Bishop of Bath and Wells

“ In 1400 a majority of the chapters of Bath and Wells elected him at the royal request as their bishop, but Boniface IX provided another minister of Henry's, Richard Clifford, keeper of the privy seal, for the vacant see. A difficulty arose, although Clifford, at the king's command, declined to accept the illegal preferment. At last matters were settled by the death of the bishop of Worcester. Clifford was transferred to that see, and the pope now issued a provision appointing Bowet to Wells (19 Aug. 1401) . ”

“ Ina also founded Wells, but as a collegiate church of secular canons, not as the cathedral of a diocese. It was not until 909 that Somerset had a bishop all to itself, who was styled the Bishop of the Somersaetas, with his seat at Wells (the first appointed being Aethelm.) In 1088, in accordance with the policy of removing bishoprics from localities of little importance, the see was transferred from Wells to Bath, the bishop (John de Villula) at the same time becoming the abbot of the monastery. In 1192 Bishop Savaric procured for the see the rich abbey of Glastonbury, and became its abbot ”

“ The great Angel seemed still to be near at hand, limitless space was all about him, and yet the bishop perceived that he was now sitting in the arm-chair in his bedroom in the palace of Princhester. He was both there and not there. It seemed now as if he had two distinct yet kindred selves, and that the former watched the latter. The latter was now awakening to the things about him; the former marked his gestures and listened with an entire detachment to the words he was saying. These words he was saying to Lady Ella: "God is coming to rule the world, I tell you. We must leave the church." ”

“ Bishop Kennion of Bath and Wells entered into an agreement to raise a sum of £31,000, the cost of the purchase; this was completed, and the site and buildings were formally transferred at a dedicatory service in 1909 to the Diocesan Trustees of Bath and Wells, who are to hold and manage the property according to a deed of trust. ”

“ And here was the familiar palace at Princhester, and in an armchair in his bed-room sat Bishop Scrope insensible and motionless, in a trance in which he was dreaming of the coming of God.
“I see my futility. I see my vanity. But what am I to do?” he said, turning to the darkness that now wrapped about the Angel again, fold upon fold. “The implications of yesterday bind me for the morrow. This is my world. This is what I am and what I am in. How can I save myself? How can I turn from these habits and customs and obligations to the service of the one true God? ”

“ He stopped short. The next words were: "bound to believe and do all those things, which your Godfathers and Godmothers then undertook for you."
He could not stand those words. He hesitated, and then substituted: "acknowledge yourselves to be the true servants of the one God, who is the Lord of Mankind?"
For a moment silence hung in the cathedral. Then one voice, a boy's voice, led a ragged response. "I do."
Then the bishop: "Our help is in the Name of the Lord."
The congregation answered doubtfully, with a glance at its prayer books: "Who hath made heaven and earth." ”

“ One day he realized that indeed the whole flood and tumult of the war would be going on almost exactly as it was going on now if there had been neither cathedral nor bishop in Princhester. It came to him that if archbishops were rolled into patriarchs and patriarchs into archbishops, it would matter scarcely more in the world process that was afoot than if two men shook hands while their house was afire. At times all of us have inappropriate thoughts. ”

“ I want to help.
"Dear Bishop and Teacher, I want to help tremendously—with all my heart and all my soul. I want to be let do things for you." (The "you" was erased by three or four rapid slashes, and "our King" substituted.)
"I want to be privileged to help build that First Church of the World Unified under God. It is a dreadful thing to say, but, you see, I am very rich; this dreadful war has made me ever so much richer—steel and shipping and things—it is my trustees have done it. I am ashamed to be so rich. ”

“ That the bishop should treat the whole teaching of the church and the church itself as wrong, was an idea so new that it fell upon him now like a thunderbolt out of a cloudless sky. But here, clear in his mind now, was a feeling, amounting to conviction, that it was the purpose and gesture of the true God that he should come right out of the church and all his professions.
And in the first glow of his vision he felt this gesture imperative. He must step right out.... Whither? how? And when?
To begin with it seemed to him that an immediate renunciation was demanded. ”

