the rising fortunes of the City--moved also,
and now for some six or seven years the two churches and
the two congregations had confronted one another among
the elm trees of the Avenue opposite to the university.
But at this point the fortunes of the churches had
diverged. St. Asaph's was a brilliant success; St. Osoph's
was a failure. Even its own trustees couldn't deny it.
At a time when St. Asaph's was not only paying its interest
but showing a handsome surplus on everything it undertook,
the church of St. Osoph was moving steadily backwards.
There was no doubt, of course, as to the cause. Everybody
knew it. It was simply a question of men, and, as everybody
said, one had only to compare the two men conducting the
churches to see why one succeeded and the other failed.
The Reverend Edward Fareforth Furlong of St. Asaph's was
a man who threw his whole energy into his parish work.
The subtleties of theological controversy he left to
minds less active than his own. His creed was one of
works rather than of words, and whatever he was doing he
did it with his whole heart. Whether he was lunching at
the Mausoleum Club with one of his church wardens, or
playing the flute--which he played as only the episcopal
clergy can play it--accompanied on the harp by one of
the fairest of the ladies of his choir, or whether he
was dancing the new episcopal tango with the younger
daughters of the elder parishioners, he threw himself
into it with all his might. He could drink tea more
gracefully and play tennis better than any clergyman on
this side of the Atlantic. He could stand beside the
white stone font of St. Asaph's in his long white surplice
holding a white-robed infant, worth half a million dollars,
looking as beautifully innocent as the child itself, and
drawing from every matron of the congregation with
unmarried daughters the despairing cry, "What a pity that
he has no children of his own!"
Equally sound was his theology. No man was known to preach
shorter sermons or to explain away the book of Genesis
more agreeably than the rector of St. Asaph's; and if he
found it necessary to refer to the Deity he did so under
the name of Jehovah or Jah, or even Yaweh in a manner
calculated not to hurt the sensitiveness of any of the
parishioners. People who would shudder at brutal talk of
the older fashion about the wrath of God listened with
well-bred interest to a sermon on the personal
characteristics of Jah. In the same way Mr. Furlong always
referred to the devil, not as Satan but as Su or Swa,
which took all the sting out of him. Beelzebub he spoke
of as Behel-Zawbab, which rendered him perfectly harmless.
The Garden of Eden he spoke of as the Paradeisos, which
explained it entirely; the flood as the Diluvium, which
cleared it up completely; and Jonah he named, after the
correct fashion Jon Nah, which put the whole situation
(his being swallowed by Baloo or the Great Lizard) on a
perfectly satisfactory footing. Hell itself was spoken
of as She-ol, and it appeared that it was not a place of
burning, but rather of what one might describe as moral
torment. This settled She-ol once and for all: nobody
minds moral torment. In short, there was nothing in the
theological system of Mr. Furlong that need have occasioned
in any of his congregation a moment's discomfort.
There could be no greater contrast with Mr. Fareforth
Furlong than the minister of St. Osoph's, the Rev. Dr.
McTeague, who was also honorary professor of philosophy
at the university. The one was young, the other was old;
the one could dance the other could not; the one moved
about at church picnics and lawn teas among a bevy of
disciples in pink and blue sashes; the other moped around
under the trees of the university campus with blinking
eyes that saw nothing and an abstracted mind that had
spent fifty years in trying to reconcile Hegel with St.
Paul, and was still busy with it. Mr. Furlong went forward
with the times; Dr. McTeague slid quietly backwards with
the centuries.
Dr. McTeague was a failure, and all his congregation knew
it. "He is not up to date," they said. That was his
crowning sin. "He don't go forward any," said the business
members of the congregation. "That old man believes just
exactly the same sort of stuff now that he did forty
years ago. What's more, he preaches it. You can't run a
church that way, can you?"
His trustees had done their best to meet the difficulty.
