How the Children Come
THEY come in many ways through the help of many friends. We have told
before[A] how our first two babies came to us through two pastors, one
in the north, the other in the south of our district. Since then many
Indian pastors and workers, and several warm-hearted Christian
apothecaries and nurses in Government service, have become interested;
with the result that little children who must otherwise have perished
have been saved.
One little babe, who has since become one of our very dearest, was
redeemed from Temple life by the wife of a leading pastor, who was
wonderfully brought to the very place where the little child was waiting
for the arrival of the Temple people. We have seldom known a more
definite leading. "I being in the way, the Lord led me," was surely true
of that friend that day, and of other Indian sisters who helped her.
Later, when she came to stay with us, she told us about it. "When first
I heard of this new work, I was not in sympathy with it. I even talked
against it to others. But when I saw that little babe, so innocent and
helpless, and so beautiful too, then all my heart went out to it. And
now----" Tears filled her eyes. She could not finish her sentence. Nor
was there any need; the loving Indian heart had been won.
My mother was with us when this baby came; and she adopted her as her
own from the first, and always had the little basket in which the baby
slept put by her bedside. When the mosquitoes began to be troublesome,
the basket was slipped under her own mosquito net, lest the little pink
blossom should be disturbed. But the baby did not thrive at first; and
the pink, instead of passing into buff, began to fade into something too
near ivory for our peace of mind. It was then the friend who had saved
the little one came to stay with us; and she proposed taking her and her
nurse out to her country village, in hopes of getting a foster-mother
for her there. So my mother, the pastor's wife, the baby, and her nurse,
went out to the Good News Village, and stayed in the pastor's hospitable
home. The hope which had drawn them there was not fulfilled; but the
memory of that visit is fresh and fragrant. We read of alienation
between Indian Christians and missionaries. We are told there cannot be
much mutual affection and contact. We often wonder why it should be so,
and are glad we know by experience so little of the difficulty, that we
cannot understand it. We have found India friendly, and her Christians
are our friends. In these matters each can only speak from personal
experience. Ours has been happy. There may be unkindness and
misunderstanding in India, as in England; but nowhere could there be
warmer love, more tender affection.
All sorts of people help us in this work of saving the children. Once it
was a convert-schoolboy who saw a widow with a baby in her arms.
Noticing the bright large eyes, and what he described as the "blossoming
countenance of the child," he got into conversation with the mother, and
learned that she had been greatly tempted by Temple women in the town,
who had admired the baby and wanted to get it. "If I give her to them,
she will never be a widow," was the allurement there. The bitterness of
widowhood had entered into her soul, and poisoned the very mother-love
within her; and yet there was something of it left, for she did not want
her babe to be a widow. The boy, with the leisureliness of the East,
dropped the matter there; and only in a casual fashion, a week or so
later, mentioned in a letter that he had seen this pretty child, and
that probably, the mother would end in yielding to the temptation to
give her to the Temple--"but it may be by the grace of God that you will
be able to save her." We sent at once to try to find the mother; but she
had wandered off, and no one knew her home. However, the boy was stirred
to prayer, and we prayed here; and a search through towns and villages
resulted at last in the mother being traced and the child being saved.
Christian women have helped us. One such, sitting on her verandah after
her morning's work, heard two women in the adjoining verandah discuss
the case of a widow who had come from Travancore with a bright little
baby-girl, whom she had vowed she would give to one of our largest
temples. The Christian woman had heard of the Dohnavur nurseries, and at
once she longed to save this little child, but hardly knew how to do it.
She feared to tell the two women she had overheard their conversation,
so in the simplicity of her heart she prayed that the widow might be
detained and kept from offering her gift till our worker, old Devai,
could come; and she wrote to old Devai.
Happily Devai was at home when the letter reached her; otherwise days
would have been lost, for her wanderings are many. She went at once, and
found the mother most reasonable. Her idea had been to acquire merit for
herself, and an assured future for her child, by giving it to the gods;
but when the matter was opened to her, she was willing to give it to us
instead. In her case, as in the other, our natural instinct would have
been to try to make some provision by which the mothers could keep their
babies; but it would not have been possible. The cruel law of widowhood
had begun to do its work in them. The Temple people's inducements would
have proved too much for them. The children would not have been safe.