“ He gave the bishop's head a little shake and relinquished it.
He began to argue as an elder brother might.
“Isn't it enough for you to know something of the God that comes down to the human scale, who has been born on your planet and arisen out of Man, who is Man and God, your leader? He's more than enough to fill your mind and use up every faculty of your being. He is courage, he is adventure, he is the King, he fights for you and with you against death....”
“And he is not infinite? He is not the Creator?” asked the bishop.
“So far as you are concerned, no,” said the Angel. ”

“ The silence invited the bishop to speak.
“In the light of this vision, I see my church plainly for the little thing it is,” he said.
He wanted to be perfectly clear with the Angel and himself.
“This church of which I am a bishop is just a part of our poor human struggle, small and pitiful as one thinks of it here in the light of the advent of God's Kingdom, but very great, very great indeed, ancient and high and venerable, in comparison with me. But mostly it is human. It is most human. ”

“ And long before the bishop bared his face again, he knew that he was to see his God.
He looked up slowly, fearing to be dazzled.
But he was not dazzled. He knew that he saw only the likeness and bodying forth of a being inconceivable, of One who is greater than the earth and stars and yet no greater than a man. He saw a being for ever young, for ever beginning, for ever triumphant. The quality and texture of this being was a warm and living light like the effulgence at sunrise; He was hope and courage like a sunlit morning in spring. ”

“ Meanwhile he began to see his way clearer and to develop his line.
“Well, Lady Sunderbund,” he said, “I can assure you that I think you will be no small addition to the church life of Princhester. But I warn you this is a hard-working and exacting diocese. We shall take your money, all we can get of it, we shall take your time, we shall work you hard.”
“Wo'k me hard!” cried Lady Sunderbund with passion.
“We will, we will,” said the bishop in a tone that ignored her passionate note.
“I am sure Lady Sunderbund will be a great help to us,” said Lady Ella. “We want brightening. ”

“ But he had grown up in the church, his life had been so entirely clerical and Anglican, that the widest separation he had hitherto been able to imagine from this past had left him still a bishop, heretical perhaps, innovating in the broadening of beliefs and the liberalizing of practice, defensive even as Chasters was defensive, but still with the palace and his dignities, differing in opinion rather than in any tangible reality from his previous self. For a bishop, disbelief in the Church is a far profounder scepticism than mere disbelief in God. God is unseen, and in daily things unfelt ”

“ The forgetfulness of men! I want to know what my chief duty is, to have it plain, in terms so plain that I can never forget....
"See in this world," he said, turning to the globe, "while Chinese merchants and Turkish troopers, school-board boys and Norwegian fishermen, half-trained nurses and Boer farmers are full of the spirit of God, see how the priests of the churches of Nicæa spend their time."
And now it was the bishop whose dark hands ran over the great silver globe, and it was the Angel who stood over him and listened, as a teacher might stand over a child who is learning a lesson. ”

“ From these belated seizures of the day's lost opportunities the bishop passed to such a pessimistic estimate of the church as had never entered his mind before.
It was as if he had fallen suddenly out of a spiritual balloon into a world of bleak realism. He found himself asking unprecedented and devastating questions, questions that implied the most fundamental shiftings of opinion. Why was the church such a failure? Why had it no grip upon either masters or men amidst this vigorous life of modern industrialism, and why had it no grip upon the questioning young? ”

“ The old man awaited the answer to his abrupt enquiry with a handful of lozenges.
“No,” said the Bishop of Princhester, “practically—I haven't.”
“My dear boy!” it was as if they were once more rector and curate. “My dear brother! do you know what the value of an ex-bishop is in the ordinary labour market?”
“I have never thought of that.”
“Evidently. You have a wife and children?” ”

