Hiram's Bible

Why is it that some memories insist on being told, even when the telling of them will do no one any good? I’ve kept this one so long, it will surely hold little interest to anyone now, yet it gives me no peace. Perhaps if I tell you, it will finally release its grip and I can let go.

The truth is, Hiram’s Bible will not let me be. I think it wants its secret told. And also, I think I owe it to Henry. Whenever it comes to mind, I think of Henry and I think I understand. The question is, will anybody else?

It might help if you could see Hiram’s Bible as Henry saw it, but that’s impossible. I can’t even describe it for you very well. It was just an old Bible. It showed its age. The leather, although scuffed at the edges, was thick and durable and made to last a millennium, I believe. It was large, bigger than a Family Bible. Hiram’s Bible was once the pulpit Bible at Holy Trinity Church. Many generations had seen the priest open it to read the scripture lesson for the day. It was too heavy to be lifted from the lectern, and so the people did without the ritual of reverencing the Gospel reading in their midst. Instead they faced the lectern. Father Anselm, the first priest to use Hiram’s Bible, assured them God understood.

I wonder now why they kept using it as long as they did. It disappeared for a time, somewhere in the 1880's and only reappeared when Henry began to use it. I confess I never really saw it up close, and I only heard its history later when Evelyn Archer told me what her father had told her. Canon Archer, in a moment of candor, said that the Bible had a bad reputation, or something like that.

“Haunted?” I asked her.

“He didn’t say that. Father would never have used such a word. I’m sure he could not imagine a haunted Bible.”

“Then what did he mean?” I persisted.

“I’m not sure.” she replied. “Apparently there was a rector way back in the history of Holy Trinity that had plunged the church into some sort of shamefulness, something so awful no one will talk about it now, and he had used that Bible exclusively. He would never preach from any other.”

“Was he Hiram?” I asked.

“I don’t think so. At least my father said he wasn’t.”

“Then where did the name come from?”

“No one knows. That’s just what it’s always been called. And when people speak of it, they seem to understand that it was cursed or something.”

“I see why your father didn’t like to speak of it that way.”

“I know. I don’t think he would have said anything to me if I hadn’t discovered it in an unused cabinet one day. I noticed it had notes jotted in the margins and I thought that was odd. You don’t expect people to write in a pulpit Bible.

“No, you don’t.” I agreed.

“So I asked my Father about it, and he seemed upset that I’d even seen it. He urged me to forget all about it. And I did. Until Henry started using it, that is.”

* * * * *

Henry was our new priest, and we liked him very much. He was nice and we wished him well in his first parish assignment. He had a winsome quality we enjoyed. He was like the kid you always meant to get to know better because he seemed nice, but somehow you never did. Such children usually have the gift of being at home with their solitude and make little demands on the people around them. When they do speak, it always surprises you. You are so used to their silence it doesn’t dawn on you they might actually have something to say.

That was Henry. Nice, pleasant, comfortable. However, that is hardly enough for a minister. After all, a chief part of his job is speaking up, and Henry’s first sermon at St. Timothy’s was not the most impressive we’d heard.. He got lost in his thoughts and left us trying to guess just what his next point might be. When he did find it, he didn’t seem to know what to do with it, nor did we. To put it plain, Henry was not a good preacher. If we could only have accepted that and been willing to enjoy him for what he was, maybe ...

And we did enjoy him. He was nice, and that meant pleasant and comfortable and kind-hearted and, above all, safe. We genuinely liked him and we told ourselves he was young, Holy Trinity was his first church, and we could always hope he’d get better.

Unfortunately, for many, being nice wasn’t enough. They expected something more from their priest, and in a word, they wanted a sermon they could follow and get something out of. Gerald Moorhouse was of the opinion that we should cut our loss and send him on his way. Most of us on the vestry thought that too harsh. After all, Henry had scarcely gotten unpacked and settled in. He was young, we were his first church assignment. He and his wife were about to have their first child. We couldn’t be that cruel.

Helen Porter thought perhaps a little coaching might help. She had been a speech teacher before she retired and offered to help him, and Henry had the good sense to accept the offer. But it wasn’t long before she realized that voice projection must first have content - something to project. There Henry seemed hopeless. The simplest of verses could so tangle his thoughts he couldn’t seem to come up with a coherent sentence. She told me once she’d given him an outline for a possible sermon on John 3:16. Henry thanked her and she looked forward to what he’d do with it. Weeks passed and no sermon appeared. When she finally asked him about it, he got red in the face and admitted he couldn’t think of anything more to say.

“The Spirit just didn’t speak to me” he confessed.

“But the Spirit can speak in many ways, Henry” she said, “my outline was a possible way for the Spirit to instruct your heart.”

