Chapter: THE STRENGTH OF GOD

The Reverend Curtis Hartman was pastor of the
Presbyterian Church of Winesburg, and had been in that
position ten years. He was forty years old, and by his
nature very silent and reticent. To preach, standing in
the pulpit before the people, was always a hardship for
him and from Wednesday morning until Saturday evening
he thought of nothing but the two sermons that must be
preached on Sunday. Early on Sunday morning he went
into a little room called a study in the bell tower of
the church and prayed. In his prayers there was one
note that always predominated. "Give me strength and
courage for Thy work, O Lord!" he pleaded, kneeling on
the bare floor and bowing his head in the presence of
the task that lay before him.

The Reverend Hartman was a tall man with a brown beard.
His wife, a stout, nervous woman, was the daughter of a
manufacturer of underwear at Cleveland, Ohio. The
minister himself was rather a favorite in the town. The
elders of the church liked him because he was quiet and
unpretentious and Mrs. White, the banker's wife,
thought him scholarly and refined.

The Presbyterian Church held itself somewhat aloof from
the other churches of Winesburg. It was larger and more
imposing and its minister was better paid. He even had
a carriage of his own and on summer evenings sometimes
drove about town with his wife. Through Main Street and
up and down Buckeye Street he went, bowing gravely to
the people, while his wife, afire with secret pride,
looked at him out of the corners of her eyes and
worried lest the horse become frightened and run away.

For a good many years after he came to Winesburg things
went well with Curtis Hartman. He was not one to arouse
keen enthusiasm among the worshippers in his church but
on the other hand he made no enemies. In reality he was
much in earnest and sometimes suffered prolonged
periods of remorse because he could not go crying the
word of God in the highways and byways of the town. He
wondered if the flame of the spirit really burned in
him and dreamed of a day when a strong sweet new
current of power would come like a great wind into his
voice and his soul and the people would tremble before
the spirit of God made manifest in him. "I am a poor
stick and that will never really happen to me," he
mused dejectedly, and then a patient smile lit up his
features. "Oh well, I suppose I'm doing well enough,"
he added philosophically.

The room in the bell tower of the church, where on
Sunday mornings the minister prayed for an increase in
him of the power of God, had but one window. It was
long and narrow and swung outward on a hinge like a
door. On the window, made of little leaded panes, was a
design showing the Christ laying his hand upon the head
of a child. One Sunday morning in the summer as he sat
by his desk in the room with a large Bible opened
before him, and the sheets of his sermon scattered
about, the minister was shocked to see, in the upper
room of the house next door, a woman lying in her bed
and smoking a cigarette while she read a book. Curtis
Hartman went on tiptoe to the window and closed it
softly. He was horror stricken at the thought of a
woman smoking and trembled also to think that his eyes,
just raised from the pages of the book of God, had
looked upon the bare shoulders and white throat of a
woman. With his brain in a whirl he went down into the
pulpit and preached a long sermon without once thinking
of his gestures or his voice. The sermon attracted
unusual attention because of its power and clearness.
"I wonder if she is listening, if my voice is carrying
a message into her soul," he thought and began to hope
that on future Sunday mornings he might be able to say
words that would touch and awaken the woman apparently
far gone in secret sin.

The house next door to the Presbyterian Church, through
the windows of which the minister had seen the sight
that had so upset him, was occupied by two women. Aunt
Elizabeth Swift, a grey competent-looking widow with
money in the Winesburg National Bank, lived there with
her daughter Kate Swift, a school teacher. The school
teacher was thirty years old and had a neat
trim-looking figure. She had few friends and bore a
reputation of having a sharp tongue. When he began to
think about her, Curtis Hartman remembered that she had
been to Europe and had lived for two years in New York
City. "Perhaps after all her smoking means nothing," he
thought. He began to remember that when he was a
student in college and occasionally read novels, good
although somewhat worldly women, had smoked through the
pages of a book that had once fallen into his hands.
With a rush of new determination he worked on his
sermons all through the week and forgot, in his zeal to
reach the ears and the soul of this new listener, both
his embarrassment in the pulpit and the necessity of
prayer in the study on Sunday mornings.

Reverend Hartman's experience with women had been
somewhat limited. He was the son of a wagon maker from
Muncie, Indiana, and had worked his way through
college. The daughter of the underwear manufacturer had
boarded in a house where he lived during his school
days and he had married her after a formal and
prolonged courtship, carried on for the most part by
the girl herself. On his marriage day the underwear
manufacturer had given his daughter five thousand
dollars and he promised to leave her at least twice
that amount in his will. The minister had thought
himself fortunate in marriage and had never permitted
himself to think of other women. He did not want to
think of other women. What he wanted was to do the work
of God quietly and earnestly.

