I had been to church one summer Sunday morning--a very simple affair it
was, with nothing sung but a couple of hymns; but the Vicar read
beautifully, neither emphatically nor lifelessly, with a little thrill in
his voice at times that I liked to hear. It did not compel you to listen so
much as invite you to join. Lestrange played the organ most divinely; he
generally extemporised before the service, and played a simple piece at the
end; but he never strained the resources of the little organ, and it was
all simple and formal music, principally Bach or Handel.
Father Payne himself was a regular attendant at church, and Sunday was a
decidedly leisurely day. He advised us to put aside our writing work, to
write letters, read, make personal jottings, talk, though there was no
inquisition into such things.
Father Payne was a somewhat irregular responder, but it was a pleasure to
sit near him, because his deep, rapid voice gave a new quality to the
words. He seemed happy in church, and prayed with great absorption, though
I noticed that his Bible was often open before him all through the service.
The Vicar's sermons were good of their kind, suggestive rather than
provocative, about very simple matters of conduct rather than belief. I
have heard Father Payne speak of them with admiration as never being
discursive, and I gathered that the Vicar was a great admirer of Newman's
sermons.
We came away together, Father Payne and I, and we strolled a little in the
garden. I felt emboldened to ask him the plain question why he went to
church. "Oh, for a lot of reasons," he said, "none of them very conclusive!
I like to meet my friends in the first place; and then a liturgy has a
charm for me. It has a beauty of its own, and I like ceremony. It is not
that I think it sacred--only beautiful. But I quite admit the weakness of
it, which is simply that it does not appeal to everyone, and I don't think
that our Anglican service is an ideal service. It is too refined and
formal; and many people would feel it was more religious if it were more
extempore--prayer and plain advice."
I told him something of my old childish experience, saying that I used to
regard church as a sort of calling-over, and that God would be vexed if one
did not appear.
He laughed at this. "Yes, I don't think we can insist on it as being a
levée," he said, "where one is expected to come and make one's bow and pay
formal compliments. That idea is an old anthropomorphic one, of course. It
is superstitious--it is almost debasing to think of God demanding praise as
a duty incumbent on us. 'To thee all angels cry aloud'--I confess I don't
like the idea of heaven as a place of cheerful noise--that isn't
attractive!
"And also I think that the attention demanded in our service is a
mistake--it's a mixture of two ideas; the liturgical ceremony which touches
the eye and the emotion, rather than the reason; and the sermon and the
prayer in which the reason is supposed to be concerned. I think the
Catholic idea is a better one, a solemnity performed, in which you don't
take part, but receive impressions. There's no greater strain on the mind
than forcing it to follow a rapid and exalted train of intellectual and
literary thought and expression. I confess I don't attempt that, it seems
to me just a joyful and neighbourly business, where one puts the mind in a
certain expectant mood, and is lucky if one carries a single thrill or
aspiration away."
"What do you _do_, then?" I said.
"Well, I meditate," said Father Payne. "I believe in meditation very much,
and in solitude it is very hard work. But the silent company of friends,
and the old arches and woodwork, some simple music, a ceremony, and a
little plan of thought going on--that seems to me a fruitful atmosphere.
Some verse, some phrase, which I have heard a hundred times before,
suddenly seems written in letters of gold. I follow it a little way into
the dark, I turn it over, I wonder about it, I enjoy its beauty. I don't
say that my thoughts are generally very startling or poignant or profound;
but I feel the sense of the Fatherly, tolerant, indulgent presence of God,
and a brotherly affection for my fellow-men. It's a great thing to be in
the same place with a number of people, all silent, and on the whole
thinking quiet, happy, and contented thoughts. It all brings me into line
with my village friends, it gives me a social mood, and I feel for once
that we all want the same things from life--and that for once instead of
having to work and push for them, we are fed and comforted. 'Open thy mouth
wide, and I will fill it'--that's a wholesome, childlike verse, you know.
The whole thing seems to me a simple device for producing a placid and
expectant mood--I don't know anything else that produces it so well."
"You mean it is something mystical--almost hypnotic?" I said.
