II
THE INHERITANCE

MACKAY was not a pioneer. In his great work at All Saints' he consolidated and developed what had already been won. He inherited an established tradition. But he was not the slave of that tradition. If in a sense All Saints' made Mackay, it is equally true that Mackay made All Saints' as we know it to-day. When the church was built, Anglo-Catholicism was a religious eccentricity which some of the laity found attractive and most of the bishops found detestable. It was Mackay's strength that he was not in the least eccentric. Eccentricity is sometimes tremendously useful as it is often delightful. But there is a definite limit to what the eccentric man can achieve. He is the perfect leader of a heroic sally. He is not the man to choose as the captain of a liner. Despite his vivid if restrained Celtic imagination Mackay was normal. He made All Saints' normal and, in so doing, he made Anglo-Catholicism normal, the sort of religion that need not offend the normal Englishman who rather suspects all foreigners, even if they are saints, and is convinced that the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth is printed every morning in The Times newspaper. This was no small service to the cause of true religion.

It should be made clear that, when he left it, All Saints' was in many respects vastly different from the church to which Mackay was instituted. During his incumbency, there was steady progress along sane and restrained lines. With its history All Saints' might well have run away with a less powerful rider. Mackay held it well in hand.

All Saints', Margaret Street, was consecrated by Dr. Tait, Bishop of London, on May 28, 1859. The Rev. W. Upton Richards was the first incumbent, and among the preachers at the services connected with the consecration was Father Ben-son, the founder of the Society of St. John the Evangelist. From the beginning All Saints' was a centre of Catholic worship. The church was built on the site of Margaret Chapel, a proprietary chapel which had a curious and varied history. In his interesting Historical Notes on the Tractarian Movement, published in 1865, the Rev. Frederick Oakeley says:

"About the time of the great French Revolution Margaret Chapel was a temple of Deism; and between that period and the year 1835 it had proceeded through the various gradations of dissent and Low Churchism till it settled, at least for a time, in some of the milder forms of the religious system which is connected with the name of Mr. Irving."

After a short period of connection with the Catholic Apostolic Church, Margaret Chapel returned to the fold of the Church of England, the Rev. William Dodsworth being licensed by the Bishop of London as its minister in 1829. Eight years afterwards, Mr. Dodsworth became the first incumbent of Christ Church, Albany Street, which had been built for him; and two years later the Rev. Frederick Oakeley went to All Saints' with the Rev. Upton Richards as assistant priest. Oakeley, who 'verted to Rome in 1845, nad been for years closely associated with the Tractarian movement, and he accepted the offer of Margaret Chapel through the desire for an opportunity "of trying the effect of Tractarian principles upon a practical scale". He was a pioneer in the translation of the Oxford Movement from the schools to the parishes. Margaret Chapel was a most unpromising building for such an experiment. Oakeley described it as "a complete paragon of ugliness".

"It was low, dark and stuffy. It bore no other resemblance to the Christian fold than that of being choked with sheep pens under the name of pews; and its only evidence of being surrounded with varieties was that it was begirt by a hideous gallery, filled on Sundays with uneasy school children. But the triumph of its monstrosities was just where, upon the principle corruptio optimi pessima, we might have expected,--in the chancel. From the floor almost to the roof there arose a tripartite structure beginning with the clerk's desk and terminating in the pulpit, the minister's reading pew occupying the interval. Thus the preacher was lofty on a kind of throne and there he stood, claiming as it were the adoration of the people."

Oakeley soon gathered a considerable congregation, including, as he proudly records, many members of the aristocracy. And he began to create the tradition which slowly developed during the years of last century, and was inherited by Mackay, to be respected and strengthened by him during his long incumbency. The changes in the order of Divine Worship were made by Oakeley "upon a definite principle and with a religious aim". While the Catholic faith was zealously taught, due regard was paid to legitimate ecclesiastical instructions, irritating and often absurd as they were. Oakeley was told that he might have candles on the altar provided he did not light them. He could have a bouquet of flowers on the altar, but he must be careful to see that they were not white on the feast of a virgin or red on that of a martyr. The offerings must be collected on a dish, the alms bag being considered as Popish. He was allowed to preach in a surplice in the morning if he would promise to wear a black gown in the evening, thus, as he said, neutralizing Rome by Geneva. All these fantastic orders were obeyed.

