Alasdair Gray - Old Men in Love

“O Brother Prince! O my dear, dear Brother Henry!” cried Rees, starting to weep.

“ Are we brothers?” murmured Henry.

“Yes! Brothers in God from the moment we first confessed and prayed together in your room at St David’s College, Lampeter, brothers-in-law since I married your sister!”

Henry said absently, “I regret that. There is still enough fleshly inclination in my heart to regret that you are no longer, in truth, my brother.”

He closed his eyes and kept them shut until Rees and Deck left the room.

“Brother Prince — for I insist on still calling you so — ” said Deck, “This letter lies when it says the meeting ended with everyone present unanimously voting you to be the Redeemer foretold in the Bible.”

“That letter tells a truth you did not see, and cannot see because you are blind.”

“But it stands to reason! —”

“I am not reasonable, Deck,” Henry interrupted smoothly, “If I fell so low as to reason with you I would become the old, selfish, fleshly Henry Prince you once knew. I would have to agree with you. But that Henry Prince is dead. I am now as a little child who says only what The Spirit wishes. Sometimes I hardly understand what it says through me, but I know it is eternal damnation not to believe it.”

Deck stood up saying, “Rees, we had better leave,” but Rees begged, “Let me try once more! Henry, on our way here yesterday we stopped in Brighton where I questioned some who have heard you preach. .”

“You were spying, in fact,” said Julia.

“I was enquiring. One said you and Starky claimed to be the two witnesses of Revelations , another that you call yourselves the Prophet Elijah and the Holy Ghost made flesh. Is this true?”

Henry said, “I am not permitted to reply”.

“We do not say we did, neither do we say we did not,” Starky explained.

“O my poor Brother Henry!” sobbed Rees, standing up, “You were the best of us at Lampeter — the purest, bravest and most truly humble. O what has turned you into such a dreadful , such a silly creature?”

At this impiety Julia and Starky stared aghast at Henry. One of his eyes may have flickered open and shut, otherwise he did not move for two or three seconds then whispered, “Get thee behind me, Rees. Get thee behind me, Deck.”

Julia stood up saying coldly, “I will show you out, Mister Rees, Mister Deck. Our Belovéd carries many heavy burdens. You have failed to add another.”

Shortly after returning to his family in Sunderland Arthur Rees received a letter with a south coast postmark, addressed to him in an unfamiliar hand. As was then common the envelope was fastened with a circular blob of sealing wax, but remarkably big, and black instead of the usual red. He broke the seal and took out two sheets of thick, good-quality paper called mourning card, because printed with a black border for people sending news of a death or funeral. The first card had these words written large in the unknown hand:

JUDAS!

Guide to them that took

THE HOLY ONE

Go to thine own place!

The second said:

Let his days be few!

Let another take his Office.

Let his children be fatherless

and his wife a widow.

Let their names be blotted out.

Below the last sentence a row of names was made illegible by ink blots, so Rees could not see if they were names of him and his wife and children, or of him and other Lampeter Brethren who doubted Henry’s divinity. Rees groaned, knelt on the carpet and begged God to cure Henry of a blasphemous delusion.

Henry called the faithful to a second meeting in the Weymouth Royal Hotel, a meeting so important that Lampeter Brethren who had not shown themselves unbelievers were ordered to come. Julia visited Swansea and explained the urgency of Henry’s summons to the Princeite clergy there, but Rees and Deck’s influence was such that only one of them attended beside Henry and Starky, Thomas and Price.

The platform at this meeting had an easy chair at the back with two upright chairs nearer the front, one on each side. Henry sat in the centre with the absent look he now always wore when not speaking; Starky sat to his left, Thomas to the right. They began the meeting by standing together with Henry behind them.

“Dearly belovéd brothers and sisters in God,” said Thomas, “you are about to hear a sermon, but not an ordinary sermon from an ordinary preacher.”

“We are sent to you from the courts of Heaven,” said Starky, “From the bosom of eternity, to proclaim the second coming of Our Lord.”

“His coming is nigh!” said Thomas.

“Very nigh!” said Starky.

“Very nigh indeed!” said Thomas, and together they cried, “Behold He cometh!”, and moved apart, sitting down again as Henry stepped forward.

And quietly asked, “Who am I who stand before you? I am Brother Prince. Who is Brother Prince? Is Brother Prince. . God? Only very foolish or very wicked people can ask such a question. I’m a man like yourselves, a vessel of clay. But God, for his own purpose, has emptied out this vessel and filled it with mercy: mercy for all who will drink of it. Look well upon me! In me you behold the love of Christ for fallen humanity.

“I am here to speak of the redemption of the body, by which I mean, its deliverance from the power of Satan, who is the author of all evil, whether it is sin in the soul, or disease and death in the body. All evil, I say, including headache, stomach ache and toothache. Jesus Christ came to destroy Satan in the soul of man, but his blesséd Gospel made no provision for the flesh, which is God’s greatest enemy. But you are flesh! You are of the earth, earthy! Behold, He is coming to judge the Earth! Believe me, the bridegroom already stands outside the door! O, how will you bear it when you behold Him?”

Suddenly he cried aloud, “I will tell you — You will not bear it! You will burn, like chaff, in the fire of his unending love, which you will feel as eternal torture if you now reject His mercy!” He paused for a moment then said, quietly again, “But do not the Scriptures say we shall be changed, those of us who are alive and await the coming of the Lord? Behold , declares Isaiah, the prophet, Behold , I create new Heavens!

“That prophesy is being fulfilled. The day of judgement has come. God is creating the new Heaven through me : Brother Prince. Be glad therefore, and join me in that which I create, for behold, I build the New Jerusalem, rejoicing! At Spaxton in Somerset an Abode is arising, an Abode where those of you who leave their houses, wives, husbands, parents, children and lands for My sake will enter and live for ever in the Pure Enjoyment of the Love of Angels! But do not tarry. God still sits in his Mercy Seat, but not even I — a Branch of the Tree of Life whose fruit I bear for you — not even I know how soon He will leave it, consigning to eternal darkness all who linger outside the gates. When the world is burning into ashes, and the sky is melting in the fervent heat, what use then will be your flocks and herds? Rank and state? Property and capital? Shares, dividends and financial securities? Do you hope to ride on horses to the throne of grace? Or drive in carriages to the judgement seat? Sell what thou hast is the Divine Injunction to the called. Will you stand on the edge of doom and dispute the Words of God? Or will you, at the end of the Christian era, do as did all who answered Christ’s call at the start of it? — Join with those who, believing in Him, entered the Peace of God and His heavenly kingdom by giving up to Him everything they had?”