Church warden

“ They had grown old together, and had together spent many, many years in clerical pursuits and clerical conversation. When one of them was a bishop and the other only a minor canon they were even then much together; but since their children had married, and Mr Harding had become warden and precentor, they were all in all to each other. I will not say that they managed the diocese between them, but they spent much time in discussing the man who did, and in forming little plans to mitigate his wrath against church delinquents, and soften his aspirations for church dominion. ”

“ In bad times the poor men had had their due, and therefore in good times they could expect no more. In this manner the income of the warden had increased; the picturesque house attached to the hospital had been enlarged and adorned, and the office had become one of the most coveted of the snug clerical sinecures attached to our church. It was now wholly in the bishop's gift, and though the dean and chapter, in former days, made a stand on the subject, they had thought it more conducive to their honour to have a rich precentor appointed by the bishop, than a poor one appointed by themselves. ”

“ And then I missed a great deal of the sermon, for I was growing unhappy in my new home, and, as the preaching of one clergyman, especially if you are not listening particularly, sounds much like the preaching of another, it was easy to shut my eyes and fancy myself sitting with my mother in church at home in London. Presently, happening to glance round me, I caught sight of Mr. Laurence Reade in the corner of the next pew, with his arms folded, his legs crossed, and his head thrown back ”

“ The old priest, in particular, stirred by the fact that “number 42” was a heretic into giving him something better than the conventional doses of religious advice which he administered to the devotees of “the true Church,” proved a most kind friend to him, and it was with a manner of sincere and warm sympathy that the good father while paying him his usual visit one day in April, let fall at parting a mysterious whisper about good news and good friends who had not forgotten him. ”

“ The case is certainly a paltry one after the tens of thousands with which we have been dealing, for the warden's income is after all but a poor eight hundred a year: eight hundred a year is not magnificent preferment of itself, and the warden may, for anything we know, be worth much more to the church ”

“ It should also be remembered, that since my appointment, a new code of Statutes has received your Grace's sanction as Visitor, in the XIIth of which provision is made for proceeding against a Warden charged with holding opinions contrary to the teaching of the United Church of England and Ireland, as at present established.
While I owe it to my own position and character, not to plead guilty to this grave charge, implied in your Grace's letter, (of which I protest my entire innocence,) and while my resignation would justly be regarded as equivalent to putting forward that plea ”

“ The day after their arrival was Sunday, and the morning church-going had been a fiery ordeal for George, not from religious indifference, but from the misgiving that if Nouna could not keep from smiling in the course of a well-conducted service in a West End church, she would certainly be carried out in convulsions from the Willingham place of worship, where the school children, summer and winter, sniffed through the service in a distressing chorus, while the loud-voiced clerk’s eccentric English rang through the building, drowning the old vicar’s feeble voice ”

“ He thought her the most splendid specimen of handsome, healthy well-brought-up womanhood he had ever met, and he thought also that the beneficent influence of the Church, exercised through the unworthy medium of himself, would mold her into a creature as near perfection as was humanly possible. ”

“ Country rector's sister, kept house for him in a Sussex village, fell in love with a handsome blue-eyed young racing-man she saw in church. I like church—it's an institution that ought to be kept up. And eighteen years ago, Armstrong,—though I say it that shouldn't—there wasn't a better-looking fellow at Goodwood than Randolph Garth. I have always been weak—I own it—where a pretty woman is concerned ”

“ Your good men who go to church on Sunday and stick to their desks so many hours on weekdays don't know the meaning of the word passion. Lorin has everything in life—why should he want you too? Good women like you are sent into the world to redeem bad men like me, not to carve beef and mutton for such estimable citizens as my cousin Lorin. A good woman whom I loved and who loved me might do what she liked with me; and, Lina, from the moment when yesterday you ran into my arms, I have loved you and longed to hold you there again! ”

“ The excitement of the strange life she had led since leaving it had spoilt her for the old, calm, passionless existence. What! Never again to leave the shade of those quiet walls? Never to wander, as she now loved to do, about the ruined church of Saint Hilda, whose roofless walls, with their choir of wailing sea-birds, had grown to her ten times more sacred than the little convent-chapel? Never to see her father? Never to see—Dick?
At this thought she broke down, and resting her head upon her hands, let the tears come. And poor Dick had looked half-starved, so John Thurley said! ”

“ He glanced at her quickly, and then at the faces of the women behind her. The idea which possessed their brains entered his also, and he asked himself whether grief and harsh treatment could have temporarily deprived his daughter of her reason.
As Sir Philip led the bride along the terrace toward the church door, a murmur of admiration ran through the crowd. Her face had lost its pallor; through the tulle veil a bright color showed in her cheeks, and contrasted with the intense purple-blue of her restless, gleaming eyes. Two persons her gaze sought in the crowd about the doors. ”

“ Harding, with a smile, as though afraid of giving offence by making his reference to scripture too solemn.
"Pish!" said the archdeacon, turning away rapidly; "if the ravens persisted in refusing the food prepared for them, they wouldn't be fed." A clergyman generally dislikes to be met in argument by any scriptural quotation; he feels as affronted as a doctor does, when recommended by an old woman to take some favourite dose, or as a lawyer when an unprofessional man attempts to put him down by a quibble.
"I shall have the living of Crabtree," modestly suggested the warden. ”

“ Indeed I liked going to church; and, even if I had not acquired the taste already, the dulness of the Sunday before—which I had spent in the drawing-room with Mrs. Rayner and Haidee, hearing my pupil repeat one of the Thirty-nine Articles, which I was sure she did not understand, and which I myself did not understand well enough to explain to her, and stifling my yawns for the rest of the time behind Goulburn’s Personal Religion—would have made me love it. So I said I should like to go, and they said that there was no afternoon service at Geldham; but Mr. ”

