“Capital!” whispered in ghostly language the shade of the Rev, Edward Starch. “Capital! They have succeeded in carrying this point. This is the great Anglican battle-ground, the prayer for the Church Militant:” as the clergy resumed their former position at the north and south end.
After the prayer and whilst I was waiting for the Liturgy to proceed, to my astonishment and the great relief of the congregation the blessing was pronounced and the assembly broke up.
“Are we to go now?” said I to Boodle.
“Go? I should think so. What more do you want? Haven’t you had enough?” Boodle yawned and looked about for his hat.
“But what does all this lead up to?” said I, “if not to the Bread of Life? and how can they all fast to this hour and then go away without the Celestial Food?”
Boodle looked at me in astonishment. “You don’t mean to say you think these people have had no breakfast?”
“The Faithful at Holy Cross never ate until they had had the Holy Bread, and on Wednesdays and Fridays, the stations, you know, they took no food till three in the afternoon, for the services were not over till then.”
“My goodness me!” said Boodle. “And where do you say is that remarkable place?”
“In Jerusalem,” I replied.
“And does Bishop Gobat approve of these ritualistic proceedings?”
“I don’t know,” I replied. “I don’t know anything about Bishop Gobat, This was a very long long time ago. In the year. . . .” Here I stopped, remembering I am a ghost and that Boodle did not know it.
“A very long time ago? I should rather think it was,” said Boodle.
“Pardon me,” I whispered, slightly irritated, “Have you any business to collect the alms of the faithful and not to give them the Bread of Life? It seems to me to be all take and no give.”
“All take? I should think so. It’s awful humbug I think; but it doesn’t hurt me much, for I never put in more than a threepenny bit.”
“No doubt you feel hurt at not receiving your due: bread upon the Day of Bread. No wonder your offering is small.”
“Well, to tell you the truth, I have not had what you speak of for many a long year.”
“What! are you excommunicate?” asked I in horror. Suppose I had been making friends with a profane person under the ban of the church.
“My dear fellow, what are you talking of? We don’t do such things now-a-days.”
As we went out I said to the busy man in black, who stood at the door—
“At what hour are the Holy Mysteries celebrated in this church?”
He looked at me from head to foot and said, “Mystery? Mystery? We doesn’t have nothink of that ’ere sort here. We don’t believe in no mysteries whatsomdever!”
“But surely, surely the Holy Sacrifice is offered some time or other?”
“Oh, you be one of the Red letter lot be you? We don’t ’old to none of that ritualistic nonsense.”
More puzzled than ever I went on with Boodle.
As we left the holy precincts, I said to him, “Have the majority of the faithful in that church never been within the sacred walls before?”
“Why should you think so?”
“Because in the opening address such great pains were taken to explain to those present what they had come for. It began if I remember right, ‘Dearly beloved. ’”
“Ha! ha! ha!” said Boodle, “that has been going on no end of a time. Whenever, wherever, you go to church, even if you go twice every day of your life, weekdays and Sundays, you will never be allowed to say your prayers until you have heard an explanation of why you came, and what you came for. For the last 300 years that has been going on with unintermitting perseverance.”
“And the poor things have not learnt it yet; what a long time it takes to din an idea into an Englishman’s bead. We certainly were not so long about it in my day. In fact we should ‘not have gone to church at all until we were quite certain why we went.”
“Come along,” said Boodle, “we shall just be in time to hear the crack preacher at St. Timothy’s Chapel.”
CHAPTER 3: “THE POPULAR PREACHER”
There was a great crowd within St. Timothy’s Church, and many stood in the centre passage and in the doorway. Except the mere fact of this standing crowd I could not see anything that the least reminded me of Holy Cross Church. At the end of the building, where in my day the altar would have stood, I saw a high wooden rostrum from which a grave, thin, yellow-looking person preached. He was clothed in a mourning garment of solemn black.
“Is he doing penance for the sins of the people?” said I to Boodle.
“What are you thinking of?” he answered, “the penance is, I should say, on the side of those who listen.”
The faithful here were shut four or five together between very high walls, I supposed they were the wooden walls of Old England which I had heard of since I had been in London. Boodle told me the service began later at St. Timothy’s than at St. Silas’s, and that the sermon from the Rev. Ebenezer Growler was quite the thing to hear. The preacher was exciting himself in a manner which did my heart good to see, for I thought such earnestness could not fail to hit the mark.
“Listen!” said Boodle, “quite a burst of eloquence.”
And the preacher thumped the cushion in front of him, balanced himself on his toes, and shouted—
Take heed, brethren, of superstition! above all of that new heresy called Ritualism! remember we have no priesthood, no sacrifice.
“Good heavens!” I whispered to Boodle, “does he not remember what the blessed Andrew said when taken before the Roman Prefect. . .”
“Blessed fiddlestick!” replied Boodle, “you don’t suppose a popular preacher has time to read anything, do you?”
I was amazed. I listened with shuddering frame to an elaborate disproof of what we at Holy Cross used to call the Catholic Faith. We were exhorted by Mr. Growler not to attend church except on the Sabbath; not to believe in absolution; not to believe in the priesthood; not to believe in times and seasons; not to esteem one day more than another; but above all to beware of certain, churches which he named in full.
