For days Noll haunted the great aisles of the cathedral of Notre Dame—sat within the beautiful interiors of the old medieval churches of Paris—dreamed—brooded over the problem of the Refuge from Life—was thrilled with the thought that the lowly and the meek should inherit the earth....
Amidst the fragrant scent of the swinging incense, to the pathetic sob of the haunting chant, in the emotional atmosphere of prayer, the great pity for all created things welled in his heart and roused in him a passionate desire to be at grips with the cruelty of life.
The mystic rites, the emblems, the symbolism of every act of this splendid church—these things held the youth fascinated, drew him, called to him.
That a vague, all-seeing, all-creating, all-powerful God, sitting apart somewhere in the blue, had created the worlds out of His omnipotence, had designed this scheme of life that the religious condemned, had designed it from the beginning, and was carrying out phase by phase every detail of it, and was angry with much of the result of His own handiwork—all this was thoroughly atune with the pessimistic conception of things. All these brutalities, were they of God’s deliberate design? Well, there they were. If there had been design, then they were a part.
And this being so, the churches had done right to set aside the wrath of this Being, and, instead, to appeal to a redeemer—one who had put himself against the brutalities of this design—who had flung down his life to mitigate the brutalities. It was clear that the salvation from such life was thus to oppose that life—was to be found only in asceticism.
The big-browed scowling German had led the brooding youth into the great mysterious precincts of the medieval church, and left him there—it was his last word. And the youth, his ears ecstatically alert to catch the whispers in the reverberant gloom of its sonorous architecture, was overwhelmed with the majesty of the great denial that is the heart of this ancient church.
And everything in his temperament urged thereto.
Art moved him thitherwards—what he conceived to be art.
The Papist faith is that subtlest, most fascinating form of art for art’s sake—religion for religion’s sake. From the years it has taken boldly all symbolism that rouses the emotions of its own significance—from its pagan altars to the saying of prayers by rote. Whatever of outward pomp and majesty all other worship has known, whatever of mysticism and of craftsmanship and of artistry all other worship has known, this splendid church has taken into itself. It had seized the great pessimistic solace that is a passing refuge from life in the contemplation of works of art. And now, here, too, was a church built to its foundations on the rock of asceticism—on the bold denial of the majesty of life—on the pessimistic, final, and only refuge from the desire for that fulness of experience, from that life that its God had thrust upon it.
And it was so well-bred—everything in its place—everything foreseen. It had an air. The music was sonorous, significant, eloquent, mystic. The arts had given of their best. The pathos of the voices that chanted the sad litanies that condemned life filled him with a sense of the sorrow of the world. He lingered in this atmosphere until he was worn out—he came home late at night, weary and famished with his ecstatic fastings, and, having eaten the meanest food, he would seat himself by the lamp and pore over the mystic volumes. He steeped himself in the books of Saint Teresa and others to which he had heard reference made.