3
October 1809 A.D. Robert
Gray—1st Anglican Bishop of Cape Town, South Africa
Robert Gray (1809 to 1872)
Church of England
South African Gray.
Birth of Robert Gray who became a notable
missionary to South Africa and the first Anglican bishop of Cape Town. He
served as Metropolitan of South Africa from 1853 until the year of his death in
1872.
3
October 1809 A.D. Robert
Gray Born—1st Anglican Bishop of Cape Town, South Africa
Day,
E. Hermitage. “Robert Gray: First Bishop of Cape Town.” Project Canterbury. 1930. http://anglicanhistory.org/africa/day_gray.html. Accessed 26 May 2014.
Robert Gray: First Bishop of Cape Town
by E. Hermitage Day
by E. Hermitage Day
London: SPCK, 1930. 32 pp.
ROBERT GRAY
A
FEW days before the Christmas of 1848 a travelling-waggon drew up before the
inn at Stellenbosch, thirty miles from Cape Town. Its body was dented and
roughly patched, its wheels tied up with ropes; the baggage which it contained
was worn into holes. From it there stepped a clergyman in a battered hat and
rent boots. The first Bishop of Cape Town had returned from the first
Visitation of his diocese. It had been a new experience for an Anglican bishop
to swim rivers, to put his shoulders to the waggon-wheel, to pitch tents and
hew wood and groom the horses. About that time an English writer had pointed
the contrast between the Roman Catholic Dr. Griffiths, Vicar Apostolic of the
London district, and the Anglican bishops of that day: "A very pleasing,
venerable, episcopal-looking man, very like any other bishop save that none of
ours would touch a carpet-bag with his little finger." But Robert Gray was
a founder of a new tradition of episcopal life and work. With the old tradition
he was perfectly familiar; he had gone up to Oxford in the year that his father
was consecrated to the See of Bristol. The Bishop of Bristol was a man of
character and courage; he had gone calmly to service in the cathedral while the
rioters of 1831 were in possession of the city, and a few hours later his
palace was burned to the ground. Throughout his life Robert Gray showed an
equal calmness and courage, and he had continual need of it.
His
youth and early manhood were gravely hampered by ill-health. But he was an
unwearying student, and though he could take no honours at Oxford, he learned
much there and from continental travel. He was ordained in 1833, and in the
following year became vicar of Whitworth, co. Durham, spending himself
unreservedly on a difficult and scattered parish, yet finding time for eight
hours a day of reading and writing. The rise of the Oxford Movement, and the
publication of the "Tracts for the Times," confirmed him in the
theological and historical position at which he had arrived independently, and
in the ideals of parochial work which he had set before himself.
In
1845 he was collated by the Bishop of Durham, who had formed a high opinion of
Mr. Gray's work, to the vicarage of Stockton-on-Tees, and to an honorary
canonry in the cathedral church. Eighteen months later he was offered the See
of Cape Town, one of those which the munificence of Miss (afterwards Baroness)
Burdett-Coutts had founded. He had already done good service for the Society for
the Propagation of the Gospel; the missionary spirit was strong within him; and
he replied to the Archbishop of Canterbury that to decline the offer would seem
to him a shrinking from the call of God, and that he readily and cheerfully
placed himself at the disposal of the Church. He was consecrated on St. Peter's
Day, 1847, together with the first Bishops of Melbourne (Perry), Adelaide
(Short), and Newcastle, N.S.W. (Tyrrell). Months of arduous work on behalf of
the new diocese preceded his sailing at the end of the year.
There
had been a suggestion that the new see should be placed at Grahamstown, where
the English population was relatively stronger. In Cape Town the feeble
congregations of the English Church were nominally under the oversight of the Bishop
of Calcutta, and successive prelates had landed on their way to India to
perform a few episcopal acts. The few clergymen of the Colony were colonial
chaplains; none of them lived in Cape Town. The Church of St. George, Cape
Town, had been built under the authority of an Ordinance, by shareholders of
whom some were Jews and others atheists; its foundation-stone had been laid with no more than Masonic
ceremonial; those who rented its pews heard from its pulpit denunciations of
the doctrines of the Church. Churchmen were far outnumbered by the Dutch
Reformed Church, and by contending sects representing several divisions of
English and Scottish Protestantism. The Bishop was undismayed. He began at once
to plan for the future.
