Next Sunday Father Daly took for his text, "And all nations shall
turn and fear the Lord truly, and shall bury their idols" (Toby xiv.
6).
"Yes, indeed, we should bury our idols." And then Father Daly asked
if our idols were always external things, made of brass and gold, or
if they were not very often cherished in our hearts--the desires of
the flesh to which we give gracious forms, and which we supply with
specious words; "we think," he said, "to deceive ourselves with those
fair images born of our desires; and we give them names, and
attribute to them the perfections of angels, believing that our
visitations are angels, but are we sure they are not devils?"
The Prioress raised her eyes, and looked at him long and steadily,
asking herself what he was going to say next.
He went on to tell how one of the chief difficulties of monastic life
was to distinguish between the good and the evil visitant, between
the angel and the demon; for permission was often given to the demon
to disguise himself as an angel, in order that the nun and the monk
might be approved. Returning then to the text, he told the story of
Tobit and Tobias's son, and how Tobias had to have resort to burning
perfumes in order to save himself from death from the evil spirit,
who, when he smelt the perfume, fled into Egypt and was bound by an
angel. "We, too, must strive to bind the evil spirit, and we can do
so with prayer. We must have recourse to prayer in order to put the
evil spirit to flight. Prayer is a perfume, and it ascends sweeter
than the scent of roses and lilies, greeting God's nostrils, which
are in heaven."
The Prioress thought this expression somewhat crude, and she again
looked at the preacher long and steadfastly, asking herself if the
text and Father Daly's interpretation of it were merely coincidences,
or if he were speaking from knowledge of the condition of convents...
Cecilia, had she told him everything? The Prioress frowned. Sister
Winifred was careful not to raise her eyes to the preacher, for she
was regretting his words, foreseeing the difficulties they would lead
her into, knowing well that the Prioress would resent this
interference with her authority, and she would have given much to
stop Father Daly; but that, of course, was impossible now, and she
heard him say that the angel who bound the evil spirit in Egypt four
thousand years ago is to-day the symbol of the priest in the
confessional, and it was only by availing themselves of that
Sacrament, not in any invidious sense, but in the fullest possible
sense, confiding their entire souls to the care of their spiritual
adviser, that they could escape from the evil spirits which
penetrated into monasteries to-day no less than before, as they had
always done, from the earliest times; for the more pious men and
women are, the more they retire from the world, the more delicate are
the temptations which the devil invents. Convents dedicate to the
Adoration of the Sacrament, to meditation on the Cross, convents in
which active work is eschewed are especially sought by the evil
spirits, "the larvæ of monasticism," he called them. An abundance of
leisure is favourable to the hatching of these; and he drew a picture
of how the grub first appears, and then the winged moth, sometimes
brown and repellant, sometimes dressed in attractive colours like the
butterfly. The soul follows as a child follows the butterfly, from
flower to flower through the sunshine, led on out of the sunshine
into dark alleys, at the end of which are dangerous places, from
whence the soul may never return again.
"Nuns and monks of the Middle Ages, those who knew monasticism better
than it ever could be known in these modern days, dreaded these larvæ
more than anything else, and they had methods of destroying them and
repelling the beguilements of evil spirits better than we have, for
the contemplative orders were more kindred to those earlier times
than to-day. Monasticism of today takes another turn. Love of God is
eternal, but we must love God in the idiom and spirit of our time."
And Father Daly believed that there was no surer method of escaping
from the danger than by active work, by teaching, which, he argued,
was not incompatible with contemplation, not carried to excess; and
there were also the poor people, and to work for them was always
pleasing to God. Any drastic changes were, of course, out of the
question, but he had been asked to speak on this subject, and it
seemed to him that they should look to Nature for guidance, and in
Nature they found not revolution but evolution; the law of Nature was
progression. Why should any rule remain for ever the same? It must
progress just as our ideas progress. He wandered on, words coming up
in his mouth involuntarily, saying things which immediately after
they were said he regretted having said, trying to bring his sermon
to a close, unable to do so, obliged, at last, to say hurriedly that
he hoped they would reflect on this matter, and try to remember he
was always at their service and prepared to give them the best
advice.
As soon as Mass was over Mother Hilda went to the Prioress. "We'll
speak on this matter later." And the Prioress went to her room,
hurriedly. The nuns hung about the cloister, whispering in little
groups, forgetful of the rule; the supporters of the Prioress
indignant with the priest, who had dared to call into question the
spiritual value of their Order, and to tell them it would be more
pleasing to God for them to start a school. It was felt even by the
supporters of the school that the priest had gone too far, not in
advocating the school, but in what he had said regarding the
liability of the contemplative orders to be attacked by demons, for
really what he had said amounted to that.