"I am not a pious man, as you know. I pay no attention to the ordinary
claims of religion. I take precisely the same pleasure in the Tenebrae
of the Catholic Church, as I do in the Burial Service of the Church of
England. In both you are swept from your ordinary course of placidity
on the waves of the eternal. In the first, you have the dull rhythm of
sound, with breaks, and curious changes of key and tune—if tune it may
be called which is so Gregorian in its methods. Working up, step by
step, with the disciples in their vigil with the Lord, you have the
putting out of candle upon candle, the pause, the heart-stirring
silence, culminating in complete darkness symbolical of dissolution.
That is dramatic and intense. In the second, you have the direct voice
of God. St. Paul never spoke with so clear a note as in his wonderful
description of the triumph of things spiritual over things temporal.
’We shall not sleep, but we shall all be changed.... There is one glory
of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the
stars: for one star differeth from another in glory. So also is the
resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in
incorruption: it is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown
in weakness; it is raised in power.... As is the earthy, such are they
that are earthy; and as is the heavenly, such are they also that are
heavenly.... The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the
law.’ We can never find words to match these either for concentration
or for power.
"Catholicism is, as you know, not so abhorrent to me as it is to some
Anglicans. To begin with, I am an historian; that in itself is a strong
point in favour of a creed which personally I dislike. I think myself
that it was a good thing for England when she threw off the yoke under
which she had bled for so many centuries; my greatest contention against
the Catholic power is her interference in the politics of nations, and
her attacks on men’s independence. On the other hand, I admit that one
of the first charges we bring against her exponents is a paradox; we
call them too worldly and too mystic; complaining that their eyes are
fixed so steadily on the vision of Heaven, that they fail to recognize
ordinary precautions which men of business, dealing with men of
business, should observe. There are a million paradoxes in the Church;
you can explain them only by admitting her claim, acknowledging her,
like Christ Himself, to be the possessor of two different entities,
Divine and human.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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