Robert
Gray was then but thirty-nine. But on the young shoulders was an old head. The
letters written during the first six months in South Africa show how quickly
and surely he mastered the facts, the conditions, the problems of the work that
lay before him. They would have daunted at the outset any man of less courage
and faith. The diocese stretched for six hundred miles from west to east; it
was necessary to organize the whole work from one corner of the vast area.
There was then, and for fifteen years afterwards, not a mile of railway track
in the Colony; the roads were mere tracks, possible only to horses and slowly
moving ox-waggons. Over the 277,000 square miles of territory were dotted
isolated families and little groups of Church people, whom the Church had
almost wholly neglected. Many of them had clung to the tradition of
Churchmanship in spite of every discouragement; no sooner had the Bishop
arrived than he began to receive piteous appeals for priests, and promises to
build little churches and schools if only they could be served. The Bishop
reckoned that fifty priests would be none too many to meet the most pressing
needs; he had but seventeen, few of them his own choice, some unsatisfactory.
In Kaffraria there were more than five thousand troops without a single
chaplain; in Natal eight hundred settlers with no clergyman within two hundred
miles of them. Beyond the scattered Church people, who were the first care, lay
an almost untouched mission-field. In and about Cape Town was a great number of
Mohammedans, in part the descendants of the Malays whom the Dutch had brought
from their East Indian Colonies, in part liberated African slaves; and even
settlers were found to be lapsing to Islam. Large groups of coloured people,
Eurafricans of mixed race, were found in and about the towns and villages. The
native tribes, as yet unsubdued by arms, and constituting a continual menace to
the more distant parts of the Colony, had only been touched here and there by
Christian missionaries, Moravian, Rhenish, Wesleyan, and French; and of these
some had lost their first zeal and become little more than traders, grown rich
by trafficking with the natives.
So
much of the problem the Bishop had realized before he set out on his first
Visitation. Everything relating to religion, he said, whether in the Church or
out of it, was in confusion and disorder. There were encouragements in face of
all difficulties. The Bishop found the Government well disposed to his work,
and willing to make considerable grants to it. He bought for his residence the old
estate of Protea, of three hundred acres, five miles from the centre of Cape
Town, and his successors in the see have had good reason to admire his
foresight. Protea, soon to be renamed Bishopscourt, had been the farm of van
Riebeek, the first Dutch Governor of the Cape. It lies on a lower slope of
Table Mountain, deep in woodland, watered by a stream, surrounded now by one of
the most beautiful gardens in all South Africa. Here, in the roomy old house,
the Bishop found occasional quiet for himself and room for the many visitors
who came and went on the business of the diocese. Here, in the first months of
his residence, he was already training men for Holy Orders; the old
slave-quarters became a school. Here the first plans were made for missions to
the Mohammedans and the heathen, for educational foundations, for the planting
of clergy at strategic points, for the raising of St. George's Church, now
become the cathedral, from its low estate.
The
first winter was coming to its end when the Bishop set out on his first
Visitation. His Journal records from point to point of the five months' trek
the discovery of little groups of English Churchpeople, of kindly English hosts
in lonely homesteads where services could be held, and Communion given, and
Baptism and Confirmation administered. At Port Elizabeth, after travelling nine
hundred miles, he found the first English church he had seen since leaving Cape
Town. There were little schools to be visited, and sites to be chosen for
churches, for which Mrs. Gray at Protea was making plans and working-drawings,
with a skill which we can admire even today. Everywhere the Bishop found a
welcome from some who rejoiced that at long last they had the oversight of a
Father in God.
