The morrow dawned fine and cold. With Grandmother on my left hand and Aunt Jael on my right, I sallied forth down Bear Street, in full baptismal kit of faded black. What the few early risers we met on our way thought of me I do not know. Nor, I expect, did they.
Though he had relinquished the office of Baptist for several years, Pentecost Dodderidge decided to resume it for this one occasion. It was a supreme honour for me, a high compliment to Aunt Jael and Grandmother, and a real risk and sacrifice on his part: for he was in frail health, and nearing his eighty-fourth year. At the riverside we found him waiting, clad in the black surplice he had always used, his white beard flowing free. Around him the Saints stood clustered; every man and woman in the Meeting must have been there.
All there, whispered the Devil, to see you. You the child-Saint, you the youthful trophy of God's grace. There were other candidates, I knew, mere everyday grown-ups; but I was the "star turn," and I first should enter the water. The moment was very near: "Be ready," whispered Grandmother. My heart beat wildly. The air was sharp and a cold breeze was stirring. How much colder would the water not be! Cold dark water, suppose it should engulph me for ever? How blue the mocking labourer had been. But God would not treat me so: my heart was aching to receive Him. He would come to me, not cast my body to death. How all the Saints were staring. Vanity swelled again. I was the youngest who had ever been baptized in Taw (I heard it whispered near me), the youngest ever privileged to break bread! Were not all the people gazing on me, admiring my piety, specialness, distinction? Ah, publicity, glory! I would walk into the water in the view of all the multitude, like an empress on her way. "Crush that vile vanity!" the Better Me cried savagely: "Chase forth that paltry pride. Only to a clean and humble heart can the Lord of Heaven come. Quick, away with it!" Ere the voice had done speaking, all the pride had fled away. My heart stood empty, sure of its emptiness, hungering for the Holy Spirit, waiting with intense expectation and a hope almost too hard to bear.
"Come, Lord Jesus," I whispered.
Meanwhile around me they had sung a hymn and prayed a prayer; I hardly knew it. Pentecost took my hand. The moment was here: should I die of hope?—my heart was beating so. We waded out together in the cold stream. I must have been looking eastwards for I remember the bright morning sun was in my eyes. I can see again the green fields opposite. I remember too how frail and tiny I felt as Mr. Pentecost's hand held mine, and as he towered above me in the water.
A long way out we halted: I was up to my shoulder nearly, he to his middle. He grasped me, placing his right hand under my left armpit, and the palm of his left hand flat in the middle of my back. He looked to heaven, holding me still upright, and called in a loud voice: "I do baptize thee, my sister, in the name of the Father and of the Son and the Holy Ghost." On the last word he flung me backwards until for a moment I was wholly under the water.
Now the miracle took place. As I came up again the water streaming from my face was no longer cold, but warm and luminous; not water at all, but light itself. Light suffused me, covered me, poured into me, filled me; a blinding, lilting joy and brightness throbbed and shone through all my body and soul. I shut my eyes in sheer rapture; my ordinary senses faded away; sight and hearing were of another world from this beatific Presence. It seemed as though another person, luminous and divine, had entered into my body. It was God. I knew everything; and everything was well. I remembered all I had ever done, and far away things I had done in distant centuries in other lives I had not known until now. I seemed to remember the future too; for in that moment Time had no meaning; that moment was all Eternity. I understood, with a perfectness of comprehension beside which all my life before seemed darkness that there was no beginning and no end, no time and no space, nothing but God Who transcended them all, and who now possessed me utterly. I thought my heart would burst. The holy exaltation was too hard and beautiful to bear. All round and in me was light and love: the sun and God and I, all the same soul and body, all merged together, all within each other, all One. For that one glorious moment I was God.
A transcendent experience transcends all verbal description: even now I cannot think of it: only feel it, live it again. Nor can explanation impart its quality to others. It is my soul's own mystery, indescribable, incommunicable, in the most literal sense ineffable. I rail at words that they can do so little, then at my own folly that I should seek to describe in finite language the Infinite Mystery of God.
The ecstasy lasted perhaps, in the world's time, a minute: though, in reality, for ever. Then I remember, as I woke to finite experience, a gradual ebbing sensation as the Holy Spirit departed from me. The warmth and radiance faded; the streaming fluid of light was dripping water only. I was conscious of Pentecost again, clasping my hand and leading me ashore. I heard the voices of the Saints raised aloft in a song of triumphal thanks. Then—Grandmother's welcoming arms, benignant Saints, the White House, garment-changing, loud Salvation, dear warm breakfast; all part of a waking dream.
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