He received this request with the most generous sympathy, saying that he
would give them a private celebration, and one morning, soon after dawn,
the guild met in this church to make its first communion. No one else
was present.
Miss Royden has told me that it was an unforgettable experience. Here
was a man, she said, who has no reputation as a great scholar, and no
popularity as an orator; he is loved simply for his devotion to Christ
and his sympathy with the sorrows of mankind. Yet that man, as no other
man had done before, brought the Presence of God into the hearts of that
little kneeling guild. It was as if, Miss Royden tells me, God was there
at the altar, shining upon them and blessing them. Never before had she
been more certain of God as a Person.
It is from experiences of this nature that she draws fresh power to make
men and women believe that the Christian religion is a true philosophy
of reality, and a true science of healing. She is, I mean, a mystic. But
she differs from a mystic like Dean Inge in this, that she is a mystic
impelled by human sympathy to use her mysticism as her sole evangel.
CANON E.W. BARNES
BARNES, Rev. ERNEST WILLIAM, M.A., Sc.D., F.R.S., F.R.A.S.; Canon
of Westminster since 1918; b. 1 April, 1874; e.s. of John Starkie
Barnes; m. 1916, Adelaide Caroline Theresa, o.d. of Sir Adolphus W.
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