Old Men in Love

by Alasdair Gray

  Walking back to the rectory Starky said gloomily, “The service went well on the whole, but I am a poor preacher.”

  “You should not have used notes,” said Henry mildly.

  “I could not have spoken without them – I would have dried up.”

  “Spiritual dryness is a condition the Spirit recognizes. Such dryness invites the Spirit to water it. Preaching from notes shuts the Spirit out.”

  “You really think so?”

  “I really do.”

  “Henry may be right about that, Sam,” said Julia, “I think I see what he means.”

  “Please Henry,” Starky pled, “let me use notes again at the evening service – I would fear to enter the pulpit without that prop.”

  “You must do as you will, my dear brother Starky,” said Henry sadly. At the evening service Starky preached very haltingly, but the Tuesday evening study group was joined by a milkmaid, a road mender and a farmer who, with the three Starkys, trebled Henry’s audience and the fervour of its mood. The farmer was the one who had refused to threaten the stiff-necked labourer with dismissal. He said, “I was wrong not to do as you bid sir. I see I was wrong, but it’s too late now for me to do right. Brackley’s daughters are dead and gone to Hell I suppose. He is mainly to blame but I too am damnable, I suppose. I should have tried to make a way for you, and I did not.”

  “But you are contrite!. That is a blesséd thing, it means you are at last on the right path. You make me very happy,” said Henry, warmly shaking his hand.

  At the next Sunday morning service Starky announced the text for his sermon, stood chewing his lower lip for a while then said unhappily, “I confess to all here that I, Samuel Starky, am a sinner like yourselves, of the Earth, earthly. In this church you should hear nothing speak but God’s Holy Spirit. Alas, alas, Sam Starky’s words are not fit for your ears so I will now pray silently that the Holy Spirit descend and use my voice as its instrument. I know at least nine souls who will also pray for that, and I humbly beg the rest of you to pray for that also.” He clasped hands and closed eyes. Those in the rectory pew and six others in the church did the same. A majority looked at each other in perplexity and as minutes passed started whispering in voices that grew to a conversational hum. At last Starky opened his eyes and said brokenly, “The Holy Ghost has not accepted my petition. I will petition Him again at the evening service.”

  After removing their robes in the vestry Starky and Prince joined Mrs Starky and Julia and then went outside through a loudly gossiping throng, some puzzled, some amused. Most fell silent as the rector and his company emerged leaving the voice of an old man with his back to them declaiming, “Boy and man I have happily slept through a parcel of sermons so I don’t like this dumb parson who why is you nudgin’ me? . . . Ah.”

  On entering the rectory Starky said, “O please, Brother Henry, please conduct the evening service! I am not able, indeed I am not.”

  “Dear Brother Starky, I will not conduct the evening service because your inability to preach is more effective than anything I could say.”

  “Impossible!”

  “Not impossible – certain. Before you returned here my sermons were heard without unease and without murmuring. I spoke to them honestly, but The Spirit did not dictate my words as it does when I speak to willing ears. I should have publicly awaited The Spirit’s coming as you are doing, but now your silence in the pulpit is more effective than mine will ever be.” “And tonight, Sam, you may have better luck,” said Mrs Starky. “O no dear! Luck is a pagan deity!” said Julia, “We must continue to invoke God’s help through prayer.”

  She looked to Henry who rewarded her with a smile and nod.

  The evening service passed like the morning one, except that Starky’s distress was greater. But attendance at Prince’s Bible study group rose from nine (counting the Starkys) to seventeen, and nineteen attended the Friday prayer meeting. At the next Sunday service Starky, having announced the sermon’s text, sobbed aloud then begged concerned Christians to follow him across to the rectory and help him pray that he receive the power of the Holy Spirit. Over thirty of the congregation followed him there while Henry conducted the traditional service, minus sermon, to just before the final blessing, then paused and waited. Soon after Starky and his followers rejoined the congregation and Starky, in a stoical, monotonous voice, brought the service to the traditional end. “How brave you were dear,” said Mrs Starky as they returned to the rectory.

  “Heroic! That is the word,” said Julia.

  “The Lord chastens who He loveth,” said Henry calmly, “He is chastening you, Sam! Be assured, dear Brother Samuel, that The Spirit cannot desert one as humbled as you have become. It is biding its time, which must now be very, very near.”

  A miserable smile was Starky’s only reply.

  Next Sunday the congregation was swelled by an influx of curious visitors from neighbouring parishes. Some were dissenters who had heard that a Church of England rector was about to turn Methodist, Baptist or Quaker, others wanted to enjoy the antics of a mad parson. In the morning service Starky’s plea for the Holy Spirit to descend on him was a despairing yell answered from the back of the church by jeers, laughter and clapping, along with many indignant shushing sounds from elsewhere.

  “I cannot conduct another service, Brother Prince! You must do it for me at Evensong,” groaned Starky as they returned to the rectory, arm-in-arm with Henry on one side and his wife on the other.

  “You can. You will. I know you will.”

  “Hear hear, well said Brother Henry! We all know you will,” said his sister stoutly.

