only the beginning, and to some degree differed from its continuation.
It seemed to me later when I looked back upon it that the personality
had changed its assault somewhat, that at first it had rushed upon me
unthinking, impelled by its own passion, and that afterward it laid
siege with skill and deliberation.... But are you sure, gentlemen, that
I am not boring you with all this?”
Monsignor answered for us. I noticed that he cleared his throat
slightly before speaking.
“No, no, Father.... Please go on.”
The old priest paused a moment as if to recollect himself, then still
nursing his knee, he began again in his quiet little voice.
“I do not know exactly how long it was before I began to understand my
danger; but I think the thought first occurred to me one day during
my meditation. Soon after my ordination I had read Mme. Guyon’s book
on prayer in order to understand exactly what it was that had been
condemned in Quietism, and I suppose it had affected me to some extent.
It is indeed a very subtle book and extremely beautiful. At any rate,
I had long been accustomed to close my meditation with what she calls
the ‘awful silence’ in the Presence of God. I do not think that,
normally speaking, there is any harm in this; on the contrary, for
active-minded people in danger of intellectualism I think it a very
useful exercise. Well, it was one day I should think within a fortnight
of my experience by the rock that I first understood that for me there
was danger. I was in my little chapel before the Blessed Sacrament.
Everything was quite quiet; the men were at work and the women in their
houses; it was a hot, sunny morning, I remember, breathlessly still. I
had finished my formal meditation and was sitting back in my chair.
“You all know, gentlemen, of course, the way in which one can approach
the Silence before God. Of course, the simplest can do it if they will
take pains.”
Monsignor Maxwell interrupted, still in that slightly strained voice in
which he had spoken just now.
“Please describe it,” he said.
The priest looked up deprecatingly.
“Well, then, first I had withdrawn myself from the world of sense. That
takes, as you know, sometimes several minutes; it is necessary to
sink down in thought in such a manner that sounds no longer distract
the attention, even though they may be heard and even considered
and reflected upon. Then the second step is to leave behind all
intellectual considerations and images, and that, too, sometimes is
troublesome, especially if the mind is naturally active. Well, this day
I found an extraordinary ease in both the acts.”
Father Brent leaned forward.
“May I interrupt, Father? But I am not sure that I understand.”
The old man pursed his lips. Then he glanced up at the rest of us
almost apologetically.
“Well, it is this, my dear Father.... How can I put it?... It is the
introversion of the soul. Instead of considering this object or that,
either by looking upon it or reflecting upon it, the soul turns inward.
There are the two distinct planes on which many men, especially those
who pay little or no attention to the soul, live continually. Either
they continually seek distractions--they cannot be devout except in
company or before an image--or else--as, indeed, many do who have even
the gift of recollection--they dwell entirely upon considerations
and mental images. Now the true introversion is beneath all this.
The soul sinks, turning inward upon itself ... there are no actual
considerations at all; these become in their turn as much distractions
to the energy of the soul as external objects to the energy of the
mind.... Is that clearer, my dear Father?”
It was all said with a kind of patient and apologetic simplicity.
Father Brent nodded pensively two or three times, and dropped his chin
again upon his hand. The old priest went on.
“Well, gentlemen, as I said just now, on this morning I came into the
Silence without an effort. First the sensible world dropped away; I
heard a woman open and shut her door fifty yards away down the street,
but it was no more than a sound. Then almost immediately the world
of images and considerations went past me and vanished, and I found
myself in perfect stillness.
“For an instant it seemed to me that all was well. There was that
strange tranquillity all about me.... I cannot put it into words except
by saying, as all do who practise that method, that it is a living
tranquillity full of a very vital energy. This is not, of course, that
to which contemplatives penetrate; St. John of the Cross makes that
very plain; it is no more than that in which we ought always to live.
It is that Kingdom of God within of which our Blessed Lord tells us,
but it is not the Palace itself.... However, as I have said, when one
has but learned the way there--and the difficulty of doing so lies only
in its extreme and singular simplicity--when one has learned the way
there it is full of pleasure and consolation.