“I know,” he replied, “but for some reason, my heart just couldn’t hear what you were trying to tell me. I’m sorry, I really am. But I’ll keep trying.”

He did too, and we kept hoping he’d improve. But he didn’t. Grumbling was heard in the congregation and the vestry was beginning to wonder if Gerald Moorhouse wasn’t right after all. Then the baby came and we all hated to do anything that might cause the new parents any further difficulties. We decided to wait a while longer. “It’s going to be a long wait!” Gerald predicted, and reluctantly we silently agreed.

Then he preached That Sermon.

* * * * *

We always spoke of it as That Sermon. Whenever anyone mentioned “that sermon” we knew exactly what they were talking about. No one had to explain. Henry had stepped up into the pulpit that morning, a look of worry mixed with determination struggling on his face. He read his scripture text - from Hebrews 12:1 - and announced that we were surrounded by a great cloud of witnesses. As familiar as it was, there was a note in his voice we had not heard in him before. He spoke slowly, as we were used to him doing, but instead of sounding uncertain, each word was weighted with a quality of intensity and persuasiveness that demanded that we listen to what his next sentence would be. His voice took on more strength, purpose, urgency, as he progressed. There was an earnestness in his delivery that demanded that we hear him out, as if to miss a single word could mean the very loss of our immortal souls. People strained in their seats to catch the import of his sentences, and no sound could be heard in the church other than Henry’s voice.

The sermon ended and we were spent. Normally I would have been looking at my watch to see how long he’d preached, finding not that many minutes had passed in what seemed like an eternity. This time we sat in silence, unwilling to get to our feet or disturb the stillness with our feeble singing. Even when the organist began the music, we hesitated, still hearing another sound more insistent, more demanding than a hymn could ever be. When we at last began to sing, the spell that had been woven by Henry’s sermon now seemed to animate our vocal chords as well and we made music like we’d never heard before. “Onward Christian Soldiers” we shouted with an assurance that that cloud of witnesses was just outside the doors, ready to march into our midst and lead us in an anthem of praise that would shake the very throne of God.

At first we wondered if this was a fluke, a lucky exception that Henry would be unable to repeat. When the new Henry preached the next Sunday we the hushed stillness vibrated with the intensity of our earnest prayer that he could repeat his performance of the week before. And he did. No, he did even more. We were stunned.

Gerald Moorhouse was the first to declare he’d been wrong about Henry, and went to everybody he could find to praise the preaching of our priest. “You must hear him. You’ve never heard preaching like this. Believe me. And I’m hard to please. Ask anybody and they’ll tell you. We’ve got a true preacher in our pulpit now. Don’t let him get away.”

Everyone seemed to agree, and life really got exciting at Holy Trinity.. People began to come to our church out of curiosity and stayed in awe. Word spread, and our pews grew crowded. A new PA system was set up so people who were unfortunate enough to arrive late could find seating in the Fellowship Hall and not miss a word he spoke. Soon it too was filled to overflowing. The vestry began to ask how we were going to accommodate these crowds. (There was no room to enlarge the sanctuary, and it was too soon to speculate about the cost of a new church.)

Henry’s fame grew. He was invited to preach in the Cathedral and the effects were equally electric. Before the year was out, Henry was known throughout the State and was even receiving calls from out of state. His wife confided to one of the women that it was getting hard to be a single parent with Henry being away so much..

“The baby hardly knows her father. She started to cry this morning when he picked her up.”

Betty Cooper, who never hesitated speaking her mind, told him he needed to spend more time with his family. “But don’t neglect your sermons either, Henry. You are feeding us the word of God, and we’re a hungry congregation.”

Yet something was bothering me. As much as we were enjoying this orator in our pulpit, no one seemed able to say exactly what we were hearing Henry preach. A topic might be announced from the pulpit, but each of us heard the text differently. While one was struck by his indictment of lazy Christians, another was comforted by his condemnation of hot-headed fanaticism for the Lord. Militants and pacifists both found validation in Henry’s messages, and though he never strayed over the line into political matters, Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians, Socialists, all came away from his sermons happy that at last we’d found a minister who was not afraid to give voice to the truth about our perilous times.

I noticed something else. There was a sense of, and here I grope for the right word, almost an absence, a vacancy, an emptiness about our preacher. As his voice grew stronger, more assured, his message more ringing, more mesmerizing in its power, he seemed to retreat inward. Where once he met us on the street, a man with warmth and compassion, now he might not even notice us, or if he did, his speech was perfunctory, almost dismissive. Before, for all his shortcomings, he had been alert, sensitive, attentive to our words, solicitous for our well-being. But no longer. Betty Cooper put it well when she said, “Well, we may have a great preacher now, but we’ve lost our pastor.”