Yet
there are sad things also set down in the Journal or recorded in private
letters home. The colonial chaplains were without pastoral or missionary zeal;
"they have no opportunities of seeing one another, and stirring up one
another to their duties, and sink in consequence into dull, apathetic officials."
There were not a few quarrels to be composed; and everywhere the Bishop saw the
grievous consequences of long neglect, in the lapsing of Churchpeople to the
sects or to indifference. Yet, wearied though he was with rough travel and
coarse fare, weighed down with anxiety about the financing of so great a work
as the organization of the diocese promised to be, the Bishop could write with
great cheerfulness, and thank God for the consolations of the journey. If in
one place he found a lady who said that in thirty-eight years she had seen no
minister of her own Church, he found there also a little congregation of
Church-people who had met every Sunday to read the Church service together;
without ministry and without sacraments they had yet maintained the spirit of
common worship.
The
Bishop reached home just before Christmas. He had travelled three thousand
miles, confirmed nine hundred persons, and ordained one or two to the sacred
ministry. He had judged for himself the greatness of the task, and with an
equal courage had planned the doing of it. He trusted the Church at home to see
that he was not left without men and means to meet the expectations and hopes
his visit had everywhere aroused.
That
toilsome journey was but the first of many; visitation succeeded visitation at
short intervals. St. Helena lay then within the Diocese of Cape Town, and he
had to go there, to minister to a small flock, to compose quarrels, to do
something for the thousands of liberated slaves landed on the island. It was something
that on his frequent voyages to England he was able to get time for reading and
thought, for in South Africa his time was continuously occupied with urgent
affairs. The shaping of the diocese was a tremendous task. He wanted men, but
not always the men whom the Colonial Office, or even the Church in England, was
anxious to send out to him. "There can be no greater mistake," he
writes, " than to suppose that inferior men will do for this Colony. The
clergy are, and will continue to be, one hundred to two hundred miles from each
other, and must be such as can be left to act alone, and be fair
representatives of the English Church in the presence of very respectable Dutch
ministers." He found that for want of such men laymen of education and
intelligence were everywhere resorting to the ministrations of the Dutch
Reformed Church and Wesleyans and Independents. Cares of all kinds, temporal
and spiritual, crowded in upon him, for there were few to whom he could
delegate even the simpler parts of his work. He looked back to the quiet
pastoral work of a parish priest in England as the happiest lot on earth.
Almost
every letter of that time speaks of the all but overwhelming weight of anxiety
and work, yet also of the confidence and perfect peace of the mind that is
stayed on God. Troubles within the Church were matched by jealousies and
suspicions without; almost every newspaper attacked the work of the awakening
Church. Echoes of ecclesiastical strife in England reached South Africa, and
encouraged little knots of malcontents. Anglo-Indians on holiday, members of
strange sects, were busy in opposition, leaving trouble when they went back to
India.
But
another Visitation assured him of quiet progress and consolidation in distant
parts of the diocese. Within two years the number of the clergy had increased
from fourteen to forty-two, and some of them were men whom he had himself
taught and ordained. He had found that Churchmen were far more in number than
he had thought at first. More than twenty churches were being built. A
collegiate school, destined to grow to great things, and today the leading
public school in South Africa, was coming to the birth. In one respect the task
might seem to be eased; the Bishop found men whom he could trust as his
lieutenants, one by one. But the happy result of their work was a development
which laid fresh burdens upon the Bishop.
In
1850 the Bishop was in Natal. A year before there had been no English clergyman
to serve the needs of the large and increasing white immigrant population and
of the hundred thousand Zulus lately added to the Colony, though there were
foreign missionaries owning no allegiance to the Government and opposed on
principle to the Church. The return to Cape Colony, over mountains pronounced
to be all but impassable, was full of dangers, and through a land devastated by
the Kaffir wars. The Bishop thought less of the perils than of the problem
which his journey had disclosed, that of nearly a million heathen within the
diocese whom the Church, alone among the twenty religious bodies in South
Africa, had not begun to evangelize. In letter after letter he wrote with
characteristic humility of his desire that "some really able man"
should take his place, while he himself went into Natal to start mission-work
there. He was oppressed with the sense of his own unfitness. Yet the bare
record of fact shows that everywhere the Church within the Colony was in a far
different state from that in which he had found it two years before; its whole
work was being consolidated, organized, inspired with a new energy.
