months' rigorous imprisonment. On appeal, the Sessions Judge reduced the
sentence to two months, on the ground that the rite complained against
was a very common one in those parts. The Public Prosecutor based his
petition on the ground that it had been held in a previous case 'that
such a dedication was an offence, and that it was highly desirable that
the interests of minors should be properly protected.' This protection,
it was submitted, could only be vouchsafed by making offending people
understand that they would render themselves liable to heavy punishment.
The present sentence would not have a deterrent effect, and he
accordingly applied for an enhancement of the same. His lordship
admitted the petition, and directed notice to the accused."
It is something to know the six months' sentence was confirmed. But is
not the fact that a Sessions Judge should commute such a sentence, on
the ground that the offence was "very common," enough to suggest a doubt
as to the deterrent effect of even this punishment?
NOTE
During the last few months the Secretary of State for India has
addressed official inquiries to the Government of India regarding the
dedication of children to Hindu gods, and the measures necessary for the
protection of such children.
If the anticipated change in the law is to result in more than a Bill on
paper--a blind, behind which things will go on as before only more out
of sight--it is, we believe, needful to ensure:
1st. Protection for all children found to be in
moral danger, whether or not they are or may be
dedicated to gods.
2nd. That, irrespective of nationality or
religion, whoever has worked for and won the
deliverance of the child should be allowed to act
as guardian to it.
3rd. That such a Bill shall be most thoroughly
enforced.
_February, 1912._
To face p. 268.
CHAPTER XXX
On the Side of the Oppressors there was Power
I HAVE been looking over my note-book, in which there are some hundreds
of letters, clippings from newspapers, and records of conversations
bearing upon the Temple children. It is difficult to know which to
choose to complete the picture already outlined in the preceding
chapters. A mere case record would be wearisome; and indeed the very
word "case" sounds curiously inappropriate when one thinks of the
nurseries and their little inhabitants; or looks up to see mischievous
eyes watching a chance to stop the uninteresting writing; or feels,
suddenly, soft arms round one's neck, as a baby, strayed from her own
domain, climbs unexpectedly up from behind and makes dashes at the
typewriter keyboard. Such little living interruptions are too frequent
to allow of these chapters being anything but human.
The newspaper clippings are usually concerned with public movements,
resolutions, petitions, and the like. There is one startling little
paragraph from a London paper, dated July 7, 1906; the ignorance of the
subject so flippantly dealt with is its only apology. No one could have
written so had he understood. The occasion was the memorial addressed to
the Governor in Council by workers for the children in the Bombay
Presidency:--
"Society must be very select in Poona. There has been a custom there for
young ladies to be married to selected gods. You would have thought that
to be the bride of a god was a good enough marriage for anyone. But it
is not good enough for Poona." It is time that such writing became
impossible for any Englishman.
In India the feeling of the best men, whether Hindu or Christian, is
strongly against the dedication of little children to Temples, and some
of the newspapers of the land speak out and say so in unmistakable
language. The _Indian Times_ speaks of the little ones being "steeped
deep from their childhood" in all that is most wrong. A Hindu, writing
in the _Epiphany_, puts the matter clearly when he says: "Finally, one
can hardly conceive of anything more debasing than to dedicate innocent
little girls to gods in the name of religion, and then leave them with
the Temple priests"; and another writer in the same paper asks a
question which those who say that Hinduism is good enough for India
might do well to ponder: "If this is not a Hindu practice, how can it
take place in a Temple and no priest stop it, though all know? . . . In
London religion makes wickedness go away; but in Bombay religion brings
wickedness, and Government has to try to make it go away." This immense
contrast of fact and of ideal contains our answer to all who would put
sin in India on a level with sin in England.
Christian writers naturally, whether in the _Christian Patriot_ of the
South or the _Bombay Guardian_ of the West, have no doubt about the
existence of the evil or the need for its removal. They, too, connect it
distinctly with religion, and recognise its tremendous influence.
But we turn from the printed page, and go straight to the houses where
the little children live. The witnesses now are missionaries or trusted
Indian workers.
"There were thirteen little children in the houses connected with the
Temple last time I visited them. I saw the little baby--such a dear,
fat, laughing little thing. It was impossible to get it, and I see no
hope of getting any of the other children."
"When I was visiting in S. a woman came to talk to me with her three
little children. Two of them were girls, very pretty, 'fair' little
children. 'What work does your husband do?' I asked; and she answered,
'I am married to the god.' Then I knew who she was, and that her
children were in danger. I have tried since to get them, but in vain.
Everyone says that Temple women never give up their little girls. These
two were dedicated at their birth. This is only one instance. We have
many Temple women reading with us, and many of the little children
attend our schools."
"There are not scores but hundreds of these children in the villages of
this district. Here certain families, living ordinary lives in their own
villages, dedicate one of their children as a matter of course to the
gods. They always choose the prettiest. It is a recognised custom, and
no one thinks anything of it. The child so dedicated lives with her
parents afterwards as if nothing had happened, only she may not be
married in the real way. She belongs to the god and his priests and
worshippers."
"The house was very orderly and nice. I sat on the verandah and talked
to the women, who were all well educated and so attractive with their
pretty dress and jewels. They seemed bright, but, of course, would not
show me their real feelings, and I could only hold surface conversation
with them."
We are often asked if the Temple houses are inside the walls which
surround all the great Temples in this part of the country. They are
usually in the streets outside. Most of the Brahman Temples are
surrounded by a square of streets, and the houses are in the square or
near it. There is nothing to distinguish them from other houses in the
street. It is only when you go inside that you feel the difference. An
hour on the shady verandah of one of these houses is very revealing. You
see the children run up to welcome a tall, fine-looking man, who pats
their heads in the kindest way, and as he passes you recognise him. Next
time you see him in the glory of his office, you wish you could forget
where you saw him last.
Sometimes we are asked who the children are. How do the Temple women get
them in the first instance?
