and encouragement were held, a system of weekly pledges organized, and every legitimate means employed for carrying on the great work. Many gifts of money and ornaments of various kinds came from the family and personal friends of the incumbent, and many were thank offerings for gifts and graces received through his ministrations. The rector was chairman of the building committee throughout its existence, constant and zealous at all its meetings; and the architect, the late John H. Sturgis, was one of his most intimate friends and received from Father Grafton many suggestions in the design and execution of the undertaking.

Another great work of Father Grafton's rectorship was the establishment of the House of the Holy Nativity, the result of much study and experience of existing sisterhoods. Its special field was the cultivation of the religious life and to give aid to the parochial clergy in their spiritual work and in preparation of candidates for the Sacraments. During the last three years of Father Grafton's administration of the parish of the Advent, half as many adults were baptized as in all the other nineteen Episcopal churches of Boston put together, a result largely due, as he has often said, to the efficient work of the Sisterhood of the Holy Nativity. The mother house is now at Fond du Lac, while there are branch houses among the Indians at Oneida, Wisconsin; Providence, Rhode Island; Milwaukee, Wisconsin; New York City, and Portland, Maine.

The spiritual work of the sixteen years in the parish of the Advent cannot be reckoned here. It will be known when the jewels are made up and the good pastor gives an account of his flock. Like the great Prince-Bishop of Geneva, Father Grafton had special facility of access to those persons of culture and refinement, so difficult to reach because their taste and breeding must necessarily be recognized and accounted with before a hearing can be obtained from them. As with St. Francis de Sales, his singular purity and detachment were united to that sense of proportion, that insight and sympathy, which we call tact. Those whose temptations do not lie in the way of coarse indulgence, but proceed from tendencies to melancholy and morbid self-analysis, require a certain encouragement and mortification of the will rather than excessive bodily asceticism. Father Grafton knew how to inculcate the "little virtues which grow at the foot of the Cross." He had all that restraint and reserve which were perhaps the deepest notes of the Oxford Movement, in strong though silent protest against the noisy and sensational appeals of Evangelicalism, embodied as we find it in Keble's exquisite "Rosebud" hymn.

There was a group of saintly persons in the Advent in Father Grafton's day of which any pastor might have been proud women as devoted as Madame de Chantal to her holy confessor, and men who followed in the good old paths without ostentation and with the true chivalric feeling for their priest. Many of these good women had been led on to further steps

in the higher life by their director; others had been turned from the engrossment of gay and brilliant society to real sanctity. Those who shared Father Grafton's meditations given at the House of the Holy Nativity, surrounded by his sisters and some of these devoted associates, have testified to the spiritual exaltation in which his soul took wing in beautiful and sympathetic environment. As Madame de Chantal wrote of St. Francis:

"That soul was more pure than the sun and more white than snow in its actions, in its resolutions, in its desires and affections."

Ritual was to Father Grafton as decent clothing in social life, an adjunct, a propriety, never an end or a fussy absorption. He passed swiftly on to the heart of things. His celebrations especially brought to mind the eloquent words of one who in going from us left what was best of him behind with us, his "apology" for what thoughtless people call irreverent haste, as though reverence meant a stumbling hesitancy:

"Words are necessary, but as means, not as ends; they are not mere addresses to the throne of grace; they are instruments of what is far higher, of consecration, of sacrifice. They hurry on as if impatient to fulfil their mission. Quickly they go; the whole is quick, for they are all parts of one integral action. Quickly they go, for they are awful words of sacrifice; they are a work too great to delay upon, as when it was said in the beginning: 'What thou doest, do quickly.' Quickly they pass, for the Lord Jesus goes with them, as He passed along the lake in the days of His flesh,

quickly calling, first one and then another. Quickly they pass; because as the lightning which shineth from one part of heaven unto the other, so is the coming of the Son of Man."

Father Grafton loved the Eucharist with all his great heart, but some of the most enthusiastic words that ever fell from his lips were in praise of those who frequented daily Morning and Evening Prayer, which some of our "advanced" Catholics speak lightly of as only condensed breviary offices, but which are sacred in Anglican and American tradition by their venerable, religious, and sober use. He was an admirable executive, never interfering with assignments, but leaving his clerical and lay assistants free to carry out instructions with suitable freedom in detail. He moved among us with sweetness, dignity, and gravity. Men and women venerated him; the children loved him.

Bishop Grafton's visits to us in his old home are indeed as the visits of an Angel of the Church, in which his ripening wisdom, love, and gentleness are ever welcomed with increasing affection. With due respect to our honored Diocesan, when we speak among ourselves of the Bishop, we mean Charles Fond du Lac!

A JOURNEY GODWARD

CHAPTER I

CHANGES AND CHANCES

MY DEAR FRIENDS:

OU have asked me to leave you some account

You

of my life. One's life is divided into two parts the inner life and the outward life. I have greatly hesitated in giving the facts about the latter, lest it should mislead any respecting the former.

My inner life has been simply one, through many spiritual trials, temptations, and failures, of a stumbling on towards God. It overwhelms me with shame and humiliation when I think of it. It is only by clinging to the infinite mercies of the merciful Lord that I am kept out of despair. It looks to me like a failure; such a ghastly failure that I am afraid to write anything about this outward life. But I will try to do so, as far as practical.

I became seriously interested in the Church through attending the Church of the Advent, Boston, and was present at its first opening in Green Street. I had known Dr. Croswell a little in my childhood, when he was rector of Christ Church, and remember his taking me in his arms and blessing me. An illness of my eyes, which kept me from other work,