Already,
within three years of its foundation, the diocese called for division. A visit
to England secured the stipends, and on St. Andrew's Day, 1853, John Armstrong
and John William Colenso were consecrated to the new Sees of Grahamstown and
Natal. The former, a man of apostolic faith and courage, was to die after less
than three years of devoted work; the latter was grievously to disappoint
Gray's trust in him.
From
the first the Bishop had planned the canonical organization of the Church in
South Africa. All his action had been taken in a firm belief in the Church as
the Body of Christ, spiritually independent of the State. The troubles of the
Church in England had confirmed his belief and his resolve. He delayed before
summoning a Synod of the diocese, for he had expected that the Imperial
Parliament would pass some Act which would give legal effect and validity to
the acts of such a Synod, but he had no doubt that without any such legislation
its acts would have canonical force. In 1856 the Secretary of State for the
Colonies had intimated to the Governor-General of Canada that the Government
had abandoned the idea of any Imperial legislation which might seem to
interfere with the legislature of Canada, and had expressed his conviction that
the Church ought herself to proceed to make her own rules for the management of
Church affairs, through representative bodies. The suggestion had already been
acted upon in Canada, and the Bishop of Cape Town announced that he would summon
a Synod. Its general principles had received the assent of the clergy and laity
four years earlier The Synod was to determine nothing without the assent of the
three orders; none but communicants could be delegates for the laity, all bona
fide members of the Church having a voice in their election; the standards
of faith and doctrine contained in the Prayer Book and Articles were to be
regarded as outside the range of the Synod's authority.
The
Synod met in January, 1857. The interest, even the external opposition, which
it aroused was proof of the new life stirring in the Church, which ten years
before had been treated as if it had no real existence. There was free and
intelligent debate on many subjects; and the Synod provided for ecclesiastical
courts, the appointment of bishops and of parish priests, and the tenure of
Church property. During a visit to England in the following year the Bishop
gained from the Government the assurance that no difficulty would be raised
about the consecration of missionary bishops for work beyond the British
Dominions. That made possible the consecration in Cape Town Cathedral, on
January 1, 1861, of Charles Frederick Mackenzie for work on the Zambesi, the
beginning of the Universities' Mission to Central Africa.
But
the Bishop was now faced by troubles of a new kind, beside that care of all the
churches which came upon him daily. Five parishes in the diocese had resisted
the holding of the Synod in 1857, refusing to send lay delegates. To a second
Synod in 1861 the vicar of Mowbray again refused to come, or to give notice of
it to his parishioners. He had been a colonial chaplain, in deacon's orders,
before the Bishop came to the Colony, but had been ordained priest by him, and
had taken the oath of canonical obedience. He defended his attitude towards the
Synod by alleging that those who had taken part in the Synod of 1857 had "
seceded from the English Church." The Bishop saw that a principle was at
stake, and that he must act. He held a Court, his five assessors were unanimous
in thinking that contumacy should not go unpunished, and Mr. Long was suspended
for three months, though--by the Bishop's charity--without loss of stipend. Mr.
Long applied to the Supreme Court for an interdict to restrain the Bishop from
disturbing him in his church. The Bishop was his own counsel, defending his
action so clearly and cogently that judgment was given in his favour. But Mr.
Long appealed to the Privy Council, the judgment was upset, and Mr. Long was
reinstated. In several particulars the judgment was contrary to fact; for
example, the Court alleged that the assessors in the Bishop's Court had been
three clergymen chosen by himself and sharing his opinions; they were in fact
five chosen by the Synod, and Mr. Long had been asked whether he objected to
any of them. But time has amply vindicated the Bishop's action. The judgment of
the Privy Council, with many another affecting the Church, has passed into the
limbo of things forgotten; synodical government has now for two generations assured
to the Church in South Africa the freedom by which she lives.