We have already answered this question by quotations from the Census
Report, and by statements of Hindus well acquainted with the subject. It
should be added that often the Temple woman having daughters of her own
dedicates them, and as a rule it is only when she has none that she
adopts other little ones. A few extracts from letters and notes from
conversations are subjoined, as they show how the system of adoption
works:--
"We are in trouble over a little girl, the daughter of wealthy parents,
who have dedicated her to the gods and refuse to change their mind. The
child was ill some time ago, and they vowed then that if she recovered
they would dedicate her."
"The poor woman's husband was very ill, and the mother vowed her little
girl as an offering if he recovered. He did recover, and so the child
has been given."
"It is the custom of the Caste to dedicate the eldest girl of a certain
chosen family, and nothing will turn them from it. One child must be
given in each generation."
"She is of good caste, but very poor. Her husband died two months before
the baby was born, and as it was a girl she was much troubled as to its
future, for she knew she would never have enough money to marry it
suitably. A Temple woman heard of the baby, and at once offered to adopt
it. She persuaded the mother by saying: 'You see, if it is married to
the gods, it will never be a widow like you. It will always be well
cared for and have honour, and be a sign of good fortune to our
people--unlike you!' (It is considered a sign of good omen to see a
Temple woman the first thing in the morning; but the sight of a widow at
any time is a thing to be avoided.) The poor mother could not resist
this, and she has been persuaded."
"The mother is a poor, delicate widow, with several boys as well as this
baby girl. She cannot support them all properly, and her relatives do
not seem inclined to help her. The Temple women have heard of her, and
they sent a woman to negotiate. The mother knew that we would take the
little one rather than that she should be forced to give it up to Temple
women; but she said when we talked with her: 'It cannot be wrong to give
it to the holy gods! This is our religion; and it may be wrong to you,
but it is not wrong to us.' So she refused to give us the baby, and
seems inclined to go away with it. It is like that constantly. The thing
cannot be wrong because it is religious!"
"I heard of two little orphan girls whose guardian, an uncle, had
married again, and did not want to have the marriage expenses of his two
little nieces to see to. So at the last great festival he brought the
children and dedicated them to the Saivite Temple, and the Temple women
heard about it before I did, and at once secured them. I went as soon as
I could to see if we could not get them, but she would not listen to us.
She said they were her sister's children, and that she had adopted them
out of love for her dead sister."
A lawyer was consulted as to this case, but it was impossible to trace
the uncle or to prove that the children were not related to the Temple
woman. Above all, it was impossible to prove that she meant to do
anything illegal. So nothing could be done.
As a rule the Temple woman receives little beyond bare sustenance from
the Temple itself. In some Temples when the little child is formally
dedicated, she (or her guardian) receives two pounds, and her funeral
expenses are promised. But though there is little stated remuneration,
the Temple woman is not poor. Poverty may come. If she breaks the law of
her caste, or offends against the etiquette of that caste, she is
immediately excommunicated, and then she may become very poor. Or if she
has spent her money freely, or not invested it wisely, her old age may
be cheerless enough. But we have not found any lack of money among the
Sisterhood. No offer of compensation for all expenses connected with a
child has ever drawn them to part with her. They offer large sums for
little ones who will be useful to them. We have several times known as
much as an offer of one hundred rupees made and accepted in cases where
the little child (in each case a mere infant) was one of special
promise. A letter, which incidentally mentions the easy circumstances in
which many are, may be of interest:--
"K. is a little girl in our mission school. Her mother is a favourite
Temple woman high up in the profession. She dances while the other women
sing, and sometimes she gets as much as three or four hundred rupees for
her dancing. She is well educated, can recite the 'Ramayana' (Indian
epic), and knows a little English. She spends some time in her own
house, but is often away visiting other Temples. Just now she is away,
and little K. is with her. . . . Humanly speaking, she will never let her
go."
The education of the mission school is appreciated because it makes the
bright little child still brighter; and we, who know the home life of
these children, are glad when they are given one brief opportunity to
learn what may help them in the difficult days to come. We have known of
some little ones who, influenced by outside teaching, tried to escape
the life they began to feel was wrong, but in each case they were
overborne, for on the side of the oppressors there was power. I was in a
Temple house lately, and noticed the doors--the massive iron-bossed
doors are a feature of all well-built Hindu houses of the South. How
could a little child shut up in such a room, with its door shut, if need
be, to the outside inquisitive world--how could she resist the strength
that would force the garland round her neck? She might tear it off if
she dared, but the little golden symbol had been hidden under the
flowers, and the priest had blessed it; the deed was done--she was
married to the god. And only those who have seen the effect of a few
weeks of such a life upon a child, who has struggled in vain against it,
can understand how cowed she may become, how completely every particle
of courage and independence of spirit may be caused to disappear; and
how what we had known as a bright, sparkling child, full of the
fearless, confiding ways of a child, may become distrustful and
constrained, quite incapable of taking a stand on her own account, or of
responding to any effort we might be able to make from outside. It is as
if the child's spirit were broken, and those who know what she has gone
through cannot wonder if it is.
And then comes something we dread more: the life begins to attract. The
sense of revolt passes as the will weakens; the persistent, steady
pressure tells. And when we see her next, perhaps only three months
later, the child has passed the boundary, and belongs to us no more.
CHAPTER XXXI
And there was None to Save
Thou canst conceive our highest and our lowest
Pulses of nobleness and aches of shame.
FREDERIC W. H. MYERS.
IN speaking of these matters I have tried to keep far from that which is
only sentiment, and have resolutely banished all imagination. I would
that the writing could be as cold in tone as the criticism of those who
consider everything other than polished ice almost amusing--to judge by
the way they handle it, dismissing it with an airy grace and a hurting
adjective. Would they be quite so cool, we wonder, if the little wronged
girl were their own? But we do not write for such as these. The thought
of the cold eyes would freeze the thoughts before they formed. We write
for the earnest-hearted, who are not ashamed to confess they care. And
yet we write with reserve even though we write for them, because nothing
else is possible. And this crushing back of the full tide makes its
fulness almost oppressive. It is as though a flame leaped from the page
and scorched the brain that searched for words quite commonplace and
quiet.
The finished product of the Temple system of education is something so
distorted that it cannot be described. But it should never be forgotten
that the thing from which we recoil did not choose to be fashioned so.