Oakeley and his colleague Upton Richards must have been very lonely men at Margaret Chapel. In the whole of London there were not more than two or three clergy whom they dared to invite to preach, and they were regarded by the Bishop with the greatest suspicion and dislike. In his book written in 1865, some six years, that is, after All Saints' was built and twenty years after he had seceded to Rome, Oakeley says that quite half a dozen of the priests connected with Margaret Chapel in its later years became converts to Rome with at least a hundred of the laity. If these figures are correct, the spirit of the place in the middle years of last century was vastly different from its spirit to-day, for All Saints', with the particular presentation of the Catholic religion with which it is associated, has never in recent times been fertile in the production of Roman converts. But it must be remembered that New-man's secession had naturally an immense effect on the men and women of the first period of the Tractarian revival.

Oakeley began his ministry on July 5, 1839, and that date may be regarded as the beginning of the history of All Saints', Margaret Street. Oakeley instituted a celebration of Holy Communion on every Sunday and Holy Day. But it is interesting to note that non-communicating attendance was not even thought of. He adopted the Eastern position, bowed to the altar, but did not light the altar candles, as he considered the practice not "strictly Anglican".

Oakeley was a first-rate musician, and he laid the foundation of the great musical tradition of the Margaret Street church. He does not seem to have been much of a preacher. Bishop Wilberforce wrote in 1844 of a Service that he had attended at Margaret Street Chapel:

"Oakeley's sermon was poor and barren in the extreme, the singing beautiful; one Old Version Psalm to an old Gregorian tune quite marvellously beautiful."

Oakeley was a Fellow of Balliol, a kind, good, lovable and scholarly man whom Jowett described as "an elegant writer and a great lover of music". His years at Margaret Street saw the most considerable achievement of his life. His parting with his people, who seem to have been most extraordinarily generous, was intensely painful to him. But he just had to follow Newman. In February, 1845, Oakeley wrote to the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford a letter in which he said:

"I claim the right of holding, as distinct from teaching, Roman doctrine, and that notwithstanding my subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles."

For this letter he was promptly hailed before the Court of Arches and his licence to officiate in the Diocese of London was revoked in the following June. Newman seceded to Rome on October 9 and a few days afterwards Oakeley followed him. The English Churchman, commenting on the revocation of Oakeley's licence, said (it was a very different English Churchman from the Kensitite English Churchman of to-day):

"We deeply regret that the solid advantages of the beautiful and unique Services of Margaret Chapel should be sacrificed, and even now we would fain hope even against hope that some way may be found by which the pastor may be saved to the flock and they from being scattered abroad; for it is in truth a beautiful flock."

The pastor was not saved, but the flock was not scattered. Upton Richards happily remained at Margaret Chapel, with the generous and steady support of an influential and faithful congregation of whom Beresford Hope was the most important member.

At this time the Ecclesiological Society, affected by Tractarian influence, was anxious to build in Central London a church that should be a perfect setting for Catholic services. Beresford Hope was a member of the Society and through him an alliance was effected between the Margaret Chapel congregation and the Society. The congregation had collected £2,000 for the purpose of building a church and Beresford Hope and Stephen Glynne made an appeal for further funds. In view of the subsequent history of All Saints', one paragraph in this appeal is of particular interest:

"The great object is to secure a permanent and ecclesiastical footing, more numerous Services and the frequent administration of Holy Communion, so as to meet the habits of the poor who, with few exceptions, are unable to avail themselves of the present-day Services."

Frequent celebrations of Holy Communion are obviously necessary if the hard-worked are to have access to their spiritual privileges.