But
troubles far graver were to come. The actions and words of the Bishop of Natal
had from the first been an anxiety; his "fine, generous, bold and noble
character," as Bishop Gray described it, had shown itself wanting in
caution and judgment. By 1861 he had thrown over the Church's doctrine of the
priesthood and the sacraments, denying that Holy Communion con-veyed any gift
which a Christian could not obtain for himself at any time. Recourse was had to
the Church in England. The Provincial Synod of Canterbury condemned Colenso's
work on the Pentateuch as "involving errors of the gravest and most
dangerous character." The English and Irish bishops, with such colonial
bishops as were then in England, were summoned by the Archbishop of Canterbury
to a solemn conference. As a result, Colenso was inhibited from officiating in
most of the English dioceses and forty-one bishops joined in calling upon him
to resign his see, expressing their opinion that proceedings should be taken
against him. It may be reasonably contended that since no proceedings had been
taken, they seemed to prejudge the case. But their action at least showed that
they would approve and support the Metropolitan of the South African Province
in citing the Bishop of Natal before him.
Complicated
questions arose as to the Letters Patent which gave Bishop Gray jurisdiction in
the Colony, a jurisdiction disputed by Colenso. The Bishop of Cape Town fell
back on his claim to spiritual jurisdiction as a Metropolitan, whatever the
fate of the challenged Letters Patent might be. To safeguard his action he
summoned all the members of his Provincial Synod to sit as his assessors in his
Court, Court and Synod thus being made to consist of the same persons. The
Bishop of Natal was charged with impugning the doctrines, amongst others, of
Atonement, Justification, Regeneration, Inspiration of Holy Scripture, the
grace of the Sacraments and the Hypostatic Union, and also with depraving the
Book of Common Prayer. The Court found Colenso guilty of the charges; the
Provincial Synod approved the judgment and sentence of the Metropolitan, and
sentence of deprivation was pronounced. The Synod also decreed that if the
Bishop of Natal should presume to act as a bishop within any part of the
Province of Cape Town after his deprivation and before restoration, he would be
ipso facto excommunicate, and that sentence of excommunication must be solemnly
pronounced against him. The sentence was pronounced in December, 1865. Bishop
Gray had throughout acted with so great a forbearance as even to incur
criticism from his brethren in England. When the first Lambeth Conference met
in 1867 fifty-five of the eighty bishops present declared their acceptance of
the sentence pronounced on Dr. Colenso by the Metropolitan of South Africa and
his suffragans as being spiritually a valid sentence.
The
vacant diocese of Natal was filled by the consecration of W. K. Macrorie, with
the title of Bishop of Pietermaritzburg. Colenso still maintained a tiny
schism, in which he was abetted by the British naval and military authorities,
who forbade the forces in Natal to acknowledge the Bishop of Pietermaritzburg.
He succeeded in getting judgments in the Natal courts confirming him in the possession
of the endowments of the see and of Church property in Natal, hindering for
many years its use by the Church of the Province. But the great majority of
clergy and laity were faithful; the schism dwindled and died. Today time has
healed the old wounds; the great Colenso case which once convulsed Church and
State is now but dull matter for the historian.
The
effect of the two cases of Long and Colenso was to destroy the whole basis of
the Royal supremacy on which the Crown lawyers had at first attempted to build
up the colonial establishment. "Lord Westbury, with that clear precision
of language for which he was famous, indicated the lawyers' line of retreat:
'The Church of England, in places where there is no Church established by law,
is in the same position with any other religious body, in no better but in no
worse position, and the members may adopt rules for enforcing discipline within
their own body.'"
