The late Scottish novelist A.J. Cronin (1896 to 1981) began life as a physician and, fresh out of medical school, took up an assignment in a small South Wales mining town. He was an atheist at the time but would eventually undergo a conversion to Catholicism. His novels included, The Keys to the Kingdom.
Among the formative experiences leading him to God were those times among the “grave, dark and silent people” in that mining town. They were isolated among bleak hills but were deeply religious. He wrote that their faith manifested itself in every aspect of their simple lives, but most especially during a moment of crisis.
Cronin writes:
Never shall I forget that occasion when, at the colliery, a heavy explosion of black damp gas entombed fourteen miners. For five days the men remained buried, while the village prayed. Than, as the rescuers hacked their way underground, they heard faintly, from deep in the collapsed workings, the strains of singing. It was the hymn Our God, Our Help in Ages Past. Thus had the entombed men chosen to keep their courage high. And when they were brought out, weak but unharmed, the great crowd gathered in the pit-yard took up the hymn which, sung by a thousand voices, echoed joyfully in the narrow valley and rose beyond the encircling hills.
It’s plain from Cronin’s account that, probably in his capacity as a doctor, he was among those lowered down with the rescuers, because he writes, As I came to the surface with the liberated men, blinking in the stark daylight after the blackness of the pit, this great volume of sound caught me like a tidal wave — as a demonstration of human faith it was moving beyond words. Although at that time I was conscious of no more than a momentary emotion, looking backward now I know that it left its mark on me.
Moved as well, but feeling the need for a few extra words, I’ll add that deep among those many long-ago humble voices raised in reverent, grateful song, the medical doctor, atheist, author and future convert probably heard that “still small voice.”
I listen for it, too, waiting for it to leave that mark on me.
I don’t know exactly when Cronin wrote this; most likely at mid-life in the mid-20th Century, about an event of his youth much earlier in that century. I choose to share it five days before Thanksgiving, 2023 — early in what for Cronin would be the next century he knew he’d never see.
This shall stand as among my public professions of thanksgiving for this season in which I so often fail to be either grateful or charitable and am often feeling buried in my own fears, concerns and failures.
These are more than usually troubled, violent, divided times in the world.
Let us, all who read this, listen for that “still small voice” the prophet Elijah heard from the cave (1 Kings 9-11)– and let us join those grand, prayerful, undespairing voices deep in that dark mine.
Pray for deliverance.
19 Cent Notebook 