The Collector returned home, his heart full of peace, and went to a certain closet of his bedroom, wherein was a box he had not opened for forty years. Within it lay a bridal dress, and an unfinished set of baby clothes, with a needle still fastened in the hem of a garment And the Collector wept; but his tears were half sorrow and half joy, and he did not sorrow as one who had no hope.
When I give him this title, I am perfectly aware that his right to it was at the best very doubtful, and that the Romans at St. Francis Xavier's laughed openly at his conceit; but he was always greatly encouraged by any one calling him "Father"; and now that he is gone I, for one, who knew both his little eccentricities and his hard sacrifices, will not throw stones at his grave--plenty were thrown at himself in his lifetime--nor shall I wound his memory by calling him Mr. Jinks. My opinion, as a layman, unattached and perhaps not even intelligent, is of very small account, but it is that of many other laymen; and to us it is of no importance what the servant of the Master is called, whether, like my dear old friend Father Pat Reilly, who has brought back more prodigals from the far country and rescued more waifs from the streets than any man I can hear of, or after the fashion of that worthy man, Pastor John Jump, as he delights to describe himself, who attends to business all the week--something in tinned meats, I think--and on Sunday preaches to a congregation of "baptized believers" with much force and earnestness, also without money or price. Both the Father and the Pastor had some doubts about my salvation--the one because I was not a member of the Anglican Communion, and the other because I was not a "strait Baptist"; but I never had any doubt about theirs--much less indeed than they had of one another's--and of the two I liked... but no, there is no use of comparisons, especially as the Pastor, as well as the Father, has gone to the land where, doubtless, many surprises are waiting for us all.
Nor does it seem of grave concern to some of us--but here again we may only be displaying our own ignorance of ecclesiastical subtleties--how a minister of religion is set apart to his office, if so be that he is an educated man and does the work put to his hand faithfully. Jinks was priested--I think that was what he called it, but he is not responsible for my mistakes--in a cathedral by a Right Rev. Father in God, and he used often to insist that only through such a channel could the grace of Orders come; but when the successor of the apostles advised Jinks in a most kindly, fatherly spirit to cease from some of his amiable extravagances--he had added a bran-new chasuble to his other bravery, which greatly pleased his female devotees--"the dear Father do look so pretty in his new chalice," one of his admirers said--Jinks repaid the Episcopal counsel with thinly-veiled scorn, and preached a sermon which ran to the unwonted length of twenty minutes to show that the bishop was himself a law-breaker and little better than a Protestant My friend Carmichael, again, was ordained in the little Free Kirk of Drumtochty by the Presbytery of Muirtown,--that heavy body of Church Law and Divinity, Dr. Dowbiggin, being Moderator,--and I cannot recollect Carmichael once referring to his Orders but he regarded his spiritual superiors with profound respect, and was very much relieved when his heresy case was dismissed--knowing very well that if they took it into their heads he would be turned out of his Church without delay and deposed from the ministry beyond human remedy. Carmichael was in the custom of denouncing priestcraft, and explaining that he had no claim to be a priest; but he administered a ghostly discipline so minute and elaborate, with sins which could be loosed by him, and reserved sins which could only be loosed by a higher authority, that the Father would have regarded it with envy. And Carmichael exercised an unquestioned authority among the hard-headed and strong-willed people of Drumtochty which Jinks would have cheerfully given ten years of his life to possess in the parish of St Agatha's. Between the two there was this difference, that the vicar of St Agatha's had the form of authority without the power, and the minister of Drumtochty had the power of authority without the form; and, as no man could be personally more humble or in heart more sincere than Jinks, this was the weary pity of the situation for my little Father.