Looking
back, we see that the Church of England and the English Courts were on their
trial during those troublous years, rather than the Church in South Africa. The
judgments in ecclesiastical cases were at that time likely to be judgments of
policy rather than of law, as Chief Baron Kelly admitted. The manifest inequity
of the judgment in the Natal property case, in which the Court assigned to
Colenso the property which Bishop Gray had himself bought and vested in
himself, had shown the Bishop that the less Churchmen had to do with the State
Courts the better chance they might have of justice. Nothing would induce him
again to appear before the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.
The
Bishop's work was done. He had lived to see the Church in South Africa
constituted, built up, secured against State interference. Twenty-five years of
incessant labours and anxiety had taken their toll of his strength. Long and
arduous visitations of the vast territory severely tried him; nor could he
recuperate his strength when at home, for his time was wholly occupied in the
affairs of the diocese. Finance had been always a heavy burden. Protracted
law-suits had brought him infinite sadness; that they issued in the triumphant
vindication of the Church's rights could not wholly compensate him for the
physical and mental strain of those harassing years. There had been frequent
journeys to England, where his time was filled with work, of other kinds but no
less laborious. In 1871 Mrs. Gray died, the constant companion of his travels,
the untiring amanuensis and accountant, the skilful designer of churches, the
brightness and stay of his home life at Bishops-court. He worked on for a year
in loneliness, though with many encouragements from signs of progress in all
that he had so wisely planned. The end came swiftly. A fall from his horse,
little heeded at the moment, brought a sudden collapse. On September i, 1872,
the great Bishop passed to his rest and his reward. The people of Cape Town
knew what manner of man had been among them; to the burial at Claremont there
came five thousand mourners, of every rank and grade, of many creeds.
The
achievement of Bishop Gray has parallels in the work of other pioneer bishops
overseas, but in its extent and its quality it remains unsurpassed. The Church
in South Africa owes its freedom, its unity, its vitality, its extension, mainly
to his wisdom and foresight. Scarcely any plan that he made for it has had to
be abandoned. It has steadily pursued its way along the lines that he traced
for it. The formation of the Diocese of George so recently as 1911 was only the
carrying out of Bishop Gray's intention half a century before; it had been
delayed only by the alienation of the Church property in Natal. The alienation
had necessitated the diversion to Natal of funds destined for the new See of
George; when the Church's property was restored to her by one of the last acts
of the Natal Parliament before the Union of South Africa, the See of George was
founded.
The
Bishop's memorial at Claremont speaks of him as having " with unceasing
energy and in simple faith built up under God the Church of this
Province." It is natural to regard that as the most important part of his
work. He had seen the foundation of the Dioceses of St. Helena, Grahamstown,
Natal, Bloemfontein, and Zululand; he was at the time of his death planning the
formation of a diocese for the Transvaal. He had organized the Province so
wisely that the first provisions of its constitution have been modified only in
small details. Under that constitution the Church has lived a free, wholesome
life. But the diocese was never neglected for the Province. The consolidation
of old centres of work, the foundation of new, the delimitation of parishes,
the provision of churches, schools, men, means, equipment generally, were
normal parts of a work which went on unceasingly. In addition, the Bishop
founded at the Cape institutions which served all South Africa. Among the first
was Zonne-bloem, now within the city of Cape Town, then a country estate on the
slope of Table Mountain, overlooking the Bay. There natives were to be
instructed side by side with whites, not only in letters but in crafts and
industries; and from Zonnebloem a native ministry was expected to issue in
course of time. Zonnebloem has a fine record of varied work; if it has not
fulfilled all expectations it is largely because conditions have changed, and
work which it was founded to do has been transferred to other centres.
