Then St. Friend, the Giver of Bread, at our urging, reads on and on. The volume tells, for instance, how Heaven became a jungle within the lifetime of an ordinary man. The book contains a sermon, which our saint reads to us, on: “Your great great grandson’s neighbors.” It is a volume no more consecutive than the Koran. Each dream is written down once for all as it came to the tranced soul of St. Scribe, as he bent over the page, with his terrible pen in his hand.
With endless reiteration the book denounces the diabolical works of the Singaporian sect and their conspiring against world peace. It pronounces a blessing on the predestined victorious armies of the World Government and prophecies the triumph of their splendid flag.
Moreover, St. Friend reads, not only many of these things, but the sermon on “The Rhythm of the Heart,” and the homily upon “The Good and Evil of Beauty.” He reads the exhortation for “The Young Musician who has not learned to Pray,” and the one for “The Young Politician who has not learned to Pray,” and like discourses for many other occupations.
And then Avanel and I take turns reading on and on to him through the specific directions for the founding of the schools of the Young Prophets, and the discourse on the horror of the angels at all the World Wars, and the tale of how the angels went out to redeem the stars from war by surrendering themselves to crucifixion on millions of crosses on millions of suns and stars and planets, and thus within the lifetime of the generation now on earth, Heaven was left a jungle. This is followed by an exhortation to make Springfield a city “worthy of the blood of the crucified poured down upon it.”
But its powers are not directly in its interminable discourses. Always it seems to be a person, not a book, and so, on this afternoon.
April 10, 2025:—Again it is a goodly afternoon, and we are still hopeful for these precocious buds. As we sit in the sun in the Washington Park Pavilion, Saint Friend, the Giver of Bread, tells us of the visions that came seven years ago.
“I remember the Halloween of 2018, and the next few days, as no other period in my life. I was in the Cathedral all the night, praying before the Image of St. Scribe of the Shrines. And toward morning it took on the appearance of breathing human flesh, but was Hunter Kelly of long ago, in the hunter’s cap and deerskin dress, such as he wore when he came to Illinois two centuries ago.”
And so Hunter Kelly, St. Scribe of the Shrines, made me forget all else, telling me stories of the tomorrow of Illinois and giving clear prophecies of the tomorrow of the Cathedral, in the city and the nation and the world. He spoke of saints of the pattern of Abraham Lincoln, and Johnny Appleseed, foreordained to live and breathe beneath our Cathedral roof, before the ever living presence on the altar. Then he gave me the joy of confession, and seemed to be St. Scribe, the master of my youth. Then all was darkness and sleep.
“In the early morning I woke from my trance and found myself lying on the floor of the Cathedral. The Image of Hunter Kelly-St. Scribe was gone from the niche.
“In the late morning, when I found myself reading his Golden Book to the people, it seemed as though I had known its every word for infinite years.