The London Oratory at King William Street

Frederick William Faber was born at Calverley, Yorkshire, on 28 June 1814. After attending Harrow School and University College, Oxford, he was ordained priest in the Church of England in 1839, becoming vicar of Elton, Huntingdonshire, in 1842. In November 1845 he became a Roman Catholic. His hope was to bring the Oratory, an order of secular priests living together without vows and founded in Rome by St Philip Neri (1515–95), to England, but because Bishop (later Cardinal) WisemanFootnote ¹ rejected the idea he founded a religious order, the Brothers of the Will of God (also known as Wilfridians), in Birmingham.Footnote ² The community moved to Cotton, Staffordshire, in October 1846 at the request of John Talbot, the sixteenth earl of Shrewsbury (1791–1852), who lived nearby at Alton Towers. However, in January 1849 Faber and his community returned to Birmingham in order to join the newly formed English Oratory established by John Henry Newman (1801–90). Faber moved to London on 15 April 1849 to become founder and first provost of the London Oratory.

Faber's letters immediately after his arrival in London are concerned with the difficulties of starting a new parish. On 29 April he was able to write to Newman, who was living at the Birmingham Oratory, which had been founded in January 1849: ‘Your sons are at last safely housed, amid dirt and disorder, but very happy and comfortable.’Footnote ³ One month later, on 31 May, the new Oratory was officially opened with high mass at which Bishop Wiseman preached.Footnote ⁴ The building, which had not yet been redecorated from its former use as a ‘gin shop’,Footnote ⁵ was situated on one side of a wedge-shaped group of buildings bordered by King William St and Agar St, both of which led out onto the Strand, and Chandos St.Footnote ⁶ Reference to a map of 1843 reveals its surroundings to have been a mixture of residential, commercial and civic buildings, including the church of St Martin-in-the-Fields and its workhouse, while the Oratorians’ immediate neighbours were Charing Cross Hospital and the Royal Westminster Ophthalmic Hospital.Footnote ⁷ The 1851 census records that individuals and families living in King William St had been born in diverse parts of the country, and formed part of the general migration to cities such as London during the nineteenth century. Their occupations included printer, accountant, military outfitter, lead seller, bookseller, architect, watchmaker, bricklayer, coffee house keeper, musician and carriage painter. Many of the buildings that Faber would have known were demolished and rebuilt from the 1860s onwards.

Faber seems to have had a good relationship with members of his congregation at King William StFootnote ⁸ and the large attendance at services indicates that they responded positively to his preaching and to his community's apostolate in general. Faber's letters reveal that those who attended the Oratory came from all strata of society, including titled or well-off individuals, identifiable because they were those whom Faber asked for money to support the Oratory, as well as English and Irish poor. Many of the latter arrived in London as a result of the potato famine in 1846, and Faber wrote to Lord Arundel: ‘We live among the lowest poor; our whole lives are sacrificed to the Irish.’Footnote ⁹ Faber's letters to Newman are full of bravado, intended to impress the community in Birmingham. Thus, at the beginning of June he wrote: ‘Confessions are increasing, and the numbers at the weekday masses, and we have worshippers before ye tabernacle all day, and quite thick towards evening.’Footnote ¹⁰ In July: ‘The chapel is always crammed. Confessions increase. Our Communions average at present 250 a week, i.e. 13000 per annum.’Footnote ¹¹ In August: ‘I wish we had counted the penitents of the last two days; they must have been several hundreds. I think I absolved 60 at one sitting last night; the communions have been marvellous’.Footnote ¹²

The darker side to this bravado is that Faber wrote of opprobrium from other clergy in London because members of Roman Catholic parishes in the city and converts from the Church of England were attending the Oratory.Footnote ¹³ Faber opined: ‘We are hearing on all sides about ourselves and ye hatred against us. Persons coming to say they can come here no more, because Revd Mr so and so says he won't visit them when dying if they do and such things.’Footnote ¹⁴ Also, ‘I think also a little jealousy has been created by the retreat from the flux of coronetted [sic] carriages, so you must be prepared to hear we do not care for the poor.’Footnote ¹⁵ Faber's letters give the impression that some came to King William St because of its novelty whereas others came because they were being given something spiritual that they were not receiving elsewhere.

