“I think I can,” he said, “if you are sure it will not bore you.”
He poured out tea for us both, and then began:
“Most of the tales I have told you are of the imaginative vision, by
which I do not mean that the vision is in any way unreal or untrue,
which is what most people mean by ‘imaginative,’ but only that it
presents itself in the form of a visible picture. It seems chiefly the
function of the imagination to visualise facts, and it is an abuse of
that faculty to employ it chiefly in visualising fancies. But it is
possible for spiritual facts to represent themselves vividly and clearly
to the intellect instead, so that the person to whom the intellectual
vision is given does not, so to speak, ‘see’ anything, but only
‘apprehends’ something to be true. However, this will become more clear
presently.
“Some years ago I took my annual holiday in the form of a solitary
walking tour. I will not tell you where I went, as there are others
concerned in this story who would dislike intensely to be publicly
spoken of in the way that I shall have to speak of them; but it is
enough to say that I came at last to a little town towards sunset. My
object in coming to this place was to visit a convent of enclosed nuns
whose reputation for holiness was very great. I carried with me a letter
of introduction to the Reverend Mother, which I knew would admit me to
the chapel. I left my bag at the inn, and then walked down to the
convent, which stood a little way out of the town.
“The lay sister who opened the door to me asked me to come into the
parlour while she told the Reverend Mother; and after waiting a few
minutes in the prim room with its bees-waxed floor and its religious
engravings and objects, a wonderfully dignified little old lady, with a
quiet wrinkled face, came in with my letter open in her hand. We talked
a few minutes about various things, and I had a glass of cowslip wine in
a thick-lipped wineglass.
“She told me that the convent was a very ancient foundation, that it had
been a country house ever since the Dissolution of the Religious Houses,
until about twenty years ago, when it had been acquired for the
community. There still remained of the old buildings part of the
cloisters, with the south transept of the old church, which was now the
chapel; the whole, with a wall or two, forming the courtyard through
which I had come. Behind the house lay the garden, on to which the
window of the parlour looked; and as I sat I could see a black cross or
two marking the nuns’ graveyard. I made inquiries as to the way the time
of the community was spent.
“‘Our object,’ said the old lady, ‘is perpetual intercession for
sinners. We have the great joy of the Blessed Sacrament amongst us in
the chapel, and, except during the choir offices and Mass, there is
always a nun kneeling before It. We look after one or two ladies
incurably ill, who have come to end their days with us, and we make our
living by embroidery.’
“I asked how it was that she could receive strangers if the order was an
enclosed one.
“‘The lay sisters and myself alone can receive strangers. We find that
necessary.’
“After a little more talk I asked whether I might see the chapel, and
she took me out into the courtyard immediately.
“As we walked across the grass she pointed out to me the cloisters, now
built up into a corridor, and the long ruined wall of the old nave which
formed one side of the quadrangle. A grave-faced and stout collie dog
had joined us at the door, and we three went together slowly towards the
door in the centre of the west wall of the restored transept. The
evening sun lay golden on the wall before us and on the ruined base of
the central tower of the old church, round which jackdaws wheeled and
croaked.”
The old priest broke off and turned to me, with his eyes burning:
“What a marvellous thing the Religious Life is,” he said, “and above all
the Contemplative Life! Here were these nuns as no doubt they and their
younger sisters are still, without one single thing that in the world’s
opinion makes life worth living. There is practically perpetual silence,
there are hours to be spent in the chapel, no luxuries, no amusements,
no power of choice, they are always rather hungry and rather tired, at
the very least. And yet they are not sacrificing present happiness to
future happiness, as the world always supposes, but they are intensely
and radiantly happy ‘now in this present time.’ I don’t know what
further proof any one wants of Who our Lord is than that men and women
find the keenest, and in fact their only joy, in serving Him and
belonging to Him.
“Well, I remember that something of this sort was in my mind as I went
across the courtyard beside this motherly old lady with her happy quiet
face. She had been over fifty years in Religion, my friend had told me.