  “You’ll feel better after lunch, dear,” said his wife.

  The Evensong congregation was like the morning’s at first, apart from Starky’s conduct of the service being more lost and halting than ever. At sermon time he ascended the pulpit and stared out for almost half a minute, open-mouthed, wide-eyed and visibly sweating, then said with difficulty, “Belovéd . . . dearly belovéd brothers . . . and sisters . . . I will read the fourteenth verse of the fifth chapter of Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians. If the Lord is pleased to speak by me . . . then He will. If He will not I must hold my tongue because I will not, I cannot speak for myself.”

  He then read out quietly but clearly, “Awake, thou that sleepest; and arize from the dead; and Christ shall give thee light,” and with no change of voice said, “Wise men tell us that this world of ours is a great globe hurtling round the Sun, spinning like a huge cannonball as it goes yet holding on its surface oceans, mountains, cities, you, me, all of us. What a terrible thought!”

  After a brief pause he added urgently, “Why are we all not sick with dizziness? What stops the bodies of you, me, everybody on this planet being flung out by this whirling wheel of a world into boundless space? Scientific men say our bodies are held here by a force called gravity, a force pulling everything down toward the Earth’s centre, a centre where many imagine Hell to be. But Hell cannot be inside the Earth because the Earth is a mortal body that will die and pass away! When it does only Hell will remain here and it will be eternal. These bodies of ours also must and will die – as we all know – but they contain immortal souls that will not and cannot die, as most of you forget. O you poor, poor souls, think how frantically you will beg for death when death is no longer possible! When the last trump sounds, the sky rolls up like a scroll, the stars fall like ripe figs, the world vanishes yet ye are resurrected! Where will you stand when there is no ground to stand upon? I tell you, you will not stand, it will be impossible! Some of us, thank God, will be drawn up easily and gladly into the eternally happy companionship of Jesus Christ our Lord, in the Kingdom of Heaven for which he created you all, and into which he invites you all, and where all who gladly accept His loving invitation will certainly go. But the vast majority of you who are refusing that loving invitation will exist with no ground beneath your feet – exist in eternal torturing darkness, without light, without hope of light . . . without hop
e of anything, ever!

  “Not many of you have been in one of Her Majesty’s new improved prisons where the inmates break stones with heavy hammers, trudge for hours on end over treadmills, stagger with big iron cannonballs round a yard from one heap to another whenever a warder blows a whistle. In return they are allowed just enough food and sleep to keep them alive for the duration of their sentence. How like most people’s life on Earth that is! Has anyone here never been sickened by toil? And come to the end of the day’s drudgery feeling exactly where they were at the start? And wakened next morning to a life they must lift and go on carrying like an almost unbearable burden? Such are the lives in Queen Victoria’s new improved prisons, but he who protests against this punishing labour must endure worse. That man is taken down a dark tunnel through several thicknesses of wall and locked in a tiny cell without windows or light. Bread and water is passed to him through a tiny opening by someone he never sees. The silence here is so complete that only by muttering or yelling or scraping his heels on the floor may a man know he is not struck deaf, and he has no way of knowing he has not been struck blind. Five days of this punishment turns the strongest criminal into a gibbering lunatic, yet he has merely disobeyed a human, prison governor. How much more dreadful must be the imprisonment of we who disobey the governor of the universe! Awake, thou that sleepest; and arise from the dead; and Christ will give thee light! Do you not fear to disobey that call? Why will you not leave this earthly prison house by taking steps toward joining Christ in his Holy Kingdom? The punishment I described never lasts as long as a week! God’s spell of solitary confinement will never end. The punishment I described is mental, but on the last day to your souls all-horrible alone-ness will be added a resurrected, undying body of flesh whose every inch, inside and out, will be gripped and crushed by a scorching mass of unendurable – but eternally to be endured – agony.”

  This start of Starky’s sermon blended ideas he had heard from Henry with ideas from the notes he no longer used, but all were strongly combined and fluently uttered. The Spirit possessing him did not rave or shout, it spoke of Heaven solemnly yet joyfully, and spoke of Hell with such pity and distress that men hearing him dropped their heads upon their chests or gaped, amazed, at sobbing wives. Most women wept and one or two shrieked. Children clung to each other. Starky’s wife and sister and all who attended the evening prayer groups looked up to their rector with tears of joy while Henry, at the pulpit foot, smiled with calm satisfaction. A deep silence following the sermon was broken by a choirboy in the gallery suddenly guffawing until the bassoonist clouted his ear. Starky ended the service with a calm, firm authority he had never before shown.

  Rector and curate retired to the vestry and gazed at each other for a moment before disrobing.

  “You are now a mouthpiece of Almighty God, Brother Starky. Your trumpet blast is the opening of a new spiritual era.”

  “You were right, master! You were right! The Spirit at last descended,” said Starky happily.

  “You must not call me master, Brother Starky – only Christ is our master.”

  “Yes but – please forgive me! – brother places us on an equal footing. I am not, I cannot be on an equal footing with you. It would be falsehood for me to pretend to it my dear, dear master.”

