Where Love Begins (Where There is Love Book 1) Page 6

The next day, the service at Faversham met more severe resistance. The Society there had arranged for the preaching to take place at a little meetinghouse, but the vast numbers who thronged to the service quickly made it apparent that other accommodations would be necessary. They moved a small wooden table into a nearby field and Phillip mounted it to preach. He had no more than begun expounding to his hearers from his text, “Repent ye, and believe the Gospel,” when a young man rushed in, cursing and swearing vehemently. He so disturbed those around him, that they moved to make him go away. “No, Brothers. Let him stay if he will agree to be quiet,” Phillip said. The curses subsided to a mutter, and Phillip resumed preaching.

  “Repentance means an inward change, a change of mind from sin to holiness, but first we must know ourselves sinners, yea, guilty, helpless sinners…”

  “That’s no way to talk to respectable folk, Parson!” The shout came from a young man dressed as a gentleman but with oddly bulging pockets.

  At the sound of his voice another young man nearby cried, “Why, if it isn’t my old mate, Bradford White!” He threw out his arms and embraced his friend, bulging pockets and all. Even from where Catherine stood some distance away, the cracking sound was audible. And then the air was filled with the stench of the rotten eggs that had filled the miscreant’s pockets.

  The crowd drew back, coughing and choking at the pungent sulphur odor, women put handkerchiefs over their noses, and the young men, dripping a sticky, yellow trail, beat a hasty retreat.

  Phillip had no more than begun again on his topic when a mob of ruffians, perhaps inspired by tales of the ox turned upon the congregation in their neighboring town, rushed upon the crowd with a bull they had been baiting. They strove to drive him in among the people, but the beast continually dodged to one side and then the other.

  The drivers saw that their sticks and goads were not going to succeed with the beast, so in desperation they tied ropes around his neck and dragged him through the people. By this time the poor animal was tired and bloody from having been beaten and torn by dogs and men, and when his tormenters thrust him in front of Phillip, the greatest danger the bull represented was that of bloodying the preacher’s cassock. More than once Phillip put his hand out to thrust the poor creature’s head away so the blood would not drip on his clothes.

  But in the end, the ruffians almost won the day. They so pressed the bull against the small table Phillip was standing on that it began to rock dangerously. The bull moved away, but was driven again against the table. This time there was the sound of splintering wood and Phillip, going down with his table, fell toward the horns of the bull.

  Except for the quick thinking and strong arms of those around him who caught Phillip and bore him upon their shoulders, the day might have had a very different ending. When they saw the preacher born aloft, the defeated rabble trudged off, leading their bewildered bull behind them; Phillip found a small rise of ground where he could stand to finish his sermon.

  “—self-will, as well as pride, is a species of idolatry; and both are directly contrary to the love of God… Covetousness in every kind and degree, is certainly contrary to the love of God, as is the love of money, which is too frequently the root of all evil…

  “Beloved, we are to repent, turn from our wicked ways, and seek the Saviour who loves us, who takes us in our sinful state—sin as vile to Him as the stench of those rotten eggs was to us—and cleanses us, washes us free of all stench of sin, and makes our hearts whiter than snow.”

  Ned again led in singing and groups began praying all around the field that still bore spatters of rancid egg yolk and red drops of bull blood. And then yet another shout disrupted the prayers. This from the man who had interrupted the service with shouts and curses early on, but now his tone was far different. He declared that he had been a smuggler, and had his swag bag with him to prove his claim. “But I’ll never do that no more. I’m resolved to ’ave the Lord for my God.”

  Even the exhilaration of a victorious service in spite of such obstacles, however, wasn’t enough to sustain Catherine’s spirits when she saw the night’s lodging that had been provided for them by the poverty-stricken Society members. Her room was little better than a cellar. She had to go down three steps and duck her head through the doorway to enter. The initial sensation in the room was one of chill dampness, but after some time, she realized the major obstacle to comfort and sleep was the stuffiness of the cramped quarters. Throwing off her covers, she groped her way across the room to where she could see the dim light of the moon shining against the paper that covered the window. She tore the paper from one of the panes and took a deep gulp of the fresh, sweet air that blew in the opening.