Although Faber's community was situated in the middle of a city where poverty, cholera, disease and unsanitary conditions were constantly present, it was also a time of change, the result of legislation that included the Public Health Act (1848). In a sermon published under the title ‘Our Lord's Choice of Poverty’, Faber preached that ‘there is no dignity or poetry about poverty, as about other suffering’,Footnote ¹⁶ and in the similarly titled ‘Poverty the Choice of Jesus’, he identified the ‘discontent of a poor man’ and ‘ill temper’ which arise when such a man compares himself with those who are rich. Here Faber's aim was to contrast the poverty of Jesus, by implication authentic, with the ‘comforts of poor men in general’. He preached: ‘However dark your way may seem, however multiplied your hardships and your woes, you are what Jesus chose to be, and is not that fortune enough to make you richer than all this poor perishing world can give?’Footnote ¹⁷ Faber did not ignore poverty, which he was unable to relieve, but created a scriptural framework through which his poor parishioners could view their predicament.

As well as poverty, parishioners brought sickness into the church, together with dirt, fleas and smells which were reportedly so disgusting that they made other parishioners and community alike nauseous, leading to liberal use of incense during mass. During the paintingFootnote ¹⁸ of the church one month after its opening in June 1849, Faber wrote, ‘The house is dreadful; the paint has driven the fleas out of the chapel and so they have come into the house. Brother Chad [Strickson] catches them by handfuls.’Footnote ¹⁹ Later he complained: ‘The frontals of ye altars it appears are filled with bugs, and ye room in which they were put is swarming with them; and alas! so is ye altar linen.’ Another reason for the fetid atmosphere was bad sanitation. However, although Faber indicates that he had a lavatory in his room, inherited from its days as a gin shop,Footnote ²⁰ he gives no further details as to the presence or efficacy of further hygiene facilities. A month later, Faber wrote of cholera in the Oratory house and wider area, including Charing Cross Hospital next door.Footnote ²¹ Faber, who also had cholera and was ‘very much out of spirits’,Footnote ²² wrote to Newman: ‘We are all giddy, sick and tired, in great measure from ye heat and effluvia of ye chapel’.Footnote ²³ This continued into August, during which time Faber wrote that he had ‘chronic inflammation of the bowels’,Footnote ²⁴ probably as a result of having had cholera. Part of the problem was the building itself:

The unhealthy atmosphere had the effect of turning actual and potential worshippers away. The more nasally discerning, particularly those from the higher classes, stopped coming because the stench of unwashed bodies and dirty clothes repulsed and alienated them. Faber wrote to Newman: ‘at present there are, what F[ather] Bernard [Dalgairns] happily names, immovable belts of stink in ye chapel, no wonder people faint or go off in epileptic fits’.Footnote ²⁶ The following day, Faber reported that ‘Mr Wickwar of Oxford Street has called today to apologise for leaving our chapel. He says he came last Sunday … but could not breathe and became giddy, and in company with 2 other gentlemen who felt ill at the chest through the effluvia he left the chapel.’Footnote ²⁷ Faber opined: ‘I maintain that people of a certain class in England are made physically ill by contact with stench and filth.’Footnote ²⁸ This was problematic because the presence of the poor depleted the income of the embryonic Oratory, which would have been boosted by richer parishioners. Faber wrote to Newman: ‘I regret this, because I am sure a great part of our mission ought to be to ye higher classes; and yet ye poor turn them out even from ye afternoon lectures which are specially directed to the educated’.Footnote ²⁹ He also reported Fr Dalgairns's comment that ‘ye English love of cleanliness is only part of our pride and national exclusiveness’.Footnote ³⁰