“At the door she stopped.
“‘I will not come in,’ she said, ‘but you will find me in the parlour
when you come out.’
“And she turned and went back, with the collie walking slowly beside
her, his golden plumed tail raised high against her black habit.
“The door was partly open, but a thick curtain hung beyond. I pushed it
quietly aside and stepped in. It seemed very dark at first, in contrast
to the brilliant sunshine outside; but I presently saw that I was
kneeling before a high iron-barred screen, in which was no door. On the
left, in the further corner of the chapel, glimmered a blue light in a
silver lamp before a statue of our Lady.
“Opposite me rose up the steps before the high altar; but not far away,
because, as you remember, the chapel had once been the transept of a
church, and the east wall, in the centre of which the high altar stood,
was longer than both the south wall where a second altar stood, and the
modern brick wall that closed it on the north. A slender crucifix in
black and white and six thin tapers rose above the altar, and high above
stood the Tabernacle closed by a white silk curtain, before which
flickered a tiny red spark.
“I said a prayer or two, and then I noticed for the first time a dark
outline rising in the centre of the space before the altar. For a moment
I was perplexed, and then I saw that it was the nun whose hour it was
for intercession. Her back was turned to me as she knelt at the
faldstool, and her black veil fell in rigid lines on to her shoulders,
and mingled with her black serge habit below. There she knelt perfectly
motionless, praying. I had not, and have not, a notion as to her age.
She might have been twenty-five or seventy.
“As I knelt there I thought deeply, wondering as to the nun’s age, how
long she had been professed, when she would die, whether she was happy;
and, I am afraid, I thought more of her than of Him Who was so near.
Then a kind of anger seized me, as I compared in my mind the life of a
happy good woman in the world with that of this poor creature. I
pictured the life, as one so often sees it in homes, of a mother with
her children growing up about her, her hands busy with healthy home
work, her life glorified by a good man’s love; as she grows older,
passing from happy stage to happy stage, comforting, helping, sweetening
every soul she meets. Was it not for this that women––and men too, I
thought, rebuking myself––were made? Then think of the sour life of the
cloister––as loveless and desolate as the cold walls themselves! And
even, I thought, even if there is a strange peculiar joy in the
Religious Life––even if there is an absence of sorrows and anxieties
such as spoil the happiness of many lives in the world––yet, after all,
surely the Contemplative Life is useless and barren. The Active Life may
be well enough, if the prayers and the discipline issue in greater
efficiency, if the priest is more fervent when he ministers outside, and
the sister of charity more charitable. Yes, I thought, the active
Religious Life is reasonable enough; but the Contemplative––––! After
all it is essentially selfish, it is a sin against society. Possibly it
was necessary when the wickedness of the world was more fierce, to
protest against it by this retirement; but not now, not now! How can the
lump be leavened if the leaven be withdrawn? How can a soul serve God by
forsaking the world which He made and loves?”...
“And so,” said the priest, turning to me again, “I went on––poor
ignorant fool!––thinking that the woman who knelt in front of me was
less useful than myself, and that my words and actions and sermons and
life did more to advance God’s kingdom than her prayers! And
then––then––at the moment when I reached that climax of folly and pride,
God was good to me and gave me a little light.
“Now, I do not know how to put it––I have never put it into words
before, except to myself––but I became aware, in my intellect alone, of
one or two clear facts. In order to tell you what those facts were I
must use picture language; but remember they are only translations or
paraphrases of what I perceived.
“First I became aware suddenly that there ran a vital connection from
the Tabernacle to the woman. You may think of it as one of those bands
you see in machinery connecting two wheels, so that when either wheel
moves the other moves too. Or you may think of it as an electric wire,
joining the instrument the telegraph operator uses with the pointer at
the other end. At any rate there was this vital band or wire of life.