It was as wax--a little, tender, innocent child--in the hands of a
wicked power when the fashioning process began. Let us deal gently with
those who least deserve our blame, and reserve our condemnation for
those responsible for the creation of the Temple woman. Is it fair that
a helpless child, who has never once been given the choice of any other
life, should be held responsible afterwards for living the life to which
alone she has been trained? Is it fair to call her by a name which
belongs by right to one who is different, in that her life is
self-chosen? No word can cut too keenly at the root of this iniquity;
but let us deal gently with the mishandled flower. Let hard words be
restrained where the woman is concerned. Let it be remembered she is not
responsible for being what she is.
In a Canadian book of songs there is a powerful little poem about an
artist who painted one who was beautiful but not good. He hid all trace
of what was; he painted a babe at her breast.
I painted her as she might have been
If the Worst had been the Best.
And a connoisseur came and looked at the picture. To him it spoke of
holiest things; he thought it a Madonna:--
So I painted a halo round her hair,
And I sold her and took my fee;
And she hangs in the church of St. Hilaire,
Where you and all may see.
Sometimes as we have looked at the face of one whose training was not
complete we have seen as the artist saw: we have seen her "as she might
have been if the worst had been the best." There was no halo round her
hair, only its travesty--something that told of crowned and glorified
sin; and yet we could catch more than a glimpse of the perfect "might
have been." So we say, let blame fall lightly on the one who least
deserves it. Perhaps if our ears were not so full of the sounds of the
world, we should hear a tenderer judgment pronounced than man's is
likely to be: "Unto the damsel thou shalt do nothing. . . . For there
was none to save her."
Our work at Dohnavur is entirely among the little children who are
innocent of wrong. We rarely touch these lives which have been stained
and spoiled; but we could not forbear to write a word of clear
explanation about them, lest any should mistake the matter and confuse
things that differ.
* * * * *
We leave the subject with relief. Few who have followed us so far know
how much it has cost to lead the way into these polluted places. Not
that we would make much of any personal cost; but that we would have it
known that nothing save a pressure which could not be resisted could
force us to touch pitch. And yet why should we shrink from it when the
purpose which compels is the saving of the children? Brave words written
by a brave woman come and help us to do it:--
"This I say emphatically, that the evil which we have grappled with to
save one of our own dear ones does not sully. It is the evil that we
read about in novels and newspapers for our own amusement; it is the
evil we weakly give way to in our lives; above all, it is the destroying
evil that we have refused so much as to know about in our absorbing care
for our own alabaster skin; it is that evil which defiles a woman. But
the evil that we have grappled with in a life and death struggle to save
a soul for whom Christ died does not sully; it clothes from head to foot
with the white robe, it crowns with the golden crown."
* * * * *
There remains only one thing more to show. It was evening in an Indian
town at a time of festival. The great pillared courts of the Temple were
filled with worshippers and pilgrims from all over the Tamil country and
from as far north as Benares. Men who eagerly grasped at anything
printed in Sanscrit and knew nothing of our vernacular were scattered in
little groups among the crowd, and we had freedom to go to them and give
them what we could, and talk to the many others who would listen.
Outside the moonlight was shining on the dark pile of the Temple tower,
and upon the palms planted along the wall, which rises in its solid
strength 30 feet high and encloses the whole Temple precincts. There
were very few people out in the moonlight. It was too quiet there for
them, too pure in its silvery whiteness. Inside the hall, with its
great-doored rooms and recesses, there were earth-lights in abundance,
flaring torches, smoking lamps and lanterns. And there was noise--the
noise of words and of wailing Indian music. For up near the closed doors
which open on the shrine within which the idol sat surrounded by a
thousand lights, there was a band of musicians playing upon stringed
instruments; sometimes they broke out excitedly and banged their drums
and made their conch-shells blare.
Suddenly there was a tumultuous rush of every produceable sound;
tom-tom, conch-shell, cymbal, flute, stringed instruments and bells
burst into chorus together. The idol was going to be carried out from
his innermost shrine behind the lights; and as the great doors moved
slowly, the excitement became intense, the thrill of it quivered through
all the hall and sent a tremor through the crowd out to the street. But
we passed out and away, and turned into a quiet courtyard known to us
and talked to the women there.
There were three, one the grandmother of the house, one her daughter,
and another a friend. The grandmother and her daughter were Temple
women, the eldest grandchild had been dedicated only a few months
before. There were three more children, one Mungie, a lovable child of
six, one a pretty three-year-old with a mop of beautiful curls, the
youngest a baby just then asleep in its hammock; a little foot dangled
out of the hammock, which was hung from a rafter in the verandah roof.
We had come to talk to the grandmother and mother about the dear little
six-year-old child, and hoped to find their heart.
But we seemed to talk to stone, hard as the stone of the Temple tower
that rose above the roofs, black against the purity of the moonlit sky.
It was a bitter half-hour. Some hours are like stabs to remember, or
like the pitiless pressing down of an iron on living flesh. At last we
could bear it no longer, and rose to go. As we left we heard the
grandmother turn to her daughter's friend and say: "Though she heap gold
on the floor as high as Mungie's neck, I would never let her go to those
degraded Christians!"
Once again it was festival in the white light of the full moon, and once
again we went to the same old Hindu town; for moonlight nights are times
of opportunity, and the cool of evening brings strength for more than
can be attempted in the heat of the day. And this time an adopted mother
spoke words that ate like acid into steel as we listened.
Her adopted child is a slip of a girl, slim and light, with the ways of
a shy thing of the woods. She made me think of a harebell growing all by
itself in a rocky place, with stubbly grass about and a wide sky
overhead. She was small and very sweet, and she slid on to my knee and
whispered her lessons in my ear in the softest of little voices. She had
gone to school for nearly a year, and liked to tell me all she knew. "Do
you go to school now?" I asked her. She hung her head and did not
answer. "Don't you go?" I repeated. She just breathed "No," and the
little head dropped lower. "Why not?" I whispered as softly. The child
hesitated. Some dim apprehension that the reason would not seem good to
me troubled her, perhaps, for she would not answer. "Tell the Ammal,
silly child!" said her foster-mother, who was standing near. "Tell her
you are learning to dance and sing and get ready for the gods!" "I am
learning to dance and sing and get ready for the gods," repeated the
child obediently, lifting large, clear eyes to my face for a moment as
if to read what was written there. A group of men stood near us. I
turned to them. "Is it right to give this little child to a life like
that?" I asked them then. They smiled a tolerant, kindly smile.