Once it was a man-servant who saved a lovely child. He heard an aside in
the market which put him on the track. The case was very usual. The
parents were dead, and the grandmother was in difficulties. For the
parents' sake she wanted to keep the dear little babe; but she was old,
and had no relatives to whose care she could commit it. Mercifully we
were the first to hear about this little one; for even as a baby she was
so winning that Temple people would have done much to get her, and the
old grandmother would almost certainly have been beguiled into giving
her to them. How often it has been so! "She will be brought up carefully
according to her caste. All that is beautiful will be hers, jewels and
silk raiment." The hook concealed within the shining bait is forgotten.
The old grandmother feels she is doing her best for the child, and the
little life passes out of her world.
"It is a dear little thing, and the man (its grandfather) seemed really
fond of it. He said he would not part with it; but its parents are both
dead, and he did not know what might happen to it if he died." This from
the letter of a fellow-missionary, who saved the little one and sent her
out to us, is descriptive of many. "Not the measure of a rape-seed of
sleep does she give me. I have done my best for her since her mother
died, but her noise is most vexatious." This was a father's account of
the matter only a week or two ago. "Have you no women relations?" we
asked him. "Numerous are my womenfolk, but they are all cumbered with
children: how can they help me?"
Given these circumstances of difficulty, and the strong under-pull of
Temple influence--is it wonderful that many an orphaned babe finds her
way to the Temple house? For in the South the child of the kind we are
seeking to save is never offered to us because there is no other place
where she is wanted. Everywhere there are those who are searching for
such children; and each little one saved represents a counter-search,
and somewhere, earnest prayer. The mystery of our work, as we have said
before, is the oftentimes apparent victory of wrong over right. We are
silent before it. God reigns; God knows. But sometimes the
interpositions are such that our hearts are cheered, and we go on in
fresh courage and hope.
Among our earliest friends were some of the London Missionary Society
workers of South Travancore. One of these friends interested her
Biblewomen; and when, one morning, one of these Biblewomen passed a
woman with a child in her arms on the road leading to a well-known
Temple, she was ready to understand the leading, and made friends with
the mother. She found that even then she was on her way to a Temple
house. A few minutes later and she would not have passed her on the
road.
There was something to account for this directness of leading. At that
time we had our branch nursery at Neyoor, in South Travancore, ten miles
from the place where the Biblewoman met the mother. On that same
morning, Ponnamal, who was in charge there, felt impelled to go to the
upper room to pray for a little child in danger. She remained in prayer
till the assurance of the answer was given, and then returned to her
work. That evening a bandy drove up to the nursery, and she saw the
explanation of the pressure and the answer to the prayer. A little
child was lifted out of the bandy, and laid in her arms. She stood with
her nurses about her, and together they worshipped God.
This prayer-pressure has been often our experience when special help is
needed to effect the salvation of some little unknown child. It was our
Prayer-day, July 6, 1907. Three of us were burdened with a burden that
could not be lightened till we met and prayed for a child in peril. We
had no knowledge of any special child, though, of course, we knew of
many in danger. When we prayed for the many, the impression came the
more strongly that we were meant to concentrate upon one. Who, or where,
we did not know.
Five days later, a letter reached us from a friend in the Wesleyan
Mission, working in a city five hundred miles distant. The letter was
written on the 8th:--
"On the morning of the 6th, a woman who knows our Biblewomen well, told
them of a little Brahman baby in great danger; so J. and two others went
at once and spent the greater part of the morning trying to save the
child. It was in the house of a so-called Temple woman, who had adopted
it, and she had taken every care of it. For some reason she wanted to go
away, and could not take it with her. Two or three women of her own kind
were there and wanted it. One had money in her hand for it. But J. had
already got the baby into her arms, and reasoned and persuaded until the
woman at last consented. They at once brought it here. Had the friendly
woman not told J., the baby would now be in the hands of the second
Temple woman. I visited the woman afterwards. She had two grown girls in
the room with her, the elder such a sweet girl. She told me openly it
was all according to custom, and that God had arranged their lives on
those lines, and they could not do otherwise. It is terribly sad, and
such houses abound."
Happenings of this sort--if the word "happen" is not irreverent in such
a connection--have a curiously quieting effect upon us. We are very
happy; but there is a feeling of awe which finds expression in words
which, at first reading, may not sound appropriate; but we write for
those who will understand:--
Oh, fix Thy chair of grace, that all my powers
May also fix their reverence . . .
Scatter, or bind, or bend them all to Thee!
Though elements change and Heaven move,
Let not Thy higher court remove,
But keep a standing Majesty in me.
FOOTNOTE:
[A] "Overweights of Joy."