In the soul of the minister a struggle awoke. From
wanting to reach the ears of Kate Swift, and through
his sermons to delve into her soul, he began to want
also to look again at the figure lying white and quiet
in the bed. On a Sunday morning when he could not sleep
because of his thoughts he arose and went to walk in
the streets. When he had gone along Main Street almost
to the old Richmond place he stopped and picking up a
stone rushed off to the room in the bell tower. With
the stone he broke out a corner of the window and then
locked the door and sat down at the desk before the
open Bible to wait. When the shade of the window to
Kate Swift's room was raised he could see, through the
hole, directly into her bed, but she was not there. She
also had arisen and had gone for a walk and the hand
that raised the shade was the hand of Aunt Elizabeth
Swift.

The minister almost wept with joy at this deliverance
from the carnal desire to "peep" and went back to his
own house praising God. In an ill moment he forgot,
however, to stop the hole in the window. The piece of
glass broken out at the corner of the window just
nipped off the bare heel of the boy standing motionless
and looking with rapt eyes into the face of the Christ.

Curtis Hartman forgot his sermon on that Sunday
morning. He talked to his congregation and in his talk
said that it was a mistake for people to think of their
minister as a man set aside and intended by nature to
lead a blameless life. "Out of my own experience I know
that we, who are the ministers of God's word, are beset
by the same temptations that assail you," he declared.
"I have been tempted and have surrendered to
temptation. It is only the hand of God, placed beneath
my head, that has raised me up. As he has raised me so
also will he raise you. Do not despair. In your hour of
sin raise your eyes to the skies and you will be again
and again saved."

Resolutely the minister put the thoughts of the woman
in the bed out of his mind and began to be something
like a lover in the presence of his wife. One evening
when they drove out together he turned the horse out of
Buckeye Street and in the darkness on Gospel Hill,
above Waterworks Pond, put his arm about Sarah
Hartman's waist. When he had eaten breakfast in the
morning and was ready to retire to his study at the
back of his house he went around the table and kissed
his wife on the cheek. When thoughts of Kate Swift came
into his head, he smiled and raised his eyes to the
skies. "Intercede for me, Master," he muttered, "keep
me in the narrow path intent on Thy work."

And now began the real struggle in the soul of the
brown-bearded minister. By chance he discovered that
Kate Swift was in the habit of lying in her bed in the
evenings and reading a book. A lamp stood on a table by
the side of the bed and the light streamed down upon
her white shoulders and bare throat. On the evening
when he made the discovery the minister sat at the desk
in the dusty room from nine until after eleven and when
her light was put out stumbled out of the church to
spend two more hours walking and praying in the
streets. He did not want to kiss the shoulders and the
throat of Kate Swift and had not allowed his mind to
dwell on such thoughts. He did not know what he wanted.
"I am God's child and he must save me from myself," he
cried, in the darkness under the trees as he wandered
in the streets. By a tree he stood and looked at the
sky that was covered with hurrying clouds. He began to
talk to God intimately and closely. "Please, Father, do
not forget me. Give me power to go tomorrow and repair
the hole in the window. Lift my eyes again to the
skies. Stay with me, Thy servant, in his hour of need."

Up and down through the silent streets walked the
minister and for days and weeks his soul was troubled.
He could not understand the temptation that had come to
him nor could he fathom the reason for its coming. In a
way he began to blame God, saying to himself that he
had tried to keep his feet in the true path and had not
run about seeking sin. "Through my days as a young man
and all through my life here I have gone quietly about
my work," he declared. "Why now should I be tempted?
What have I done that this burden should be laid on
me?"

Three times during the early fall and winter of that
year Curtis Hartman crept out of his house to the room
in the bell tower to sit in the darkness looking at the
figure of Kate Swift lying in her bed and later went to
walk and pray in the streets. He could not understand
himself. For weeks he would go along scarcely thinking
of the school teacher and telling himself that he had
conquered the carnal desire to look at her body. And
then something would happen. As he sat in the study of
his own house, hard at work on a sermon, he would
become nervous and begin to walk up and down the room.
"I will go out into the streets," he told himself and
even as he let himself in at the church door he
persistently denied to himself the cause of his being
there. "I will not repair the hole in the window and I
will train myself to come here at night and sit in the
presence of this woman without raising my eyes. I will
not be defeated in this thing. The Lord has devised
this temptation as a test of my soul and I will grope
my way out of darkness into the light of
righteousness."

One night in January when it was bitter cold and snow
lay deep on the streets of Winesburg Curtis Hartman
paid his last visit to the room in the bell tower of
the church. It was past nine o'clock when he left his
own house and he set out so hurriedly that he forgot to
put on his overshoes. In Main Street no one was abroad
but Hop Higgins the night watchman and in the whole
town no one was awake but the watchman and young George
Willard, who sat in the office of the Winesburg Eagle
trying to write a story. Along the street to the church
went the minister, plowing through the drifts and
thinking that this time he would utterly give way to
sin. "I want to look at the woman and to think of
kissing her shoulders and I am going to let myself
think what I choose," he declared bitterly and tears
came into his eyes. He began to think that he would get
out of the ministry and try some other way of life. "I
shall go to some city and get into business," he
declared. "If my nature is such that I cannot resist
sin, I shall give myself over to sin. At least I shall
not be a hypocrite, preaching the word of God with my
mind thinking of the shoulders and neck of a woman who
does not belong to me."