Now in the Tabernacle I became aware that there was a mighty stirring
and movement. Something within it beat like a vast Heart, and the
vibrations of each pulse seemed to quiver through all the ground. Or you
may picture it as the movement of a clear deep pool when the basin that
contains it is jarred––it seemed like the movement of circular ripples
crossing and recrossing in swift thrills. Or you may think of it as that
faint movement of light and shade that may be seen in the heart of a
white-hot furnace. Or again you may picture it as sound––as the sound of
a high ship-mast with the rigging, in a steady wind; or the sound of
deep woods in a July noon.
The priest’s face was working, and his hands moved nervously.
“How hopeless it is,” he said, “to express all this! Remember that all
these pictures are not in the least what I perceived. They are only
grotesque paraphrases of a spiritual fact that was shown me.
“Now I was aware that there was something of the same activity in the
heart of the woman, but I did not know which was the controlling power.
I did not know whether the initiative sprang from the Tabernacle and
communicated itself to the nun’s will; or whether she, by bending
herself upon the Tabernacle, set in motion a huge dormant power. It
appeared to me possible that the solution lay in the fact that two wills
co-operated, each reacting upon the other. This, in a kind of way,
appears to me now true as regards the whole mystery of free-will and
prayer and grace.
“At any rate the union of these two represented itself to me, as I have
said, as forming a kind of engine that radiated an immense light or
sound or movement. And then I perceived something else too.
“I once fell asleep in one of those fast trains from the north, and did
not awake until we had reached the terminus. The last thing I had seen
before falling asleep had been the quiet darkening woods and fields
through which we were sliding, and it was a shock to awake in the bright
humming terminus and to drive through the crowded streets, under the
electric glare from the lamps and windows. Now I felt something of that
sort now. A moment ago I had fancied myself apart from movement and
activity in this quiet convent; but I seemed somehow to have stepped
into a centre of busy, rushing life. I can scarcely put the sensation
more clearly than that. I was aware that the atmosphere was charged with
energy; great powers seemed to be astir, and I to be close to the
whirling centre of it all.
“Or think of it like this. Have you ever had to wait in a City office?
If you have done that you will know how intense quiet can coexist with
intense activity. There are quiet figures here and there round the room.
Or it may be there is only one such figure––a great financier––and he
sitting there almost motionless. Yet you know that every movement
tingles, as it were, out from that still room all over the world. You
can picture to yourself how people leap to obey or to resist––how lives
rise and fall, and fortunes are made and lost, at the gentle movements
of this lonely quiet man in his office. Well, so it was here. I
perceived that this black figure knelt at the centre of reality and
force, and with the movements of her will and lips controlled spiritual
destinies for eternity. There ran out from this peaceful chapel lines of
spiritual power that lost themselves in the distance, bewildering in
their profusion and terrible in the intensity of their hidden fire.
Souls leaped up and renewed the conflict as this tense will strove for
them. Souls even at that moment leaving the body struggled from death
into spiritual life, and fell panting and saved at the feet of the
Redeemer on the other side of death. Others, acquiescent and swooning in
sin, woke and snarled at the merciful stab of this poor nun’s prayers.”
The priest was trembling now with excitement.
“Yes,” he said; “yes, and I in my stupid arrogance had thought that my
life was more active in God’s world than hers. So a small provincial
shopkeeper, bustling to and fro behind the counter, might think, if only
he were mad enough, that his life was more active and alive than the
life of a director who sits at his table in the City. Yes, that is a
vulgar simile; but the only one that I can think of which in the least
expresses what I knew to be true. There lay my little foolish narrow
life behind me, made up of spiritless prayers and efforts and feeble
dealings with souls; and how complacent I had been with it all, how
self-centred, how out of the real tide of spiritual movement! And
meanwhile, for years probably, this nun had toiled behind these walls in
the silence of grace, with the hum of the world coming faintly to her
ears, and the cries of peoples and nations, and of persons whom the
world accounts important, sounding like the voices of children at play
in the muddy street outside; and indeed that is all that they are,
compared to her––children making mud-pies or playing at shop outside the
financier’s office.”
