A PILGRIM BISHOP

Dominion, Volume 11, Issue 37, 7 November 1917, Page 8

A PILGRIM BISHOP

HIS TRAMP WITH A PASTORAL STAFF.

Robed in his purple cassock, carrying a crooked staff, the Bishop of Peterborough is walking from parish to parish of his diocese on a three weeks' pilgrimage among his clergy and people (wrote a special correspondent in the "Daily Mail" recently). This is the first time that a bishop has gone afoot staff in hand on a pilgrimage since the Middle Ages. It wag a medieval spectacle that I saw this afternoon when I met the bishop at the boundary line of two parishes on a lonely country road. The silence of the country'was broken only by the rumbling of distant thunder; the solitude of the country was broken only by the silhouettes of a shepherd and his flook on a near hilltop. Then a procession appeared on the dusty country road. The bishop headed it, a figure tall, virile, and splendid, taller by_ full five inches than the 6ft. staff' which he had had made specially for the pilmmage from a 5l)0-year-old oak out of Peterborough Cathedral, and on it he intends to carve the names of all the parishes visited, ns other pedestrians carve names on their alpenstocks. With the bishop walked, in the blazing sunshine, the rural dean of Framland, the rector of Redmile parish, with "his churchwardens and parishioners. At the parish boundary the procession halted. The bishop made a personal farewell to every parishioner who accompanied him, thanked the rector for his simple hospitality to a pilgrim, and bade him also farewell. And then tho people stood in a. circle round him on the road; the men bared their heads, and the bishop prayed for the parish and its people and gave them his benediction. It was not onlv a medieval spectacle; it was also deeply heart-stirring, the most heart-stirring sight the English country road has seen these many ages. "And now I must bid you good-bye," said the bishop, "and God bless you. I will often think of you, my people in Redmile, one 'of my GOO parishes, and I wish you to think often of me." "We will," they answered fervently. They were loath to part with him. They wanted to walk still farther with him on the dusty road in the blazing sunshine, with a thunderstorm boding, old men and women some, of them; ihis giant bishop of Peterborough, bTimming with human fellowship, was a new portent to them, his visit a red-letter day. ■ But the bishon smiled and said, No, we part here. Look, Barkston is coming to meet mo." From the opposite direction came another procession, the rector of Barkston, in his cassock, with his churchwardens and parishioners, and thus, with the bells welcoming the bishop from the church spire, he walked into the next parish. Here the bishop conducted an afternoon service of intercession. The significance o£ these afternoon servicas of the bishop's pilgrimage is that they are special .war services, with special prayers and special reference to ■parishioners who are fighting or who have fallen. After the service the bishop preached a sermon. One wished that a crowded cathedral congregation .could have heard that manly, homely, splendid eloquent address. The Bishop of Peterborough regards these services of his pilgrimage as friendly, helpful meetings of bishop, pastors, and peoplo in a time of stress and sonw. He has, beyond all doubt, immensely touched the iniagination of the peoplo by his walking pilgrimage.