CHAPTER XVIII.
THE REVEREND DOCTOR CALLS ON BROTHER FAIRWEATHER.
For the last few months, while all these various matters were going on
in Rockland, the Reverend Chauncy Fairweather had been busy with the
records of ancient councils and the writings of the early fathers. The
more he read, the more discontented he became with the platform upon
which he and his people were standing. They and he were clearly in
a minority, and his deep inward longing to be with the majority was
growing into an engrossing passion. He yearned especially towards the
good old unquestioning, authoritative Mother Church, with her articles
of faith which took away the necessity for private judgment, with her
traditional forms and ceremonies, and her whole apparatus of stimulants
and anodynes.
About this time he procured a breviary and kept it in his desk under
the loose papers. He sent to a Catholic bookstore and obtained a small
crucifix suspended from a string of beads. He ordered his new coat to be
cut very narrow in the collar and to be made single-breasted. He began
an informal series of religious conversations with Miss O'Brien, the
young person of Irish extraction already referred to as Bridget, maid
of all work. These not proving very satisfactory, he managed to fall in
with Father McShane, the Catholic priest of the Rockland church. Father
McShane encouraged his nibble very scientifically. It would be such
a fine thing to bring over one of those Protestant heretics, and a
"liberal" one too!--not that there was any real difference between
them, but it sounded better to say that one of these rationalizing
free-and-equal religionists had been made a convert than any of those
half-way Protestants who were the slaves of catechisms instead of
councils and of commentators instead of popes.
Pages:
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291