"Certainly no one would call it right, but it is our custom," and they
passed on. There was no sense of the pity of it:--
Poor little life that toddles half an hour,
Crowned with a flower or two, and then an end!
We had come to the town an hour or two earlier, and had seen, walking
through the throng round the Temple, two bright young girls in white. No
girls of their age, except Temple girls, would have been out at that
hour of the evening, and we followed them home. They stopped when they
reached the house where little Mungie lived, and then, turning, saw us
and salaamed. One of the two was Mungie's elder sister. Little Mungie
ran out to meet her sister, and, seeing us, eagerly asked for a book. So
we stood in the open moonlight, and the little one tried to spell out
the words of a text to show us she had not forgotten all she had
learned, even though she, too, had been taken from school, and had to
learn pages of poetry and the Temple dances and songs.
The girls were jewelled and crowned with flowers, and they looked like
flowers themselves; flowers in moonlight have a mystery about them not
perceived in common day, but the mystery here was something wholly
sorrowful. Everything about the children--they were hardly more than
children--showed care and refinement of taste. There was no violent
clash of colour; the only vivid colour note was the rich red of a silk
underskirt that showed where the clinging folds of the white
gold-embroidered _sari_ were draped a little at the side. The effect was
very dainty, and the girls' manners were modest and gentle. No one who
did not know what the pretty dress meant that night would have dreamed
it was but the mesh of a net made of white and gold.
But with all their pleasant manners it was evident the two girls looked
upon us with a distinct aloofness. They glanced at us much as a
brilliant bird of the air might be supposed to regard poultry, fowls of
the cooped-up yard. Then they melted into the shadow of an archway
behind the moonlit space, and we went on to another street and came upon
little Sellamal, the harebell child; and, sitting down on the verandah
which opens off the street, we heard her lessons as we have told, and
got into conversation with her adopted mother.
We found her interested in listening to what we had to say about
dedicating children to the service of the gods. She was extremely
intelligent, and spoke Tamil such as one reads in books set for
examination. It was easy to talk with her, for she saw the point of
everything at once, and did not need to have truth broken up small and
crumbled down and illustrated in half a dozen different ways before it
could be understood. But the half-amused smile on the clever face told
us how she regarded all we were saying. What was life and death
earnestness to us was a game of words to her; a play the more to be
enjoyed because, drawn by the sight of two Missie Ammals sitting
together on the verandah, quite a little crowd had gathered, and were
listening appreciatively.
"That is your way of looking at it; now listen to my way. Each land in
all the world has its own customs and religion. Each has that which is
best for it. Change, and you invite confusion and much unpleasantness.
Also by changing you express your ignorance and pride. Why should the
child presume to greater wisdom than its father? And now listen to me!
I will show you the matter from our side!" ("Yes, venerable mother,
continue!" interposed the crowd encouragingly.) "You seem to feel it a
sad thing that little Sellamal should be trained as we are training her.
You seem to feel it wrong, and almost, perhaps, disgrace. But if you
could see my eldest daughter the centre of a thousand Brahmans and
high-caste Hindus! If you could see every eye in that ring fixed upon
her, upon her alone! If you could see the absorption--hardly do they
dare to breathe lest they should miss a point of her beauty! Ah, you
would know, could you see it all, upon whose side the glory lies and
upon whose the shame! Compare that moment of exaltation with the
grovelling life of your Christians! Low-minded, flesh-devouring,
Christians, discerning not the difference between clean and unclean!
Bah! And you would have my little Sellamal leave all this for that!"
"But afterwards? What comes afterwards?"
"What know I? What care I? That is a matter for the gods."
The child Sellamal listened to this, glancing from face to face with
wistful, wondering eyes; and as I looked down upon her she looked up at
me, and I looked deep into those eyes--such innocent eyes. Then
something seemed to move the child, and she held up her face for a kiss.
This is only one Temple town. There are many such in the South. These
things are not easy to look at for long. We turn away with burning eyes,
and only for the children's sake could we ever look again. For their
sake look again.
It was early evening in a home of rest on the hills. A medical
missionary, a woman of wide experience, was talking to a younger woman
about the Temple children. She had lived for some time, unknowingly,
next door to a Temple house in an Indian city. Night after night she
said she was wakened by the cries of children--frightened cries,
indignant cries, sometimes sharp cries as of pain. She inquired in the
morning, but was always told the children had been punished for some
naughtiness. "They were only being beaten." She was not satisfied, and
tried to find out more through the police. But she feared the police
were bribed to tell nothing, for she found out nothing through them.
Later, by means of her medical work, she came full upon the truth. . . .
"Why leave spaces with dotted lines? Why not write the whole fact?"
wrote one who did not know what she asked. Once more we repeat it, to
write the whole fact is impossible.
It is true this is not universal; in our part of the country it is not
general, for the Temple child is considered of too much value to be
lightly injured. But it is true beyond a doubt that inhumanity which may
not be described is possible at any time in any Temple house.
Out in the garden little groups of missionaries walked together and
talked. From a room near came the sound of a hymn. It was peaceful and
beautiful everywhere, and the gold of sunset filled the air, and made
the garden a glory land of radiant wonderful colour. But for one woman
at least the world turned black. Only the thought of the children nerved
her to go on.
CHAPTER XXXII
The Power behind the Work
"To Him difficulties are as nothing, and
improbabilities of less than no account."--_Story
of the China Inland Mission._
THE Power behind the work is the interposition of God in answer to
prayer.