That did not seem to bother most people at Holy Trinity. Many had always been a little impatient with Henry’s manners anyway. They preferred he keep his distance and not try try to get so close to us. For them, a minister was expected to stay in his place and only step into our homes and our lives when we invited him in.

But I wondered. I thought I saw the beginnings of a haunted look about Henry that never left him. I do not mean that in a literal sense, as if there were a real ghost dogging his every step. If there was a ghost in Henry’s life, it was the ghost of his true self, somehow struggling to return to him. He was a total success in his profession, but what was the price he was paying for that succes?.

I felt this so strongly, I decided I would speak to him about it; but as I tried to prepare myself for my well-intended visit, no speech seemed appropriate for the occasion. How does one approach one’s pastor and ask “What’s happened to you?” without sounding judgmental or at least prying? No words would come, and what few words of well-meant concern I did manage to utter, were so tentative and oblique they only provoked a puzzled look on Henry’s face.

Finally I said, “I’m really enjoying your sermons, Henry, we all are.”

Henry looked at me in the strangest way and then, nodding his head, he thanked me. But at the same time, he kept looking beyond me as if he was afraid my remarks might be overheard. I turned my head too, saying “Should I not have said that?” There was no one nearby and Henry shook his head dismissing my remark. “No, of course not. You’re too kind.” and hastily walked away.

But from that day on, something changed for me. I can’t say why. It was just that Henry’s sermons stopped reaching me in the way they once had. His eloquence continued, his passion was undiminished, but for me he was not there anymore. He might have beamed a hologram of himself into the pulpit to preach for him while he stayed somewhere else, some private place we knew nothing about, and the effect would have been the same.

After what finally happened, I’m ashamed to admit I stopped listening. My thoughts would drift off on flights of fancy during his homily, counting heads, contemplating stained glass images, or pondering thoughts of my own. My wife noticed my absent-mindedness and even suggested I stay home if I wasn’t going to be more attentive to the sermon.

“Come on Grace, are you paying any more attention than I am?”

“Of course I am. What do you mean?”

“I mean it’s not enough to just speak the words. St. Paul said ‘If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love ...” I paused. “And have not love!” Was that what I was feeling?

“Yes?” Grace prompted me. “Feeling unloved? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?” The irritation in her voice was hard to miss.

“No, of course not,” I snapped irritably. “No, there’s just something missing in Henry now. You know what Betty said. ‘We’ve lost our pastor.’”

“Betty Cooper is a complaining nag who wouldn’t be satisfied if Jesus Christ himself were preaching the Sermon on the Mount in our sanctuary.”

I was startled by the sharpness of her tone and was immediately sorry I’d said anything in the first place. I did not want to cause Henry or anybody else trouble.

“I know, I know.” I agreed, “It’s just that something’s different now. We’re getting a performance these day, rather than Henry, and I miss him.”

Grace stared at me with a blank look, as if she was wondering what on earth I was talking about. Then shrugging she said, “I think Henry’s lonely, that’s all. Probably has too much on his mind.” With that, she walked away, leaving me no wiser, but no less troubled. In fact, I felt worse.

* * * * *

One issue did come up at the vestry. We noticed Henry always read from old Hiram’s Bible and some were reminded of old rumors about its unsavory character. We asked Henry to put the old Bible away, but he flatly refused. When we asked him why, he simply said, “It inspires me: I need it.”

“Besides” he added with a self-deprecating laugh, “I need it’s large print. My eyesight you know.”

We were not convinced. There was nothing wrong with his eyes, and besides, even if there was, there were plenty of Pulpit Bibles available in a host of translations. When I pointed that out, he shrugged it off saying, “Why buy a new one when this one’s perfectly good?” Knowing that probably four-fifths of the congregation would agree I did not argue with him. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that the change in Henry had something to do with that Bible.

It was doing more than supplying Henry with an out-dated translation, it was as if the language of the sermon was taking on that old King James English too. Henry’s themes too often clung to another age and another day. Modern terminology was not completely banished from his lips, but more and more of “the good old days” was reflected in his style. One Sunday in particular I remarked to Grace “Henry Ward Beecher could have preached that sermon and scarcely changed a word.”

“If all you’re going to do is criticize Henry’s preaching, maybe you’d do just as well to stay home Sunday morning.” The obvious irritation in her voice had increased since our last conversation about Henry, and I could feel my own anger increasing. What was happening to us?

I looked around me at our church family and it dawned on me we had changed as a church too, and not all to the good. While we had continued to grow, more had moved on. We once knew one another very well. Now there were more strangers than friends in our pews.

Henry’s wife no longer came to church. She stayed home with the children. There were two now, and they took up most of her time. There was no open conflict in the church, but we seemed more on edge, more conscious of our differences than what we held in common. We were becoming strangers to each other, just as Henry seemed to be vanishing behind his preacher facade. We’d come a long way from that first Sunday with the young preacher who was so obviously uncomfortable trying to speak a word for God.