Education
was one of the Bishop's first concerns; he was no sooner settled at Protea than
he himself began to teach. The old slave-quarters there saw the beginnings of
the school which has grow into the Diocesan College, colloquially known as
"Bishop's." Before a year was out the Bishop had bought an estate of
fifty acres at Rondebosch, nearer Cape Town, and moved the school there. The
need for itsoon outran the accommodation; from the moment of its inception to
the present day the school has taken a foremost share in the education of South
African boys, and has set a standard for emulation by others. The provision of
schools for girls was in the nature of things a work less easy for the Bishop
to plan. But in the last years of his episcopate St. Cyprian's was founded, to
become no less renowned than " Bishop's." It had long been in his
thoughts, the undertaking had been pressed upon him from several quarters, but
only in 1871 was it found practicable to begin work. St. Cyprian's was to be a
diocesan work. It was fortunate in its first head; it took at once a leading
place. In later years continuity has been assured by placing it under the care
of the All Saints Sisters, and it has done immense service to South African
womanhood. The lessons that have been learned there have borne good fruit in
lonely homesteads on the Karoo, and in the town and country life of the Cape.
It
was natural that the Bishop should hope for the work of religious communities
in South Africa, and ardently desire their aid in his immense task. The Synod
of 1865 asked the Bishop to invite some English sisterhood to establish a
branch house for penitentiary work. Three years later the Bishop founded St.
George's Home, Cape Town, not as a daughter-house of an English foundation,
though Clewer was greatly interested in it, but as an independent house. The
members of the Society were not under vows, but lived together under a light
rule, rather as deaconesses than sisters. Their house near the cathedral became
at once the centre of women's work in the diocese; they undertook many
activities besides that which had been their first aim, including the nursing
in the city hospital. It accomplished valuable work, but its constitution was
too slight to give it the stability of a community, and it yielded place to
branch houses of English sisterhoods as they found it possible to extend their
work to South Africa. There are now many of these in the Province, besides the
indigenous Communities of the Resurrection at Grahamstown and St. John the
Divine in Natal. For their work St. George's Home had prepared the way, by
overcoming prejudices and suspicions, initiating work, and bringing the Church
to realize that the work of religious communities is indispensable in regions
where the Church must for centuries to come be largely missionary.
The
foundation of sisterhoods had in England long preceded the revival of the
religious life for men. But before the Bishop died the Society of St. John the
Evangelist, Cowley, had given promise of stability, under its founder Father
Benson, and the Bishop was in correspondence with Father Benson during the last
year of his life, in the hope that the Fathers might come to South Africa. It
was at that time impossible for the little community to send out a colony. It
was then but five years old, it had already some obligations to America, and
was looking forward to an Indian house. But Father Benson looked forward to a
time when a South African house might also be possible, though he did not think
that it would be for some time to come. That plan also has been accomplished.
Father Benson kept South Africa in mind. Not many years passed before he was
able to fulfil the Bishop's hope. The Society's house in the slums of Cape
Town, with its many dependencies for native work, and the mission station of
St. Cuthbert's in the Transkei, have given invaluable service to the Province,
not only in the mission-work for which the Fathers have been directly
responsible, but in the maintenance of spiritual life among the clergy, the
communities, and layfolk.
To
look for the secret of great achievement is to find it in character. Robert
Gray was one in whom, by the grace of God, those three elements which von Hugel
has insisted to be necessary to ripeness and fullness of Christian living were
held in balance. The intellectual element, the institutional element, the
mystical element were evident and proportionate in him. He would have been the
last man to claim for himself any high degree of scholarship. But he read
constantly and deeply in all subjects which concerned his office and work, and
was wise in judgment. So he was able to bring to bear on that institutional
work by which he is best remembered the fruit of the Church's experience
throughout the ages, the wisdom of her theologians and canonists and moralists.
But the intellectual and the institutional were in him related at every point
to the mystical. Love of God, and of souls to be brought to God through His
Church, was the driving force of all his action.
Perhaps
the most remarkable characteristic was his simple humility. The pagan poet
might reply to his royal patron:
It
is as thou hast heard; in one short life I, Cleon, have effected all those
things Thou wonderingly dost enumerate.