They had offered Dr. McTeague a two-years' vacation to
go and see the Holy Land. He refused; he said he could
picture it. They reduced his salary by fifty per cent;
he never noticed it. They offered him an assistant; but
he shook his head, saying that he didn't know where he
could find a man to do just the work that he was doing.
Meantime he mooned about among the trees concocting a
mixture of St. Paul with Hegel, three parts to one, for
his Sunday sermon, and one part to three for his Monday
lecture.
No doubt it was his dual function that was to blame for
his failure. And this, perhaps, was the fault of Dr.
Boomer, the president of the university. Dr. Boomer, like
all university presidents of today, belonged to the
presbyterian church; or rather, to state it more correctly,
he included presbyterianism within himself. He was of
course, a member of the board of management of St. Osoph's
and it was he who had urged, very strongly, the appointment
of Dr. McTeague, then senior professor of philosophy, as
minister.
"A saintly man," he said, "the very man for the post. If
you should ask me whether he is entirely at home as a
professor of philosophy on our staff at the university,
I should be compelled to say no. We are forced to admit
that as a lecturer he does not meet our views. He appears
to find it difficult to keep religion out of his teaching.
In fact, his lectures are suffused with a rather dangerous
attempt at moral teaching which is apt to contaminate
our students. But in the Church I should imagine that
would be, if anything, an advantage. Indeed, if you were
to come to me and say, 'Boomer, we wish to appoint Dr.
McTeague as our minister,' I should say, quite frankly,
'Take him.'"
So Dr. McTeague had been appointed. Then, to the surprise
of everybody he refused to give up his lectures in
philosophy. He said he felt a call to give them. The
salary, he said, was of no consequence. He wrote to Mr.
Furlong senior (the father of the episcopal rector and
honorary treasurer of the Plutoria University) and stated
that he proposed to give his lectures for nothing. The
trustees of the college protested; they urged that the
case might set a dangerous precedent which other professors
might follow. While fully admitting that Dr. McTeague's
lectures were well worth giving for nothing, they begged
him to reconsider his offer. But he refused; and from
that day on, in spite of all offers that he should retire
on double his salary, that he should visit the Holy Land,
or Syria, or Armenia, where the dreadful massacres of
Christians were taking place, Dr. McTeague clung to his
post with a tenacity worthy of the best traditions of
Scotland. His only internal perplexity was that he didn't
see how, when the time came for him to die, twenty or
thirty years hence, they would ever be able to replace
him. Such was the situation of the two churches on a
certain beautiful morning in June, when an unforeseen
event altered entirely the current of their fortunes.
"No, thank you, Juliana," said the young rector to his
sister across the breakfast table--and there was something
as near to bitterness in his look as his saintly,
smooth-shaven face was capable of reflecting--"no, thank
you, no more porridge. Prunes? no, no, thank you; I don't
think I care for any. And, by the way," he added, "don't
bother to keep any lunch for me. I have a great deal of
business--that is, of work in the parish--to see to, and
I must just find time to get a bite of something to eat
when and where I can."
In his own mind he was resolving that the place should
be the Mausoleum Club and the time just as soon as the
head waiter would serve him.
After which the Reverend Edward Fareforth Furlong bowed
his head for a moment in a short, silent blessing--the
one prescribed by the episcopal church in America for a
breakfast of porridge and prunes.
It was their first breakfast together, and it spoke
volumes to the rector. He knew what it implied. It stood
for his elder sister Juliana's views on the need of
personal sacrifice as a means of grace. The rector sighed
as he rose. He had never missed his younger sister
Philippa, now married and departed, so keenly. Philippa
had had opinions of her own on bacon and eggs and on lamb
chops with watercress as a means of stimulating the soul.
But Juliana was different. The rector understood now
exactly why it was that his father had exclaimed, on the
news of Philippa's engagement, without a second's
hesitation, "Then, of course, Juliana must live with you!
Nonsense, my dear boy, nonsense! It's my duty to spare
her to you. After all, I can always eat at the club; they
can give me a bite of something or other, surely. To a
man of my age, Edward, food is really of no consequence.
