Painted Windows: Studies in Religious PersonalityBegbie, Harold
Religion
Painted Windows: Studies in Religious Personality
Begbie, Harold
Clergy -- England
You have not done with doubt, because you have thrown yourself into
the fortress; you are left to keep doubt continually at bay, with
the cheerful assurance that if you fail, the whole of your
religious life has been a ghastly mistake . . .
for this reason, they have, I think, a notable significance.
Is it not probable that Father Knox has thrown himself into a fortress,
not out of any burning desire to defend it, but solely to escape from
the enemy of his own soul? Is it not probable that he was driven from
the field by Fear rather than summoned to the battlements by Love?
I find this inference justified in numerous ways, and I do not think on
the whole that Father Knox himself would deny it. But chiefly I find it
justified by the form and substance of his utterances since he became a
Roman Catholic--fighting and most challenging utterances which for me at
any rate are belied, and tragically belied, by a look in his eyes which
is unmistakably, I am forced to think, the look of one who is still
wrestling with doubt, one, I would venture to hazard, who may even
occasionally be haunted by the dreadful fear that his fortress is his
prison.
On the day that Newman entered that fortress the triumphant cry of St.
Augustine rang in his ears, _Securus judicat orbis terrarum_; but later
came the moan _Quis mihi tribuat_, and later still the stolen journey to
Littlemore and that paroxysm of tears as he leaned over the lych-gate
looking at the church.
Not long ago I went one Sunday evening to Westminster Cathedral. It was
winter, and the streets of tall and sullen houses in that gloomy
neighbourhood were darkening with fog. This fog crept slowly into the
cathedral. The surpliced boy who presented an alms-dish just within the
doors was stamping his feet and snuffling with cold. The leaves of
tracts and pamphlets on the table blew up and chattered in the wind
every time the door was thrust open.
The huge building was only half filled, perhaps hardly that. Through the
fog it was not easy to see the glittering altar, and when three priests
appeared before it their vestments so melted into the cloth that they
were visible only when they bowed to the monstrance. The altar bell rang
snappishly through this cold fog like the dinner bell of a boarding
house, and in that yellow mist, which deepened with every minute, the
white flames of the candles lost nearly all their starlike brightness.
There seemed to be depression and resentment in the deep voices of the
choir rumbling and rolling behind the screen; there seemed to be haste,
a desire to get it over, in the nasal voice of the priest praying almost
squeakily at the altar.
People were continually entering the cathedral, many of them having the
appearance of foreigners, many of them young men who looked like
waiters: one was struck by their reverence, and also by their look of
intellectual apathy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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