“I remained there, as my manner was, drawing a long breath or two,
as one is obliged to do. I do not know why--and at first all seemed
well. There was that peace about me which may be described under the
image of any one of the five senses. I prefer to speak of it now as
under the image of light--a very radiant, mellow light full of warmth
and sweetness. There was, too, just at first, that sense of profound
abasement and adoration which is so familiar.... As I said, gentlemen,
I do not, of course, for an instant pretend to the gift of pure
contemplation; that is something far beyond.
“Then, all in an instant that sense of adoration vanished.
“Now, it was not that I had risen back again to meditation; there were
no images before my attention, no reflections of any formulated kind.
It was still the pure perception, and yet all sense of adoration and
of God’s majesty was gone. The light and the peace were there still,
but--but not God....
“Then I perceived, if I may say so, that something was on the point
of disclosure. It was as if something was about to manifest itself.
I perceived that the light was not as it had been. It was like that
strange, vivid sunlight that we see sometimes when a heavy cloud is
overhead. That is the only way in which I can express it. It is for
that reason that I called it _light_ rather than sound or touch. For
an instant still I hesitated. The thought of what had happened to me
by the rock never came to my mind, and with inconceivable swiftness
the process passed on. To use an auditory metaphor for a moment it
was like the change of an orchestra. The minor note steals in; a
light passes over the character of the sound, and simultaneously the
volume increases, the chords expand, tearing the heart with them, and
the listener perceives that a moment later the climax will break in
thunder.”
He had raised his voice a little by now; his eyes glanced this way and
that, though still without a trace of self-consciousness. Then again
his voice dropped.
“Well, gentlemen, before that final moment came I had remembered; the
vision of the rock and the chatter of the stream was before me sharp
as a landscape under lightning.... I do not know what I did, but I
was aware of making a kind of terrified effort. My soul sprang up
as a diver who chokes under water, and in an instant the whole thing
was gone. Then I became aware that my eyes were open and that I was
standing up. I was still terrified by the suddenness of the experience,
and stood there, saying something aloud to Our Lord in the Tabernacle.
Then I heard the door open behind me.
“‘Did you cry out, Father?’ said Bridget. ‘Why, Mother of Mercy----’
“I felt myself beginning to sway on my feet. Well, gentlemen, I need
not trouble you with all that. The truth was that Bridget, who was
washing up my breakfast things in the kitchen, heard me cry out. She
told me afterward that when she saw my face she thought that I was
dying.... I sat down a little then, and she fetched me something, and
presently I was able to walk out.
“Well, gentlemen, that is enough for this evening.”
He stopped abruptly.
We got up and went to night-prayers.
II
“Well, so far,” began Father Girdlestone on the following evening--“so
far you see two things had happened to me. First there seems to have
been a kind of unpremeditated assault that affected my body, mind, and
soul. That was the attack by the rock. Then he began to lay siege more
deliberately, and attacked me in my meditation, in what I may call the
innermost chamber, that anteroom of the transcendent world. Now, I have
to tell you of his next assault.”
There was a rustle of expectation as we settled ourselves to listen.
I had found on questioning the others in the morning that they were
in the same attitude as myself, impressed, but not convinced--indeed,
strangely impressed by the extreme subtlety of the experience related
to us. Yet there had been no proof, no tangible evidence, such as we
are accustomed to demand, that the incidents had been anything more
than subjective. At the same time there had been something remarkable
in the priest’s assurance as well as in the precise particularity of
his narrative. It seemed now, however, from what he said, that perhaps
we were to have more materialistic elements presented to us.
“The result, of course,” continued Father Girdlestone, “of the attack
upon my soul was that I became terrified at the thought of any further
act of introversion. It seemed to me on reflection that I had probably
overstrained my faculties a little and that I had better be more
distinctly meditative in devotion.