No, no; Juliana must move into the rectory at once."
The rector's elder sister rose. She looked tall and sallow
and forbidding in the plain black dress that contrasted
sadly with the charming clerical costumes of white and
pink and the broad episcopal hats with flowers in them
that Philippa used to wear for morning work in the parish.
"For what time shall I order dinner?" she asked. "You
and Philippa used to have it at half-past seven, did you
not? Don't you think that rather too late?"
"A trifle perhaps," said the rector uneasily. He didn't
care to explain to Juliana that it was impossible to get
home any earlier from the kind of the dansant that
everybody was giving just now. "But don't trouble about
dinner. I may be working very late. If I need anything
to eat I shall get a biscuit and some tea at the Guild
Rooms, or--"
He didn't finish the sentence, but in his mind he added,
"or else a really first-class dinner at the Mausoleum
Club, or at the Newberrys' or the Rasselyer-Browns'--
anywhere except here."
"If you are going, then," said Juliana, "may I have the
key of the church."
A look of pain passed over the rector's face. He knew
perfectly well what Juliana wanted the key for. She meant
to go into his church and pray in it.
The rector of St. Asaph's was, he trusted, as broad-minded
a man as an Anglican clergyman ought to be. He had no
objection to any reasonable use of his church--for a
thanksgiving festival or for musical recitals for
example--but when it came to opening up the church and
using it to pray in, the thing was going a little too
far. What was more, he had an idea from the look on
Juliana's face that she meant to pray for him. This, for
a clergy man, was hard to bear. Philippa, like the good
girl that she was, had prayed only for herself, and then
only at the proper times and places, and in a proper
praying costume. The rector began to realize what
difficulties it might make for a clergyman to have a
religious sister as his house-mate.
But he was never a man for unseemly argument. "It is
hanging in my study," he said.
And with that the Rev. Fareforth Furlong passed into the
hall took up the simple silk hat, the stick and gloves
of the working clergyman and walked out on to the avenue
to begin his day's work in the parish.
The rector's parish viewed in its earthly aspect, was a
singularly beautiful place. For it extended all along
Plutoria Avenue, where the street is widest and the elm
trees are at their leafiest and the motors at their very
drowsiest. It lay up and down the shaded side streets of
the residential district, darkened with great chestnuts
and hushed in a stillness that was almost religion itself.
There was not a house in the parish assessed at less than
twenty-five thousand, and in very heart of it the Mausoleum
Club, with its smooth white stone and its Grecian
architecture, carried one back to the ancient world and
made one think of Athens and of Paul preaching on Mars
Hill. It was, all considered, a splendid thing to fight
sin in such a parish and to keep it out of it. For kept
out it was. One might look the length and breadth of the
broad avenue and see no sign of sin all along it. There
was certainly none in the smooth faces of the chauffeurs
trundling their drowsy motors; no sign of it in the
expensive children paraded by imported nursemaids in the
chequered light of the shaded street; least of all was
there any sign of it in the Stock Exchange members of
the congregation as they walked along side by side to
their lunch at the Mausoleum Club, their silk hats nodding
together in earnest colloquy on Shares Preferred and
Profits Undivided. So might have walked, so must have
walked, the very Fathers of the Church themselves.
Whatever sin there was in the City was shoved sideways
into the roaring streets of commerce where the elevated
railway ran, and below that again into the slums. Here
there must have been any quantity of sin. The rector of
St. Asaph's was certain of it. Many of the richer of his
parishioners had been down in parties late at night to
look at it, and the ladies of his congregation were joined
together into all sorts of guilds and societies and bands
of endeavour for stamping it out and driving it under or
putting it into jail till it surrendered.
