V

The last of my advocates brought my hammered dulcimer and set it up and seated me before it. Then he mounted the pulpit and said, “He is reputed to be something of a musician, Your Honor.”

At the sight of my instrument my spirits rose unexpectedly. I picked up the hammers and with them lightly touched the silver strings. In the loft I saw O’ Carolan’s face brighten as he turned blind eyes toward the enchanting sound.

“The timpan!” he whispered with a smile. Then he took up his harp once more and began to play “O’ Carolan’s Concerto.” I was familiar with the tune, and began to play with him, strong and confident at first, as the combined sounds of the two instruments floated and flew around the length and breadth of the sanctuary and swept upward to the ceiling like two butterflies in bright flight. But halfway into the second section of the tune I lost my place. I could not keep up with the furious pace he set. I faltered, fumbled, and paused; then struck a series of blaringly wrong notes in a desperate attempt to save myself; then stopped dead. O’ Carolan stopped too, and turned a blank, bewildered face in my direction.

“Please, sir,” I said after an awkward silence, “that’s a tune I don’t know well. Can we try another?”

George MacDonald leaned forward in his seat. “‘The Flooers o’ the Forest!’” he eagerly suggested. “Can ye play ‘The Flooers o’ the Forest,’ laddie?”

“N-no, sir,” I stammered, much embarrassed. “I’m afraid I don’t know that one either. But I have been working awfully hard on ‘The Flowers of Edinburgh.’”

“Then play it, by all means!” the old Scotsman said enthusiastically.

So I lifted my hammers once again, and once again let them fall. But though I had practiced it untold times, this time I could not play ‘The Flowers of Edinburgh’ – no, not to save my life. My hands forgot what little skill they had. All the wrong notes rang out strong and clear. The few that were right struck dead as wood on wood. I laid the hammers down and looked up in time to see MacDonald bow his head in dismay.

* * * * * * * *

IV

With rumblings and rustlings and the shutting of many books, everyone sat down again; but I remained standing before the table and heard the judge’s voice spill down over me from above:

“Let the counsel for the defense come forward,” he said.

A few members of my family timidly approached the chancel. They had no formal representation. Instead, one by one they mounted the pulpit, which had been made to serve as the witness stand, and spoke a few words on my behalf.

One of them had brought along a wheelbarrow load of boxes – boxes full of my notebooks, papers, and manuscripts of every kind. Depositing these before the bench as evidence, he said, “Your Honor, this man is a scholar and teacher. He has led many Bible studies.”

A white-wigged, black-jacketed clerk at a desk to one side of the table took note of this, looking unimpressed.

Another of my defenders took a sheaf of papers from one of these boxes and laid it directly on the clerk’s desk.

“He also aspires to write,” he said.

The clerk raised his black, bushy eyebrows and frowned.   Then he instructed the bailiff to take the manuscripts to MacDonald and Bunyan in the choir loft. I saw with what eagerness and good will those two venerable authors received my writings; with what an honest display of hopefulness they opened them and examined their contents. But it was not long before they returned them to the bailiff with looks of bleak disappointment.

* * * * * * * *

III

We marched straight down the center aisle. The pews were filled, and every face in every pew turned slowly to regard my slow approach. I knew them all, and they knew me; but if ever my eyes met theirs, they suddenly dropped their gaze. It was an expression of shame – shame, not of themselves, but of me.

At last I stood before the chancel. On a lofty platform above me stood the Lord’s Table, draped in a cloth of purest linen that cascaded to my feet in glistening folds of white. So high and elevated was the table that I could not see over the top of it.

A golden-winged angel, robed in white, approached and blew a blast upon a silver trumpet. “All rise!” he cried, and the congregation thundered to its feet. A small door at one side of the chancel opened and a black-robed figure emerged. Such was my position in relation to his that I could not see his face, only his back as he entered. But even his back was terrifying, broad as northern wastes, broad and unfathomable as earth and sea and sky combined, black and deep as night. Over his back rolled the heavy scrolls of his long white wig, white as wool, rippling down like a mighty waterfall. He climbed some steps at the back of the great table and took his seat on a bench behind it.

