HISTORY OP BISHOP AUOKLuiND. 167 light and peace of God, and a longing desire to make others possess the happiness he enjoyed^ which we have hardly seen united in the same degree." With respect to his literary labours. Father Bowden says, "Between January, 1853, and December, 1860, that is, in the short space of eight years. Father Faber wrote and published as many closely-printed volumes." During the whole time, the anxiety and responsibility of the foundation and government of the Oratory rested upon his shoulders, and for the latter five years the charge of the noviciate was added to his cares. He was often prostrated by illness, a severe attack infallibly following the completion of one of his booka He took his turns of preaching with the rest of the Community, and his leisure time was further shortened by the numerous calls upon him for assistance and advica The works which Father Faber wrote after joining the Oratory are principally of a devotional character, and that one upon which his reputation as an author mainly rests, " All for Jesus" — a closely-printed volume of 400 pages — was written for the press in a period of about six weeks. The first edition of this book, which was published in July, 1853, was sold out in less than a month, a second and third rapidly followed, and a fourth appeared before Easter of the following year. Three French translations of it were published, the sale of which soon reached 40,000 copies ; whilst in America its circulation was equally great. His biographer says : ** Father Faber wrote rapidly, and his manuscripts scarcely ever needed a correction before they were sent to the printers. The fair sheets of straw-coloured paper, closely covered with neat lines of peculiar character, more resemble a carefully-made copy than original matter, frequently embracing vexed theological questions, which required the most delicate handling." In a letter dated February 2nd, 1858, to a brother Oratorian at that time in Egypt, he writes : " Now look here, it was five years last Sunday fortnight since I began, after the High Mass SS. Nominis Jeau AU for Jesus. Since then, 1. AH for Jesus. 2. Growth in Holinesa 3. Blessed Sacrament. 4. Creator and Creature. 5. Edition of Poems, with three thousand new lines. 6. Sir Lancelot immensely changed. 7. Foot of the Cross. 8. New Hymns, besides the thirty new ones now. 9. Bethlehem. 10. Conferencea 11. Ethel's Book. 12. Innumerable preachings. 13. Three books partially prepared, viz.. Precious Blood, Holy Ghost, and the second volume of Conferences. 14. Confessing and directing. 15. Business as Superior. 16. Correspondenca 1 7. A certain amount of intercourse with God. 1 8. The bearing of pain when I could do nothing else. It is plain that life can't be lived at this rate. But my mind is now like a locomotive that has started with neither driver nor stoker." It seems quite clear from many of his letters about this time that he was sufiering much from over-work, both mentally and bodily, and that his system was fast breaking up. In another letter, dated from St Mary's, Sydenham — the country house of the Oratorians, and where many of his works were written — ^he writes to Father Philip Gordon : " Best love to alL My only comfort is that all you fellows have enjoyed yourselves so mucL To me it seems that if I could lie for an hour on the heather, and look down on a blue loch, and think dreamy thoughts of God, it would be heaven; but I suppose stumbling up Calvary is better for a reprobate like me. It was in my brother's sick room at Magdalen that I wrote the lines, O Time ! O life ! ye were not made For languid dreaming in the shade, Nor sinful hearts to moor all day By lily-isle or grassy bay, Nor drink at noontide's balmy hours Sweet opiates from meadow flowers." During the year 1861, his health became most critical, owing to the complication of diseases from which he suflFered, so much so that his work was seriously interrupted, and his career as an author was never resumed after that tima On the 11th of November of the same year he left London for Arundel Castle, whither he was summoned to visit the Very Rev. Canon Tiemey, then Digitized by Google