“ Yet there is much to suggest itself of special interest, for the sacrament involves the whole history of mankind. The child arrives not a member of the Church, even in positive enmity—though unconsciously—to Almighty God, and in the power of the enemy of mankind. As a result of the priest's ministration, the devil is expelled, and the child acquires the state of one of the faithful. The command "Exi ab eo, immunde spiritus, et da locum Spiritui Sancto Paraclito" should surely bring home to one the power of the priesthood. ”

“ Warden, the chaplain, lived, and retained his dislike to the youth. That good man, single-minded and benevolent as he really was, entertained rather more than a reasonable idea of the respect due to him as a minister, and exacted from the inhabitants of the castle more deference than the haughty young page, proud of his mistress's favour, and petulant from youth and situation, was at all times willing to pay. ”

“ Can't you see that if we tell them that no action will lie against you, but that one may possibly lie against some other person or persons, that we shall be putting weapons into their hands, and be teaching them how to cut our own throats?"
The warden again sat silent, and the bishop again looked at him wistfully: "The only thing we have now to do," continued the archdeacon, "is to remain quiet, hold our peace, and let them play their own game as they please." ”

“ In the perplexing condition of Christendom, it had just enough good and promise to justify those who had been brought up in it remaining where they were, as long as they saw any prospect of improving it, and till they were driven out. That was a duty—uncomfortable and thankless as it was, and open to any amount of misconstruction and misrepresentation—which they owed to their brethren, and to the Lord of the Church. But it involved plain speaking and its consequences; and Mr. Ward never shrank from either. ”

“ It appears we are of little consequence, and hence our wicked neighbours do us injustice. These wardens hinder us from our purposes, and we are without favour. There is no caitiff pilgrim but hath had a warden assigned him from his birth, to attend him and defend him at all times from our hands, and especially from the time that he washed in the ‘salt lye,’ ordained by grace de Dieu, who hath ever been our enemy; and then they are taken, as soon as these wardens come, before the provost, and have audience at their own pleasure; while we are kept here without, as mere ribalds. ”

“ In the days when a priest had to go about his duties in the continual risk of being apprehended and cast into prison, and being condemned on trial to be hanged, drawn and quartered, the heroism of his life, and the manner in which he had to be almost continuously braving personal danger in his search after souls, would undoubtedly have taken the place of much training and prayer in sanctifying his soul. But with the relaxation of active persecution, came an imminent danger which showed itself throughout the dreary eighteenth century, and during the first half of the nineteenth. ”

“ All we desire is to deal with Mrs. Ward for her own good. Brother Dean speaks of the evil in the church,—ain't it our duty to check that? It appears, sir, that, preacher of this church or not, you've allowed her sin of unbelief to remain unreproved, and the consequence is its spread in the church: that's what we're responsible for; that's our duty. If you've neglected your duty, we ain't a-goin' to neglect ours." He wagged his head emphatically, and then sat down.
John Ward was too entirely without self-consciousness to feel the change in the tone of these men. ”

“ She had always been a Baptist because her mother was. But in her deep reaction against her father's associates, the chapel which she frequented did not now satisfy her. She hungered for she knew not what, certain fastidious artistic instincts awakening the while in unexpected ways.
Then one Easter Eve, as she came back from an errand into the outskirts of the town, she passed a little iron church standing in a very poor neighbourhood, where, as she knew, a 'Puseyite' curate in charge officiated, and where a good many disturbances which had excited the populace had taken place. She went in. ”

“ Would you not take all your books and vestments and signs of religion, and retire to the most secret caves and mountains? This is just what our priests, and prophets, and sooth-sayers, and nagualists have done to this time and are still doing.” Experience showed, too, that this worship of the evil spirit assumed the form of various sects, some imitating the Catholic Church in having bishops, priests, and sacraments, which they secretly administered to consecrate their victims to Satan before they received the real ones from the hands of the missionaries. ”

“ For Baptism and the sacraments of the dying are only other forms of loosing souls from the bonds of sin. The question then is, does reserve with women create any hindrance in this essential work of a priest? Unquestionably not. Protestant writers, indeed, looking at the Church from outside, and not understanding the real feeling of Catholics, have sometimes supposed that they prefer going to Confession to an easy-going, self-indulgent priest, rather than one who leads a mortified, unworldly life. But all practical Catholics well know there cannot be a greater mistake. ”

“ He can recall receiving Low Churchmen, Dissenters, Quakers, or unbaptised persons with no religion at all, as frequently as those of the High Church. They come at all ages; and often without any very definite apparent reason. It has no doubt been a case of corresponding with the grace of God, and even when it was originally set in motion by something in one of our sermons, or when difficulties have been chased away in like manner, the priest feels clearly enough how little one has had personally to do with it, beyond being the representative of God. ”

“ More than any single man Ward held the balance and kept comparative peace among the thinkers of English Catholicism. His apologetic was based on his axiom that since the Reformation the Catholic Church was in ‘a state of siege’. He was a liberal without being found guilty of liberalism by authority. The balance which Ward held amongst his fellow Catholics corresponded with his position amongst non-Catholics. ”

“ Our dear Chaplain and Warden are doing everything possible for the spiritual welfare of all the men. The Warden dignified our first meeting by giving us his personal religious experience at the commencement of the service, and he is willing and anxious to encourage in every way possible the religious sentiment now prevailing. As for our Chaplain, I do not believe there is his equal. I who am so closely associated with him can truly testify to his untiring zeal in behalf of all of us. If ever there was a living man, free from any selfish or worldly motives, I believe it is he. ”