As we came out, after three quarters of an hour of this wonderful performance, I said, “Are the objectionable churches tenanted by Gnostics?”
“By what?” said Boodle.
“By adherents of the Gnostic heresy?”
“I never heard of that heresy. We’ve plenty here, but none of that name, that I know of, at least.”
“Tell me,” I asked, “are these people superstitiously devoted to the priesthood? Do they throng to the churches to confess their sins before the whole congregation? Do they crowd inconveniently to the services so that their duties in the world are seriously hindered?”
“My dear fellow, it’s all you can do to get them to come to church once a week.”
“Then why did he preach to them as if they were never out of it?”
“Because that sort of thing goes down. The people haven’t the slightest intention of honouring the priesthood, or of flocking to the churches, or of giving alms, or of beautifying God’s House, and so the Rev. Ebenezer preaches up the holiness of ugliness and the filthiness of good works, and the people love to have it so, and he is asked to three dinners every night of the week.”
“But he told them it was enough to keep the Sabbath, and yet they were keeping the Lord’s Day. Now the primitive Christians kept both for a long time, but by degrees left off the Jewish Sabbath. His language was a little confused.”
“Don’t be alarmed,” said Boodle, “we haven’t the slightest intention of keeping two Sundays a week, one is quite enough. When he said the Sabbath, he meant the Lord’s Day.”
“When he said Saturday, he meant Sunday. Very well, I shall know another time,” I meekly remarked.
Just then I saw floating close to me the shade of the Rev. Edward Starch.
“Perfectly disgusting! was it not?” muttered the ghost,
&
nbsp; “I am not sure it was more so than your pet service at St. Silas’s,” I replied.
“Why so,” calmly inquired the ghost.
“Because there the preacher took certain truths for granted, but did not act on them. There was the appearance, but not the reality. He exhorted us to attend the Eucharist, and then sent us away without it. Now the preacher at St. Timothy’s told us that there was nothing in anything, and gave us nothing. St. Cyril would be very much astonished at both of them.”
“Humph!” said the ghost, and quietly floated away.
Now this dialogue being spoken in spirit language was utterly inaudible to my friend Boodle; he merely thought I was looking up to see if it were going to rain.
“But tell me,” I continued, as we walked along the street, “what have the churches done which excited Mr. Growler’s wrath to that enormous pitch?”
“St. Chad’s and St. Thurstan’s and St. Ethelbert’s and the others? Oh nothing that I can understand. As far as I know they have kept exactly to the directions of the Book of Common Prayer, and when there were no directions they have tried to find out what was done at the time the Book was compiled.”
“That does not sound so very had. But of course Mr. Growler is very particular in following the directions of some superior authority, as he is so anxious to make others take offence at the brethren.”
“Not at all. He does the whole thing in his own way, taking what he pleases and leaving out what he pleases; but people don’t mind it because he gives them very little trouble, and they come out pretty much the same as when they went in. Now the man at St. Chad’s is always worrying about fasting and ; and confessing your sins and the like, and people get no peace of their lives with his bother.”
“That sounds more like Holy Cross,” thought I.
“He is such a nuisance that Growler has set two fellows to watch him to see if he does anything actionable; he might bend his knee half an inch too low or have too many things on the altar, and then Growler would have him up before the justices in a jiffy.”
“Then the persecution here has not yet ended?” I said, my spirits rising at the prospect of something like primitive Christianity. “You still hear the pagan cry, ‘To the lions with the Christians. ’”
“Something like it; but the curious part of it is that instead of a Pagan cry, it is now a Christian cry, and instead of the lions, it is the lion and the unicorn. But come to me next Sunday and I will show you what goes on at St, Chad’s.”
The kindly Boodle turned the corner, waving his hand to me; and again I saw the shade of the Rev. Edward Starch.
“You won’t like St. Chad’s at all,” said he, “I wouldn’t go there if I were you. It’s not in the least like anything Charles the First saw, or Laud, or Sancroft. It’s not in the least like the interior of Bishop Andrews’s Chapel, in the Hierurgia Anglicana. It’s not in the least like St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, or St. James’s, Piccadilly.”
“But my dear ghost,” I replied, “you forget I have nothing to do with either. I go back far beyond two hundred or even three hundred years. I am looking for primitive Christianity, such as I remember it in the days of the blessed Cyril.”
The ghost shook his head sadly. “If you’re wise,” said he, “you’ll keep to the use of the last three hundred years.”
“My 300 years are as good as yours,” said I rather cantankerously, I must own, considering that I was a ghost of 1520 years standing.
CHAPTER 4: SARUM USE
St. Chad’s was difficult to find. It was in a poor part of the enormous town; I mean it was in that part of the town which was tenanted by the poor. Hidden by a number of sordid and densely populated buildings, the exterior presented no very striking features, but when I reached the entrance I saw at once that some sort of affinity could be claimed with Holy Cross Church at Jerusalem. The area was grand and spacious, full of seats truly, but these seats were so unpretentious and low that they did not attract the eye like those of St. Silas. There were no locks and no bolts and no doors to them. Boodle, true to his appointment, had joined me at the door, looking as if he did not like it much, but that he considered himself bound to keep his engagement.