The formal opening of the Oratory church took place on 30 October 1849. Its interior, completed just in time for the inaugural mass, is illustrated in a painting reproduced in Chapman's monograph Father Faber, which illustrates the community at vespers and benediction in the church in front of a prosperous-looking congregation. Large gilt-framed paintings of Mary and St Philip Neri hang above maroon curtains, one on the left and one to the right of the altar, while a side chapel houses a life-sized crucifix, paintings and statues.Footnote ³¹ In his sermon at the opening, Wiseman praised Faber's community and preached that ‘from hence you go forth as apostles of love each of you into the dismal city’; the following day Faber wrote to Newman: ‘Our function last night went off most gloriously … the bishop was extremely eloquent, and gave us his imprimatur in the most unqualified terms.’Footnote ³²

Faber's Health while at King William St

Faber suffered from ill-health throughout his life due to Bright's disease, and also took Blue Pills, which caused mercury poisoning.Footnote ³³ His condition deteriorated markedly from 1849 onwards, affecting his ability to function as provost, although he remained in charge. The bravado of his letters to Newman is accompanied by a sense of overpowering suffering. Newman's letters were sympathetic and encouraging towards the new venture, and he wrote: ‘We are very much distressed about your illness, and won't forget you.’Footnote ³⁴ Illness made Faber an outsider because he was unable to participate fully in the life of his community, and his letters illustrate that he was very much on his own, receiving little compassion from members of his community, who were frequently too busy or too ill themselves.Footnote ³⁵ In October 1849, Faber had influenza.Footnote ³⁶ In the same month he was depressed by Newman's unsympathetic comments,Footnote ³⁷ attributable either to insensitivity (perhaps a foretaste of their future difficult relationship) or to the fact that Newman was simply too far away in Birmingham to understand Faber's predicament fully. Ill-health continued throughout the year and in November he wrote: ‘Today I have such a rheumatism in my face and one side of my head that I am quite floored simply by having to endure ye pain, which is a cut above my usual power of pain bearing.’Footnote ³⁸ In December he described being ‘so ill that I can hardly grapple with your letter. I get worse daily.’Footnote ³⁹ Letters to Newman are filled with comments such as: ‘Here is ye 5 days illness out of eight’, and ‘3 hours per diem of Irish confessions’ to deal with whilst feeling desperately unwell.Footnote ⁴⁰ In December he wrote: ‘I am so wretchedly ill with constant vomiting on Saturday and rheumatism in ye hand I can barely write.’Footnote ⁴¹ On Christmas Eve he was ill in bed and depressed, complaining: ‘The rheumatism seized ye side of my head and face, eye to ear, where ye Friday's headache had been. I was nearly delirious … with ye pain.’Footnote ⁴² In January 1850 Faber had cholera.Footnote ⁴³ He was briefly better later in the month, but his doctor warned that a stroke was likely, due to hemiplegia, a form of temporary paralysis. Faber wrote: ‘I lock my door when I feel it coming on; but it is merely transient. I was told a slight portion of my brain has softened as it is only on the right side.’Footnote ⁴⁴ Faber was ill later in January and in AprilFootnote ⁴⁵ and explained to Newman: ‘I have been so ill for 4 or 5 days that I can hardly keep my temper in ye confessional, and I have no appetite and sleep badly.’Footnote ⁴⁶ As he recounted: ‘It is painful to say mass and I have little or no sleep at nights from it. Ye right wrist is failing; I feel ye act of writing, if I keep much to it. I am afraid I am very much out of spirits about myself; I am so weak, and have such odd sensations inside.’Footnote ⁴⁷ In October, Faber observed: ‘I can't apply my head in ye very least, and feel as if I was slightly drunk.’Footnote ⁴⁸ He was often either confined to his room or carrying out his ministry with great difficulty, reporting: ‘I can hardly ever say mass, people are near and they see my face, and I get flurried and break ye rubrics … I have left out glorias even and credos … and I am never very well when I haven't said mass.’Footnote ⁴⁹ It is perhaps unsurprising that he told Newman: ‘I find invalidism anything but sanctifying to me. It seems to me suffering doesn't make saints, but polishes them up when once made.’Footnote ⁵⁰