The priest was silent, and his face became quieter again. Then in a
moment he spoke again.
“Well,” he said, “that is what I believe to have been an intellectual
vision. There was no form or appearance or sound; but I can only express
what was shown to me to be true, under those images. It almost seems to
me as I look back now as if the air in the chapel were full of a
murmurous sound and a luminous mist as the currents of need and grace
went to and fro. But I know really that the silence was deep and the air
dim.”
Then I made a foolish remark.
“If you feel like that about the Contemplative Life, I wonder you did
not try to enter it yourself.”
The priest looked at me for a moment.
“It would be rash, surely, for a little shopkeeper of no particular
ability to compete with Rothschild.”
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Under Which King?
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“All such knowledge as this, whether it comes from God or not, can be
but of little profit to the soul in the way of perfection, if it
trusts to it: yea, rather, if it is not careful to reject it, ... it
will bring upon it great evil; ... for all the dangers and
inconveniences of the supernatural apprehensions, and many more, are
to be found here.”
_The Ascent of Mount Carmel_.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Under Which King?
WITHIN a day or two of our conversation on St. Teresa, I asked the old
priest about what is called “Quietism.” A friend had given me an old
copy of Molinos’ _Spiritual Guide_, and I knew that the writer had been
condemned and imprisoned for life, and yet I could not understand in
what lay his crime.
“It is difficult to put into words,” said the priest, “or even to
understand, why certain sentences are condemned, since it is probably
possible to parallel them from other Catholic mystics whose names are
honoured. Yet the fact remains that the result of Molinos’ teaching was
neglect of the Sacraments and of external means of grace, which was not
so in the case of the schools of other mystics.”
“But I will tell you a story,” he went on, “to illustrate the effect of
certain kinds of mysticism; and I must leave you to judge whether my
friend was right or wrong in what he decided, for I must tell you first
that the incident did not happen to me. On the whole I may say that I
have my own opinion on the subject, but I will not tell you what it is,
as sometimes I am strongly inclined to change it. However, you shall
hear the story. Shall we take a stroll on the terrace?”
And when we had reached it, he began:
“My friend was a priest of about thirty years of age (this happened some
forty years ago). He was working in the country at the time, and had a
great deal of leisure for reading, and this he chiefly occupied in the
study of various mystics, and most of them of the Quietistic school. You
know, too, that one of their characteristic lines of thought lies in the
abandonment of all effort save that of adhering to God, and even that is
to be a passive rather than an active effort. The soul must lie still,
says one of them, and be drawn as if by a rope up the Mount of
Perfection. The slightest movement will check or divert that swift and
steady approach towards God.
“But my friend not only studied writers of this school intellectually,
but he put himself more or less under their spiritual direction. He told
me afterwards that it seemed to him that if he used the Sacraments
faithfully, and if he found that his devotion towards them did not cool,
he would be sufficiently protected against possible extravagances or
heresies in his spiritual reading. His daily meditation, too, he told
me, began to mean more to him than ever in his lifetime: the presence of
God seemed more real and accessible, and, above all, the guidance of God
in his daily life more apparent. The time that really matters, as he
said to me once, is the time between our religious exercises; and in
this time, too, God manifested Himself. In fact, from all that he said
to me, I have very little doubt that his character and spiritual life
were both deepened and purified, at any rate at first, by his devotional
study of these mystics.
“One word more before I begin the actual story.
