Free Sidney Chambers and The Problem of Evil (The Grantchester Mysteries) by James Runcie Page B

the terror of absence; a chasm without love.’
    ‘And I am in that chasm.’
    ‘Then let me help you out of it.’
    ‘There is nothing you can do, Canon Chambers.’
    ‘You won’t even let me pray for you?’
    Patrick Harland stopped. ‘You would still do that? After all that I have done?’
    ‘I pray for everyone.’ Sidney knelt down. ‘Come. Kneel. You too, Miss Randall.’
    ‘What?’ Helena asked.
    ‘Please. Kneel down.’
    Helena did so.
    ‘Mr Harland, put your knife aside. Please. Kneel. Close your eyes.’
    It was not a request but an order.
    ‘Let us pray.’
    Sidney began the Lord’s Prayer, buying time, hoping for an act of God, anything to stop the evil that lay before them. The important thing, he had been taught, was to lead. This was no time for public doubt. He spoke clearly and loudly, already planning which of the familiar prayers he would say next, asking for mercy, hoping for understanding.
    A sparrow flew through the open windows of the hall. Harland looked up, surprised by the interruption, as Sidney kept praying. ‘When the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness that he hath committed, and doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall save his soul alive.’
    Then Simon Opie, revived by the words and rescued from death, began to pray from the cross. ‘Rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your God: for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth him of the evil.’
    Harland opened his eyes and looked back at the dying man, praying confidently in the hope of mercy, and began to weep.
    Sidney let the tears fall into the silence. Then he walked over to Harland, knelt down beside him, and held him in his arms. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘It’s over now.’
     
    A few days later, two couples spent a sunny Saturday together, lunching in the gardens of a local restaurant. Geordie was reflecting on Patrick Harland’s eventual arrest, Simon Opie’s miraculous recovery, and Helena Randall’s quick thinking. She was quite a girl, he continued, and Sidney had to agree, as Cathy and Hildegard smiled indulgently.
    On tackling his second pint, the Inspector then began to muse on the trouble caused by religion and asked how a loving God could allow such evil.
    ‘That is complicated,’ Sidney answered. ‘However, instead of trying to justify the ways of God to man we should perhaps think more of justifying man’s ways to God.’
    ‘That would take for ever.’
    ‘An eternity, I suppose.’
    ‘And so evil people like Harland will still be forgiven in the end?’ Keating asked.
    ‘Possibly,’ Sidney continued. ‘I’ve been reading a text from the early Middle Ages, the Vision of Saint Paul , which is an account of the apostle’s journey into the underworld. There he meets a man engulfed in the fires of purgatory. But the man is not in pain. Instead he is smiling. Why? Because he knows that three thousand years later one of his descendants will become a priest and, at his first Mass, that same priest will pray for him and release him from his suffering. St Paul realises that three thousand years in purgatory is nothing in comparison with eternity. The sinner has taught him the meaning of patience.’
    ‘I’m not sure I’d be prepared to spend three thousand years in pain. It would be simpler not to sin in the first place.’
    ‘That is rather the idea,’ Sidney assured his friend.
    Keating fetched them all more beer and wondered whether, as he put it, God could ever be happy. ‘He must be a miserable old bugger, really, when you think of the wickedness human beings get up to; all that sin.’
    ‘That may be true,’ Sidney replied. ‘If God is aware of the human condition then how can he be content? But perhaps we have to think about the divine presence in a different way; not as what he is, but what he is not. In other words, not human, and not liable to emotion. The concept of happiness perhaps has no