  Back in her bed, huddled under her covers, a strange new thought came over Catherine. If the near drownings, stonings, and bull-tramplings, followed by fatigue, starvation, and discomfort of the past days were typical of the experiences of an itinerant preacher and his companions, she certainly did not envy the former Miss Sally Gwynne. With a flash of humor and amazement, Catherine found herself pitying the young woman who was newly wed to one of the most active circuit-riding preachers in the Methodist Society. As she drifted off to sleep in her cryptlike room, Catherine wondered if her bitter disappointment had, in truth, been a blessed deliverance.

  Eight

  IT RAINED DURING THE NIGHT, so on a washed and shining morning the little party set out on its last lap to Canterbury. Having accomplished one day of pillion riding without disaster, Catherine was now a little more at ease, and still smiling over the Society member whose parting admonition had been, “Don’t get carried off by no Frenchies!” She sat in silence behind Phillip as they rode through the bright green and gold morning.

  She thought about her companion’s silence—so still, so reticent, and yet, one felt at peace in his company even without having a sense of knowing him well. Perhaps it was because he was at peace with himself, if not with his circumstances, and being with him made one more at peace with oneself.

  After more time passed she asked, “Have you always wanted to preach?” Rather than an abrupt interruption in the quiet, her soft words matched the rhythm of Jezreel’s hoofbeat and seemed a fitting part of their journey to the great founding church of their faith.

  “I had not thought to preach until I came really to understand the basis of my faith while at Cambridge. But from earliest memories I loved the church. Other boys at the foundling school complained about the strict attendance at services required of them, and at Cambridge my fellow gownsmen universally sneered at and slept through the twice-daily chapel. But I felt differently.”

  A hesitation in his speech evidenced the difficulty the taciturn Phillip found in speaking of his feelings, and Catherine could only guess at all the words encompassed. Phillip had loved the church for more reasons than the spiritual—the peace and beauty there satisfied an aesthetic need deep within him which certainly nothing in the orphanage or his daily school life could fulfill. And something else—perhaps it was the sense of being near God—of belonging to Him, that met his undefined need.

  “The orphanage school was a good one?”

  “An excellent school—strict and proper. Then I attended Cambridge as a Sizar.” And again, it was necessary for his listener to embroider between the spoken words to picture the training in cleanliness and manners far beyond that most boys of his class would have received at home, and the well-grounded, if coldly formal religious training to which the young boy’s soul had responded with an unaccustomed warmth. Then at university, he had been able to call on his early training to find the discipline and humility required to fulfill his role as a servant to other students.

  “At Cambridge you found assurance of your faith?” She hoped he didn’t object to her prodding, but it did seem that without her encouragement the entire conversation would ebb into silence.

  He nodded. “Through reading the works of William Law. Long before that time, Law had been forced to leave Cambridge for refusin
g the Oath of Allegiance to George I. After I read his Serious Call to a Devout and Holy Life, I was privileged to call on him for counsel.”

  “As did the Wesley brothers, I believe.”

  “Yes, like so many others who read Law’s excellent book and were privileged to seek out its author, I found the assurance of my salvation.” He had found there a place of belonging for his soul. And yet, he continued with a few clipped words that gave the underlying message, having his heart set on a heavenly home only increased his feelings of not belonging here. And grasping the warmth and comfort of that hitherto foreign word home only increased his undefined longing for an earthly home.

  Catherine’s thoughts then focused on the scene before them, as the sound of pealing bells rang on the bright air, calling all who would to worship. Through the tree branches, past a field of new-sprouted grain, beyond the medieval stone wall and town buildings, rose the triumphant square towers of Canterbury Cathedral.

  As they rode along St. Peter’s Place, then turned up the High Street, the church grew before Catherine’s fascinated gaze, and she felt her excitement mounting. Here Christian worship had flourished since Roman times; here, on Whitsunday in the year 597, King Ethelbert of Kent was baptized by St. Augustine, an act symbolizing the first official acceptance of Christianity in the Anglo-Saxon realms; here St. Augustine himself became the first Archbishop; here was the Mother Church of English Christendom.