“I fetched down, therefore, from my shelves a copy of the ‘Spiritual
Exercises,’ and set to work. I began with a carefully objective act
of the Presence of God, dwelling chiefly upon the Blessed Sacrament,
and then pursued carefully the lines laid down. Two or three times
every day, I should say, I was tempted to fall back upon the Prayer
of Quiet, and each time I resisted it. It was a kind of frightened
fascination that I felt for it. It was as if it had been a cupboard
where something terrible lurked in silence and darkness, ready to tear
me if I opened the door. Of course I should have opened it boldly; any
priest of experience would have told me so at once; but I did not fully
understand what was wrong. The result was as you shall hear.
“All went well for several days. I meditated with care, making the
prescribed considerations--the preludes, the pictures, and all the
rest, observing to go straight from the intellectual act to the
voluntary. I became soothed and content again. Then, without any
warning, the new assault was made. It came about in this fashion:
“I was meditating upon the Particular Judgment, and had formed the
picture as vividly as possible of my soul before the Judge. I saw the
wounds and the stains on one side, the ineffably piercing grace and
holiness on the other. I saw the reproach in the Judge’s face. I seized
my soul by the neck, as it were, and crushed it down in humility and
penitence. And then suddenly it seemed to me that my hold relaxed,
and all faded. Now this assault came to me in intellectual form, yet
I cannot remember the arguments. It began, if I may say so, as a blot
upon the subject of my meditation, effacing the image of my Judge and
of myself, and it spread with inconceivable swiftness over the whole of
my faith....”
The priest paused, smiling steadily at the fire.
“How shall I put it?” he said.... “Well, in a word, it was intellectual
doubt of the whole thing. A kind of cloud of infidelity seemed to
envelop me. I beat against it, but it passed on, thick and black.
There seemed to me no Person behind it; it was the very negation of
Personality that surrounded me. ‘After all,’ it seemed to say to me,
yet without words or intellect, you understand--‘after all, this is a
pretty picture, but where is the proof? What shadow of a proof is there
that the whole thing is not a dream? If there were objective proof,
how could any man doubt? If there is not objective proof, what reason
have you to trust in religion at all--far more, to sacrifice your life
to it?... Death, too, what is that but the resolving of the elements
that issue in what you call the soul? And when the elements resolve the
soul disperses.’... And so on, and so on. You know it, gentlemen....
It suggested horrible things against Our Lord when I turned to the
Tabernacle. And then, on a sudden, as it had done in the deeper plane,
it spread upward to an intolerable climax. I began to see myself as a
dying spark in a burning-out world, and there was no escape, for there
was nothing but empty space about me--no God, no heaven, not even a
devil to hint at life in some form at least after death. I looked
during those seconds into the gulf of annihilation.... I cried out in
my heart that I would sooner live in hell than die there ... and the
vision, if I may call it so, of ultimate eternal blackness cleared
every instant before my intellect until it was imminent upon me as a
demonstrable certainty; and then, once more, before that loomed out
as actually intellectually certain, I struggled and stood up, saying
something aloud, the name of God, I think, while the sweat poured down
my face.
“It passed then--at least, in its acuteness. There was the little domed
tabernacle before me with its white curtains, and the altar-cards and
the gilt candlesticks, and a woman went past the window in clogs, and
I heard a bird twitter beneath the eaves, and it was all, for a while,
natural and peaceful again.”
The priest stopped.
“Now, gentlemen,” he said very slowly, “intellectual difficulties
have occurred to most people, I imagine. How should it not be so? If
religion were small enough for our intellects it could not be great
enough for our soul’s requirements. But this was not just that fleeting
transient obscurity that we call intellectual difficulty. It was to
ordinary darkness what substance is to imagination, what a visible
concrete scene is to a fancy, what life is to dreaming. I know I
cannot express what I mean; but I want you to take it on my word that
this visitation in the realm of the intellect was a solid blackness,
compared with which all other difficulties that I have ever heard of
or experienced are as a mere lowering of intellectual lights. It was
paralleled only by my experience in introversion. That, too, had not
been an emotional withdrawal, or a spiritual dryness, as we commonly
use those words. It had been a solid, unutterably heavy burden--real
beyond description.... And further, I want you to consider my dilemma.