Faber was aware of the effect that illness had on his spiritual discipline and frequently mentions the burden that it placed on his prayer life. It is, however, significant that in writing of himself he often dismissed suffering in a flippant manner. In this way, Faber's writing about his own ill-health is frequently, but not always, impersonal, as though he believed that the experience was being used by God as a moral chastisement or as something with which to challenge him. Thus Faber dismissed his suffering as punishment for over-reliance on himself and too little reliance on God.Footnote ⁵¹ Furthermore, Faber often seems to have regarded any form of sickness as being part of a spiritual discipline in which he, and humanity in general, must become proficient. The problem, he wrote, was that ‘[o]ne gets effeminized so quickly, especially when valetudinarianism keeps up a running fight with penance.’Footnote ⁵²

Whether consciously or unconsciously, concerns about his own health and the reality of taking medications such as Blue Pills, mercury, laudanum, opium, alcohol and iron, which together were slowly poisoning him, leaches into everything that Faber wrote, recurring constantly in books, letters, lectures and sermons. He was the target of experimentation from his doctors and endured constant changes in treatment. For instance, he told Newman: ‘Last week [my doctor] took a different view of my case, and would have it was deficiency of acid, not excess of it, and gave me hydrochloric acid, which made me ill; so he gives me iron which makes me drunk and clogs my head up with silliness.’Footnote ⁵³ Iodine gave Faber headaches,Footnote ⁵⁴ and chloroform made him so unwell that he was unable to do anything.Footnote ⁵⁵ He complained: ‘My health gets worse and worse, tho’ I look so well.’Footnote ⁵⁶ In his biography, John Bowden writes that Faber was recommended to apply a relic of the Carmelite mystic St Mary Magdalene of Pazzi (1566–1607) to his head. He reported that doing so cured his headache on two occasions, but that he never tried it again because the experience frightened him.Footnote ⁵⁷

It seems probable that the experience of illness and isolation changed Faber's idea of God, and that it became more profound because he had time in which to be susceptible to religious experience. Illness, the claustrophobic experience of being shut in, the climate of sickness around the Oratory and medication, coupled with his intensely religious nature, clearly affected Faber's spirituality, making it more contemplative,Footnote ⁵⁸ as well as shaping the way in which that experience was passed on to other people. Writing this article during the COVID-19 pandemic has provided insight into Faber's isolation and the fragile, sickness-filled environment in which he lived. In contrast to the angst surrounding the COVID pandemic, religious experience provided spiritual freedom from illness for Faber and a sense of companionship in his suffering, although this does not mean that he was not aware of the problematic nature of suffering. In addition, medication, particularly opiates, may have caused an altered mental state or visions, and there are trance-like passages in some of Faber's writings. We cannot, however, say conclusively whether or how his imagination was affected.

Illness as Metaphor and Reality in Books, Sermons and Public Lectures

Words such as illness, sickness and suffering are used by Faber in two ways, either as metaphor or for their own sake as literal description, but however used they have both physical and spiritual connotations. Faber's spirituality is intensely imaginative and poetical and influenced by his practice of Ignatian spirituality.Footnote ⁵⁹ He frequently uses words such as fragility, melancholy, illness, infection, pain, darkness, loss, ungodliness, absorption, sickness, dirt, devil and damnation, silence and lost to make his point in connection with illness.

