By What Authority?

by Robert Hugh Benson

But this was a very extraordinary experience to her; it gave her a first glimpse into the rigid discipline that the extreme Puritans wished to see enforced everywhere; and with it a sense of corporate responsibility that she had not appreciated before; the congregation meant something to her now; she was no longer alone with her Lord individually, but understood that she was part of a body with various functions, and that the care of her soul was not merely a personal matter for herself, but involved her minister and the officers of the Church as well. It astonished her to think that this process was carried out on every individual who lived in the town in preparation for the sacrament on the following Sunday.

Isabel, and indeed the whole household, spent the Friday and Saturday in rigid and severe preparation. No flesh food was eaten on either of the days; and all the members of the family were supposed to spend several hours in their own rooms in prayer and meditation. She did not find this difficult, as she was well practised in solitude and prayer, and she scarcely left her room all Saturday except for meals.

“O Lord,” Isabel repeated each morning and evening at her bedside during this week, “the blind dulness of our corrupt nature will not suffer us sufficiently to weigh these thy most ample benefits, yet, nevertheless, at the commandment of Jesus Christ our Lord, we present ourselves to this His table, which He hath left to be used in remembrance of His death until His coming again, to declare and witness before the world, that by Him alone we have received liberty and life; that by Him alone dost thou acknowledge us to be thy children and heirs; that by Him alone we have entrance to the throne of thy grace; that by Him alone we are possessed in our spiritual kingdom, to eat and drink at His table, with whom we have our conversation presently in heaven, and by whom our bodies shall be raised up again from the dust, and shall be placed with Him in that endless joy, which Thou, O Father of mercy, hast prepared for thine elect, before the foundation of the world was laid.”

And so she prepared herself for that tryst with her Beloved in a foreign land where all was strange and unfamiliar about her: yet He was hourly drawing nearer, and she cried to Him day by day in these words so redolent to her with associations of past communions, and of moments of great spiritual elevation. The very use of the prayer this week was like a breeze of flowers to one in a wilderness.

On the Saturday night she ceremoniously washed her feet as her father had taught her; and lay down happier than she had been for days past, for to-morrow would bring the Lover of her soul.

On the Sunday all the household was astir early at their prayers, and about half-past eight o’clock all, including the servants who had just returned from the five o’clock service, assembled in the dining-room; the noise of the feet of those returning from church had ceased on the pavement of the square outside, and all was quiet except for the solemn sound of the bells, as Dr. Carrington offered extempore prayer for all who were fulfilling the Lord’s ordinance on that day. And Isabel once more felt her heart yearn to a God who seemed Love after all.

St. Sepulchre’s was nearly full when they arrived. The mahogany table had been brought down from the eastern wall to beneath the cupola, and stood there with a large white cloth, descending almost to the ground on every side; and a row of silver vessels, flat plates and tall new Communion cups and flagons, shone upon it. Isabel buried her face in her hands, and tried to withdraw into the solitude of her own soul; but the noise of the feet coming and going, and the talking on all sides of her, were terribly distracting. Presently four ministers entered and Isabel was startled to see, as she raised her face at the sudden silence, that none of them wore the prescribed surplice; for she had not been accustomed to the views of the extreme Puritans to whom this was a remnant of Popery; an indifferent thing indeed in itself, as they so often maintained; but far from indifferent when it was imposed by authority. One entered the pulpit; the other three took their places at the Holy Table; and after a metrical Psalm sung in the Genevan fashion, the service began. At the proper place the minister in the pulpit delivered an hour’s sermon of the type to which Isabel was being now introduced for the first time; but bearing again and again on the point that the sacrament was a confession to the world of faith in Christ; it was in no sense a sacrificial act towards God, “as the Papists vainly taught”; this part of the sermon was spoiled, to Isabel’s ears at least, by a flood of disagreeable words poured out against the popish doctrine; and the end of the sermon consisted of a searching exhortation to those who contemplated sin, who bore malice, who were in any way holding aloof from God, “to cast themselves mightily upon the love of the Redeemer, bewailing their sinful lives, and purposing to amend them.” This act, wrought out in the silence of the soul even now would transfer the sinner from death unto life; and turn what threatened to be poison into a “lively and healthful food.” Then he turned to those who came prepared and repentant, hungering and thirsting after the Bread of Life and the Wine that the Lord had mingled; and congratulated them on their possession of grace, and on the rich access of sanctification that would be theirs by a faithful reception of this comfortable sacrament; and then in half a dozen concluding sentences he preached Christ, as “food to the hungry; a stream to the thirsty; a rest for the weary. It is He alone, our dear Redeemer, who openeth the Kingdom of Heaven, to which may He vouchsafe to bring us for His Name’s sake.”

Isabel was astonished to see that the preacher did not descend from the pulpit after the sermon, but that as soon as he had announced that the mayor would sit at the Town Hall with the ministers and churchwardens on the following Thursday to inquire into the cases of all who had not presented themselves for Communion, he turned and began to busy himself with the great Bible that lay on the cushion. The service went on, and the conducting of it was shared among the three ministers standing, one at the centre of the table which was placed endways, and the others at the two ends. As the Prayer of Consecration was begun, Isabel hid her face as she was accustomed to do, for she believed it to be the principal part of the service, and waited for the silence that in her experience generally followed the Amen. But a voice immediately began from the pulpit, and she looked up, startled and distracted.

“Then Jesus said unto them,” pealed out the preacher’s voice, “All ye shall be offended by me this night, for it is written, I will smite the shepherd and the sheep shall be scattered. But after I am risen, I will go into Galilee before you.”

Ah! why would not the man stop? Isabel did not want the past Saviour but the present now; not a dead record but a living experience; above all, not the minister but the great High Priest Himself.