The site of Margaret Chapel and of three adjoining houses was bought at the cost of £9,000, and William Butterfield was appointed the architect of the new church. It is interesting to recall the barrenness of London, so far as Anglo-Catholicism was concerned, when Butterfield began his work. St. Paul's, Knightsbridge, and St. Barnabas', Pimlico, are older than All Saints', Margaret Street. But All Saints' is in the front rank of the long pageant of beautiful churches in which now, for three generations, the Catholic religion has been taught. Ruskin praised the noble architecture, but the interior of the church lacks beauty as it lacks comfort. Scott Holland once described the windows of Keble Chapel, Oxford, as " Christmas charades, with their crude colours, and the leads looking like the wire fastenings of the Apostles' wigs and whiskers". Father Adderley told Mackay of Scott Holland's gibe. He at once replied: "Our windows are more like court cards." In this connection I may recall that I am responsible for the description of the All Saints' interior as being of the "early marzipan period".

The first stone of All Saints' was laid on All Saints' Day, 1850, by Dr. Pusey. The proceedings were described in the Guardian as "of a very simple and unostentatious character although of a deeply impressive nature". The work of building was long and difficult, and Richards, in 1855, opened a large temporary church--a building which is now the Confraternity Chapel--and here an earnest spiritual work was carried on for four years. In 1859 the Ecclesiastical Commissioners accepted the church, the buildings that include the Choir School, and the vicarage from Mr. Beresford Hope, and the patronage was made over to the Bishop, and, as I have said, the church was consecrated by him on May 28. The total cost of the edifice was £60,000, of which half was given by Henry Tritton, the banker to whom, in its early days, the Church owed almost as much as to Beresford Hope. The first thing, by the way, that Bishop Tait did on his arrival for the Consecration Service was to order the embroidered cloth on the altar to be covered!

It was perhaps prophetic of the many changes in the Church of England that were to take place, and for which All Saints' was to be a great inspiring centre, that there were present at the consecration three men who afterwards became Archbishops. Tait, then Bishop of London, became Archbishop of Canterbury, Trench, then Dean of Westminster, became Archbishop of Dublin, and Dr. Thomson, then Provost of Queen's, became Archbishop of York. The singing at the Consecration Service, at which the choir was supplemented by the choirs of the Chapel Royal, is said to have been particularly lovely, and a great tradition was strengthened and carried on.

In the course of his consecration sermon Dr. Trench, preaching from the text, "To what purpose is this waste?" said that this beautiful House of God, which had been built at a cost which might have provided five larger churches, would prove to be the parent of many more, would stimulate zeal and, as a protest against regarding anything as too precious for the Master's use, would help Churchpeople to be ashamed of meanness in their offerings to Him.

If the singing at once became famous, the preaching must also have been of a high order; for among the names of the preachers in the early years of All Saints' are Liddon, Mackonochie, Lowder, Trench, Benson, Wagner, Pusey and half a dozen bishops. The Three Hours was instituted in 1865 and Eucharistic vestments were worn for the first time in 1867. In 1871 the Daily Telegraph published an extremely sympathetic report of the All Saints' Day seven o'clock Mass. The writer said:

"The only points noticeable in the demeanour of the congregation beyond extreme reverence were the kneeling at the clause in the Nicene Creed which refers to the Incarnation, the crossing of themselves at that portion which asserts belief in the world to come, and prostration during the consecrating of the elements. Truly there is vitality at All Saints' in this movement. People do not face Catholic Services at dawn without meaning something by it."

Upton Richards died in 1873. The Church Times said of him:

"We doubt whether the departure of any of those who hold a prominent position in the Catholic movement, not excepting Mr. Keble himself, has gained more heartfelt sorrow."

Upton Richards was not a scholar nor apparently particularly intellectual. But he was a man of unbounded persistence joined to a charming simplicity of character, and it is rather odd to read in the obituary notice of him that appeared in the Guardian "that he had not kept pace with the more modern developments of the High Church movement". All Saints' has always watched its step. A Requiem with full ceremonial was sung for the dead Vicar in his church, and among the congregation there and afterwards by the graveside at Brompton was W. E. Gladstone.