But the slums lay outside the rector's parish. He had no
right to interfere. They were under the charge of a
special mission or auxiliary, a remnant of the St. Asaph's
of the past, placed under the care of a divinity student,
at four hundred dollars per annum. His charge included
all the slums and three police courts and two music halls
and the City jail. One Sunday afternoon in every three
months the rector and several ladies went down and sang
hymns for him in his mission-house. But his work was
really very easy. A funeral, for example, at the mission,
was a simple affair, meaning nothing more than the
preparation of a plain coffin and a glassless hearse and
the distribution of a few artificial everlasting flowers
to women crying in their aprons; a thing easily done:
whereas in St. Asaph's parish, where all the really
important souls were, a funeral was a large event,
requiring taste and tact, and a nice shading of delicacy
in distinguishing mourners from beneficiaries, and private
grief from business representation at the ceremony. A
funeral with a plain coffin and a hearse was as nothing
beside an interment, with a casket smothered in hot-house
syringas, borne in a coach and followed by special
reporters from the financial papers.
It appeared to the rector afterwards as almost a shocking
coincidence that the first person whom he met upon the
avenue should have been the Rev. Dr. McTeague himself.
Mr. Furlong gave him the form of amiable "good morning"
that the episcopal church always extends to those in
error. But he did not hear it. The minister's head was
bent low, his eyes gazed into vacancy, and from the
movements of his lips and from the fact that he carried
a leather case of notes, he was plainly on his way to
his philosophical lecture. But the rector had no time to
muse upon the abstracted appearance of his rival. For,
as always happened to him, he was no sooner upon the
street than his parish work of the day began. In fact,
he had hardly taken a dozen steps after passing Dr.
McTeague when he was brought up standing by two beautiful
parishioners with pink parasols.
"Oh, Mr. Furlong," exclaimed one of them, "so fortunate
to happen to catch you; we were just going into the rectory
to consult you. Should the girls--for the lawn tea for
the Guild on Friday, you know--wear white dresses with
light blue sashes all the same, or do you think we might
allow them to wear any coloured sashes that they like?
What do you think?"
This was an important problem. In fact, there was a piece
of parish work here that it took the Reverend Fareforth
half an hour to attend to standing the while in earnest
colloquy with the two ladies under the shadow of the elm
trees. But a clergyman must never be grudging of his
time.
"Goodbye then," they said at last. "Are you coming to
the Browning Club this morning? Oh, so sorry! but we
shall see you at the musicale this afternoon, shall we
not?"
"Oh, I trust so," said the rector.
"How dreadfully hard he works," said the ladies to one
another as they moved away.
Thus slowly and with many interruptions the rector made
his progress along the avenue. At times he stopped to
permit a pink-cheeked infant in a perambulator to beat
him with a rattle while he inquired its age of an episcopal
nurse, gay with flowing ribbons. He lifted his hat to
the bright parasols of his parishioners passing in
glistening motors, bowed to episcopalians, nodded amiably
to presbyterians, and even acknowledged with his lifted
hat the passing of persons of graver forms of error.
Thus he took his way along the avenue and down a side
street towards the business district of the City, until
just at the edge of it, where the trees were about to
stop and the shops were about to begin, he found himself
at the door of the Hymnal Supply Corporation, Limited.
The premises as seen from the outside combined the idea
of an office with an ecclesiastical appearance. The door
was as that of a chancel or vestry; there was a large
plate-glass window filled with Bibles and Testaments,
all spread open and showing every variety of language in
their pages. These were marked, Arabic, Syriac, Coptic,
Ojibway, Irish and so forth. On the window in small white
lettering were the words, HYMNAL SUPPLY CORPORATION, and
below that, HOSANNA PIPE AND STEAM ORGAN INCORPORATED,
and Still lower the legend BIBLE SOCIETY OF THE GOOD
SHEPHERD LIMITED.
There was no doubt of the sacred character of the place.
Here laboured Mr. Furlong senior, the father of the Rev.
