In that outlying country place, where men had no knowledge of cathedrals, half the offices of the Church had been forgotten.  The vicar brought them back again.  He began early morning services; he had the church open all day for private prayer.  He reminded the folk of Lent and Eastertide, which, except for the traditional pancakes, had almost passed out of their lives.  Festivals, saints’ days, midnight service, and, above all, the Communion, were insisted upon and brought home to them.  As in many other country districts, the Communion had nearly dropped into disuse.  At first he was alone, but by-and-by a group of willing lay helpers grew up around him.  The churchwardens began to work with him; then a few of the larger tenant farmers.  Of the two great landed proprietors, one was for him from the first, the other made no active opposition, but stood aloof.  When, in the autumn, the family of the one that was for him came home, a fresh impetus was given.  The ladies of the mansion came forward to join in the parish and Church work, and then other ladies, less exalted, but fairly well-to-do, who had only been waiting for a leader, crowded after.

For the first time in the memory of man the parish began to be ‘visited.’  Lay sisters accepted the charge of districts; and thus there was not a cottage, nor an old woman, but had the change brought home to her.  Confirmation, which had been almost forgotten, was revived, and it was surprising what a number of girls came forward to be prepared.  The Bishop, who was not at all predisposed to view the ‘movement’ with favour, when he saw the full church, the devotional congregation, and after he had visited the vicarage and seen into what was going on personally, expressed openly a guarded approval, and went away secretly well pleased.  Rightly or wrongly, there was a ‘movement’ in the parish and the outlying hamlets:  and thus it was that the curate, struggling through the mire, carried in his face the expression of hard work.  Work, work, work; the vicar, his three curates and band of lay helpers, worked incessantly.

Besides his strictly parochial duties, the vicar wrote a manual for use in the schools, he attended the Chambers of Agriculture, and supported certain social movements among the farmers; he attended meetings, and, both socially and politically, by force of character, energy, and the gift of speech, became a power in the country side.  Still striving onwards, he wrote in London periodicals, he published a book, he looked from the silence of his gaunt study towards the great world, and sometimes dreamed of what he might have done had he not been buried in the country, and of what he might even yet accomplish.  All who came in contact with him felt the influence of his concentrated purpose:  one and all, after they had worked their hardest, thought they had still not done so much as he would have done.