That I must utter when your time comes. Without a slip in the utterance. Such are my responsibilities.
The business with the deceased complete, I turned towards Mr Kistle who had gone.
And just then the moon again was lost and a great gloominess once more compassed me about as if I had been cast into the deep as Jonah in the midst of seas, for all thy billows and thy waves passed over me, O Lord.
And though I did shout none heard me in that infinite desolation, save the Lord.
For on climbing the declivity with slow and labouring steps, so feeble did I feel, that I might view round about to better vantage should the clouds once more rend themselves and light be let out, my hand did seize by chance the heel of a boot, as Jacob took his brother by the heel in the womb.
And when I looked up, lo, I did see my curate by moonlight again with arms outspread above me, vexed by the buffets and blasts of the storm upon that chalky top but stuck fast, as it were, to their exceeding cold as if upon a cross.
And after I had reached beside him and urged him in his ear to descend, he only cried out, through a numbed mouth, that which was at first hard to comprehend, but on the third repeat had blasted mine own ear more than the snow upon the whirlwind, and was the following:
‘I am set free from the burden of sin!’
And seeing that his cloak was more out behind him wildly than about him, and that beneath his cloak his shirt was loose, I made the latter fast with the utmost difficulty, my fingers being chilled to the bone, and wrapped my arms about him and might have brought him down but that we slipped and fell and in this tumble I placed my hand upon a small furze bush concealed beneath the snow and did give myself great hurt from the thorns thereon.
And Mr Kistle did remain upon his back in the snow, and did shout to me many things through the blasts. He did shout that the spirit of Christ was rising within me. That I must put off all worldly things and taste the sweetness of a humbled life and this mortification of the flesh that was sent by God to prove our inclinations and set the seed within us to leaf and blossom, and that the perfume of His ointment was all about us for we both dwelt under His canopy and were bathing in a river of unspeakable joy.
O my children.
Never was our miserable state of sinfulness and wretchedness more clear to me than on that chalky summit, bowed down beside my ranting giddy blasphemous curate whose stinking spewings forth I had not the strength of body to smother or e’en answer, my lips being quite helpless with the cold, that a burning firebrand might not have melted them.
Simon Kistle is no more, my children. But what you will be asking in your hearts is more to the matter than his end. It is the after-life that is the pith. Whether his gross and obnoxious Enthusiasm was intact at the moment of his passing, he being taken with all his infirmities and downright blasphemies ripe in the husk as it were but incorrigibly poisoned and rotten. What didst thou our minister do to save his soul to cling to he who was your pillar nay your companion in extremity?
List, my children.
The scuttling of mice in our poor thatch or the wind under the door or the squeaking of thy boots shall in that other life of happiness be transported into harmonious music the like of which we cannot imagine, save were we to come of a sudden out of a city’s huff and clamour and stink by chance into a vast nave filled with the loveliness of a choir dropping from the sweetness of their mouths such songs as might move our bowels and make us walk upon the high places. For the other life be perpetual music, my children.
And in these vain and jesting times we must tune ourselves to that which is harmonious and lovely for in Hell all is grating, and freakish, and loud with misery, like a knife upon a whetstone perpetually pressed betwixt the grindings of teeth in torment.
And now imagine how similarly vexatious to my ears was that blasphemy of my curate mingled with the fearful clamour of the storm. And fiercely in my soul did I desire to stop up the sluice from which his hope of salvation was already flooding, that he might though he be taken be raised into life everlasting, when the Last Day comes and the trumpet be blown.
So I rose and went to him still upon the summit of that desolate slope blasted by the storm and bent to him and with my left hand under his head I did plead with him to leave off his ramblings and this Enthusiasm that had come upon him so suddenly no doubt owing to the touch of this infamous place and to come down into the shelter of our Lord, into the lee of the Scriptures, to throw himself upon the mercy of the Lord and His Word. And I shouted to him those words of David in the Psalm:
‘Thou art he that tookest me out of the womb, thou madest me to hope when I was upon my mother’s breasts. I was cast upon thee from the womb, thou art my God from my mother’s belly. Be not far from me for trouble is near.’
And I also recalled to him the words that did begin my peroration this morning, my children:
‘When our heart fails God is the strength of our hearts and our portion for ever.’
He was shivering and his teeth chattering and his face and hands were exceeding cold, but he raised himself upon one elbow and shouted loud unto me:
‘You are mistaken. This blessed state has not come upon me suddenly, but has been growing within me for several months, since God led me to a certain book I saw in a window and took home, that was the Christian Epistle to Friends writ by George Whitehead. And Barclay and Fox I also read, and others, that persuaded me of my own state of ignorance and blindness and it was as if the sun had burst upon me and the scales fallen from my sight, and all that I had thought mad and foolish I saw might not be, but I was fearful of telling anyone though I found no satisfaction in my employment and in the shapes and shadows of religion, flaunting words that are so much dust to the lascivious people, who nevertheless doff their hats to the steeple and enter in to the ceremonies, but have never tasted the banquet that lies within themselves, but only stuff their mouths with the serpent’s food.’
I was much astonied to hear this Enthusiasm had been on him so long, and called tremblingly into his ear:
‘What am I, then, that feeds them this dust that is the serpent’s food, and has command of the steeple, or rather tower, under which they do doff their hats, Mr Kistle?’
And he made reply, with an obnoxious sigh, so that my ear grew exceeding hot, the following:
‘Thou art the fat and wanton smotherer of their souls, Mr Brazier.’
My children.
Snigger not.
For this Mr Brazier is the very same Reverend Crispin Brazier of His Majesty’s Church of England that doth stand before ye now, and hath command of this parish, and maintenance of all its souls, and is our Lord’s minister on this base earth. O wherefore lookest thou upon them that deal treacherously, and holdest thy tongue when the wicked devoureth the man that is more righteous man he? O what thick and palpable clouds have descended upon this our land, that our anointed guardians of the Faith must rail against the revelations of blockheads and the wisdom of creeping things, yet be mocked!
O Thou didst walk through the sea with thine horses.
O Thou didst slay the nations.
Give them, O Lord. What wilt Thou give? Give them a miscarrying womb. Give them dry breasts.
Woe.
List, list.
To touch the very marrow of the matter now.
I ask thee: is not that man that runs toward Death willingly more culpable than those poor Gadarene swine, for he does it in full knowledge of his trespass? We are weighed in the balance and are found wanting and if the grapes be not fine the wine-press cannot be trodden into sweetness. The Lord it is who decides when the tender grape shall be gathered, when the reaper shall bow with his hook and the ears of the barley fall. To cut ourselves untimely off is to wither on the vine, to foul the streams of Lebanon, to worm the apple and bring frost to the garden of our souls and the chafe of despair upon our necks, O my children.