Recently--so recently that it would be unwise to go into detail--we were
in trouble about a little girl of ten or eleven, who, though not a
Temple child, was exposed to imminent danger, and sorely needed
deliverance. I happened to be alone at Dohnavur at the time, and did not
know what to answer to the child's urgent message: "If I can escape to
you" (this meant if she braved capture and its consequences, and fled
across the fields alone at night), "can you protect me from my people?"
To say "Yes" might have had fatal results. To say "No" seemed too
impossible. The circumstances were such that great care was needed to
avoid being entangled in legal complications; and as the Collector
(Chief Magistrate) for our part of the district happened just then to be
in our neighbourhood, I wrote asking for an appointment. Early next
morning we met by the roadside. I had been up most of the night, and was
tired and anxious; and I shall never forget the comfort that came
through the quiet sympathy with which one who was quite a stranger to
us all listened to the story, not as if it were a mere missionary
trifle, but something worthy his attention. But nothing could be done.
It was not a case where we had any ground for appeal to the law; and any
attempt upon our part to help the child could only have resulted in more
trouble afterwards, for we should certainly have had to give her up if
she came to us.
As the inevitableness of this conclusion became more and more evident to
me, it seemed as if a great strong wall were rising foot by foot between
me and that little girl--a wall like the walls that enclose the Temples
here, very high, very massive. But even Temple walls have doors, and I
could not see any door in this wall. Nothing could bring that child to
us but a Power enthroned above the wall, which could stoop and lift her
over it. I do not remember what led to the question about what we
expected would happen; but I remember that with that wall full in view I
could only answer, "The interposition of God." Nothing else, nothing
less, could do anything for that child.
Her case was complicated, if I may express it so, by the fact that
though she knew very little--she had only had a few weeks' teaching and
could not read--she had believed all we told her most simply and
literally, and witnessed to her own people, whose reply to her had been:
"You will see who is stronger, your God or ours! Do you think your Lord
Jesus can deliver you from our hand, or prevent us from doing as we
choose with you? We shall see!" And the case of an older girl who had
been, as those who knew her best believed, drugged and then bent to her
people's will, was quoted: "Did your Lord Jesus deliver her? Where is
she to-day? And you think He will deliver you!" "But He will not let you
hurt me," the child had answered fearlessly, though her strength was
weakened even then by thirty hours without food; and, remembering one of
the Bible stories she had heard during those weeks, she added, "I am
Daniel, and you are the lions"--and she told them how the angel was sent
to shut the lions' mouths. But she knew so little after all, and the
bravest can be overborne, and she was only a little girl; so our hearts
ached for her as we sent her the message: "You must not try to come to
us. We cannot protect you. But Jesus is with you. He will not fail you.
He says, 'Fear thou not, for I am with thee.'" That night they shut her
up with a demon-possessed woman, that the terror of it might shake her
faith in Christ. Next day they hinted that worse would happen soon. Our
fear was lest her faith should fail before deliverance came.
Three and a half months of such tension as we have rarely known passed
over us. Often during that time, when one thing after another happened
contrariwise, as it appeared, and each event as it occurred seemed to
add another foot to the wall that still grew higher, help to faith came
to us through unexpected sources like voices blown on the winds.
Once it was something Lieut. Shackleton is reported to have said to
Reuter's correspondent concerning his expedition to the South Pole:
"Over and over again there were times when no mortal leadership could
have availed us. It was during those times that we learned that some
Power beyond our own guided our footsteps." And the illustrations which
followed of Divine interposition were such that one at least who read,
took courage; for the God of the great Ice-fields is the God of the
Tropics.
Once it was a passage opened by chance in a friend's book--Pastor
Agnorum. The subject of the paragraph is the schoolboy's attitude
towards games: "Glimpses of his mind are sometimes given us, as on that
day at Risingham when you refused to play in your boys' house-match,
unless the other house excluded from their team a half-back who was
under attainder through a recent row. They declined, and you stood out
of it. The hush in the field when your orphaned team, in defiance of the
odds, scored and again scored! Their supporters, in chaste awe at the
marvel, could hardly shout: it was more like a sob: a judgment had so
manifestly defended the right. The cricket professional, a man naturally
devout, looked at me with eyes that confessed an interposition, and all
came away quiet as a crowd from a cemetery. It was not a game of
football we had looked at, it was a Mystery Play: we had been edified,
and we hid it in our hearts."
And once, on the darkest day of all, it was the brave old family motto,
on a letter which came by post: "Dieu defend le droit." It was something
to be reminded that, in spite of appearances to the contrary, the
kingdom is the Lord's, and He is Governor among the people.
"Eyes that confessed an interposition." The phrase was illuminated for
us when God in very truth interposed in such fashion that every one saw
it was His Hand, for no other hand could have done it. Then we, too,
looked at each other with eyes that confessed an interposition. We had
seen that which we should never forget; and until the time comes when it
may be more fully told to the glory of our God, we have hid it in our
hearts.
The reason we have outlined the story is to lead to a word we want to
write very earnestly; it is this: Friends who care for the children, and
believe this work on their behalf is something God intends should be
done, "pray as if on that alone hung the issue of the day." More than we
know depends upon our holding on in prayer.
All through those months there was prayer for that child in India and in
England. The matter was so urgent that we made it widely known, and some
at least of those who heard gave themselves up to prayer; not to the
mere easy prayer which costs little and does less, but to that waiting
upon God which does not rest till it knows it has obtained access,
knows that it has the petition that it desires of Him. This sort of
prayer costs.
But to us down in the thick of the battle, it was strength to think of
that prayer. We were very weary with hope deferred; for it was as if all
the human hope in us were torn out of us, and tossed and buffeted every
way till there was nothing left of it but an aching place where it had
been. God works by means, as we all admit; and so every fresh
development in a Court case in which the child was involved, every turn
of affairs, where her relatives were concerned (and these turns were
frequent), every little movement which seemed to promise something, was
eagerly watched in the expectation that in it lay the interposition for
which we waited. But it seemed as if our hopes were raised only to be
dashed lower than ever, till we were cast upon the bare word of our God.
It was given to us then as perhaps never before to penetrate to the
innermost spring of consolation contained in those very old words: "I
should utterly have fainted, but that I believe verily to see the
goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Oh, tarry thou the
Lord's leisure: be strong, and He shall comfort thine heart; and put
thou thy trust in the Lord."