  And she was to attend Sunday morning worship on the spot where Christian worship had been offered continuously for 1,150 years.

  Arriving just in time for the morning prayer service, they tethered the horses by the southwest porch and entered the magnificent nave. Just as the builders of perpendicular architecture intended, Catherine’s gaze was drawn up, up, up, to the very heavens along with the prayers which were offered to the Glory of God daily in that sacred space. They took the seats the verger indicated and Catherine, catching her breath at the splendor around her, thought of the Old Testament account of how the people under Solomon’s direction had built the Temple of God. Here too at Canterbury had the workmen labored, as generation after generation of stonemasons, glassblowers, and woodcarvers plied their humble trades to express their faith.

  Throughout the service of metrical hymns, sung psalms, scripture reading and prayers, and even through the lengthy sermon, Catherine kept thinking that just as God had helped Solomon and all those in the Old and New Testaments to build and spread the faith, as He had helped the Christians of Medieval and Renaissance and Restoration England, so He would help those now striving to do His work. As she looked up the nave to the high altar and above to the ceiling with its pillars and arches spreading like a vast forest of trees with their branches entwined in prayer, her prayer included a special request that Phillip wouldn’t be forced to leave his historic faith in order to find a permanent place to minister.

  The minister in his cassock and academic hood pronounced the final prayer, “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, be with us all evermore.” Catherine joined in the general “Amen.”

  After the service, Ned and Phillip chose to climb the tower to the belfry and the view it offered of Canterbury and the surrounding countryside. But Catherine preferred to make her own pilgrimage to the apse behind the high altar. She went up the progressive series of stairs to the highest level in the Cathedral where for hundreds of years the shrine of St. Thomas had provided the focal point of the whole building. As she ascended each worn stone step, she took care to place her feet in the deepest of the hollows, stepping where centuries of devout travelers had worn the solid stone away with steps of devotion and penitence.

  She was thankful for a faith that didn’t rely for its assurance on such outward works, but she was also thankful for those faithful ones who were willing to do what they thought right. At the top she walked around the wide barren floor that had once supported Thomas a Becket’s tomb. It was moving, especially when she thought of the golden, gem-encrusted casket had been destroyed during the Reformation.

  Surely, Thomas, who was found to have worn a hair shirt under his robes, would have preferred this powerful symbolism of the empty space left by a man’s death. In a great cathedral of carved marble and jeweled stained glass, what could better express the vacancy left by the death of a man who gave his life for his faith than this expanse of smooth, bare stone?

  Thomas a Becket had built the cathedral with his death. His martyrdom had brought pilgrims from all over the world, and much of the splendor of architecture and decoration that enhanced the worship had come from the wealth brought by the pilgrims to the martyr’s tomb.

  But Catherine thanked God that, no matter how difficult matters seemed for Phillip and other Methodist ministers, Thomas’ sacrifice would not be required of them. They might be forced to preach in the fields, they might be forced to live a life of itinerant hardship, they might even be forced to sign the Act of Toleration and declare themselves dissenters. But at least there was an Act of Toleration. No longer were men put to death in England for their faith, as Becket had been, or the Lollards, or any whose faith happened to disagree with the King’s. Dear King George II might have his faults, but he didn’t behead those who disagreed with him.

  Along the wall Catherine saw statues of great men of history kneeling in prayer—priests and Bishops, as one would expect in a cathedral; but even more impressive, Catherine felt, were the generals, dukes, and ministers, the lords temporal who acknowledged their reliance on God as they made decisions and led armies that determined England’s destiny.

  Before leaving Trinity Chapel, Catherine paused at one more station, the tomb of Edward, the Black Prince. As she looked at the arms of war and arms of peace alternating around the tomb supporting his brass effigy—Plantagenet banners for war and quill feathers for peace—she thought of this excellent prince who more than any other exemplified the ideals of the chivalry of the Middle Ages. Ideals of service, of loyalty, of fearlessness in the cause of right, of integrity in word and deed, of courtesy and generosity, of consideration for those in distress or need. Beside his tomb, the Norman French inscription read, “Here lies that noble Prince, Mons Edward…. Thus the glory of this world passes away.”