During the interregnum that followed Upton Richards' death the Roman clergy were very industrious in the endeavour to make proselytes from the congregation and there seems to have been about half a dozen secessions. There was, too, considerable apprehension that Bishop Jackson would make a Low Church appointment which would destroy the recently established character of the Church. Happily this did not happen. The second Vicar was appointed in October, 1873. He was the Rev. Berdmore Compton who for eight years had been Rector of St. Paul's, Covent Garden, and who resigned a well-paid rectorship for a position of certain anxiety and the very smallest certain income. With him the Catholic character of All Saints' was assured and the Low Church weekly, the Rock, deplored the appointment as "one of the greatest blows ever struck at the Church of England"; Compton's aim was to consolidate the positions that had been won, to carry on the established services and ritual rather than to attempt developments. He was particularly concerned with the unnecessary diversity of practice in congregations that were agreed in principle. In 1880 a conference of priests and scholars met at All Saints' and resolved:

I. That the evil of unnecessary diversity in ritual as practised in various churches aiming at the maintenance of Catholic doctrine and usage in the Church of England is real and great.

II. That an effort to moderate it should be attempted resting mainly on the united opinion of some of those who have given special attention to the theory and practice of ritual in their private capacity of students or parish priests.

The consequence of this conference was the publication of a commentary on the rubrics of the Prayer Book called Ritual Conformity. The clergy responsible for its publication included Littledale and Charles Wordsworth, and Bishop Abrahams and Denison, among others, approved it. Here again is another landmark, another suggestion of the spirit of the kingdom for which Mackay was at this time preparing at Oxford.

The Archbishop of Canterbury preached at All Saints' on Ascension Day, 1886, and a month later Compton resigned the incumbency, leaving behind him a debt of £400, another All Saints' tradition that has been faithfully carried on unto this day.

On November 4 the Rev. William Alien Whitworth was collated to the benefice. He confessed that he himself had no music in his soul and would certainly have preferred the simplest of services; but he maintained the elaborate music and the choir. On December 23, 1888, the Rev. Henry Falconar Barclay Mackay, of Merton College, Oxford, joined the staff on his ordination as deacon, spending most of his time at the Pentonville Mission for which, at that time, All Saints' was responsible.

In the years that were to pass before Mackay returned as Vicar there was the continuation of work already begun with its constant successful application of the faith to the needs of the times.

With the history and development of the Oxford Movement is inextricably bound up the revival in England of the life of Religion. With the formation of the English Religious houses in the last century are just as inextricably bound up those acts of deep and unobtrusive heroism, which gave the houses their direction in works of Christian mercy and their character in the Christian spirit of performing them. All Saints', Margaret Street, is intimately connected with this side of the revival.

Here are three pictures of hidden, unassuming courage in the last decades of Victorian convention and popular prejudice against the Revival. The first is that of two ladies, keeping the canonical hours of prayer, reciting together the proper thanksgiving after the Eucharist, and joining together in visiting the poor and helping the sick. The second is of the foundress of a community collecting food--"scrapping", she called it--from the rich houses of Mayfair, for three incurable women and two orphans. The third is that of a postulant, made matron of a great hospital before she had even reached her novitiate.

The two ladies were Harriet Brownlow Byron, Foundress-Mother of the Community of All Saints' Sisters of the Poor, and Etheldreda Anna Bennett, Foundress of the Society of the Sisters of Bethany. It was Miss Byron who a little later did all the housework, and collected the food for her first house for invalids and orphans in Mortimer Street. The matron of University College Hospital was one of the early postulants of the new community, sent by the Foundress-Mother to undertake that grave responsibility, in service of the sick, at the very outset of her community life.

Harriet Brownlow Byron was born in 1818, at Coulsdon, Surrey, and when in later years her family removed to a house in London, in Nottingham Place, she began to attend Margaret Chapel, and it was the Rev. William Upton Richards who, in spite of possible future outside opposition, gave the first impetus to, and helped to make the first home for, the Community of All Saints'. Miss Byron, under Mr. Richards' direction, gave herself to works of mercy, to visiting the poor, and to keeping the canonical hours of prayer. Later, when she considered the possibility of entering one of the existing communities, Mr. Richards delayed her decision, understanding better than herself her gift for leadership in the strength of her character and the depth of her devotion. In 1851, upon his advice and with his help, Miss Byron took a house in Mortimer Street.