This Divine Interposition has been very inspiring. We feel afresh the
force of the question: "Is anything too hard for the Lord?" And we ask
those whose hearts are with us to pray for more such manifestations of
the Power that has not passed with the ages. Lord, teach us to pray!
For it has never been with us, "Come, see, and conquer," as if victory
were an easy thing and a common. We have known what it is to toil for
the salvation of some little life, and we have known the bitterness of
defeat. We have had to stand on the shore of a dark and boundless sea,
and watch that little white life swept off as by a great black wave. We
have watched it drift further and further out on those desolate waters,
till suddenly something from underneath caught it and sucked it down.
And our very soul has gone out in the cry, "Would God I had died for
thee!" and we too have gone "to the chamber over the gate" where we
could be alone with our grief and our God--O little child, loved and
lost, would God I had died for thee!
Should we forget these things? Should we bury them away lest they hurt
some sensitive soul? Rather, could we forget them if we would, and dare
we hide away the knowledge lest somewhere someone should be hurt? For it
is not as if that black wave's work were a thing of the past: it has
gone on for centuries unchecked: it is going on to-day.
Several months have passed since the chapters which precede this were
written. We are now, with some of our converts who needed rest and
change, in a place under the mountains a day's journey from Dohnavur. It
is one of the holy places of the South; for the northern tributary of
the chief river of this district falls over the cliffs at this point in
a double leap of one hundred and eighty feet, and the waters are so
disposed over a great rounded shoulder of rock that many people can
bathe below in a long single file. To this fall thousands of pilgrims
come from all parts of India, believing that such bathing is meritorious
and cleanses away all sin. And as they are far from their own homes, and
in measure out on holiday, we find them more than usually accessible and
friendly. This morning I was on my way home after talk with the women,
and was turning for a moment to look back upon the beautiful sorrowful
scene--the flashing waterfall, the passing crowd of pilgrims, the
radiance of sunshine on water, wood, and rock, when a Brahman, fresh
from bathing, followed my look, and glancing at the New Testament and
bag of Gospels in my hand, smiled indulgently and asked if we seriously
thought these books and their teaching would ever materially influence
India. "Look at that crowd," and he pointed to the people, his own caste
people chiefly. "Have we been influenced?"
Then he told me the story of the Falls, how ages ago a god, pitying the
sins and the sufferings of the people, bathed on the ledge where the
waters leap, and thereafter those waters were efficacious to the
cleansing of sin from the one who believingly bathes. To the one who
believes not, nothing happens beyond the cleansing of his body and its
invigoration. "Even to you," he added, in his friendliness, "virtue of a
sort is allowed; for do you not experience a certain exhilaration and a
buoyancy of spirit and a pleasure beyond anything obtainable elsewhere
[which is perfectly true]? This is due to the benevolence of our god,
whose merits extend even to you."
He was an educated man; he had studied in a mission school, and
afterwards in a Government college. He had read English books, and parts
of our Bible were familiar to him. He assured me he found no more
difficulty in accepting this legend than we did in accepting the story
of our Saviour's incarnation. And then, standing in the Temple porch
with its carved stone pillars, almost within touch of the great door
that opens behind into the shrine, he led the way into the Higher
Hinduism--that mysterious land which lies all around us in India, but is
so seldom shown to us. And I listened till in turn he was persuaded to
listen, and we read together from the Gospel which transcends in its
simplicity the profoundest reach of Hindu thought: "In the beginning was
the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." We did not
pause till we came to the end of the paragraph. I could see how it
appealed, for deep calleth unto deep; but he rose again up and up, and
that unknown part of one's being which is more akin to the East than to
the West, followed him and understood--when the door behind us creaked,
and a sudden blast of turbulent music sprang out upon us, deafening us
for a moment, and he said, "It is the morning worship. The priests and
the Servants of the gods are worshipping within." It was like a fall
from far-away heights to the very floor of things.
Then he told me how in the town three miles distant, the Benares of the
South, the service of the gods was conducted with more elaborate
ceremonial. "I could arrange for you to see it if you wished." I
explained why I could not wish to see it, and asked him about the
Servants of the gods, and about the little children. "Certainly there
are little children. The Servants of the gods adopt them to continue the
succession. How else could it be continued?"
CHAPTER XXXIII
If this were All
AN hour earlier three of us had stood together by the pool at the foot
of the Falls, and watched the people bathe. At the edge of the rock an
old grandmother had dealt valiantly with an indignant baby of two, whom,
despite its struggles, she bathed after prolonged preparation of divers
anointings, by holding it grimly, kicking and slippery though it was,
under what must have seemed to it a terrible hurrying horror. When at
last that baby emerged, it was too crushed in spirit to cry.
Beyond this little domestic scene was a group of half-reluctant women,
longing and yet fearing to venture under the plunging waters; and beyond
them again were the bathers, crowding but never jostling each other, on
the narrow ledge upon and over which the Falls descend. Some were
standing upright, with bowed heads, under the strong chastisement of the
nearer heavier fall; some bent under it, as if overwhelmed with the
thundering thud of its waters. Some were further on, where the white
furies lash like living whips, and scourge and sting and scurry; and
there the pilgrims were hardly visible, for the waters swept over them
like a veil, and they looked in their weirdness and muteness like martyr
ghosts. Further still some were carefully climbing the steps cut into
the cliff, or standing as high as they could go upon an unguarded
projection of rock, with eyes shut and folded hands, entirely oblivious
apparently to the fact that showers of spray enveloped them, and the
deep pool lay below.
I had never seen anything quite like this: it was such a strange
commingling of the beautiful and sorrowful. The women--"fair"-skinned
Brahman women they chanced to be--were in their usual graceful raiment
of silk or cotton, all shades of soft reds, crimson, purple, blue,
lightened with yellow and orange, which in the water looked like dull
fire. Their golden and silver jewels gleamed in the sunlight, and their
long black hair hung round faces like the faces one sees in pictures.
The men wore their ordinary white, and the ascetics the salmon-tinted
saffron of their profession.