  Henry brooded a little then smiled and said, “Call me Belovéd.” “O I will,” whispered Starky, “ I will.”

  A very happy group returned to the rectory through a crowd of awe-struck gazers.

  “Yes, we will all call you Belovéd, Brother Henry,” said Julia, “Won’t we dear?”

  Mrs Starky could only nod, being too happy to speak.

  From now on Starky conducted Sunday services without faltering. Those who had come from other parishes to mock him no longer came, some who had come out of mere curiosity remained to pray. His sermons never again caused such wild reactions as that first and most inspired one, but his congregation remained large, and interested with many who responded fervently to the services. On the following Sunday he announced that our Belovéd Brother Henry Prince had been directed by the Lord to say, that if any persons would send their children to the schoolroom later that evening, he would lecture to them. About fifty came. In a pamphlet published in 1842 – The CHARLINCH REVIVAL or, an Account of the Remarkable Work of Grace which has lately taken place in Somersetshire – Henry described what happened in the schoolroom:

  The words spoken were at first very solemn, but in a few minutes the Holy Ghost came on the minister with the most tremendous power, so that the word of the Lord was really like fire. About twenty of the children were pierced to the heart, and appeared to be in great distress, but the bigger boys still continued unmoved, and some of them even seemed disposed to laugh. In a short time however the word reached them, too, and they were smitten to the hearts with the most dreadful conviction of their sin and danger: it appeared as if the arrows of the Almighty had pierced their very reins. In about ten minutes the spectacle presented by their schoolroom was truly awful: out of fifty children present there were not as many as ten could stand upright: boys and girls, great and small together, were either leaning against the wall quite overcome by their feelings of distress, or bowed down with their faces hidden in their hands and sobbing in the severest agony. For some time after the minister ceased to pray, they continued where they were, not weeping, but literally deeply wailing. They expressed their desire henceforth to forsake their sins and pleasures, and seek the Lord.

  It would be impossible to express in words, the awful sense of God’s presence and power felt by those who were in the schoolroom on that occasion. Four or five obtuse ploughboys were sobbing as though they had the hearts of women. Three of those most deeply smitten were hardened reckless boys, whom the minister had been obliged long before to turn out of the school, after which they used to come to the church and sit opposite the minister, and make faces at him as he was preaching the most solemn and affecting truths. Often he looked from his pulpit on these boys where they were grinning at him, and said in his heart, “What can God bring these boys here for? Surely he cannot intend to convert them.” Now only one was altogether unaffected: this boy stood upright, with a vacant stare of stupid astonishment on his face, in the midst of the children who were weeping around him, as though God had permitted him to come there to contrast between one on whom the word did not take affect, and on those whom it did.

  Henry’s prayer meetings for adults in the rectory were often as passionate for he could be eloquent, with small, willing audiences.

  After a sermon in December that year Starky made a peculiar announcement: “Christmas is nearly upon us – a joyful yet solemn time for all true Christians mindful of our Saviour’s coming, and who are willing to receive him. Our Belovéd Brother Prince and I will conduct the Christmas Eve service with prayer, fasting, exhortation and psalms from six o’clock to midnight, and the Christmas Day service, along with Holy Communion, from nine in the morning till nine in the evening, or later, if the Spirit so wills. We realize this will not please a majority who regard the Christmas Holy-Days, alas alas alas!, as an opportunity to eat, drink and be merry, and the Yuletide services as pauses for digestion before again joining the revels. We do not wish those who view Christmas in that light way to attend our services. The time has come to make a separation between the concerned and the careless, the wheat and the chaff, sheep and goats. For three months God has been calling the faithful of this parish to him. A great many have answered that call and, though not yet converted, are struggling along the pathway to conversion. These will be heartily welcome. Our Christmas services can do the rest of you no possible good so please do not attend.”

  Before most of his hearers had grasped the sense of this announcement he resumed the words of the prayer book, praying that, “At Christ’s second coming to judge the world, all present will be found an acceptable people, in the sight of Him who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit, ever one God, world without end, Amen
. O God, our Father in Heaven; have mercy upon us miserable sinners.”

  Roughly half the congregation repeated the response to that while a few started whispering and buzzing. Speaking louder to overcome their noise he cried, “O God the Son, Redeemer of the world; have mercy upon us miserable sinners.”

  The buzz became a clamour as many protesters stood up, looked round and spoke to each other. Starky shouted, “O God the Holy Ghost . . .” before his voice was drowned by uproar. The concerned part of his congregation stayed kneeling and responding so loudly that their voices almost overcame the tumult of the rest and certainly greatly increased it.

  So in Charlinch Church in 1841 Christmas Day was celebrated exactly as the rector and his curate wished, and as Henry later described it: The whole body of believers spent this day in fasting and prayer. It was a blesséd day: twenty-six believers, unaccompanied by any of the unconverted, met at the Lord’s table, and truly, the Lord Himself was present with them. The King sat at His table, a soft and loving Spirit pervaded all the people, and the Spirit knit all their hearts together into one. Can anyone resist the conviction that this is God’s work? If it be not His, whose work is it?