“My dear fellow,” said Lascelles, “I don’t see what you mean. All they want is the Gospel. And that I give them. I say Mass for them. I will hear their confessions. I instruct them. I lead their devotions. All beside is mere human embellishment. No doubt a more competent man would be more pleasing to them, but he could not do more than give them the Gospel, could he?”
On All Souls’ Day, 1912, Lascelles was depressed. Early that morning he had gone up to the cemetery, and said a Requiem in the little chapel. Then there had been the early Mass at 8.30 in church. The church had been full. Not only were all his children there, but there were a good many fathers and mothers: for the services on the day of the dead appealed to a deep human instinct with a power which not even Lascelles could spoil. The Dies Iræ, sung in Latin, had sounded oddly from a congregation so predominantly childish: and Lascelles had preached a short sermon on the “Significance of Death.”
“We exaggerate the importance of death. It is to us death matters, not to the dead. For them it is a release, for us it is a warning. Death of the body is only a symbol. It is death of the soul we must fear. Believe me, it would be worth while for every one of you in this church to die, if by dying, you could bring a soul to Jesus. God knows, I would die for you, if that would bring you. There are those here to-day—you, Penberthy, and you, Trevose—who have not been to Mass since you were boys. Make a new resolution to-day, and ask the Holy Souls to help you keep it. Come to your duties, and return to your church.”
Lascelles felt at the time that his appeal lacked force. He knew that after Mass, Penberthy would say to Trevose:
“Bootivul service, bean’t it, Tom?”
“Iss—it be that. I du like it for once or twice. But for usual give me the chapel. It be more nat’ral like.”
“Iss—it be. Poor Mr. Lascelles, I did think he would have a slap at us.”
“Iss—it be his way. My gosh! I don’t mind.”
So Lascelles was depressed. He sat among his books, reading a Renascence treatise on “Death.” He thought a great deal about death. Sometimes he feared it horribly. It seemed the great enemy of faith. It was so disconcerting a thing, so heartless, so unregarding. At other times he felt defiant. But never did he reach the spirit of S. Francis about death. He was too remote from natural life and the events of animal birth and death to understand death as an ordinary thing, something not less usual than the sunset.
“It may be”—he read, “that there be more deaths than one. For it is evident that some are so hardened in sin that the death of the body comes long after the man has been really dead. Such men are commonly gay and cheerful: for with the death of their soul, has died all godly fear, all apprehension of judgment, all hope of salvation. They become but as brutes. Wherefore the church has always held that heretics, if they be obstinate and beyond recall, may be handed over to the secular arm for the death of the body. It should not trouble us that they display ordinary human virtues: for these be common in the unregenerate, and are but devices of the devil who would persuade men that religion matters naught. They are his children, and may be lawfully treated as such by any godly prince. The church herself kills not: though the Lord Pope, being a Temporal King, has the power of the sword, and may exercise the same.”