“I said just now that the guidance of God began to be more apparent in
his daily life. There are two main ways of settling questions that come
up for decision, and both ways are possible to a religious man. One way
is to lay stress on the intellectual side, to weigh the arguments
carefully, and decide, as it were, by reasoning alone: the other is to
lay comparatively little stress on the arguments and the intellectual
side generally, and to make the main effort lie in the aspiration of the
will towards God for guidance. We may call them, roughly, the
intellectual and the intuitive. Now of course my friend’s mystical
studies inclined him more and more towards the latter. He told me, in
fact, that in the most ordinary questions––in his visiting his
people––in his preaching––in his dealings with souls––he began more and
more to refuse intellectual light, and to trust instead to the immediate
interior guidance of the Holy Ghost. More than once, for example, he
laid aside the sermon he had prepared, as he entered the pulpit, and
preached from a text that had seemed to be suggested to him. Of course
it was not so good from the literary point of view; but that, as he very
justly said, is not the most important question in judging of a sermon.
He seemed to find, he told me, that his spiritual power in every way
developed, both in his interior life and in his dealings with others.
“In his conversations, too, he would allow long silences to come, if it
did not seem to him that God moved him to speak; at other times he would
drop conventional modes of speech and say things that, humanly judged,
were calculated to do the very opposite of what he personally desired.
Sometimes in such a case his wish was attained, and sometimes not; but
in both cases he forced himself to regard it as if he had succeeded. In
short, he acted and spoke in obedience to this interior drawing, and
disregarded consequences entirely. And this, I need hardly say, is one
road to interior peace.
“And then at last a startling thing happened.
“There had been some crime committed: I have not an idea what it was.
Two men were involved in the consequences. One, whom we will call A.,
had committed the crime: but he could only be prosecuted if B., whom he
had seriously injured, consented to take action. Now my friend was
deeply interested in A., and he thought he knew that the one chance of
A.’s salvation lay in his being allowed to go unpunished. But Lord B.,
who, by the way, was an Irish peer, of no importance himself, though his
father had been well known, was a hard, vindictive man, and had publicly
announced his intention of ruining A. In this state of affairs my friend
was asked to intercede by A. and his friends.
“Lord B. lived in a large country-house some four or five miles from my
friend’s house. He was an unmarried man, but generally had his house
fairly full of his friends, who did not bear the best possible
reputation.
“My friend arrived at the house by appointment with B., whom he did not
personally know, towards the close of a rainy autumn afternoon. In spite
of his anxiety he had resolved to be guided as usual by the interior
monitor whom he had learnt to trust, and he had hardly thought of a
single argument which he could use. Yet he felt confident that he was
right in coming, and equally confident that he would know what to say
when the time came. As he got near the house this confident sense of
guidance increased to an extent that almost terrified him. It seemed to
him, as he walked under the dripping yellow branches, that a strong,
almost physical, oppression carried him forward. As if in a dream he saw
the manservant appear in answer to his ring, and heard, as from a great
distance, the man tell him that Lord B. had come in a little while
before, and was now expecting him in the smoking-room.
“On entering the house these curious sensations, which he hardly
attempted to describe to me, seemed to diminish a little, and he felt
cool and confident. He told me that the sense of oppression resting on
him was dispelled, as if by a breeze, as he passed along the corridor on
the ground floor on his way to the smoking-room in the west wing of the
house.
“The servant threw open the door and announced him, and my friend went
through, and the door closed behind him: but the moment he had crossed
the threshold he felt that something was wrong.
“There was a circle of men, some in shooting costume, and some as if
they had not been out all day, sitting in easy chairs round the fire,
which was to the right of the door. My friend could see most of their
faces, and Lord B.’s face among them, as he paused at the door; but not
one offered to move, though all looked curiously at him.
“There was silence for a moment, and then Lord B. said suddenly and
loudly:
“‘Well, here’s the parson at last, sermon and all.’
“And then two or three of the men laughed.
“My friend saw of course that Lord B. had arranged the interview in this
way simply in order to insult him, and that he would not be able to
speak to him in private at all, as he had hoped. There was, he told me,
just one great heave of anger in his heart at this offensive behaviour;
but he did his best to crush it down, and still stood without speaking.
He had not, he said, an idea what to say or do, so he stood and waited.
