So day by day the world became more magical; day by day the work of
separation was being performed, the gross accidents were being refined
away. Darnell neglected no instruments that might be useful in the work;
and now he neither lounged at home on Sunday mornings, nor did he
accompany his wife to the Gothic blasphemy which pretended to be a
church. They had discovered a little church of another fashion in a back
street, and Darnell, who had found in one of the old notebooks the maxim
_Incredibilia sola Credenda_, soon perceived how high and glorious a
thing was that service at which he assisted. Our stupid ancestors taught
us that we could become wise by studying books on 'science,' by meddling
with test-tubes, geological specimens, microscopic preparations, and the
like; but they who have cast off these follies know that they must read
not 'science' books, but mass-books, and that the soul is made wise by
the contemplation of mystic ceremonies and elaborate and curious rites.
In such things Darnell found a wonderful mystery language, which spoke
at once more secretly and more directly than the formal creeds; and he
saw that, in a sense, the whole world is but a great ceremony or
sacrament, which teaches under visible forms a hidden and transcendent
doctrine. It was thus that he found in the ritual of the church a
perfect image of the world; an image purged, exalted, and illuminate, a
holy house built up of shining and translucent stones, in which the
burning torches were more significant than the wheeling stars, and the
fuming incense was a more certain token than the rising of the mist. His
soul went forth with the albed procession in its white and solemn order,
the mystic dance that signifies rapture and a joy above all joys, and
when he beheld Love slain and rise again victorious he knew that he
witnessed, in a figure, the consummation of all things, the Bridal of
all Bridals, the mystery that is beyond all mysteries, accomplished from
the foundation of the world. So day by day the house of his life became
more magical.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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