The tending of the sick, the aged, and the incurable, and the care of orphan children were the works of mercy nearest to her heart; and she made these the chief expression of the active side of community life. She started in the house in Mortimer Street with three incurable women and two orphans. Later, when other aspirants had joined the little Community, the house became too small; and in 1856, "nine Sisters, and thirty to forty poor", aged and infirm women, sick women, young girls, and the children of the orphanage, took up their home in 82, Margaret Street, which became the mother-house. The Mother Superior was admitted to her office by Bishop Samuel Wilberforce, acting on behalf of the Bishop of London; and in 1859 the rule of the Community, based upon the Augustinian rule and the rule of the Sisters of the Visitation, was given legal form.

The work of the Sisters was devoted and laborious.

"Beside what they do," reads one contemporary account, "in the Home night and day, they are ready at the ring of the bell to go forth to nurse the sick, to attend to the dying, and to prepare the dead for burial (during cholera they were severely taxed, but never wavered)."

Attached to their house was a room for the dead, built especially for the use of the poor, which was a godsend in a crowded district, where the rooms were not large enough for the living who were packed into them.

In 1860 the Sisters of All Saints' began work in University College Hospital. A postulant was sent to be matron, and soon other Sisters, given a course of nursing in one of the other hospitals or in University Hospital itself, were made ward Sisters.

It was characteristic of the courage and the devotion of the Foundress-Mother and of the prevalent spirit of willing service in the Community, that, in 1870, in response to the great need for nurses in the Franco-Prussian War, a small band of Sisters, led by the Foundress-Mother herself, went out to nurse the sick and wounded. The Mother and her Sisters worked in Balan and in the neighbouring district. One chateau, used as a field hospital, possessed grounds that were literally saturated with wound secretion. The graves of men and of horses filled the sorrounding land. And "sick and wounded of both sides, wherever conditions appeared most deplorable", were crowded in--terrible cases of gunshot wounds, cases of typhus and cases of chronic dysentery.

In 1873, upon the death of Mr. Upton Richards, the Community was left without a Chaplain-General; and it was in that year that the spiritual link was formed with the Society of St. John the Evangelist, Cowley, that has continued unbroken until to-day. Father Benson, Founder and Superior of S.S.J.E., became the chaplain of All Saints' Community. He visited the Convent for direction and advice. He took many retreats for the Sisters, both at Margaret Street and in the new great buildings at Colney Chapel, near St. Albans, to which the Community removed, as its growth made accommodation quite impossible at Margaret Street.

The work of the Community in recent years has been planned to follow closely upon the wishes of the Foundress-Mother, and the ideals of charity and care for the helpless and the poor, which she first prayed about in the old Margaret Chapel and put into practice in the Margaret Street district. The Community grew to great numbers, and opened branch houses in the provinces and overseas in the mission-field. For some years past, the Community has been earnestly and prayerfully considering the advisability of becoming one Order; and recently the Orders of Choir and Lay Sisters have been amalgamated.

In the Mother-House at Colney Chapel, the principles of the Mixed Life are strictly kept--the inward life of prayer and the outward expression of it in the service of Christ in humanity.

Beside the works that are centred in the St. Albans house, there is sacristy and parish work still continued in Margaret Street; there are two other children's homes, at Liverpool and Leeds; there are two homes for incurable cases, at Oxford for forty patients, and at Finchley for the poor who can afford very little in the way of fees. There is parish work done from a branch house in Westminster, and among the poor in two parishes in Leeds. There is mission work undertaken in branch houses in Cape Town and Bombay. This is the history of the All Saints' Sisterhood.

Writing of All Saints' generally in a series of articles that appeared in the Torch in 1923, the Rev. James Adderley said:

"There were three stages of the Tractarian revival, as old Dr. King used to say. First, there was the study, then the ritual, and then the hard work, but it is only where the three have overlapped or accompanied one another that the true life has been preserved. The Oxford Movement began as an appeal to the people, and it only continues alive while it remains essentially that. To have studied the Prayer Book and Catholic theology, and to have stopped there, would have been futile. The tracts and books would have found their way into libraries and museums, and there it would have ceased to function. But the great leaders like Pusey and Keble were never only students. Pusey busied himself about cholera patients and Keble about country cricketers. It was natural, then, that men like Lowder and Dolling should arise and take the conclusions of these practical students and apply their principles in slums and drawing-rooms.

