“He was speaking of the last days of mankind — the time of the general resurrection. Do you believe we are living in these last days?”
Henry did not reply.
“Will you persist in excluding parishioners from your services?”
“I will do as the Holy Spirit commands, Your Lordship.”
“Might it occur to you, Mr Prince, that in the Church of England the Holy Spirit commands you through me, your Bishop?”
Henry said nothing.
“If you do not concur I must withdraw your licence to preach in English Episcopal Churches.”
“Your Lordship will do precisely what God allows you to do.”
“If that is all you have to say, you may leave.”
Henry bowed and left.
This interview and its outcome had been foreseen and had stimulated Julia’s practical intelligence. She said, “The advowson of Stoke is still in our family’s gift. My baronet uncle will appoint one of the Brethren in your place here also, no matter what Dr Allen wants, so the best of your followers in Stoke will not be lost to us. Who would you like to choose — O Belovéd forgive me! — Who would the Holy Spirit choose in your place here?”
“Lewis Price, I suppose.”
“That will make him very happy. Shall we now discuss the new situation with Sam, since he is similarly placed?”
Henry nodded agreement. He had come to believe a saying of Thomas à Kempis, that silence is usually wiser than speech.
Complaints to the Bishop of Bath and Wells had continued after Henry and Julia left Charlinch because Starky and his new curate, George Thomas, were ardent Princeites, as some of the Lampeter Brethren were now being called. Most people in the Church of England thought their appointed clergymen adequate, but Princeites believed Henry — at first or second-hand — was essential. His Charlinch followers flocked so closely around Starky and Thomas that the rest, feeling excluded, at last persuaded Bishop Law to withdraw Starky’s licence. Thomas lasted longer. His popular sermons so increased Prince’s Charlinch following that when the Bishop eventually expelled him too nearly half his congregation also left. They now worshipped God in a Princeite farmer’s barn renamed the Charlinch Free Church. Here Thomas and Starky conducted services while a curate from a neighbouring parish led Sunday services in the established Charlinch church. Starky retained the rectory, so here he and Henry and their wives conferred.
“Things are working out wonderfully well, Belovéd!” said Starky. “We who have left the Church of England for conscience’ sake must now be as many as the first few Christians who separated from the Jews. With your following in Stoke and elsewhere we may soon be as many as the Children of Israel who followed Moses into the wilderness!”
“We have not left the Church of England Brother Starky,” said Henry firmly, “The Church of England has left us, or some of us. Our faith is unchanged. I have told the Lampeter Brethren this by letter. It is an important distinction.”
“Most of the Brethren are still Anglicans,” said Julia, “We should not needlessly estrange them.”
“You are quite right — I stand rebuked,” said Starky happily.
“Another wonderful thing is the better class of people joining our free church — not just milkmaids, road-menders and inferior farming people but people with money and land and respectable professions. We have a civil engineer with the Bristol and Exeter Railway!”
“The men are mostly bachelors and the women spinsters or widows,” said Mrs Starky. “I sometimes feel quite strange, being one of the few married people.”
“The engineer is Brother William Cobbe,” said Starky, “His sister, Miss Frances Cobbe, is the well known writer on social problems. He is so devoted to us that he has drawn plans for our very own church building and will pay for the construction! A site has been found for it only two or three miles away by Brother Hotham Mayber, a lovely spot at Spaxton Bottom where he owns land.”
Henry said thoughtfully, “At Stoke there is also a wealthier class of people among my faithful.”
He was silent for a time. The rest waited patiently until The Spirit moved him to say, “I must meet Brothers Cobbe and Mayber at Spaxton. But it is time, Brother Sam, for us to spread the Word of God to fresh pastures in less rural places.”
Which happened. Henry and Julia moved to Brighton where he rented a hall to preach in; Sam and wife went to Weymouth and did the same.
These pleasant seaside resorts contained many who had retired from cities like London where their money had been made, and where polluted air and water reduced life expectancy, even among the rich. Most of the retired were no longer young and often worried about the health of their bodies and souls. Those who overcame the first shock of attending Princeite meetings (which diverged more and more from traditional Anglican services) found unusual comfort in them. At least once a week Starky joined Henry in Adullam Hall, Brighton, or Henry joined Starky in a Weymouth tavern where they rented a room. Instead of the usual sermon they stood side by side making short speeches, turn and turn about. Their passionate duet first said all mankind was living under a dreadful impending catastrophe, then offered listeners a mysterious escape route.
Prince might begin by saying sadly, “What a beautiful thing was the human body when it came fresh from the hand of the Maker! Even now it is a noble thing, though it is but a temple in ruins! But in Eden it was bright with the beautiful image of God; it bore on its noble front the name of Him who made it, and man was the honoured link between Spirit and matter, Earth linked to Heaven by his living soul, united to Earth by his living body. His eye, his ear, his taste, his touch, his smell, his skin, his every sense was conscious only of good. Because Adam was a creature of sense rather than thought. Eve also. Their senses were alive in God, giving them the bright sun and the heaven in its clearness, the flowers in their sweetness, the streams in their gentleness. All these were mediums by which their Maker ministered to them as flesh.”
Starky said, “Adam, Eve and we their children would be living in eternal happiness to this day, as God wished, but that subtle serpent Satan tempted them to doubt God, yes, doubt God who had told them they would die if they ate fruit giving knowledge of good and evil! For to know evil is to become evil. They doubted God’s word, ate that fruit, were ashamed of their nakedness, and thought to hide themselves from God’s eye. Yes, doubt and knowledge and thought brought us all to sin, shame and death. So at last God took another woman — a virgin in Nazareth, Judaea — and made in her flesh Jesus Christ through whom the souls of believers will be redeemed. But where does that leave our bodies?”
“Look on the human body now!” cried Prince, “Look at those shrivelled anatomies of once human men, women and children starved by the failure of the potato crops in Holland, Belgium and Ireland! But why look so far? London is now the largest, richest, most scientifically governed city in the world and capital of an empire ruling, in every continent, a full quarter of the world’s people. Yet poisonous sewage has turned the Thames into the foulest river on earth. On its banks great lords and senators sitting in the Westminster Palace can hardly stand the stink, yet know not how to cure it. At night gas candelabra light up every London lane, street and public building but what does that light reveal? Filthy and turbulent mobs!”
“Look into any hospital,” cried Starky, “Into any prison — workhouse — factory — sweatshop — gin palace — tenement — slum. Are not even the mansions of the wealthy repositories of misery and sin? Can you see among so many weak and unhealthy bodies, so many painful forms of torn humanity, the lines of beauty and the mark of God? What do you see in all this? Death reigns. Death reigns. Need it always reign?”