"Perhaps I should if I knew what those big words meant," said Father Payne,
smiling. "No; church seems to me a thing that has really grown up out of
human nature, not a thing imposed upon it. I don't like what may be called
ecclesiasticism, partly because it emphasizes the intellectual side of
belief, partly because it tries to cast a slur on the people who don't like
ceremonial, and whom it does not suit--and most of all because
ecclesiasticism aims at making you believe that other people can transact
spiritual business on your account. In these democratic days, you can't
have spiritual authority--you have got to find what people need, and help
them to find it for themselves. The plain truth is that we don't want
dogma. Of course it isn't to be despised, because it once meant something,
even if it does not now. Dogmas are not unintelligible intellectual
propositions imposed on the world. They are explanations, interpretations,
attempts to link facts together. They have the sacredness of ideas which
people lived by, and for which they were prepared to die. But many of them
are scientific in form only, and the substance has gone out of them. We
know more in one sense about life and God than we did, but we also know
less, because we realise there is so much more to know. But now we want, I
believe, two or three great ideas which everyone can understand--like
Fatherhood and Brotherhood, like peace and orderliness and beauty. I think
that a church service means all these things, or ought to. What people need
is simplicity and beauty of life--joy and hope and kindness. Anything which
helps these things on is fine; anything which bewilders and puzzles and
gives a sense of dreariness is simply injurious. I want to be told to be
quiet, to try again, not to be disheartened by failures, not to be angry
with other people, to give up things, rather than to get them with a sauce
of envy and spite--the feeling of a happy and affectionate family, in fact.
The sort of thing I don't want is the Athanasian Creed. I can't regard it
simply as a picturesque monument of ancient and ferocious piety. It seems
to me an overhanging cloud of menace and mystification! It doesn't hurt the
unintelligent Christian, of course--he simply doesn't understand it; but to
the moderately intelligent it is like a dog barking furiously which may
possibly get loose; a little more intelligence, and it is all right. You
know the dog is safely tied up! Again, I don't mind the cursing psalms,
because they give the parson the power of saying: 'We say this to remind
ourselves that it was what people used to feel, and which Christ came to
change.' I don't mind anything that is human--what I can't tolerate is
anything inhuman or unintelligible. No one can misunderstand the
Beatitudes; very few people can follow the arguments of St. Paul! You don't
want only elaborate reasons for clever people, you want still more
beautiful motives for simple people. It isn't perfect, our service, I
admit, but it does me good."
"Tell me," I said--"to go back for a moment--something more about
meditating--I like that!"
"Well," said Father Payne, "it's like anchoring to a thought. Thought is a
fidgety thing, restless, perverse. It anchors itself very easily on to a
grievance, or an unpleasant incident, or a squabble. Don't you know the
misery of being jerked back, time after time, by an unpleasant thought? I
think one ought to practise the opposite--and I know now by experience that
it is possible. I will make a confession. I don't care for many of the Old
Testament lessons myself. I think there's too much fact, or let us say
incident, in them, and not enough poetry. Well, I take up my Bible, and I
look at Job, or Isaiah, or the Revelation, and I read quietly on. Suddenly
there's a gleam of gold in the bed of the stream--some splendid, deep, fine
thought. I follow it out; I think how it has appeared in my own life, or in
the lives of other people--it bears me away on its wings, I pray about it,
I hope to be more like that--and so on. Sometimes it is a sharp revelation
of something ugly and perverse in my own nature--I don't dwell long on
that, but I see in imagination how it is likely to trouble me, and I hope
that it will not delude me again; because these evil things delude one,
they call noxious tricks by fine names. I say to myself, 'What you pretend
is self-respect, or consistency, is really irritable vanity or stupid
unimaginativeness.' But it is a mistake, I think, to dwell long on one's
deficiencies: what one has got to do is to fill one's life full of
positive, active, beautiful things, until there is no room for the ugly
intruders. And, to put it shortly, a service makes me think about other
people and about God; I fear it doesn't make me contrite or sorrowful. I
don't believe in any sort of self-pity, nor do I think one ought to
cultivate shame; those things lie close to death, and it is life that I am
in search of--fulness of life. Don't let us bemoan ourselves, or think that
a sign of grace!"
"But if you find yourself grubby, nasty, suspicious, irritable, isn't it a
good thing to rub it in sometimes?" I said.
"No, no," said Father Payne, "life will do that hard enough. Turn your back
on it all, look at the beautiful things, leave a thief to catch a thief,
and the dead to bury the dead. Don't sniff at the evil thing; go and get a
breath of fresh air."