Then, as if to add an ethereal touch to it all, a rainbow spanned the
Falls at that moment, and we saw the pilgrims through it or arched by it
as they stood, some at either end of the bow where the colours painted
the rock and the spray, and some in the space between. The sun struck
the forest hanging on the steeps above, and it became a vivid thing in
quick delight of greenness. It was something which, once seen, could
hardly be forgotten. The triumphant stream of white set deep in the
heart of a great horseshoe of rock and woods; the delicate, exquisite
pleasure of colour; and the people in their un-self-consciousness,
bathing and worshipping just as they wished, with for background rock
and spray, and for a halo rainbow. To one who looked with sympathy the
picture was a parable. You could not but see visions: you could not but
dream dreams.
Then from the quiet heights crept a colony of monkeys, their chatter
drowned in the roar of the Falls. On they came, wise and quaint, like
the half-heard whispers of old-time jokes. And they bathed in the mimic
pools above, as it seemed in imitation of the pilgrims, holding comical
little heads under the light trickles.
And below the scene changed as a company of widows came and entered the
Falls. They were all Brahmans and all old, and they shivered in their
poor scanty garments of coarse white. Most of them were frail with long
fasting and penance, and they prayed as they stood in the water or
crouched under its weight. Such a one had sat on the stone under the
special fall which, as the friend who had taken me observed with more
forcefulness than sentiment, "comes down like a sack of potatoes." I had
tried to stand it for a minute, but it pelted and pounded me so that
less than a minute was enough, and I moved to make room for a Brahman
widow who was bathing with me. And then she sat down on the stone, and
the waters beat very heavily on the old grey head; but she sat on in her
patience, her hands covering her face, and she prayed without one
moment's intermission. How little she knew of the other prayer that rose
beside hers through the rushing water--it was the first time I at least
had ever prayed in a waterfall--"Oh, send forth Thy light and Thy truth;
let them lead her!" She struggled up at last and caught my hand; then,
steadying herself with an effort, she felt for the iron rod that
protects the ledge, and blinded by the driving spray and benumbed by the
beat of the water, she stumbled slowly out. But the wistful face had a
look of content upon it, and her only concern was to finish the
ceremonial out in the sunshine--she had brought her little offerings of
a few flowers with her--and so, much as I longed to follow her and tell
her of the cleansing of which this was only a type, it could not have
been then. Oh, the rest it is at such a time to remember that the Lord
is good to all, and His tender mercies are over all His works.
Below the pool, in the broad bed of the stream and on its banks, all was
animation and happy simple life. Here the women were drying their
garments, without taking them off, in a clever fashion of their own.
There some were washing them in the stream. Children played about as
they willed. But in and among the throng, anywhere, everywhere, we saw
worshippers, standing or sitting facing the east, alone or in company,
chanting names for the deity, or adoring and meditating in silence.
Doubtless some were formal enough, but some were certainly sincere; and
we felt if this were all there is to know in Hinduism, the time must
soon come when a people so prepared would recognise in the Saviour and
Lover of their souls, Him for whom they had been seeking so long, "if
haply they might feel after Him and find Him."
But this is not all there is to know. Back out of sight behind the
simple joyousness of life, to which the wholesome waters and the
sparkling air and the beauty everywhere so graciously ministered, behind
that wonderful wealth of thought as revealed in the Higher Hinduism
which is born surely of nothing less than a longing after God--behind
all this what do we find? Glory of mountain and waterfall, charm and
delight of rainbow in spray; but what lies behind the coloured veil?
What symbols are carved into the cliff? Whose name and power do they
represent?
This book touches one of the hidden things; would that we could forget
it! Sometimes, through these days as we sat on the rocks by the
waterside, in the unobtrusive fashion of the Indian religious teacher,
who makes no noise but waits for those who care to come, we have almost
forgotten in the happiness of human touch with the people, the lovable
women and children more especially, that anything dark and wicked and
sad lay so very near. And then, suddenly as we have told, we have been
reminded of it. We may not forgot it if we would. It is true that the
thing we mean is disowned by the spiritual few, but to the multitude it
is part of their religion. "Of course, Temple women must adopt young
children; and they must be carefully trained, or they will not be meet
for the service of the gods." So said the Brahman who only a moment
before had led me into the mystic land, deep within which he loves to
dwell: what does the training mean?
A fortnight ago the friend to whom the child is dear took me to see the
little girl described in a letter from an Indian sister as "a little
dove in a cage." I did not find that she minded her cage. The bars have
been gilded, the golden glitter has dazzled the child. She thinks her
cage a pretty place, and she does not beat against its bars as she did
in the earlier days of her captivity. As we talked with her we
understood the change. When first she was taken from school the woman to
whose training her mother has committed her gave her polluting poetry to
read and learn, and she shrank from it, and would slip her Bible over
the open page and read it instead. But gradually the poetry seemed less
impossible; the atmosphere in which those vile stories grew and
flourished was all about her; as she breathed it day by day she became
accustomed to it; the sense of being stifled passed. The process of
mental acclimatisation is not yet completed, the lovely little face is
still pure and strangely innocent in its expression; but there is a
change, and it breaks the heart of the friend who loves her to see it.
"I must learn my poetry. They will be angry if I do not learn it. What
can I do?" And again, "Oh, the stories do not mean anything," said with
a downward glance, as if the child-conscience still protested. But this
was a fortnight ago. It is worse with that little girl to-day; there is
less inward revolt; and to-morrow how will it be with her?
CHAPTER XXXIV
"To Continue the Succession"
FOR to-morrow holds no hope for these children so far as our power to
save them to-day is concerned. It will be remembered that we felt we
could do more for them by working quietly on our own lines than by
appealing to the law; but lately, fearing lest we were possibly doing
the law an injustice by taking it for granted that it was powerless to
help us, we carefully gathered all the evidence we could about three
typical children: one a child in moral danger, though not in actual
Temple danger; another the adopted child of a Temple woman; the third a
Temple woman's own child: and we submitted this evidence to a keen
Indian Christian barrister, and asked for his advice.
