Robert Hugh Benson was the son of an Archbishop of Canterbury, and raised quite a public commotion by his conversion to Catholicism in the late nineteenth century, and his eventual ordination to the priesthood. His works include a somewhat famous spiritual autobiography, Catholic apologetics, and a number of fictional works.
In terms of this particular work, it is comprised of a set of loosely linked short stories, tied together by the narrator of the stories, a young man living in London who goes into the country to visit an elderly priest friend of is living in retirement in an English country house. The narrator, is treated to many stories about the supernatural from his priestly friend. The stories are, roughly speaking, ghost stories, although it might be better to call them spiritual short stories. Several of the stories have a touch of the surreal and grotesque, but for the most part they veer more on the light side of the supernatural, especially the mystical and spiritual. This is actually very refreshing, and caught me quite by surprise. They are, in many ways, an inverse to dark horror stories and give a very sound and well thought out "light side" to the supernatural, which is not common in fiction. They are all characterized by a light and pleasant style. There is often a great deal of stylistic similarity, especially in turns of phrase, to the work of Chesterton, though I've no idea if there was any influence between the two beyond their being contemporaries.
The stories cover a range of experiences, from personal experiences of the elderly priest, to reports from his friends or colleagues. They comprise examinations of life after death, the activity of angels, the effects of prayer and the sacraments, and the departure of the soul. They are all generally uplifting and Christian spirituality interwoven into them in a way that is both clear, but not forceful. One of the earliest stories in the collection, for instance, gives a moving account of an even from the priest's boyhood in which he shoots out of sport and spite an unfortunate animal. He then sees in the bushes a being watching him, and overseeing his deed. He is moved to contrition at this strange visitation.
The stories are generally like this, and are focused on providing illustrations of spiritual principles. One story centers on the power of the Eucharist, as the old priest reflects on the moving experience he had in a Roman perpetual adoration chapel, in which he feels the movement of prayer from a nun who is quietly praying and the life and warmth which flow from the eucharist in return.1 Another is a beautiful Christmas story, in which a mentally retarded child, written off by his Calvinistic family as a damned soul, is visited by the Christ Child. The stories are very uplifting and a joy to read.
I would however say that, at least in this particular collection, there are multiple places where the writing is somewhat stale or slow moving. Much of the language is slightly stereotyped, and in a few moments of particular emotional intensity the author's prose verges on melodrama. This can be mildly off-putting in places, but overall the impression they left me with is a good one, and if anyone is looking for some light Christian reading with a touch of the supernatural and strange, I highly recommend this set of short stories.
1. Perpetual adoration of the Blessed Sacrament is a practice undertaken in many Roman Catholic monasteries, wherein the monks or nuns take it in shifts to sit in prayer before an exposed eucharistic host and adore the divinity there manifest. This is not a practice undertaken in the Orthodox Catholic Church, though we do confess the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist. Exposition of the Sacrament is not practiced in the Byzantine Rite, and is only rarely practiced in the Orthodox Roman Rite (the Western Rite). There is a reticence to exposing the Eucharist in Orthodox liturgical praxis out of respect for the holy, often communicated by veiling (e.g. the iconostasis hiding the altar, altar curtains, the cloths covering the holy gifts during entrances, etc.).
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