Edward Fareforth. He was a man of many activities;
president and managing director of the companies just
mentioned, trustee and secretary of St. Asaph's, honorary
treasurer of the university, etc.; and each of his
occupations and offices was marked by something of a
supramundane character, something higher than ordinary
business. His different official positions naturally
overlapped and brought him into contact with himself from
a variety of angles. Thus he sold himself hymn books at
a price per thousand, made as a business favour to himself,
negotiated with himself the purchase of the
ten-thousand-dollar organ (making a price on it to himself
that he begged himself to regard as confidential), and
as treasurer of the college he sent himself an informal
note of enquiry asking if he knew of any sound investment
for the annual deficit of the college funds, a matter of
some sixty thousand dollars a year, which needed very
careful handling. Any man--and there are many such--who
has been concerned with business dealings of this sort
with himself realizes that they are more satisfactory
than any other kind.
To what better person, then, could the rector of St.
Asaph's bring the quarterly accounts and statements of
his church than to Mr. Furlong senior.
The outer door was opened to the rector by a sanctified
boy with such a face as is only found in the choirs of
the episcopal church. In an outer office through which
the rector passed were two sacred stenographers with hair
as golden as the daffodils of Sheba, copying confidential
letters on absolutely noiseless typewriters. They were
making offers of Bibles in half-car-load lots at two and
a half per cent reduction, offering to reduce St. Mark
by two cents on condition of immediate export, and to
lay down St. John f.o.b. San Francisco for seven cents,
while regretting that they could deliver fifteen thousand
Rock of Ages in Missouri on no other terms than cash.
The sacred character of their work lent them a preoccupation
beautiful to behold.
In the room beyond them was a white-haired confidential
clerk, venerable as the Song of Solomon, and by him Mr.
Fareforth Furlong was duly shown into the office of his
father.
"Good morning, Edward," said Mr. Furlong senior, as he
shook hands. "I was expecting you. And while I think of
it, I have just had a letter from Philippa. She and Tom
will be home in two or three weeks. She writes from Egypt.
She wishes me to tell you, as no doubt you have already
anticipated, that she thinks she can hardly continue to
be a member of the congregation when they come back. No
doubt you felt this yourself?"
"Oh, entirely," said the rector. "Surely in matters of
belief a wife must follow her husband."
"Exactly; especially as Tom's uncles occupy the position
they do with regard to--" Mr. Furlong jerked his head
backwards and pointed with his thumb over his shoulder
in a way that his son knew was meant to indicate St.
Osoph's Church.
The Overend brothers, who were Tom's uncles (his name
being Tom Overend) were, as everybody knew, among the
principal supporters of St. Osoph's. Not that they were,
by origin, presbyterians. But they were self-made men,
which put them once and for all out of sympathy with such
a place as St. Asaph's. "We made ourselves," the two
brothers used to repeat in defiance of the catechism of
the Anglican Church. They never wearied of explaining
how Mr. Dick, the senior brother, had worked overtime by
day to send Mr. George, the junior brother, to school by
night, and how Mr. George had then worked overtime by
night to send Mr. Dick to school by day. Thus they had
come up the business ladder hand over hand, landing later
on in life on the platform of success like two corpulent
acrobats, panting with the strain of it. "For years,"
Mr. George would explain, "we had father and mother to
keep as well; then they died, and Dick and me saw daylight."
By which he meant no harm at all, but only stated a fact,
and concealed the virtue of it.
And being self-made men they made it a point to do what
they could to lessen the importance of such an institution
as St. Asaph's Church. By the same contrariety of nature
the two Overend brothers (their business name was Overend
Brothers, Limited) were supporters of the dissentient
Young Men's Guild. and the second or rival University
Settlement, and of anything or everything that showed a
likelihood of making trouble. On this principle they
were warm supporters and friends of the Rev. Dr. McTeague.
The minister had even gone so far as to present to the
brothers a copy of his philosophical work "McTeague's
Exposition of the Kantian Hypothesis." and the two brothers
had read it through in the office, devoting each of them
a whole morning to it. Mr. Dick, the senior brother,
had said that he had never seen anything like it, and
Mr. George, the junior, had declared that a man who could
write that was capable of anything.
