London - Edward Rutherfurd [403]
Martha stared after him in astonishment. Then she frowned. Then she looked at Gideon. And saw that he was ghastly pale.
In the Puritan London of the Commonwealth, there were many sights to encourage and even inspire the faithful. But none, by the year 1653, could equal the famous preaching universally known as Meredith’s Last Sermon.
The years had at last caught up with Edmund Meredith. He was in his eighties now, and he had begun to look it. A sharp illness the previous year had left him so thin and gaunt that people meeting him gave an involuntary gasp, as though they were seeing a ghost. Edmund Meredith walked with death, and rose to the occasion.
His method was simple. As the rule of the saints had produced all the moral bigotry he had feared, and about which he had tried to forewarn Jane, it had also produced a religious confusion so great that even he could not be certain upon which bandwagon he should jump: Presbyterian, Quaker or some other free congregation? Who knew? So he had done the simplest thing of all. He had risen above them. His age only lent conviction to the performance. His language took flight; his gaunt face turned heavenward. The more inspired, the more soul-searing his sermons became, the more absolutely impossible it was to say quite where he stood. Nor did anyone care. Even the most severe and homespun Puritan women, dressed in black and with bonnets tightly tied, felt free to faint. Their husbands in their tall black hats would weep as Meredith’s spirit took wing.
For his last sermon Meredith would climb up the steps to the pulpit with such difficulty that, even before he started, the congregation was leaning forward anxiously. With his white hair hanging down to his shoulders – he had grown it long again now – and his hollowed eyes, the very sight of him produced an awed hush. His subject, always, was that of death.
There were many occasions for it: if the season was Lent, a meditation upon Christ’s death and resurrection; if Advent, upon the death of the heathen world and the birth of the Christian era. There was nothing in which the seed of death could not be discovered. And, since Sunday afternoon sermons were so greatly in vogue, upon any Sunday when he was in the dying mood, Meredith would refer to the traditional text of evensong:
“Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.” Gazing out over the congregation, he would stare towards the west window as though, at that very instant, he saw the host of angels coming for him, and cry out: “For mine eyes have seen thy salvation.”
He was ready. The congregation could see it. Ready and willing. Indeed, it was clear that he might actually go, at any second, before their eyes. That very possibility made his sermons wildly popular. He was constantly in demand. In the autumn of last year he had preached at St Bride’s, St Clement Danes, St Margaret’s, Westminster, even St Paul’s. Nor did he ever fail to add that dose of humiliation without which no Puritan sermon of the day would be complete. Looking earnestly down at them he would enquire: “And tell me, dearly beloved, if with me now, you were to depart . . . are you ready?” He would pause sadly then, accusingly, point his long finger. “Are you ready?” And a great groan would arise from the congregation. For they never were. Which would lead him straight to his electrifying conclusion as, raising up on his toes as if he verily meant to fly, raising his arms up, straining his gaunt face heavenwards in what must, surely, be his final, heroic convulsion, he would cry out in a tremendous voice: “Yet the time is now, even now, I see him coming with all his angels; He is upon us. He has us. He clutches my heart, and yours. He is here. Now. Now!”
At which, with a crash, he would fall back, before staggering down from the pulpit again and being supported to his seat by two helpers. Meredith’s last sermon was