The most common use of these terms is for the spiritual life of the individual and for states within the spiritual life, and Faber uses them equally when discussing his own problems in letters and when preaching to his congregation. In this context, illness is frequently used as an excuse for lack of religious discipline, and Faber uses words relating to illness in criticism of individuals. For example, it is always their fault that they are spiritually unwell, because they do not care or are lazy. The spiritually ill individual is not doing something in their spiritual life, or doing something wrong, or doing it with the wrong attitude, particularly refusing to take their relationship with God seriously. Faber's attitude is contradictory, because he expects everything from the individual spiritually whilst telling them that they will achieve nothing. He is frequently cynical about the individual's ability to progress spiritually and he seems to weigh them down with problems, perhaps because he did not have the ability to encourage them to a higher level of holiness.Footnote ⁶⁰ The individual in a state of spiritual illness was one who was constantly making excuses, either consciously or unconsciously. There is an element of moral blindness and ineptitude present in this idea which, for Faber, is the state of the majority of people, even those who claim to be religious and who attend church regularly. Excuses in the spiritual life are, for Faber, a malady that impinges upon an individual's relationship not only with their contemporaries but also with the church, God, angels, saints and Mary. This is particularly serious for Faber, because they are not only avoiding the advantages of the everyday practice of Christianity but also missing out on a profound relationship with God, the only relationship worth cultivating because it is eternal. Faber also uses illness in a wider context, to describe the relationship of Great Britain as a whole towards God, and he is concerned with the spiritual health of the British Empire. It is significant that he consistently contrasts the British Empire unfavourably with Catholic countries, arguing (albeit with questionable logic) that the latter were always superior because they had remained loyal to Roman Catholicism, even if they were poor and inefficient compared to the British Empire.Footnote ⁶¹

The character of Faber's discussion of illness in books and sermons is fairly consistent. He creates a straightforward image that is uncomplicated and easily understandable to his listeners or readers, especially those living in a setting where illness, accidents and early deaths were everyday occurrences. Thus, although popularly viewed as a rather colourful character given to excessive poetical flights of fancy, Faber's view of the world and of humanity in general was in reality often profoundly pessimistic.Footnote ⁶² This shows itself in his sermons and books, in which again he was often cynical about the individual's ability to be spiritual, a streak of pessimism that frequently becomes sarcasm. In his Spiritual Conferences,Footnote ⁶³ written in 1850, Faber contrasted the excuses of humanity with the truth of God with reference to suffering. Thus, in a chapter entitled ‘Self Deceit’, Faber explored the notion of suffering in conjunction with the capacity of the individual for deluding themselves. This functions as an example of Faber's penchant for realism and his lack of sentimentality when discussing illness or suffering, and it is noticeable that he does not try to dress up the discussion of illness in an idealistic or Romantic guise. Rather, he suggests that there is no true suffering in the world, and he mocks individuals for their covert or overt self-centredness while undergoing what they describe as suffering.Footnote ⁶⁴ Faber's particular sarcasm is reserved for those whose suffering is accompanied either by the expectation that God will or must do something to alleviate their suffering or by a sense of peevishness towards God for not doing so. This is because Faber viewed this as evidence of a wrong relationship between the individual and God.Footnote ⁶⁵ Furthermore, Faber was of the opinion that people tend to ‘exaggerate the misery of the world’ and that what individuals describe as suffering is inconsequential, nothing more than a flea-bite. In the spiritual life, Faber is concerned that suffering functions as a series of excuses for moral and spiritual laziness and disregarding the sovereignty of God.

Occasionally it is difficult to tell whether Faber really meant what he said, or whether it was either a throwaway comment or medication-induced hyperbole. However, whatever its source, cynicism regarding suffering is one of the most important ideas in Faber's books and sermons. Thus he writes of an archetypal individual: ‘They have had a modicum of pain, an allowance of annoyances, a sprinkling of dissatisfactions and disappointments. But this does not amount to suffering.’Footnote ⁶⁶ We can hypothesize that rather than intending to patronize or discourage individuals, Faber wishes to make their suffering authentic, part of a genuine and deep spirituality which is sensitive to a higher ideal.Footnote ⁶⁷ This is because he believed that suffering should not cause individuals to move away from God but should draw them into a deeper appreciation of Jesus's redemptive suffering, although he acknowledges that such an attitude is rare. For Faber, authenticity is fundamental to the individual's spiritual life; in particular, as he writes, ‘[o]ut of God all is unreal. Away from God all is untrue.’Footnote ⁶⁸ It is not only that true suffering is rare, but also that a spirit of disinterested willingness to suffer is rarer: ‘in these smooth times a great proportion of men go to their graves, without having had what could rightly be called suffering’.Footnote ⁶⁹

Faber's discussion of suffering changes its meaning subtly depending on its context. It is as though his primary aim was to produce an active, practical response in his listeners, because the majority would not have been familiar with the theological niceties of his argument. In a letter to the duchess of Argyll, written in 1857, Faber highlighted the idea of suffering experienced by an individual within the Roman Catholic Church, writing ‘How different suffering is in the Church and out of it! It seems to have so much more meaning, and to do its work so much more straightforwardly when one is in the true Fold.’Footnote ⁷⁰ Here he seems to offer a nuanced view of suffering as a work, a springboard for action or amendment of life for the individual who suffers.