* * * * *

That last Sunday, as I settled back to listen - or to be more truthful, partly listen - to Henry’s sermon, I heard his familiar voice intone a passage from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians:

“I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some. And this I do for the gospel's sake,...”

He paused and looked up at us, as if he were seeing us again as he once had seen us, and it was he - not the performer - who looked out of his eyes.

“I am made all things to all men” he repeated, “all things”.

He looked back down at the Bible, touched the page as if he could feel the ink ridged upon the paper, and scanned the words again, shaking his head in wonder like a man coming out of a sleep.

Then, looking up, he scanned our faces, as he had scanned the words on the page, trying to read us. It was as if he were looking for his message in us. He hesitated and began to speak in the old voice, the warm, caring voice that conveyed a subliminal message, one about being unworthy to touch and handle holy things.

“I know I’ve read this before,” he said , “but the words look new to me this morning, just minted, the ink barely dry from the pen of Paul’s hand. I have some notes here that might help us find his meaning,” And he started to look down on the page. I wanted to jump up and shut Hiram’s Bible. I wanted to shout at him: “Don’t look at that Bible, Henry. Shut it up. It does not belong to you.” But I didn’t have the courage to do it.

I didn’t have to. Slowly, reluctantly, he closed it himself, looked up at us and said “I believe Paul became all things for all people for the sake of the gospel. But one thing he did not do is lose himself. Even his weak and sinful self ....” He paused, his eyes no longer looking at us, searching for some thought that would express what he was thinking, what he was feeling. His silence continued and we waited. Time slowed and we found ourselves unwilling to breathe, wanting to hear what he would say next.

After what seemed an eon, and Henry still had not spoken, Gerald Moorhouse got up and approached the pulpit to see if he was all right. (I’d have gone if Gerald hadn’t gone first.) Henry did not look at him, or speak. When Gerald stepped up to the pulpit, Henry finally noticed him and impatiently shook his head at him as if to rebuke him for the interruption.

“No, Gerald. Thank you. I don’t need you.” Then he turned to us and looked at us as if some urgent thought he must speak had just occurred to him.

“Do not lose yourselves, my friends, lest God not be able to find you.”

Then he picked up Hiram’s Bible, and started to carry it out of the pulpit.

No one quite agrees what happened next. Some say he stumbled and dropped the book. Others that he threw it down on the floor and then stumbled. Either way he could not save himself and fell on his knees. A gasp of horror went up in the congregation and Gerald hurried forward to try and help him.

Henry regained his balance, but leaned heavily on Gerald’s arm as they slowly walked out of the sanctuary with me following close behind. They went into Henry’s study and he sat down at his desk, his eyes still unfocused, almost as if he were blind. Gerald brought him a glass of water but he paid no attention to it. Doc Winters came into the study to see what was going on. He examined Henry and found nothing physically wrong. “A minor seizure, not serious” he assured us and accompanied Henry as they took him to the parsonage.

Henry never spoke again.

* * * * *

Many tests were done, many theories propounded. No satisfactory answer was forthcoming. They said it was some kind of nervous breakdown, but no one knew for sure. He did not respond to medications.

That’s been many years ago now. Other ministers have come and gone. None ever preached as Henry did.

We continued to speculate about what happened. Only Evelyn seemed convinced she knew.

“He was possessed. We were listening to sermons from the devil!”

She claimed her father had warned of such a thing.

“I knew it the first time I laid eyes on that old Bible. There were notes written all over its margins, spooky notes. I don’t know how Henry could even read them. God forgive him for doing it.”

She claimed her father believed the book was bewitched, but most people disagreed. Surely you couldn’t bewitch a Bible, for heaven’s sake.

“But you could bewitch a mind” Gerald Moorhouse pointed out grimly. “Henry knew he was hopeless in the pulpit. I’ll bet he’s been preaching out of those notes from the beginning, and his guilty conscience finally got the best of him. Poor guy.”

We didn’t want to believe it, but the theory made as much sense as any. Since Henry couldn’t - or wouldn’t - talk, the mystery remained.

There was one peculiar thing about it all. Even though we’d seen the Bible, seen Henry carry it out of the pulpit, no one could find it afterward. I assumed Evelyn had taken it. She seemed more familiar with its history than the rest of us. But she denied touching it. She said her father always warned her not to have anything to do with it.

When the Bishop heard of it, he shook his head and crossed himself.

“How on earth did he get hold of old Hiram’s Bible?” he said. “I thought we had disposed of that years ago.”

Some of us kept hoping Henry would come back some day. But I guess it was just not meant to be. He never appeared in our pulpit again.

Neither did Hiram’s Bible.