The
Bishop, looking back over a work at which others marvelled, would only think
"so little done, so much remains to do." Again and again his private
letters bear witness to his distrust of himself, his sense of inadequacy to his
post and his opportunities. Some who looked on at the ecclesiastical conflicts
into which he was forced judged hastily that he was an overbearing man, eager
to have his way and impose his ideas, at whatever cost to others. They little
knew at how great a cost to himself he maintained orthodoxy and discipline and
vindicated the Church's right; how he suffered with those on whom he was
compelled to pass judgment. If here and there a concise letter seems to be
wanting in sympathy, it was because he himself had long ago made the sacrifices
which now he asked from others, calling them to duties which he had not
declined. His heart was full of tenderness to all; it showed itself in his
compassion to the sick and oppressed, his kindness to children and animals.
He
longed for more time for study and prayer. He seemed to himself at times to be
leading merely a busy, secularized life. Yet on a long day's journey he records
with thankfulness that he had been able to maintain almost uninterrupted communion
with God. At Bishops-court he would rise at five, to get time for prayer before
the business of the day began. For the work once begun would not cease till
nightfall, if then. The age was one which set a high standard of duty; the
Bishop never fell below the highest. If he scorned delights and lived laborious
days, duty, not fame, was his spur. Exercise was very necessary, to him; he
found it in walking and riding about his diocese. For long hours in every day
that he spent at home he was chained to his desk. Letter-writing was ever a
burden to him; but that could not be guessed from his correspondence, which,
whether it related to public or private affairs, was admirably full and clear.
A bishop today can dictate to a typist much of his routine correspondence;
Bishop Gray lived before such aid, nor perhaps would he have condescended to
it. We may think that he was somewhat too conscientious; we are content to
scribble "S.P.G.," the Bishop always wrote it in full, "the
Venerable Society for the Propagation of the Gospel." History is the
gainer by his toil; we have in his letters and journals a record of the
development of the Church in South Africa, its trials and conflicts, the
conditions in which it worked, the state of the country, which constitutes as
ample material for the historian as exists in any Church of a Dominion.
When
the Bishop died the S.P.G., moved to a warmth of expression unwonted at that
time recorded its estimate of the service which he had given to the Church.
"The seat of the foremost prelate in the British Colonies is left vacant
He has laid down the burden of a work the greatness and completeness of which
can hardly be over-estimated. . . . Robert Gray was con secrated Bishop of Cape
Town in 1847 There was then in South Africa no Church organization fourteen
isolated clergymen ministered to scattered congregations. In the quarterof a
century which has since elapsed a vast ecclesiastical province has been
created. There are now in South Africa six dioceses. At the Provincial Synod of
1870 five of these were announced as integral parts of the Province, being
complete with synodical, parochial, and missionary organizations, administered
by one hundred and twenty-seven clergymen, besides lay teachers The Society
would record solemnly its thankfulness to God for those great talents, the use
of which was so long granted to the Church. His single minded devotion of
himself and his substance to the work of God, his eminent administrative
ability, his zeal which never flagged, his considerate tenderness in dealing
with others, his undaunted courage in grappling with unexpected obstacles in
the defence and confirmation of the Gospel, will live in the records of the
African Church as the qualities of her founder, and will secure for him a place
in history as one of the most distinguished in that band of missionary Bishops
by whose labours in this generation the borders of the Church have been so
widely extended."
No
survey of Bishop Gray's work would be complete which left out of account its
reaction upon the Church in England. There the Church went in subservience to
the State, in dread of the Privy Council. At any moment she might be the sport
and the secret scorn of cynical statesmen, and at times she seemed merely to
echo their opinions; if a Colonial Secretary presumed to decide whether or not
a bishop was necessary to a new mission, an archbishop would be found arguing
that it was un-scriptural for a bishop to head one. Bishop Gray's assertion of
the Church's independence and of her inherent powers encouraged all in England
who were combining to resist the intrusion of the civil power into the
spiritual affairs of the Church. His action made men ask themselves whether the
Church was the Body of Christ, or merely a department of the State, maintained,
as Newman had said, rather as a support to civil society than for the unseen
and spiritual blessings which are its true and proper gifts. South Africa
showed England not only that the Church could exist independently of the State,
but that independence was necessary to her life.
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