“Let us die together in our integrity, and heaven and earth shall witness for us how unjustly we be cut off.”
“Would that it might be even so,” continued the preacher, “that so dying we might pass in a body to our Father’s home above, but they will not do us so great a kindness. Me and the elder brethren they may indeed kill, but you who are younger will be sent back into the world ye have once forsaken, where divers temptations assail you. Alas, who is sufficient for these things?”
Here he paused, and then continued, “This may be the last time we meet within these sacred walls: the last time that they re-echo the tone of thanksgiving, which has arisen for nigh fifteen centuries on this spot.[12] But it is meet that we prepare for the stroke, and that we may do so the better, let us ask pardon for all the faults we may have committed against each other, and let each forgive, that so we may say the divine prayer, ‘Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us.’”
A solemn pause followed, during which there came a strange interruption, a sweet soft sound as of angels’ voices singing in harmony: not from the organ came that strange music, nor from any visible orchestra, but all felt it as it thrilled into their hearts. The venerable preacher was so moved that he sank down in tears, and for a long time could not resume his discourse, while all in the choir sat as if astonished, yet rejoicing in the token, as they believed it was, of God’s presence amongst them.
And the burden of the song seemed, “O rest in the Lord, wait patiently on Him.”
That sermon ended in broken words of faith, love, and hope—words of deep emotion never forgotten by any present—and then the Celebration proceeded, with its stores of rich comfort and celestial joy.[13]
The following day the Abbot left early in the morning for a small country house belonging to the Abbey about a mile-and-a-half away. This he did that the scandal of an open arrest, and a probable conflict, might be averted, for he felt that his people might not peacefully bear the spectacle of their venerated Father led away like a criminal.
But he made no concealment of his retreat, so when the Commissioners arrived, later in the morning, they had no difficulty in learning the place, and they followed him to the country house.
In an old oak-panelled apartment sat the once powerful Abbot, writing calmly a few parting directions, chiefly concerning the disposal of such personal property as might serve as mementoes to those who loved him, when they should see his face no more.