Low Mass

September, 1904.

I MUST be fivank with myself.

It is useless to pretend that I am not trying to make the best of the Roman Church; and, after all, I do not want to pretend otherwise, for the only conceivable way of understanding anything is understanding it; in other words, if you would judge of a system you must approach it as a friend, and not an enemy.

Now, it is as perfectly easy to pick holes in the manner in which Low Mass is celebrated, as to do the same oflBce for Morning Prayer. If the one is mumbled, the other is preached; if the one is sacerdotal, the other is clerical; and both alike may be called by their respective foes an insult to man's intelligence. But it appears to me, in the enthusiasm of this moment, that the former is at least not an insult to God Almighty's intelligence as well. It is not hinted that the Creator cannot understand the silent motions of the heart, nor be moved by a formal address unless it is delivered with skilful enunciation. Roughly speaking, then, it appears to me that the presence of God, who is a Spirit, is assumed as a matter of course by the Massing-priest, and loudly declared by the minister of the Establishment.

Two days ago I arrived in town by the early Irish mail at St. Pancras Station, and had an hour or two to spend at Victoria before catching the 9.15 for Little Brasted. So, after bestowing my luggage and breakfasting in the refreshment-room, I went for a walk. I have no sense of geography, and have not the faintest idea as to what the little church was into which I turned a few minutes before seven o'clock. It stood in a by-lane somewhere to the north of Victoria Street.

I suppose there were half a dozen people there when I entered, and twice as many again when I went out half an liour later. There was a heavy fog outside and a fair sample of it inside, and the gas-lights at the back of the church had a kind of frosted halo, very pleasant to see, around their flames. The rest of the church was tolerably dark, except at the altar, where three candles burned, one at either end, and a third by the book on the right-hand side.

There was a dirty statue of the Redeemer in red close beside me against a pillar, with a guttered candle or two at the foot. There was a hideous round-topped red window cutting the gloom like a bloated moon overhead; and a very tawdry display of brass things, and what I took to be sham roses above the altar. It is impossible to describe how every artistic nerve in my body and soul was outraged. I began to wish I had gone to Westminster Cathedral instead, if I wanted piety, for there at least things are far enough away to look respectable.

Presently a small creature in white and black emerged from somewhere, snuffing loudly, and a fat clergyman came after, in the same sort of costume, only in his case the black was uppermost and the white beneath, and he wore an inelegant hat on his head, resembling that of a cook. The two approached the altar and went down, each on one knee; then the fat man, who had got rid of his hat, went up the steps and set some things down upon the table.

Then I made a great effort, and exhorted myself in somewhat of this fashion: "You have no business to say this kind of thing. After all, who are you? You are a broken-down actor of no fortune and no particular gifts. You have lived an irreligious life for the most part, and are only just now beginning to attend to the affairs of your soul. What do you know about religion, and of the way in which God wants to be worshipped.^ How do you know He doesn't prefer this kind of thing.^ Just attend and hold your tongue. Besides, you are extremely tired and cross with your night-journey: you are eonseious of grimy cuffs and a crumpled collar and the absence of your usual bath. But for all that, try to behave decently inside as well as outside. Don't criticize. But attend, and try to conceive it possible that there may be something more in this world than your vast intelligence has already comprehended."

It did me a great deal of good; and by the time that the fat man had found his place and come down the steps again, I was in a more chastened mood. I was even willing to allow that he might know more about his business than I.

Well, I need not describe Low Mass at length. It is perfectly familiar to most people. But perhaps it is necessary to remark that it is not at all like High Mass. There is no posturing or singing; everything is done in an extremely business-like way, and as rapidly as possible. (I am even given to understand that some priests say what is called a black Mass as often as they are allowed, because it occupies ten minutes less than any other form of that service.)

The man appeared to say his piece, sometimes to himself altogether, and sometimes in a grumbling, discontented voice; and, for one of his condition, he moved almost briskly, washing his hands, and bowing down, turning the pages, and doing this and that as expeditiously as possible. A small bell rang now and again; and the snuffling creature who attended the priest sneezed four times loudly in the dead silence, yet went about his work without a sign of disconcertedness. Finally, after a loud bawling on the knees, to which the small congregation responded as hastily as their choragus, the undignified procession of two shuffled away and disappeared. Then I took my hat and umbrella and went out too.