For Faber, everything about life, humanity and the world is dangerously orientated away from God, and humanity is always unwilling to change. In preaching, he frequently uses the idea that sickness is a common state in life. In this context he associates sickness with the idea that life is sad and deeply melancholy when it is without faith, and when the individual is alienated from God due to lack of faith or not knowing about Christianity. In a sermon preached on the Feast of the Epiphany, 6 January 1861, Faber uses this notion in the context of the Incarnation, as the historical event which gives life its only meaning. Faber asked: ‘What is life without God, without Jesus? How it passes away in joy; How it lingers in sorrow.’Footnote ⁷¹

Faber commonly used the word ‘infection’ to mean something contrary to faith, which is to be shunned by the individual Christian, and writes of danger even from those who he describes as reformed heretics, by which he means converts who bring in ideas from outside the church.Footnote ⁷² He discusses the restrictions of existing on earth and in time, as contrary to heaven, eternity and God. These are interlinked for Faber, inasmuch as what individuals do while on earth affects the quality of, or their alienation from, their eternal vision of God. Thus heresy is described as a source of infection because it spreads ideas which are contrary to Roman Catholic doctrine. In a lecture entitled ‘The Church at War with Heresy’ (1851), Faber writes of Mary: ‘Devotion to her preserves men from infection.’ Later in the same lecture he writes of the ‘evils of living among heretics’ but also claims that ‘by fervour [Mary] destroys heresy by limiting its infection’.Footnote ⁷³ Faber's use of language is that of infection and contamination versus purity. It perhaps is significant that there was cholera in the area around the Oratory at the time that this lecture was given.

Health is mentioned by Faber in contrast to sickness. For example, a sermon for New Year's Eve 1849 refers to ‘pleasure in living, especially if we have health’.Footnote ⁷⁴ However, the idea of physical health is more often used by Faber in a negative than a positive sense and is frequently viewed as something which ensures that the individual becomes too comfortable and satisfied with things such as gossip or fashion, and therefore complacent and further away from God. Faber writes of the relationship between bodily health and spiritual health in Spiritual Conferences (1850). In the chapter ‘Weariness in Welldoing’, Faber expresses concern that individuals are obsessed with material things and creating a climate of ease and well-being to the detriment of their spiritual life, asserting: ‘We are all of us too much inclined to make concessions to our bodies.’ This idea is significant for Faber. It recurs throughout his mature thought in a variety of guises related to the irrevocability of time that has been wasted or frittered away, because time spent away from religion is wasted. For that reason, for Faber, ‘[r]eliance on comforts is quite incompatible with true liberty of spirit.’Footnote ⁷⁵ In Growth in Holiness (1854), he observes those for whom sensuality is a ruling passion, describing ‘persons of soft … nature, sensitive and sentimental, loving bodily comforts’.Footnote ⁷⁶ Faber highlights the relationship between physical health and spiritual well-being using the notion that both health and ill-health can be, and often are, used as an excuse for lack of action, almsgiving or prayer.Footnote ⁷⁷ Here he seems to be criticizing a form of sickness within health, one that is merely fashionable or part of a trend (or both), the enjoyment of poor health rather than authentic sickness or suffering. Faber is concerned that ‘[t]he worship of health is one of the most efficient and extensive causes of lukewarmness and indevotion’ in the spiritual life.Footnote ⁷⁸ ‘We must not forget that many of the phenomena of the spiritual life spring from physical causes.’Footnote ⁷⁹ He is concerned to point out that many individuals attribute positive feelings to God and temptations to ‘Satan, what is really a matter of nerves or of digestion’. In contrast, Faber attributes a moral dimension to feelings of good, as opposed to bad, health: ‘The reaction after hard work, different seasons of the year, individual constitution, very slight atmospherical disturbances, all of them tend to bring forth many moral results, without the intervention of actual pain or positive malady.’Footnote ⁸⁰