"Churches were built and restored, the old machinery was set going again, and the Church of England began to hum. It was an amazing and, at the same time, most comforting thought to find that you could be a Catholic, linked on to the old Church of the saints, and yet not go with the little group who threw up the sponge and submitted to Rome. True, it was a terrible shock to have great men of the type of Newman going, but on the other hand there were Gladstone and Pusey and others firm in remaining.

"The bulk of English Churchmen wanted to be assured that the Tractarians were right, but it was of the highest importance that the truth should be made clear to all not merely in books but in the churches and parishes themselves. Nor was it enough to have slum parishes worked on Catholic lines. The gospel must, of course, be preached to the poor, but the West-enders wanted it even more. The ladies and gentlemen must not be tempted to think that they could satisfy Catholic requirements by slumming or even by a series of cheques sent to some struggling priest at the Docks. They, too, must make their confessions and be regular communicants and join in the glory of the new-found way of worshipping. They responded with alacrity as the successes of St. Paul's, Knightsbridge, and St. Barnabas', Pimlico, testify.

"This is where All Saints', Margaret Street, comes into view. Architecturally, it represents an epoch. William Butterfield and Pugin were the great artists who emancipated us from the era of 'Churchwarden Gothic', and it was Butterfield who designed All Saints'. Ruskin wrote in the Stones of Venice of the 'noble architecture' employed for the interior of the church in Margaret Street. He added, 'I do not altogether like the arrangements of the colour in the brickwork; but these will hardly attract the eye where so much has been already done with precious and beautiful marble, and is yet to be done in fresco. Much will depend, however, upon the colouring of this latter portion. I wish that either Holman Hunt or Millais could be prevailed upon to do at least some of the smaller frescoes.'

"In this new church, the successor of Margaret Chapel, where the ritual of the Communion was a strange mixture of old-fashioned Anglicanism and the new, Mr. Upton Richards, the first Vicar, began his work. Many of us can remember the afternoon service at All Saints' to which Edward the Seventh and Queen Alexandra, then Prince and Princess of Wales, came so regularly. The music was then, and has always remained, one of the artistic gems of London. Each Vicar has contributed something substantial to the progress of All Saints'. Alien Whitworth developed the evangelical side of Catholic truth and practice which has always been a marked characteristic of the Church, while Holden steered it carefully through the times of crisis from a renewed Protestantism which disturbed the whole Church in the 'nineties. The present Vicar has not only maintained the tradition, but he has brought it up to date. One can see what has come to be called 'Anglo-Catholicism' at its very best at All Saints'. People who dismiss the Anglo-Catholic movement as a 'Doll and Candle Show' or as mere Romanism should be compelled to live and worship in Margaret Street for two or three weeks before they utter themselves again on the subject. So, too, ought those others who talk as if the whole of the ceremonial was a mere adjunct which could be easily dispensed with and all that is good in the life and work would go on still. This is like saying that a man can live a good life quite as easily if he makes up his mind to remain dumb on purpose, and to dress in black, while all the time he is longing to speak and to put on some colour.

"Clothes and lights and music do make a difference, whatever these people may say. Art would, we suppose, continue somehow if all the galleries of the world were closed. Music might exist, if all the instruments in the world were broken up, but it would be foolish to say that these revolutionary methods would make no difference to life at large. So, once grant that Anglo-Catholicism is a reality and the expression of it outwardly in ceremonial and daily practice is not only justified but necessary. This is what All Saints' stands for. Real worship of God Incarnate shown in the practice of a congregation intensely in earnest, mutually helping one another to carry it on. Week by week the drama runs on. There is a first-rate choir, the boys living and getting their education on the spot. There are confraternities of men, women, boys and girls, each binding themselves by a rule to be loyal to the laws of the Church, not, of course, advertising themselves to the outside world, but praying that they may do these things faithfully ^ to the Glory of God and for their own souls' sake. A continuous course of good sermons from their own priests and from the pick of the preachers of the Church of England keeps them from becoming selfish and centred only on their own welfare. There is a wide outlet upon the colouring of this latter portion. I wish that either Holman Hunt or Millais could be prevailed upon to do at least some of the smaller frescoes.'