I must confess that I was very much astonished and disappointed at first as I groped my way in the fog. This was not like the Requiem; there was not an attempt to impress the audience even with the most sombre emotions; the whole affair was shabby and perfunctory. There was none of that glamour — of which I had heard so much; no mysterious hieratical figure performinir functions which made the skin prickk^ to look upon; no awe, no incense, no earnestness. It was exactly such an entertainment as those described in a certain sort of tract, where a superstitious and blinded laity bow down before a series of actions that are as unintelligible to them as they are dishonouring to God. Surely, I said to myself, my own bright church at home, all alive with a gay altar-cloth and flowers, inspired by my dignified rector, who moves and speaks with such assurance, thrilled by the singing of ladies in a gallery, lighted by brilliant brass coronae that, to sentimental eyes, resemble gigantic celestial crowns, — surely the clean pews, the white stone pillars, the rich organ, the thoughtful preaching, the incomparable English delivered with such fire, the thronging well-dressed congregation on Sunday mornings — in fact the w^hole affair — is infinitely more in accord with what we understand by Christianity, than this shabby, heartless, dingy, cold, formal set of actions that is called Low Mass.

Such were my reflections. And I cannot tell you when the change came; I suppose it was gradual. I began to conceive of another interpretation as I dozed in my carriage on the way down from Victoria; it had almost become outlined by the time that I reached home; and now that I have had a couple of nights' rest, and am sitting at my table, I think I understand a little better what it was all about.

First, then, it appears to me that the object of Low Mass, if I may say so, is God, not man. I do not say that Almighty God is not pleased with music and beauty and cleanliness: no doubt He is; but these accessories are not essential. I prefer my friend to wear a clean shirt, but he does not cease to be my friend when he arrives at my house after a night-journey. "Near is his shirt, but nearer is his skin"; and, I suppose, nearest of all his immortal soul. Something then in Low Mass is done towards God; I confess I do not yet properly understand what that is; but at least it is believed that that is the object. Certainly nothing that can be perceived by the senses is done towards man, except what tends to repel him. The fat clergyman turned his back on the people most of the time — I am sure that they could not tell, except from their books, what he was doing up there; not one word could be heard by them, except once when I thought he said Doscum; and therefore I presume that he was not seeking to address them particularly; he wore shabby clothes, the candles were not at all pretty, nor the surroundings calculated to impress the eye except with feelings of dislike.

Yet it seems to me that that point I have mentioned is a very important one. If God Almighty is really there, and desires to be served by man, it is surely not vital, though it may be more decent, to use stately and magnificent ceremonial. The fact that High Mass forms part of the Church's offering:, as I have tried to sav in another paper, shows that the Papists do not depreciate good manners in approaching the Divine Majesty; while Low Mass proves that they do not consider etiquette essential. (It is like a child who now calls his father "Sir," and stands up in his presence, and now climbs on to his knee and pulls his beard or dozes with his head on the paternal shoulder. I have no child, but if God had given me one, I must confess that I should have wished him to use both sorts of courtesy to me. )

Now at Morning Prayer God is undoubtedly present, because He is everywhere; but it is extremely hard to picture Him as anything but a mere spectator, diffused pleasantly through the sunlit church, as is that faint odour of furs and flowers and woodwork to be perceived there on Sunday morning. He is a spectator, interested and satisfied perhaps, but no more than that: He is not the object of the worship in the same sense as at this dingy little service I have described. Rather, to my mind. He resembles a King, before whom his subjects, so engrossed in the sweep of tlieir trains, the carriage of their swords and hats, and the correct enunciation of their protestations of loyalty, forget the object for which they have come, and w^hisper and bow, as in a ballroom empty of a throne.

But at Low Mass there is another spirit altogether. It is like the enteriuf' of a small deputation at early morning, a little frowsy perhaps and slovenly, but right into the Kinix's bed-chamber to assist him to rise. It does not stir their emotions, as when, with clash of brass and thunder of drums and shouting of the populace in brave array, they pace before him across the Cathedral Square; but, for that very reason, there is the less danger of their forgetting for wdiat purpose they do tlieir service. They are there to help the King to get up, to pour water with chilly fingers, to hand stockings, to light fires, to draw curtains. There is no kind of fear that they will do it for fun; they do it only because he is the King, and they are his servants.

Now, I have already said that I do not properly understand what service It was that the man in black and white, with his assistant, believed he was doing for God Almighty; but I am quite sure that the Lord appreciated his efforts, and the more so because it was done so bravely and from such a plain sense of duty.

Those people, too, who knelt behind me and kept so deathly still — surely they were not doing it for their own enjoyment either! They were there because their King liked them to be there, and they came even although they were not compelled, or even attracted by the sensible beauty and dignity of their service.

Was the devotional spirit, then, wholly absent.^ I do not believe it, though I felt none myself. And this brings me to the second lesson I have learned from Low Mass.