On the whole it was evident that the relations between
the Overend family and the presbyterian religion were
too intimate to allow Mrs. Tom Overend, formerly Miss
Philippa Furlong, to sit anywhere else of a Sunday than
under Dr. McTeague.
"Philippa writes," continued Mr. Furlong "that under the
circumstances she and Tom would like to do something for
your church. She would like--yes, I have the letter
here--to give you, as a surprise, of course, either a
new font or a carved pulpit; or perhaps a cheque; she
wishes me on no account to mention it to you directly,
but to ascertain indirectly from you, what would be the
better surprise."
"Oh, a cheque, I think," said the rector; "one can do so
much more with it, after all."
"Precisely," said his father; he was well aware of many
things that can be done with a cheque that cannot possibly
be done with a font.
"That's settled then," resumed Mr. Furlong; "and now I
suppose you want me to run my eye over your quarterly
statements, do you not, before we send them in to the
trustees? That is what you've come for, is it not?"
"Yes," said the rector, drawing a bundle of blue and
white papers from his pocket. "I have everything with
me. Our showing is, I believe, excellent, though I fear
I fail to present it as clearly as it might be done."
Mr. Furlong senior spread the papers on the table before
him and adjusted his spectacles to a more convenient
angle. He smiled indulgently as he looked at the documents
before him.
"I am afraid you would never make an accountant, Edward,"
he said.
"I fear not," said the rector.
"Your items," said his father. "are entered wrongly.
Here, for example, in the general statement, you put down
Distribution of Coals to the Poor to your credit. In the
same way, Bibles and Prizes to the Sunday School you
again mark to your credit. Why? Don't you see, my boy,
that these things are debits? When you give out Bibles
or distribute fuel to the poor you give out something
for which you get no return. It is a debit. On the other
hand, such items as Church Offertory, Scholars' Pennies,
etc., are pure profit. Surely the principle is clear."
"I think I see it better now," said the Rev. Edward.
"Perfectly plain, isn't it?" his father went on. "And
here again. Paupers' Burial Fund, a loss; enter it as
such. Christmas Gift to Verger and Sexton, an absolute
loss--you get nothing in return. Widows' Mite, Fines
inflicted in Sunday School, etc., these are profit; write
them down as such. By this method, you see, in ordinary
business we can tell exactly where we stand: anything
which we give out without return or reward we count as
a debit; all that we take from others without giving in
return we count as so much to our credit."
"Ah, yes," murmured the rector. "I begin to understand."
"Very good. But after all, Edward, I mustn't quarrel with
the mere form of your accounts; the statement is really
a splendid showing. I see that not only is our mortgage
and debenture interest all paid to date, but that a number
of our enterprises are making a handsome return. I notice,
for example, that the Girls' Friendly Society of the
church not only pays for itself, but that you are able
to take something out of its funds and transfer it to
the Men's Book Club. Excellent! And I observe that you
have been able to take a large portion of the Soup Kitchen
Fund and put it into the Rector's Picnic Account. Very
good indeed. In this respect your figures are a model
for church accounts anywhere."
Mr. Furlong continued his scrutiny of the accounts.
"Excellent," he murmured, "and on the whole an annual
surplus, I see, of several thousands. But stop a bit,"
he continued, checking himself; "what's this? Are you
aware, Edward, that you are losing money on your Foreign
Missions Account?"
"I feared as much," said Edward.
"It's incontestable. Look at the figures for yourself:
missionary's salary so much, clothes and books to converts
so much, voluntary and other offerings of converts so
much why, you're losing on it, Edward!" exclaimed Mr.
Furlong, and he shook his head dubiously at the accounts
before him.
"I thought," protested his son. "that in view of the
character of the work itself--"
"Quite so," answered his father, "quite so. I fully admit
the force of that. I am only asking you, is it worth it?
Mind you, I am not speaking now as a Christian, but as
a businessman. Is it worth it?"
