“Do I hear you protesting? Do I hear some of you saying to yourselves, ‘No one can be that good. I’m human. I can’t be perfect.’ You’re right! Of course, you’re right. But the Law of God doesn’t care for your excuses. If you’re lame, if you’ve got arthritis, if you’re going blind or your heart is failing, if you’re crippled, if you’ve got multiple sclerosis or diabetes or any other of those fancy names for sin, you can be sure that the curse of God is on you. But if you’re healthy, don’t think you’re safe! You’re just lucky that God hasn’t decided to ‘walk contrary to you in fury.’ You can’t be perfect, my friends. And the Law doesn’t care how hard you tried. Instead of telling yourself what a valiant try you made, listen to the Bible. The Old Covenant says to you as plain as day, ‘The leper who has the disease shall wear torn clothes and let the hair of his head hang loose, and he shall cover his upper lip and cry, “Unclean, unclean.”
He held his audience in the palm of his hand now. The orotund resonance of his voice swept them all together in one ranked assembly of mortality and weakness. Even Covenant forgot himself, forgot that he was an intruder in this canvas tabernacle; he heard so many personal echoes and gleams in the peroration that he could not resist it. He was willing to believe that he was accursed.
“Ah, my friends,” Dr. Johnson went on smoothly, “it’s a dark day for us when illness strikes, when pain or dismemberment or bereavement afflict us, and we can no longer pretend we’re clean. But I haven’t told you about the Gospel yet. Do you remember Christ saying, ‘He who loses his life for my sake shall find it’? Did you hear Paul say, ‘When we are judged by the Lord, we are chastened so that we may not be condemned along with the world’? Did you hear the writer of the Apocalypse say, ‘He who conquers shall have this heritage, and I will be his God and he shall be my son’? There’s another side, my friends. The law is only half of God’s holy message. The other half is chastening, heritage, forgiveness, healing-the Mercy that matches God’s Righteousness. Do I have to remind you that the Son of God healed everyone who asked Him? Even lepers? Do I have to remind you that He hung on a cross erected in the midst of misery and shame to pay the price of our sin for us? Do I have to remind you that the nails tore His hands and feet? That the spear pierced His side? That He was dead for three days? Dead and in hell?
”My friends, He did it for only one reason. He did it to pay for all our cowardly, unbelieving, unclean sabbaths, so that we could be healed. And all you have to do to get healed is to believe it, and accept it, and love Him for it. All you have to do is say with the man whose child was dying, ‘I believe; help my unbelief!’ Five little words, my friends. When they come from the heart, they’re enough to pay for the whole Kingdom of Righteousness.”
As if on cue, Matthew Logan stood up and began singing in soft descant, “Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine.” Against this background, Dr. Johnson folded his hands and said, “My friends, pray with me.”
At once, every head in the audience dropped. Covenant, too, bowed. But the wound on his forehead burned extravagantly in that position. He looked up again as Dr. Johnson said, “Close your eyes, my friends. Shut out your neighbours, your children, your parents, your mate. Shut out every distraction. Look inward, my friends. Look deep inside yourselves, and see the sickness there. Hear the voice of God saying, Thou art weighed in the balance, and found wanting.’ Pray with me in your hearts.
“Dear holy Jesus, Thou art our only hope. Only Thy Divine Mercy can heal the disease which riddles our courage, rots the fiber of our faith, dirties us in Thy sight. Only Thou canst touch the sickness which destroys peace, and cure it. We lay bare our hearts to Thee, Lord. Help us to find the courage for those five difficult, difficult words, ‘I believe; help my unbelief!’ Dear Lord, please give us the courage to be healed.”
Without a break, he raised his arms over the audience and continued, ‘ ‘Do you feel His spirit, my friends? Do you feel it in your hearts? Do you feel the finger of His Righteousness probing the sick spot in your soul and body? If you do, come forward now, and let me pray for health with you.”
He bowed his head in silent supplication while he waited for the repentant to heed his call. But Covenant was already on his way down the aisle. The usher made a furtive movement to stop him, then backed off as several members of the audience looked up. Covenant stalked feverishly the length of the tent, climbed the rough wooden steps to the platform, and stopped facing Dr. Johnson. His eyes glistered as he said in a raw whisper, “Help me.”