According to the Papist theory (and it seems to me highly reasonable) there are two elements of spiritual action to be considered. There is, first, what the Church, in her official capacity, docs for and on behalf of the individual; and there is, secondly, what the individual does on behalf of himself and of the Church to which he belongs. We may name these elements, for brevity's sake, the official and the personal.

Now, the official element finds its illustrations in a thousand matters, beginning with the Sacrifice on Calvary. This was done for all men, and a vast store of grace liberated for their benefit. The Church adds to this her official acts — what she calls her Merits; with her sacrifices, prayers, penances, and good actions. Every Contemplative House, according to this view, carries on, in union with the Life of God on earth, the work begun by that Life and Death. W^e might imagine it all as a vast manufactory of grace.

But the personal element consists partly in efforts not onlv to aid in the work, but to appropriate the benefits of it all to the worker. For example, if I were a Catholic, and from proper motives gave half a crown to a beggar, or said some prayers with sincerity, I should by a single action benefit the beggar, the Church, and myself, as well as please God.

These two elements, then, I take it, must always be kept in mind when we consider the Papist system, for it is founded largely upon them.

Now, I have never before realized in all my life what a simple illustration of the theory is presented in Low Mass; and it is rendered the more simple by the stripping from its presentation of all emotional accessories that might otherwise obscure it.

There at the altar stands the Church, in vestments proper to her mind at the moment, and she goes about her business in a business-like manner. She is not exhorting men, she is dealing with their Maker. She scarcely casts one backward glance, for it is wholly unessential to the effect of this particular business as to whether at the instant they are attending or not; it is all a much greater matter than that.

There behind kneels the individual —

LOW MASS 1G7

(and I may here digress to bestow a maxim upon other Protestants, who, like myself, may sometimes attend Papist functions and tell them that when they are in doubt, to kneel, and remain kneeling). There, then, he kneels, a personal character with particular tendencies, likes and repulsions, objects, desires, ambitions, fears; and he is encouraged to retain them all so far as they will pass the test of God's fire. He is not, at this moment, being put through his exercises, or compelled to say these words and not those, to make postures, to generate prescribed emotions; he is left entirely alone; his minister is careful not to disturb him by talk, or movement, or exhortation; nor is he particularly encouraged to attend to what the clergyman is saying. He may do precisely what he likes, tell beads, read a meditation, or engage, if he is able, in mental prayer; in fact, he may follow whatever course he thinks best for the preservation of a suitable attitude of soul in the presence of the Divine.

Now, is not this an extraordinarily good arrangement? Contrast with any other system that you like. The Church of England in her offices is a sour schoolmistress by the side of this Mother: her pupils must kneel, pray, aspire, repent, attend, hope, intercede, all to order. They must rejoice in the Venite, meditate in the psalms, praise in this canticle, bless in another, listen to the tales of bloody-minded kings who died thirty centuries ago, wrestle with St. Paul's logic, or have the open eye with John, and there is no appeal, or relief, or concession. The Dissenters are yet more stern, for these allow one uninspired man to conduct the exercises according to the state of mind he chances to be in, and lead the dismal band with his arbitrary baton in strains that they have never practised. The Quakers, indeed, attract one more than either, for these at least leave a man for the most part to his own moods, but they lack the objective might of the Mass enacted before the eyes, to remind us that heaven-gate is open, God's eye observant, and His Heart overflowing — even, if the

LOW.MASS l()l)

theory is true, to open His Heart yet more widely, and take the Kingdom of Heaven by the only force that Omnipotence cannot resist.

There then, if I had had eyes to see, was the entire Church of God at her official prayers: the white Carthusians were there, and the black Benedictines; the Poor Clares offered their blood and tears, and the Crutched Friars their liberty. Cries went up in that silence from India, France, and Greenland, for each altar is at the centre of the earth, they tell us; Mary was there, with her virginal eyes and mother's love; the black Jesuits, who struggled in Elizabeth's rope, were free to remind their God of their pain; not one was missing of all who ever cried upon Him in bliss, expectation, or the darkness of this w^orld. For Jesus Christ their Prince was there, with broken Body, and streaming Blood, in whom each song was made perfect and each life accepted.

And there knelt I, free to play now this note, now that, as my will dictated, in that orchestra of glory; or to listen, or to regret, or to aspire as I was capable. And all that I thought of was the fat man that I saw, and the pinched creature that I heard snuffling and ringing his bell; and the poor candles, and the bloated moon of a window, and the sham flowers!

But then, is it all true?...