It was cold in the room of the bell tower of the church
on that January night and almost as soon as he came
into the room Curtis Hartman knew that if he stayed he
would be ill. His feet were wet from tramping in the
snow and there was no fire. In the room in the house
next door Kate Swift had not yet appeared. With grim
determination the man sat down to wait. Sitting in the
chair and gripping the edge of the desk on which lay
the Bible he stared into the darkness thinking the
blackest thoughts of his life. He thought of his wife
and for the moment almost hated her. "She has always
been ashamed of passion and has cheated me," he
thought. "Man has a right to expect living passion and
beauty in a woman. He has no right to forget that he is
an animal and in me there is something that is Greek. I
will throw off the woman of my bosom and seek other
women. I will besiege this school teacher. I will fly
in the face of all men and if I am a creature of carnal
lusts I will live then for my lusts."

The distracted man trembled from head to foot, partly
from cold, partly from the struggle in which he was
engaged. Hours passed and a fever assailed his body.
His throat began to hurt and his teeth chattered. His
feet on the study floor felt like two cakes of ice.
Still he would not give up. "I will see this woman and
will think the thoughts I have never dared to think,"
he told himself, gripping the edge of the desk and
waiting.

Curtis Hartman came near dying from the effects of that
night of waiting in the church, and also he found in
the thing that happened what he took to be the way of
life for him. On other evenings when he had waited he
had not been able to see, through the little hole in
the glass, any part of the school teacher's room except
that occupied by her bed. In the darkness he had waited
until the woman suddenly appeared sitting in the bed in
her white nightrobe. When the light was turned up she
propped herself up among the pillows and read a book.
Sometimes she smoked one of the cigarettes. Only her
bare shoulders and throat were visible.

On the January night, after he had come near dying with
cold and after his mind had two or three times actually
slipped away into an odd land of fantasy so that he had
by an exercise of will power to force himself back into
consciousness, Kate Swift appeared. In the room next
door a lamp was lighted and the waiting man stared into
an empty bed. Then upon the bed before his eyes a naked
woman threw herself. Lying face downward she wept and
beat with her fists upon the pillow. With a final
outburst of weeping she half arose, and in the presence
of the man who had waited to look and not to think
thoughts the woman of sin began to pray. In the
lamplight her figure, slim and strong, looked like the
figure of the boy in the presence of the Christ on the
leaded window.

Curtis Hartman never remembered how he got out of the
church. With a cry he arose, dragging the heavy desk
along the floor. The Bible fell, making a great clatter
in the silence. When the light in the house next door
went out he stumbled down the stairway and into the
street. Along the street he went and ran in at the door
of the Winesburg Eagle. To George Willard, who was
tramping up and down in the office undergoing a
struggle of his own, he began to talk half
incoherently. "The ways of God are beyond human
understanding," he cried, running in quickly and
closing the door. He began to advance upon the young
man, his eyes glowing and his voice ringing with
fervor. "I have found the light," he cried. "After ten
years in this town, God has manifested himself to me in
the body of a woman." His voice dropped and he began to
whisper. "I did not understand," he said. "What I took
to be a trial of my soul was only a preparation for a
new and more beautiful fervor of the spirit. God has
appeared to me in the person of Kate Swift, the school
teacher, kneeling naked on a bed. Do you know Kate
Swift? Although she may not be aware of it, she is an
instrument of God, bearing the message of truth."

Reverend Curtis Hartman turned and ran out of the
office. At the door he stopped, and after looking up
and down the deserted street, turned again to George
Willard. "I am delivered. Have no fear." He held up a
bleeding fist for the young man to see. "I smashed the
glass of the window," he cried. "Now it will have to be
wholly replaced. The strength of God was in me and I
broke it with my fist."

 Though the Reverend Curtis Hartman is a pastor of the Presbyterian Church of Winesburg, it is a hardship for him to preach his sermons. He prays to the Lord to give him the strength to preach well. Reverend Curtis is liked by all, but he wonders when the flame of the spirit would really burn in him. One day, as he is reading the Bible, he sees through the opposite window, a woman lying on her bed, smoking a cigarette. He also notices her bare shoulders and white throat, and wild thoughts course through him. That day his speech is impassioned and strong. The Reverend undergoes the torture of trying in vain to subdue his thoughts, which runs towards the open window. Each day is a battle for him. He tries to keep himself away from the room, but it is in vain. He even thinks if throwing away his chosen career and let-himself be pulled into the vortex of lust and passion. One night, he sees the lady, who is Kate Swift, a teacher throwing herself naked on to her bed and weeping bitterly. Then she rises and begins to pray. For Curtis Hartman, this is the ultimate message he has received from god. He rushes out crying that he had found the light, and that God had manifested himself to him in the body of a woman. He fears no more for his soul and feels no more for his soul and feels that finally, he has been delivered.