“ It is a primary mental structure, and they not only do not doubt but they doubt the good faith of those who do. They think that the Atheist and Agnostic really believe but are impelled by a mysterious obstinacy to deny. So it had been with the Bishop of Princhester; not of cunning or design but in simple good faith he had accepted all the inherited assurances of his native rectory, and held by Church, Crown, Empire, decorum, respectability, solvency—and compulsory Greek at the Little Go—as his father had done before him. ”

“ It is dreadful to look upon the young.
He stood surveying the faces of the young people as the rector read the Preface to the confirmation service. How simple they were, how innocent! Some were a little flushed by the excitement of the occasion; some a little pallid. But they were all such tender faces, so soft in outline, so fresh and delicate in texture and colour. They had soft credulous mouths. Some glanced sideways at one another; some listened with a forced intentness. The expression of one good-looking boy, sitting in a corner scat, struck the bishop as being curiously defiant. ”

“ Meanwhile Lady Sunderbund had become a frequent worshipper in the cathedral, she was a figure as conspicuous in sombre Princhester as a bird of paradise would have been; common people stood outside her very very rich blue door on the chance of seeing her; she never missed an opportunity of hearing the bishop preach or speak, she wrote him several long and thoughtful letters with which he did not bother Lady Ella, she communicated persistently, and manifestly intended to become a very active worker in diocesan affairs. ”

“ In Him the spirit of creation had become incarnate, had joined itself to men, summoning men to Him, having need of them, having need of them, having need of their service, even as great kings and generals and leaders need and use men. For a moment, for an endless age, the bishop bowed himself in the being and glory of God, felt the glow of the divine courage and confidence in his marrow, felt himself one with God. ”

“ Brighton-Pomfrey ought never to have left his practice in the hands of this wild-eyed experimenter.
Strange that after a lifetime of discretion and men's respect one should be standing on the Piccadilly pavement—intoxicated!
It came into his head that he was not so very far from the Athenaeum, and surely there if anywhere a bishop may recover his sense of being—ordinary.
And behind everything, behind the tall buildings and the swarming people there was still the sense of a wide illuminated space, of a light of wonder and a Presence. But he must not give way to that again! ”

“ The unpleasant quality of the talk was far more manifest in the retrospect than it had been at the time. It had seemed then bold and strange, but not impossible; now in the cold darkness it seemed sacrilegious. And the bishop's share, which was indeed only the weak yielding of a tired man to an atmosphere he had misjudged, became a disgraceful display of levity and bad faith. They had baited him. Some one had said that nowadays every one was an Arian, knowingly or unknowingly. They had not concealed their conviction that the bishop did not really believe in the Creeds he uttered. ”

“ And there she was, and the point was there were thousands and thousands and thousands of educated people like her who were dying to get through these old-fashioned symbols to the true faith that lay behind them. That they knew lay behind them. She didn't know if he had read “The Light under the Altar”?
“He's vicar of Wombash—in my diocese,” said the bishop with restraint.
“It's wonde'ful stuff,” said Lady Sunderbund. “It's spi'tually cold, but it's intellectually wonde'ful. But we want that with spi'tuality. We want it so badly. ”

“ The events of the early spring, the bloody failure of British generalship at Neuve Chapelle, the naval disaster in the Dardanelles, the sinking of the Falaba, the Russian defeat in the Masurian Lakes, all deepened the bishop's impression of the immensity of the nation's difficulties and of his own unhelpfulness. He was ashamed that the church should hold back its curates from enlistment while the French priests were wearing their uniforms in the trenches; the expedition of the Bishop of London to hold open-air services at the front seemed merely to accentuate the tub-rolling. ”

“ The bishop avoided "The Light under the Altar" for nearly a year. It was only when a second book was announced with the winning title of "The Core of Truth in Christianity" that he perceived he must take action. He sat up late one night with a marked copy, a very indignantly marked copy, of the former work that an elderly colonel, a Wombash parishioner, an orthodox Layman of the most virulent type, had sent him. ”