"I thought that perhaps, in view of the fact of our large
surplus in other directions--"
"Exactly," said his father, "a heavy surplus. It is
precisely on that point that I wished to speak to you
this morning. You have at present a large annual surplus,
and there is every prospect under Providence--in fact,
I think in any case--of it continuing for years to come.
If I may speak very frankly I should say that as long as
our reverend friend, Dr. McTeague, continues in his charge
of St. Osoph's--and I trust that he may be spared for
many years to come--you are likely to enjoy the present
prosperity of your church. Very good. The question arises,
what disposition are we to make of our accumulating
funds?"
"Yes," said the rector, hesitating.
"I am speaking to you now," said his father "not as the
secretary of your church, but as president of the Hymnal
Supply Company which I represent here. Now please
understand, Edward, I don't want in any way to force or
control your judgment. I merely wish to show you
certain--shall I say certain opportunities that present
themselves for the disposal of our funds? The matter can
be taken up later, formally, by yourself and the trustees
of the church. As a matter of fact, I have already written
to myself as secretary in the matter, and I have received
what I consider a quite encouraging answer. Let me explain
what I propose."
Mr. Furlong senior rose, and opening the door of the
office,
"Everett," he said to the ancient clerk, "kindly give me
a Bible."
It was given to him.
Mr. Furlong stood with the Bible poised in his hand.
"Now we," he went on, "I mean the Hymnal Supply Corporation,
have an idea for bringing out an entirely new Bible."
A look of dismay appeared on the saintly face of the
rector.
"A new Bible!" he gasped.
"Precisely!" said his father, "a new Bible! This one--
and we find it every day in our business--is all wrong."
"All wrong!" said the rector with horror in his face.
"My dear boy," exclaimed his father, "pray, pray, do not
misunderstand me. Don't imagine for a moment that I mean
wrong in a religious sense. Such a thought could never,
I hope, enter my mind. All that I mean is that this Bible
is badly made up."
"Badly made up?" repeated his son, as mystified as ever.
"I see that you do not understand me. What I mean is
this. Let me try to make myself quite clear. For the
market of today this Bible"--and he poised it again on
his hand, as if to test its weight, "is too heavy. The
people of today want something lighter, something easier
to get hold of. Now if-"
But what Mr. Furlong was about to say was lost forever
to the world.
For just at this juncture something occurred calculated
to divert not only Mr. Furlong's sentence, but the fortunes
and the surplus of St. Asaph's itself. At the very moment
when Mr. Furlong was speaking a newspaper delivery man
in the street outside handed to the sanctified boy the
office copy of the noonday paper. And the boy had no
sooner looked at its headlines than he said, "How dreadful!"
Being sanctified, he had no stronger form of speech than
that. But he handed the paper forthwith to one of the
stenographers with hair like the daffodils of Sheba, and
when she looked at it she exclaimed, "How awful!" And
she knocked at once at the door of the ancient clerk and
gave the paper to him; and when he looked at it and saw
the headline the ancient clerk murmured, "Ah!" in the
gentle tone in which very old people greet the news of
catastrophe or sudden death.
But in his turn he opened Mr. Furlong's door and put down
the paper, laying his finger on the column for a moment
without a word.
Mr. Furlong stopped short in his sentence. "Dear me!" he
said as his eyes caught the item of news. "How very
dreadful!"
"What is it?" said the rector.
"Dr. McTeague," answered his father. "He has been stricken
with paralysis!"
"How shocking!" said the rector, aghast. "But when? I
saw him only this morning."
"It has just happened," said his father, following down
the column of the newspaper as he spoke, "this morning,
at the university, in his classroom, at a lecture. Dear
me, how dreadful! I must go and see the president at
once."
Mr. Furlong was about to reach for his hat and stick when
at that moment the aged clerk knocked at the door.
"Dr. Boomer," he announced in a tone of solemnity suited
to the occasion.
Dr. Boomer entered, shook hands in silence and sat down.
"You have heard our sad news, I suppose?" he said. He
used the word "our" as between the university president
and his honorary treasurer.