The man was shorter than he had appeared to be from the audience. His black suit was shiny, and his shirt soiled from long use. He had not shaved recently; stiff, grizzled whiskers roughened his jowls and cheeks. His face wore an uncertain aspect-almost an expression of alarm-as Covenant confronted him, but he quickly masked it with blandness, and said in a tone of easy sonority, “Help you, son? Only God can help you. But I will joyfully add my prayers to the cry of any contrite heart.” He placed a hand firmly on Covenant’s shoulder. “Kneel, son, and pray with me. Let’s ask the Lord for help together.”
Covenant wanted to kneel, wanted to submit to the commanding spell of Dr. Johnson’s hand and voice. But his knees were locked with urgency and inanition. The pain in his forehead flamed like acid gnawing at his brain. He felt that if he bent at all he would collapse completely. “Help me,” he whispered again. “I can’t stand it.”
Dr. Johnson’s face became stern at Covenant’s resistance. “Are you repentant, son?” he asked gravely. “Have you found the sick spot of sin in your soul? Do you truly ache for Almighty God’s Divine Mercy?”
“I am sick,” Covenant responded as if he were answering a litany. “I have committed crimes.”
“And do you repent? Can you say those five difficult words with all the honest pain of your heart?”
Covenant’s jaw locked involuntarily. Through clenched teeth, he said as if he were whimpering, “Help my unbelief.”
“Son, that’s not enough. You know that’s not enough.” Dr. Johnson’s sternness changed to righteous judgment. “Do not dare to mock God. He will cast you out forever. Do you believe? Do you believe in God’s own health?”
“I do”- Covenant struggled to move his jaw, but his teeth clung together as if they had been fused by despair- “I do not believe.”
Behind him, Matthew Logan stopped singing his descant. The abrupt silence echoed in Covenant’s ears like ridicule. Abjectly, he breathed, “I’m a leper.”
He could tell by the curious, expectant faces in the first rows of the audience that the people had not heard him, did not recognize him. He was not surprised; he felt that he had been altered past all recognition by his delusions. And even in his long-past days of health he had never been associated with the more religious townspeople. But Dr. Johnson heard. His eyes bulged dangerously in their sockets, and he spoke so softly that his words barely reached Covenant. “I don’t know who put you up to this but you won’t get away with it.”
With hardly a pause, he began speaking for the people in the tent again. “Poor man, you’re delirious. That cut is infected, and it’s given you a bad fever.” His public voice was redolent with sympathy. “I grieve for you, son. But it will take a great power of prayer to clear your mind so that the voice of God can reach you. Brother Logan, would you take this poor sick man aside and pray with him? If God blesses your efforts to lift his fever, he may yet come to repentance.”
Matthew Logan’s massive hands closed like clamps on Covenant’s biceps. The fingers ground into him as if they meant to crush his bones. He found himself propelled forward, almost carried down the steps and along the aisle. Behind him, Dr. Johnson was saying, “My friends, will you pray with me for this poor suffering soul? Will you sing and pray for his healing with me?”
In a covered whisper, Matthew Logan said near Covenant’s ear, “We haven’t taken the offering yet. If you do anything else to interrupt, I’ll break both your arms.”
“Don’t touch me!” Covenant snarled. The big man’s treatment tapped a resource of rage which had been damned in him for a long time. He tried to struggle against Logan’s grasp. “Get your hands off me.”
Then they reached the end of the aisle and ducked under the canvas out into the night. With an effortless heave, Brother Logan threw Covenant from him. Covenant stumbled and fell on the bare dirt of the parade ground. When he looked up, the big man was standing with fists on hips like a dark colossus between him and the light of the tent.
Covenant climbed painfully to his feet, pulled what little dignity he could find about his shoulders, and moved away.
As he shambled into the darkness, he heard the people singing, “Blessed Assurance.” And a moment later, a pathetic childish voice cried, “Lord, I’m lame! Please heal me!”
Covenant dropped to his knees and retched dryly. Some time passed before he could get up again and flee the cruel song.
He went homeward along the main road, defying the townspeople to hurt him further. But all the businesses were closed, and the street was deserted. He walked like a flicker of darkness under the pale yellow streetlamps, past the high, belittling giant-heads on the columns of the courthouse-made his way unmolested out the end of