I had been routed in my soul and dared not take refuge there; I had
been overwhelmed, too, in my intellect, and even when the first misery
had passed it seemed to me that the arguments against the Faith were
stronger than those for it. I did not dare to pit one against the
other. A heavy deposit had been left upon my understanding. I did not
dare to sit down and argue; I did not dare to run for refuge to the
Silence of God. I was driven out into the sole thing that was left--the
world of sense.”
Again he stopped, still with that tranquil smile. I hardly understood
him, though I think I saw very dimly what he had called his dilemma.
Yet I did not understand what he meant by the “world of sense.”
After a little pause he went on.
“To the world of sense,” he repeated. “It seemed to me now that
this was all that was left. I determined then and there to drop my
meditation and to confine myself to mass, office and rosary. I would
say the words with my lips, quickly and steadily, keeping my mind
fixed upon them rather than upon their meaning, and I would trust that
presently the clouds would pass.
“Well, gentlemen, for about two months I continued this. The misery I
suffered is simply indescribable. You can imagine all the suggestions
I made to myself when I was off my guard. I told myself that I was a
coward and a sham--that I had lost my faith and that I continued to act
as a priest! What was especially hard to bear was the devotion of my
parishioners. As I knelt in front saying the rosary and they responded
I could hear the thrill of conviction in every word they uttered. Oh,
those Irish! The things they said to me sometimes were like swords for
pain ... the masses they asked me to say...!
“I went to a priest at a distance once or twice and told him the bare
outline--not as I have told it to you. He laughed at me, kindly, of
course. He told me that it was the effect of loneliness, while I knew
that at the best it was the work of One who bore me continual company
now and who was stronger than I. He told me that all young priests had
to win the victory in some form or other; that every priest thought
his own case the most desperate.... Yet I knew from every word that
he said that he did not understand, and that I could never make him
understand. Yet, somehow, I set my teeth; I told God that I was willing
to bear this dereliction for as long as He willed--so paradoxical and
mysterious is the gift of Faith--if He would but save my soul, and at
last, in a kind of defiance, I began to look once more at my designs
for the church I was to build.
“You see, gentlemen, what I meant by taking refuge in the world of
sense. I deliberately contemplated never daring to face God again
interiorly, or even my own soul. I would do my duty as a priest; I
would say my mass and office; I would preach strictly what the Church
enjoined; I would live and die like that, with my teeth set. Better God
beaten and denied than all the world beside in prosperity!”
For the first time in the whole of his narrative Father Girdlestone’s
voice trembled a little. He passed his thin old hand over his mouth
once or twice, shifted his position and began again.
“It was on the first of October that I took down my plans again. I had
not looked at them for two months; I had not the heart to do so.
“Now let me describe to you exactly the room in which I sat, and the
other necessary circumstances.
“In the centre of my room stood my table, with two windows on my left,
the fire in front, and the door behind me to the right. The windows
were hung with serge curtains. I had no carpet, but a little mat only
beneath my table and another before the fire.
“It was in the beginning of October--to be accurate, the third of the
month--that this thing happened that I am about to tell you.
“I awoke early that morning, said my mass as usual, with attention and
care, but no sensible devotion, and after my thanksgiving sat down to
breakfast. It was then that I first had any uneasiness.
“I was breakfasting at my table, and beyond me, in front and to the
right, stood a large basket-chair. I was reading some book or other,
and can honestly say that nothing was further from my mind than my
experiences in the summer. Remember, during two months nothing had
happened--nothing, at least, beyond that intolerable intellectual
darkness. Then the basket-chair suddenly clicked in the way in which
they do half an hour after one has sat in them. It distracted my
attention for an instant--it was just enough for that; no more. I went
on with my book.
“Then it clicked again three or four times, and I looked up, rather
annoyed.... Well, to be brief, this went on and on. After breakfast,
when Bridget came to fetch the tray, I asked whether she had touched
the chair that morning. She told me No. All this time, remember, no
thought of anything odd had entered my head. I supposed it was the damp
and said so.