In the choir loft sat the twelve jurors. They were drawn from among my friends, relations, neighbors, acquaintances, and mentors. Included in their number were Luther, MacDonald, Bunyan, and O’ Carolan, the blind Irish harper.

A bailiff, dressed in cloth-of-gold, came forward and addressed me:

“You have been brought here to stand trial,” he said. “This day the measure of your worth is to be determined.”

At this, O’ Carolan took up his harp. Hymnals were opened, and the congregation sang “Take my life and let it be consecrated, Lord, to Thee,” and “Who is on the Lord’s side? Who for Him will go?” Last of all they sang a hymn with words like these:

O Jesus, Thou art standing outside the fast-closed door,

In lowly patience waiting to pass the threshold o’er.

Shame on us, Christian brothers, His name and sign who bear,

O shame, thrice shame upon us, to keep Him standing there!

* * * * * * * *

II

At my question an ancient-looking man pushed his way to me through the crowd. His beard was of a shocking white in contrast with the nut-brown wrinkle of his face. His robe was of rough homespun, woven throughout and seamless. His eyes were blue and clear as the desert sky as he planted his staff upon the ground between us and spoke.

“This is a day of reckoning,” he croaked. “A day of darkness and not of light; a day of sorrow and not of rejoicing.”

Then, when he had produced chains and shackles from the voluminous folds of his mantle, I was swiftly bound hand and foot. Like an implacable and relentless shepherd he drove me with his staff at the head of that silent multitude, up a massively paved road that led straight from the quay to a city set upon a hill. All along that road, larger than life, stood marble statues of the apostles, saints, and martyrs: Peter, head-downward on the cross; Paul, bowing before the sword; Stephen, Antipas, and James the brother of John; Hus and Cranmer and George Eagles called Trudgeover-the-World. They all stood still and watched me pass, and regarded my going with troubled looks.

At the foot of the hill we began to climb a marble stair that rose by twelve flights of seven steps each to the level of the shining city above. The irons on my arms and legs chafed and cut me and grew heavier with each successive step. At the very top of the stair I saw, when I raised my eyes, a church of many spires and towers looming above me, dignified, forbidding, reverend.

At length we reached the top and stood within the twisted and fluted columns of the church’s portico. At last, a fresh breath of sea air reached me there and ruffled my hair and cooled my sweating head. Then the doors were swung open and I was led inside.

* * * * * * * *

I

It is said that one cannot dream one’s own death and wake to tell the tale. This is a matter of some concern to me, for if this rule holds true, then I am either dead or dreaming still. Be that as it may, for the time being I choose to live in the often desperate hope that there is in fact a third possibility: that in truth I have passed through the darkest part of the night and planted one foot on the shore of a newly dawning day.

My story begins like this:

When the night was darkest, then I slept. And in my sleep I dreamed a dream. And in my dream I looked, and the sea, dark and alive and flecked with foam, stretched out at my feet and away to a shadowy horizon. I stood in the bows of a little black boat that drove of its own accord through glassy black troughs and over frothy crests of waves.

The char-black sky paled to shades of blue, and as my boat pushed on, without my will or aid, jagged shapes of land rose up before these lighter hues. Dim along the water’s edge I saw, as the curling breakers thrust me to the shore, wharfs and quays of somber iron gray, like battle ships drawn up in warlike array. And all along these quays silent faces watched my approach with deliberate, solemn stares.

At last the boat scraped up against the barnacle-encrusted pilings. Firm and gentle hands reached down and pulled me up and set me on my feet upon the landing. I stood amazed, for every one of the hundreds of faces ranged about me was familiar in some degree. There were friends and family, neighbors and acquaintances, teachers and pastors, leaders and followers. Even the authors of the books that had most influenced me were there: Lewis and Luther, Bunyan and MacDonald, Chesterton and Calvin, Foxe and Blaise Pascal. They all stood so still, as if holding their breath, as if in anxious and silent agreement that I must be the first to speak.

“What day is this?” I blurted out, not knowing why …

* * * * *