“Well, what do you think of it?” said he, “rum looking place, ain’t it?”
“More like a church than anything I’ve seen yet. I am pleased beyond measure at seeing such a crowd of real worshippers. But tell me who are those evil looking persons to our left?”
“Oh, they are the spies.”
“Spies? are they the persons who will carry the information to the Prefect?”
“Prefect, no. Privy Council.”
“And how do they execute them here, by burning, crucifixion, or wild beasts?”
“We haven’t got to that yet. It’s a pleasure to come. Heavy fines are the great things now.”
I had always heard England was a money loving country, so I supposed this was the greatest punishment the persecutors could inflict.
“And what will these persons do?”
“Oh, they will watch narrowly to see whether the incumbent of the church bows his knee in the middle of a certain prayer, and whether he holds the chalice and paten too high, and a lot of little things you and I should never notice. But what this people hate most, the people who employ the spies, I mean, are lights on the altar, above it, or around it.”
“And why?”
“Because there is an old custom that two lights shall be set on the altar to show that Christ is the Light of the World.”
“And do these people say He is not the Light of the World? What odd Christians they must be! What is the name of the society who employs these spies?”
“The Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews— no, I don’t mean that, I can’t remember it exactly, I think it calls itself the Church Association,”
It was a grand service certainly. The music, the animation of the priests, the devotion of the people, the want of distinction between rich and poor, the prominent position of the altar, the evident subordination of all to the great Christian Sacrifice, was refreshing to one who, like myself, was anxious to see a revival of things as they were under the blessed Cyril. At a certain point of the service a servant of the Church walked quietly up to the altar and lit the candles. I saw, a self-satisfied smirk on the part of the spies, and heard the rustle of the paper on which they wrote down their remarks.
“That’ll cost him £500,” whispered Boodle to me, looking at the priest of St. Chad’s,
“And serve him right,” muttered the shade of the Rev. Edward Starch as it quietly floated by me, “I never lighted my candles at Grubbington-in-the-Clay. I considered they looked much better unlighted.”
“They certainly were much more economical,” I replied.
It did not matter the least when Starch and I talked in church, because as we only used ghost language we disturbed nobody. It was another thing when Boodle began, for his remarks were so loud I had serious thoughts of suddenly becoming invisible. I was ashamed of being in his company, for no wooden walls hid us as in the other churches. The main features of the service were grand, the sermon most interesting, and rousing, but there were various little affectations that puzzled me and made me still sigh for Holy Cross and its simple majesty; everything there seemed so thoroughly natural, whilst at S. Chad’s people seemed to be wondering whether all they were doing was in proper order.
As we came out, and we did not come out until, as at Holy Cross, all was finished and an end made of the great Christian service of the Eucharist, Boodle turned to me and said, “Now I shall introduce you to that gentleman, and place you in better hands than mine. He will just suit you, for he understands all these things. Goodbye, I must be off home to dinner. Come and dine? no! well, never mind; see you another time.”
We passed into the little dark cloister leading out of the Church, and standing there I saw the individual in question, whom I recognised as one of the assistant priests with whose minute and rather
nervous fussy ways I had been struck. He was a tall, lantern-jawed, cadaverous looking man, stiff as an iron rod and impracticable as a thunderbolt.
“The Rev. Octagon Fidgets,” murmured Boodle to me, and I heard him whisper to the person in question something about—
“Red-hot Ritualist—just your sort, you know,” meaning me. What he meant I could not imagine, no doubt it was something very appropriate.
The Rev. Octagon Fidgets bowed, and walking with me down the street, said in a hollow voice,
“Miserable service, wasn’t it, Mr.——I didn’t quite catch your name.”
“I should think you didn’t, and you’re not going to now,” thought I to myself. Then in answer to his question, “Miserable service?” said I, “in what way pray, sir?”
“Why, in the first place, didn’t you notice the frontal was all wrong?”
“What was the matter with it?”
“It was the colour of the Sunday, red. Now you know it ought to have been the colour of the saint whose day it was, that is— yellow, Sarum yellow—for St. Swithun, Bishop and Confessor. It is true some people have a notion that Sundays of a certain class take precedence of the Saint’s Day, but that is wrong, my dear sir, totally wrong;” and the Rev. Octagon struck his foot on the kerbstone with excitement. “I tell my respected incumbent over and over again about it, but he says he has little time for these things and he must stick to broad principles, but,—hallo—hallo—what is happening to you. . . .”
At this moment, forgetting all my caution, I subsided from the visible to the invisible, and became the shadow of the deacon Irennaus. The reason was the sudden appearance of the two Church Association spies, peeping round the corner. I was so horribly nervous at their self-satisfied leer that I felt I could not face them, and I was also afraid lest a natural infirmity of temper should invite me to wreak my bodily combative powers upon them. So all things considered, I judged it better to put such a course entirety out of my own power, and their utter incapability of appreciating the invisible prevented their perceiving that a spirit was near them.
The Collected Supernatural and Weird Fiction of Sabine Baring-Gould Page 50