In Faber's mind, illness can be harnessed to concentrate the collective mind on what is important by bringing people back to attendance at church and the practice of religion. This was demonstrated for Faber by a cholera epidemic in September 1854, the horror of which he described in a letter to George Talbot:

However, the horror had its positive side: ‘The cholera is preaching a capital mission. Our confessionals are crowded, and with gentry of 10, 20, 30 years without sacraments.’Footnote ⁸² Faber does not mention prayers for those who were unwell, but that does not mean that he did not use them. Likewise, he does not question whether or not God was with people or helped them in times when disease or epidemics were present. Thus although he refers to suffering as an ‘empire, which original sin has created’,Footnote ⁸³ he does not seem to have viewed illness or epidemics as forms of divine punishment.

Faber's book The Precious Blood was written during 1860 for the Confraternity of the Precious Blood, which had been established at the Oratory ten years earlier. In it, he dwells on the prevalence of physical pain in the life of the individual. It seems that his knowledge stems not only from meditation and study of Scripture and theology, but also from practical reflection on his own experience of sickness. In a chapter entitled ‘The Necessity of the Precious Blood’, which is a meditation on philanthropy, he reflects: ‘Every one whose lot it is to lead a life of pain knows too well how little medical science avails to alleviate this particular kind of human suffering’,Footnote ⁸⁴ and comments: ‘how feeble and how limited is the jurisdiction of medical science’.Footnote ⁸⁵ Faber points out ‘the limits of scientific and medical discovery’ and asks: ‘how often have the remedies themselves brought new pains along with them?’Footnote ⁸⁶ In addition, ‘[a]n immense amount of the world's misery consists of bodily pain’, yet ‘[t]here are few things more hard to bear. It is one of our unrealities that we write and speak lightly of it. We think it grand to do so. We think to show our manliness.’Footnote ⁸⁷

In a meditation entitled ‘The Solitariness’, preached in 1859, Faber discussed the solitary, inward nature of suffering as experienced by humanity and by Jesus in his passion and writes as an aside: ‘Sickness is a drawing of us into still farther solitude – yet kind ministries are around.’Footnote ⁸⁸ In The Precious Blood, Faber interprets pain and suffering as important aspects of the relationship of the individual Christian with Jesus. Faber uses the consideration that Jesus is the only one who truly understands because he has suffered and shares not only Faber's suffering, but also the suffering of those who will read the book. He writes: ‘What is the meaning of pain, except the purification of our soul.’Footnote ⁸⁹

In a sermon whose subject is mental suffering in purgatory, Faber states that ‘Pain is a desperately difficult thing to bear’, and asks ‘is bodily or mental pain worst?’Footnote ⁹¹ In The Precious Blood Faber is also concerned with mental suffering. This is something which occupies less of his thought than physical suffering, and he seems to show less sympathy towards it. He writes: ‘The excesses of mental anguish, while they visit chiefly the rarer and more sensitive minds, are always of brief duration.’Footnote ⁹² Faber's meditation leads him to the conclusion that ‘[i]t is the characteristic of mental suffering to be for the most part beyond the reach of philanthropy’,Footnote ⁹³ opining: ‘Who has not often wondered at the most invariable irritation produced in unhappy persons by … formal soothing?’Footnote ⁹⁴ In discussing the relationship between the mind and the body and the relationship between the purely mental and the spiritual within life, if indeed such a distinction can be made, in his book Bethlehem (1860), Faber was concerned to inculcate a spirit of spiritual cheerfulness, a positivity which contrasts with melancholy or sadness. He writes: ‘Sadness is a sort of spiritual disability. A melancholy man can never be more than a convalescent in the house of God’,Footnote ⁹⁵ and he contrasts sadness with joy: ‘Joy is the freshness of our spirits. Joy is the life-long morning of our souls, an habitual sunrise out of which worship and heroic virtue come.’ This notion is also part of Faber's view of the relationship between the individual Christian and God, in which the onus is on the individual not to ask questions or expect answers from God. He writes of the melancholy individual's mind: ‘He may think much of God, but he worships very little. God has rather to wait upon him as infirmarian, than he to wait on God as his Father and his King. There is no moral imbecility so great as that of querulousness and sentimentality.’Footnote ⁹⁶ Here Faber once again mentions physical health as a contrast to sickness. He is very plain and forthright, presenting health in a straightforward way: ‘We must rejoice, because he loves to see us rejoice. Melancholy in a creature is a kind of inglorious reflection on the creator.’Footnote ⁹⁷