“Well, she was still in the room. I went out to fetch my breviary from
the chapel, and as I set foot on the stairs, leaving the door open
behind me, I heard her, as I thought, come out after me with the tray
and follow me, three or four steps behind, all down the staircase. I
had no more doubt of that than of the fact that I myself was going
downstairs. At the turn of the stairs I did not even look behind.
By the sounds--not clear footfalls, you understand, but a kind of
shuffling and breathing, and still more by the consciousness that
there she was--I judged she was in a hurry, as she often was. At the
foot of the stairs I turned to say something, and as I began to turn I
will swear that I saw a figure out of the corner of my eye; but when
I looked it was simply not there. There was nothing there.... Do you
understand, gentlemen? Nothing at all.
“I called up to her, and heard her come across the floor. Then she
looked over the banister.
“‘Did you come out of the room just now?’ I said.
“‘No, your reverence.’
“Well, I made my theory, of course. It was to the effect that she had
moved in the room as I came out; that I therefore thought she was
following me, and that the rest was simply self-suggestion.
“I got my breviary and came out. As I came into the little lobby again
there occurred to me the impression that some one was there, waiting in
the corner. I looked round me; there was nothing, and I went upstairs.
“Gentlemen, do you know that nervous condition when one feels there
is some one in the room? It is generally dissipated by ten minutes’
conversation. Well, I was in that condition all the morning. But there
was more than that.
“It was not only that sense of some one there; there were sounds
now and then, very faint, but absolutely distinct, coming from all
quarters--sounds so minute and unimportant in themselves that I might
have heard them a hundred times without giving them another thought if
they had not been accompanied by that sense of a presence with me. They
were of all kinds. Once or twice a piece of woodwork somewhere in the
room clicked, as my basket-chair had done--a sharp, minute rap, such as
one hears in damp weather. Once the door became unlatched and slid very
softly with the sound of a hush over a piece of matting that lay there.
I got up and shut the door again, looking, I must confess, for an
instant on to the landing, and as I came back to my chair that clicked
twice.
“Gentlemen, I know this sounds absurd. You will be saying, as I said,
that I was simply in a nervous condition. Very well, perhaps I was;
but please wait. Once, as I sat in my chair drawn sideways near the
fireplace, a very slight movement caught my eye. I turned sharply; it
was no more than the fringe of the mat under the table lifting in the
draught. As I looked it ceased.
“Well, my nerves got worse and worse. I stared every now and then round
the room. There was nothing to be seen but the boards, the mats, the
familiar furniture, the black and white crucifix over the mantleshelf,
my few books, and the vestment-chest near the door. There were the
curtains, too, hanging at the windows. That was all. It was a cloudy
October day, and rained a little about half-past twelve. I remember
starting suddenly as a gust came and dashed the drops against the glass.
“At about a quarter to one Bridget came in to lay dinner.... I am
ashamed to say it, but I was extraordinarily relieved when I heard
her open the downstairs door. She came in, you remember, three or four
times a day to see after me; otherwise I was alone in the house.
“When she came into the room I looked up at her.... She smiled at
me, and then it seemed to me that her face took on it rather an odd
expression. She stopped smiling, and before she set down the tablecloth
and knives she looked round the room rather curiously, I thought.
“‘Well, Bridget,’ I said, ‘what is it?’
“There was just a moment before she answered.
“‘It is nothing, your reverence,’ she said.
“Then she laid dinner. I dined, reading all the while, and she brought
in the dishes one by one. I am afraid I hurried rather over dinner. I
made up my mind to go out for a long walk; there was something else
in my mind, too--well, I may as well tell you; it seemed to me that I
should rather like to be out of the house before she was. Yes; it was
cowardly; but remember that all this while I was telling myself that I
had an attack of the nerves, and that I had better not be alone except
in the fresh air.
“Well, nothing at all happened that afternoon. It seemed to me as I
went over the moors that all sense of haunting had ceased; I noticed
first consciously that it had gone soon after leaving the outskirts of
the village; I was entirely happy and serene.