FullReads

“There is none. William Hughes-Jones is the first of them that has prayed. Are not the builders making a chamber for the accounts of their disobedience?”

Immediately God thundered: the earth trembled and the stars shivered and fled from their courses and struck against one another; and God stood on the brim of the universe and stretched out a hand and a portion of a star fell into it, and that is the portion which He hurled into the garden of Hughes-Jones’s house. On a sudden the revels ceased: the bread of the feast was stone and the tea water, and the songs of the angels were hushed, and the strings of the harps and viols were withered, and the hammers were dough, and the mountains sank into Hell, and behold Satan in the pulpit which was an iron cage.

The Prophets hurried into the Judgment Hall with questions, and lo God was in a cloud, and He spoke out of the cloud.

“I am angry,” He said, “that Welsh Nonconformists have not heard my name. Who are the Welsh Nonconformists?” The Prophets were silent, and God mourned: “My Word is the earth and I peopled the earth with my spittle; and I appointed my Prophets to watch over my people, and the watchers slept and my children strayed.”

Thus too said the Lord: “That hour I devour my children who have forsaken me, that hour I shall devour my Prophets.”

“May be there is one righteous among us?” said Moses.

“You have all erred.”

“May be there is one righteous among the Nonconformists,” said Moses; “will the just God destroy him?”

“The one righteous is humbled, and I have warned him to keep my commandments.”

“The sown seed brought forth a prayer,” Moses pleaded; “will not the just God wait for the harvest?”

“My Lord is just,” Paul announced. “They who gather wickedness shall not escape the judgment, nor shall the blind instructor be held blameless.”

Moreover Paul said: “The Welsh Nonconformists have been informed of you as is proved by the man who confessed his transgressions. It is a good thing for me that I am not of the Prophets.”

“I’ll be your comfort, Paul,” the Prophets murmured, “that you have done this to our hurt.” Abasing themselves, they tore their mantles and howled; and God, piteous of their howlings, was constrained to say: “Bring me the prayers of these people and I will forget your remissness.”

The Prophets ran hither and thither, wailing: “Woe. Woe. Woe.”

Sore that they behaved with such scant respect, Paul herded them into the Council Room. “Is it seemly,” he rebuked them, “that the Prophets of God act like madmen?”

“Our lot is awful,” said they.

“The lot of the backslider is justifiably awful,” was Paul’s rejoinder. “You have prophesied too diligently of your own glory.”

“You are learned in the Law, Paul,” said Moses. “Make us waywise.”

“Send abroad a messenger to preach damnation to sinners,” answered Paul. “For Heaven,” added he, “is the knowledge of Hell.”

So it came to pass. From the hem of Heaven’s Highway an angel flew into Wales; and the angel, having judged by his sight and his hearing, returned to the Council Room and testified to the godliness of the Welsh Nonconformists. “As difficult for me,” he vowed, “to write the feathers of my wings as the sum of their daily prayers.”

“None has reached the Record Office,” said Paul.

“They are always engaged in this bright business,” the angel declared, “and praising the Lord. And the number of the people is many and Heaven will need be enlarged for their coming.”

“Of a surety they pray?” asked Paul.

“Of a surety. And as they pray they quake terribly.”

“The Romans prayed hardly,” said Paul. “But they prayed to other gods.”

“Wherever you stand on their land,” asserted the angel, “you see a temple.”

“I exceedingly fear,” Paul remarked, “that another Lord has dominion over them.”

The Prophets were alarmed, and they sent a company of angels over the earth and a company under the earth; and the angels came back; one company said: “We searched the swampy marges and saw neither a god nor a heaven nor any prayer,” and the other company said: “We probed the lofty emptiness and we did not touch a god or a heaven or any prayer.”