  Catherine descended the stairs on the other side of the chapel, again feeling the swale in the stone made by both the great and the humble, in whose footsteps she walked. And she remembered a couplet John Wesley wrote, after visiting a famous castle that was purported to be the most ancient building in England,

  A little pomp, a little sway,

  A sunbeam in a winter’s day,

  Is all the great and mighty have

  Between the cradle and the grave!

  Catherine shook her head. It made one think. If that was all there was to the might of princes and kings, what could a teacher in a ragged school hope to accomplish?

  Catherine, Edward, and Phillip had just time to take a light refreshment before the service they were to hold for the Society John Wesley had founded and nurtured on his many visits to Canterbury. They left the city through the ancient Quenin Gate, and outside the wall were greeted by a large number of Society members who had gathered to accompany them up the hill to St. Martin’s Church.

  Before they could reach the church, however, a crowd of rabble gathered, like flies to a pot of honey, and followed the Society members up the hill through the grounds of St. Augustine’s ruined Abbey. The troublemakers showered cups of water over the marchers, and when that failed to dampen their spirits, they tossed lighted fireworks into the crowd. Fortunately, the water had sufficiently wetted the ladies’ skirts and caps and the men’s coats so that no serious fires were started. The procession did, however, move considerably faster than usual, to the accompaniment of explosions and shrieks.

  By the time they reached St. Martin’s church, the rabble had run out of weapons and for the most part lost interest in causing further disturbance. Undoubtedly the presence
of several hundred soldiers in the congregation helped to curtail further boisterous activities. Canterbury hosted a major army garrison, situated as it was in a strategic position to guard the English Channel in case of an invasion attempt by England’s ancient enemy, France. Indeed, since the recent French attempt to capture Minorca which, along with Gibraltar, gave England naval supremacy in the Mediterranean, Pitt’s government was almost neurotic about the fear of a French attack, and so of late the garrison numbers had been greatly increased. Wesley’s services had always been well attended by red-coated soldiers and many had been converted by his preaching.

  The lusty male voices added much to the singing as Edward led them in one of the hymns penned by Charles Wesley only a few years earlier, “Oh, for a heart to praise my God, a heart from sin set free….” Canterbury, the oldest parish church in England, was often called the cradle of English Christianity, because here the Christian Queen Bertha and her ladies had faithfully prayed for the conversion of this island every day for forty years until the coming of St. Augustine. Inside St. Martin’s church was the Saxon font where the newly converted King Ethelbert had been baptized by St. Augustine in the year 597.

  St. Martin’s was far too small to hold all their hearers, but the square Saxon tower of stone and Roman brick made a backdrop like a high altar canopy and the grave-covered hillside formed a natural amphitheatre, with the fir trees spreading their branches overhead like the finest Gothic arches. Birdsong accompanied the singing, as more worshipers and curiosity seekers made their way up the hill from town. Catherine turned around. From her vantage point at the top of the hill she could look over the heads of the congregation covering the hillside. She caught her breath as, through the trees, she glimpsed the towers of Canterbury Cathedral stalwart symbols of unbending faith reaching upward.

  In spite of their initial ill-mannered rowdiness, the listeners now entered wholeheartedly into the singing, and then gave rapt attention to Phillip’s preaching: “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives to all men generously and without reproaching, and it will be given him. But let him ask in faith with no doubting.” As Phillip turned from the words of Saint James to his own exhortation, Catherine thought of her own lack of wisdom and her own doubts. But instead of concentrating on the preacher’s words, she found herself focusing on the preacher himself. The long nose with skin drawn tight over the cheekbones, the deepset solemn eyes, the strong jawline and squared-off chin—his features spoke of might and durability as clearly as the ancient stones around him. The preacher stretched out an arm and a long, thin wrist bone extended beyond the white cuff of the shirtsleeve beneath his black cassock. Catherine found the gesture so eminently appealing that she forced her mind back to the words of Scripture Phillip was quoting: “I will instruct you and teach you the way you should go; I will counsel you with My eye upon you….”