Christian life -- Fiction; Clergy -- England -- Fiction; Paranormal fiction; Short stories, English
Now in the Tabernacle I became aware that there was a mighty stirring
and movement. Something within it beat like a vast Heart, and the
vibrations of each pulse seemed to quiver through all the ground. Or you
may picture it as the movement of a clear deep pool when the basin that
contains it is jarred––it seemed like the movement of circular ripples
crossing and recrossing in swift thrills. Or you may think of it as that
faint movement of light and shade that may be seen in the heart of a
white-hot furnace. Or again you may picture it as sound––as the sound of
a high ship-mast with the rigging, in a steady wind; or the sound of
deep woods in a July noon.
The priest’s face was working, and his hands moved nervously.
“How hopeless it is,” he said, “to express all this! Remember that all
these pictures are not in the least what I perceived. They are only
grotesque paraphrases of a spiritual fact that was shown me.
“Now I was aware that there was something of the same activity in the
heart of the woman, but I did not know which was the controlling power.
I did not know whether the initiative sprang from the Tabernacle and
communicated itself to the nun’s will; or whether she, by bending
herself upon the Tabernacle, set in motion a huge dormant power. It
appeared to me possible that the solution lay in the fact that two wills
co-operated, each reacting upon the other. This, in a kind of way,
appears to me now true as regards the whole mystery of free-will and
prayer and grace.
“At any rate the union of these two represented itself to me, as I have
said, as forming a kind of engine that radiated an immense light or
sound or movement. And then I perceived something else too.
“I once fell asleep in one of those fast trains from the north, and did
not awake until we had reached the terminus. The last thing I had seen
before falling asleep had been the quiet darkening woods and fields
through which we were sliding, and it was a shock to awake in the bright
humming terminus and to drive through the crowded streets, under the
electric glare from the lamps and windows. Now I felt something of that
sort now. A moment ago I had fancied myself apart from movement and
activity in this quiet convent; but I seemed somehow to have stepped
into a centre of busy, rushing life. I can scarcely put the sensation
more clearly than that. I was aware that the atmosphere was charged with
energy; great powers seemed to be astir, and I to be close to the
whirling centre of it all.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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