"In this new church, the successor of Margaret Chapel, where the ritual of the Communion was a strange mixture of old-fashioned Anglicanism and the new, Mr. Upton Richards, the first Vicar, began his work. Many of us can remember the afternoon service at All Saints' to which Edward the Seventh and Queen Alexandra, then Prince and Princess of Wales, came so regularly. The music was then, and has always remained, one of the artistic gems of London. Each Vicar has contributed something substantial to the progress of All Saints'. Alien Whitworth developed the evangelical side of Catholic truth and practice which has always been a marked characteristic of the Church, while Holden steered it carefully through the times of crisis from a renewed Protestantism which disturbed the whole Church in the 'nineties. The present Vicar has not only maintained the tradition, but he has brought it up to date. One can see what has come to be called 'Anglo-Catholicism' at its very best at All Saints'. People who dismiss the Anglo-Catholic movement as a 'Doll and Candle Show' or as mere Romanism should be compelled to live and worship in Margaret Street for two or three weeks before they utter themselves again on the subject. So, too, ought those others who talk as if the whole of the ceremonial was a mere adjunct which could be easily dispensed with and all that is good in the life and work would go on still. This is like saying that a man can live a good life quite as easily if he makes up his mind to remain dumb on purpose, and to dress in black, while all the time he is longing to speak and to put on some colour.

"Clothes and lights and music do make a difference, whatever these people may say. Art would, we suppose, continue somehow if all the galleries of the world were closed. Music might exist, if all the instruments in the world were broken up, but it would be foolish to say that these revolutionary methods would make no difference to life at large. So, once grant that Anglo-Catholicism is a reality and the expression of it outwardly in ceremonial and daily practice is not only justified but necessary. This is what All Saints' stands for. Real worship of God Incarnate shown in the practice of a congregation intensely in earnest, mutually helping one another to carry it on. Week by week the drama runs on. There is a first-rate choir, the boys living and getting their education on the spot. There are confraternities of men, women, boys and girls, each binding themselves by a rule to be loyal to the laws of the Church, not, of course, advertising themselves to the outside world, but praying that they may do these things faithfully to the Glory of God and for their own souls' sake. A continuous course of good sermons from their own priests and from the pick of the preachers of the Church of England keeps them from becoming selfish and centred only on their own welfare. There is a wide outlet for Foreign Missionary enterprise, and only lately one of the staff was chosen as Bishop of Nassau. A remarkable sermon delivered by him before he left England showed that All Saints' had not made him blind to the importance of modern movements or obscurantist as Anglo-Catholics are sometimes supposed to be. "The pulpit is not despised at All Saints'. On the contrary it figures almost as prominently as the altar. Rather, perhaps, we should say that it is the companion of the holy table. All Saints' is a home for the administration of the Word and Sacraments."

What then were the characteristics of the kingdom which Mackay inherited? First, absolute loyalty to the Church of England, with the acceptance of the Tractarian insistence on its Catholic character. This loyalty compelled submission to episcopal direction when it was not evidently contrary to Catholic tradition and Canon Law, even when such direction was irritating, prejudiced or just silly. The All Saints' conviction that the Church of England is the Catholic Church in England was accompanied by a complete faith in the eventual triumph within the Church of Catholic teaching and Catholic practice. This faith has caused All Saints' always to be cautious, always to proceed slowly. From the days of Upton Richards its clergy have neither been pro-Roman nor anti-Roman. They have been English Catholics, whose business it has been to convert the indifferent and at the same time to persuade their fellows, clergy and laity alike, of the supreme value and the supreme beauty of the spiritual heritage which has come to them from their fathers. With all the elaboration of the services and the artistry of the music, there has been at All Saints' the constant desire to keep within what is either explicitly or implicitly permitted by the Book of Common Prayer. The policy has always been to teach first and to innovate afterwards, to wait for the congregation to understand and to add nothing for which there was not a genuine congregational need.

Mackay inherited a tradition that he understood and respected, and which by inclination and character he was eminently fitted to carry on. No church could have been better suited to his distinctive gifts and qualities. No vicar could have been better suited to All Saints'.

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