“Lord B. got up in a moment and lit a cigarette with his back to my
friend; and then turned and faced him, leaning against the mantelpiece.
“‘Well,’ he said, ‘we’re all waiting.’
“Still there was silence. One of the men beyond the fire suddenly
laughed.
“‘Now then,’ said Lord B. impatiently, ‘for God’s sake say what you came
to say, and go.’
“As this sentence ended my friend felt a curious sensation run over him,
like those he had experienced in the park, but far stronger. He could
never give me any description of it, except by saying that it seemed as
if a force were laying hold of him in every remote fibre of his bodily
and spiritual being. His own will seemed to give up the control into
some stronger hand, and he felt a sense of being steadied and quieted.
“Then he was aware that his own voice said a single sentence of some
half-dozen words; but though he heard each word, it was instantly
obliterated from his mind. In his description of it all to me
afterwards, he said it was like words that we hear immediately before we
fall asleep in a lecture-room or a railway carriage: each word is
English and intelligible, but the sentence conveys no impression.
“While his voice spoke for perhaps two or three seconds, his eyes were
fixed on Lord B.’s face, and in that momentary interval he saw a
terrible fear and astonishment suddenly stamped upon it. The mouth
opened in loose lines and the cigarette fell out, and B.’s hands rose
instinctively as if to keep my friend off. One of the men, too, at the
further end of the circle suddenly sprang erect, with the same kind of
imploring horror on his face.
“That was all that my friend had time to see; for the same power that
had laid hold of him turned him immediately to the door, and he opened
it and went out and down the corridor. As he went the strange sensation
passed, but he felt the sweat prick to his skin and then pour down his
face. He heard, too, as he reached the end of the corridor, a bell peal
violently somewhere. He passed out into the hall, and even as he opened
the front door a servant dashed past him through the hall and down the
corridor, up which he had just come.
“He went straight home, feeling terribly tired and overwrought, and had
to go to bed on reaching his house, tortured by neuralgia.
“Two hours later a note was brought by a groom from Lord B., written in
a shaking hand, with an abject apology for his reception in the
afternoon; an entreaty to him not to mention the subject again which he
had spoken of in the sitting-room, with a scarcely veiled offer of a
bribe, and an emphatic promise to withdraw all proceedings against A.
“On the following day he was told that Lord B. was supposed to be
unwell, and that the house-party had been hurriedly broken up the night
before.
“From that day to this he has never had an idea of what the sentence was
that his voice spoke that worked such a miracle.”
“That is a most curious story,” I said. “What do you make of it?”
The priest smiled.
“I will tell you what my friend made of it. He gave up his study of
mysticism, yet without in any sense condemning that line of thought of
which I have spoken. His reasons, which he explained to me after coming
to a decision, were that such a visitation might or might not be from
God. If it were not from God, then that proved that he had been meddling
with high things, and had somehow slipped under some other control. If
it were from God, it might be that it was just for that very purpose
that he had been brought so far, but that he dared not pursue that path
without some distinct further sign. ‘In any case,’ he said, ‘no soul can
be lost by following the simple and well-beaten path of ordinary
devotion and prayer.’ And so he returned to intellectual forms of
meditation, such as most Christians use. He died a few years ago, full
of holiness and good works.
“But for you there are several opinions open. Either that it was an
intensely strong case of hypnotic thought-transference from Lord B. to
my friend, and that the latter only spoke mechanically of something that
lay in the former’s mind; or you may decide that the whole affair was of
the Evil One, and that A. would have been all the better for
prosecution, and that an evil being somehow found entrance into the
strained nature of my friend, and used it for his own purposes; or that
the prophetic gift was bestowed on him, but that the ordeal was too
fierce and he too cowardly to claim it. And there are other solutions as
well, no doubt possible.
“For myself I think I have formed my opinion; but I would prefer, as
Herodotus says, to keep it to myself.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------