"How did it happen?" asked Mr. Furlong.
"Most distressing," said the president. "Dr. McTeague,
it seems, had just entered his ten o'clock class (the
hour was about ten-twenty) and was about to open his
lecture, when one of his students rose in his seat and
asked a question. It is a practice," continued Dr. Boomer,
"which, I need hardly say, we do not encourage; the young
man, I believe, was a newcomer in the philosophy class.
At any rate, he asked Dr. McTeague, quite suddenly it
appears; how he could reconcile his theory of transcendental
immaterialism with a scheme of rigid moral determinism.
Dr. McTeague stared for a moment, his mouth, so the class
assert, painfully open. The student repeated the question,
and poor McTeague fell forward over his desk, paralysed."
"Is he dead?" gasped Mr. Furlong.
"No," said the president. "But we expect his death at
any moment. Dr. Slyder, I may say, is with him now and
is doing all he can."
"In any case, I suppose, he could hardly recover enough
to continue his college duties," said the young rector.
"Out of the question," said the president. "I should not
like to state that of itself mere paralysis need
incapacitate a professor. Dr. Thrum, our professor of
the theory of music, is, as you know, paralysed in his
ears, and Mr. Slant, our professor of optics, is paralysed
in his right eye. But this is a case of paralysis of the
brain. I fear it is incompatible with professorial work."
"Then, I suppose," said Mr. Furlong senior, "we shall
have to think of the question of a successor."
They had both been thinking of it for at least three
minutes. "We must," said the president. "For the moment
I feel too stunned by the sad news to act. I have merely
telegraphed to two or three leading colleges for a locum
tenens and sent out a few advertisements announcing the
chair as vacant. But it will be difficult to replace
McTeague. He was a man," added Dr. Boomer, rehearsing in
advance, unconsciously, no doubt, his forthcoming oration
over Dr. McTeague's death, "of a singular grasp, a breadth
of culture, and he was able, as few men are, to instil
what I might call a spirit of religion into his teaching.
His lectures, indeed, were suffused with moral instruction,
and exercised over his students an influence second only
to that of the pulpit itself."
He paused.
"Ah yes, the pulpit," said Mr. Furlong, "there indeed
you will miss him."
"That," said Dr. Boomer very reverently, "is our real
loss, deep, irreparable. I suppose, indeed I am certain,
we shall never again see such a man in the pulpit of St.
Osoph's. Which reminds me," he added more briskly, "I
must ask the newspaper people to let it be known that
there will be service as usual the day after tomorrow,
and that Dr. McTeague's death will, of course, make no
difference--that is to say--I must see the newspaper
people at once."
That afternoon all the newspaper editors in the City were
busy getting their obituary notices ready for the demise
of Dr. McTeague.
"The death of Dr. McTeague," wrote the editor of the
Commercial and Financial Undertone, a paper which had
almost openly advocated the minister's dismissal for five
years back, "comes upon us as an irreparable loss. His
place will be difficult, nay, impossible, to fill. Whether
as a philosopher or a divine he cannot be replaced."
"We have no hesitation in saying," so wrote the editor
of the Plutorian Times, a three-cent morning paper, which
was able to take a broad or three-cent point of view of
men and things, "that the loss of Dr. McTeague will be
just as much felt in Europe as in America. To Germany
the news that the hand that penned 'McTeague's Shorter
Exposition of the Kantian Hypothesis' has ceased to write
will come with the shock of poignant anguish; while to
France--"
The editor left the article unfinished at that point.
After all, he was a ready writer, and he reflected that
there would be time enough before actually going to press
to consider from what particular angle the blow of
McTeague's death would strike down the people of France.
So ran in speech and in writing, during two or three
days, the requiem of Dr. McTeague.
Altogether there were more kind things said of him in
the three days during which he was taken for dead, than
in thirty years of his life--which seemed a pity.
And after it all, at the close of the third day, Dr.
McTeague feebly opened his eyes.
But when he opened them the world had already passed on,
and left him behind.