For Faber, the idea of spiritual illness or sickness has a moral dimension that is linked to the notion that religion is also a public duty. This is indicated in Bethlehem, in which Faber describes saints ‘whose way of worshipping His glory is to tell the wonders which He has let them see’. Thus the Christian must ensure that other people are also saved and understand the purpose of Christianity in daily life, rather than treating religion as purely a personal matter. For Faber, ‘[h]e who lies down at full length on life, as if it were a sick-bed, – poor languishing soul! What will he ever do for God?’Footnote ⁹⁸ This activism is an important part of Faber's thought, which may be attributable to the Evangelicalism of his early life. It is also associated with the sense of sarcasm and chivvying that is present throughout his mature works, but to a greater degree in his later writing. Writing of the worship of God, he opines: ‘Is religion a private luxury – a simple sofa of sweet soft thoughts for conscience to lie down upon and take its ease?’Footnote ⁹⁹ This notion also occurs in his preaching; thus in a sermon entitled ‘God so little Loved’, Faber wrote: ‘Is your piety to go to sleep while the world is perishing?’ This alludes to the gospel, probably that set for that Sunday, in which Jesus, asleep in a boat in a storm with his disciples, is woken by them asking: ‘Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?’Footnote ¹⁰⁰ Faber is concerned to suggest that it is the responsibility of individual Christians to do the work of Jesus and save those around them. ‘[D]ead and dying souls’ are a spiritual rather than a physical reality, but also a spur to action. Faber asks: ‘Driven by a holy despair at the awful sense of dead and dying souls around you, what sacrifices are you making for Him who sacrificed himself on the cross for you?’Footnote ¹⁰¹

In Faber's thought, individuals, although in need of healing, become the instrument of their own destruction or sickness, a spiritual sickness, perversity or error which leads away from God. In this context the metaphorical concepts of health and sickness are linked to Faber's preoccupation with the four last things: death, judgment, heaven and hell. It is as though he believed that lack of love for God saps vital moral and physical strength from humanity: he suggests that ‘all the miseries of this life’ come about ‘because of God not being loved’Footnote ¹⁰² and expresses the concern that ‘Hell [is] … filling hourly.’Footnote ¹⁰³ In sermons and books Faber is always concerned with sin, the nearness of hell and the ever-present possibility of separation from God and personal damnation. For this reason, he views the personal wants of the individual as secondary to the necessity of doing everything possible to ensure salvation. Furthermore, because he views the encounter with God as the only significant encounter, he assumes that individuals will want to consider their salvation as their highest priority. In this context, time is against the individual because the time and day of death are always unknown, particularly during times of sickness or epidemic. In a sermon entitled ‘The Legacies of Jesus’, Faber wrote: ‘If life be bright and smiling, Jesus is the brightness and the smile.’Footnote ¹⁰⁴ For Faber, God is the only cure for spiritual sickness; however, individuals are passive and disinterested and allow themselves to be destroyed by the world, many only waking up later in hell after their death, where all is irrevocable. Faber contrasts time and eternity, presenting the latter as a luminous ever-present reality. In the sermon on ‘Eternity’, he writes: ‘Picture a life, all classes living, scheming, building, planning, as if all was to go on the same without end. An Angel comes down … proclaims, no more time! We fall into the arms of eternity.’Footnote ¹⁰⁵