L., the first child he deals with, the little "dove in the cage," is in
charge of a woman of bad character, by the consent and arrangement of
her mother. The mother speaks English as well as an Englishwoman, and
her eldest son is studying for his degree in a Government college.
Although Temple service is not intended, the proposed life is such that
a similar course of training as that to which the Temple child is
subjected, is now being carried on. This is the barrister's reply to my
letter:--
"I have carefully perused the statements of the probable witnesses. L.'s
mother is not a Temple woman, and the foster-mother also is not a Temple
woman. The law of adoption relating to Temple women does not apply to
them. The foster-mother, therefore, can have no legal claim to the
child. But the mother has absolute control over the bringing-up of the
child, and it would not be possible in the present state of the law to
do anything for the child now."
S. This is the little one who whispered her texts to me in the
moonlight, and whose foster-mother told her to tell me she was being
trained for the Service of the gods. She is evidently destined to be a
Temple woman. "The first question for consideration is how the old woman
is related to her. If she is the adopted mother, or if she could
successfully plead adoption of the child, the Civil Courts will be
powerless to help. If we can get some reliable evidence that the child
has not been adopted" (this is impossible) "we may be able to induce the
British Courts to interfere on her behalf and say she shall not be
devoted to Temple service until she attains her majority; but it would
not be possible to induce the Courts to hand the child over to the
Mission."
K., the little girl whose own mother is a Temple woman. She has been
taught dancing, which to our mind was conclusive proof of her mother's
intentions. To make sure we asked the question, to which the following
is the reply: "No children of [good] Hindu parents are taught dancing.
Even the lowest caste woman thinks it beneath her dignity to dance,
excepting professional devil-dancers, who are generally old women,
mostly widows, of an hysterical temperament. When young children of
women of doubtful character are taught dancing, it means they are going
to be married to the idol. When children of Temple women are taught
dancing the presumption is all the greater. But the difficulty in the
case of K. is to get one who has higher claims to guardianship than the
mother. In the case of a Temple woman's child there is no one.
"It is this which makes it impossible for the well-wishers of the
children to interfere. . . . The law punishes only the offence committed
and not the intent to commit, or even the preparation, unless it amounts
to an attempt under the Penal Code."
* * * * *
Bluebeards are not an institution in England; but if they were, and if
one of the order were known to possess a cupboardful of pendent heads,
would Englishmen sit quiet while he whetted his butcher's knife quite
calmly on his doorstep? Would they say as he sat there in untroubled
assurance of safety, feeling the edge of the blade with his thumb, and
muttering almost audibly the name of his intended victim, "We have no
right to interfere, he is only sharpening his knife; an intent to
commit, or even the preparation for crime, is not punishable by law,
unless it amounts to an attempt, and he has not 'attempted' yet."
Surely, if such intent were not punishable it very soon would be. It
would be found possible--who can doubt it?--to frame a new law, or amend
the old one, so as to deal with Bluebeards. And a Committee of Vigilance
would be appointed to ensure its effectual working.
Of course, the simile is absurdly inadequate, and breaks down at several
important points, and the circumstances are vastly more difficult in
India than they ever could be in England, just because India is India;
but will it not at least be admitted that the law meant in kindness to
the innocent is fatal to our purpose?--which is to save the children
while they are still innocent.
* * * * *
We do not want to ask for anything unreasonable, but it seems to us that
the law concerning adoption requires revision. In Mayne's _Hindu Law and
Usage_ it is stated that among Temple women it is customary in Madras
and Pondicherry and in Western India to adopt girls to follow their
adopted mother's profession: and the girls so adopted succeed to their
property; no particular ceremonies are necessary, recognition alone
being sufficient. In Calcutta and Bombay such adoptions have been held
illegal, but in the Madras Presidency they are held to be legal. In a
case where the validity of such adoption was questioned, the Madras High
Court affirmed it, and it has now, "by a series of decisions, adopted
the rule . . . which limits the illegality of adoption to cases where
they involve the commission of an offence under the Criminal Code."
This, as we have said, makes it entirely impossible to save the child
through the law before her training is complete; and after it is
complete it is too late to save her. Train a child from infancy to look
upon a certain line of life as the one and only line for her, make the
prospect attractive, and surround her with every possible unholy
influence; in short, bend the twig and keep it bent for the greater part
of sixteen years, or even only six--is there much room for doubt as to
how it will grow? An heir to the property may be required; but with the
facts of life before us, can we be content to allow the adoption of a
child by a Temple woman to be so legalised that even if it can be proved
to a moral certainty that her intention is to "continue the succession,"
nothing can be done?
Then as to the guardianship: again we do not want to ask too much, but
surely if it can be shown that no one else has moved to save the child
(which argues that no one else has cared much about her salvation) we
should not be disqualified for guardianship on the sole ground that we
are not related? In such a case the relatives are the last people with
whom she would be safe. An order may go forth from that nebulous and
distant Impersonality, the British Government, to the effect that a
certain child is not to be dedicated to gods during her minority. But
far away in their villages the people smile at a simplicity which can
imagine that commands can eventually affect purposes. They may delay the
fulfilment of such purpose; but India can afford to wait.
_We would have the law so amended, that whoever has been in earnest
enough about the matter to try to save the child from destruction,
should be given the right to protect her, if in spite of the odds
against him he has honestly fought through a case and won._
"Is it not a sad thing," writes the Indian barrister--we quote his words
because they seem to us worthy of notice at home--"that a Christian
Government is unable to legislate to save the children of Temple women?
I am sorry my opinion has made you sad. Giving my opinion as a lawyer, I
could not take an optimistic view of the matter. _The law as it stands
at present is against reform in matters of this kind._ Even should a
good judge take a strong view of the matter, the High Court will stick
to the very letter of the law."
So that, as things are, it comes to this: We must stand aside and watch
the cup of poison being prepared--so openly prepared that everyone knows
for which child it is being mixed. We must stand and wait and do
nothing. We must see the little girl led up to the cup and persuaded to
taste it. We must watch her gradually growing to like it, for it is
flavoured and sweet. We must not beckon to her before she has drunk of
it and say, "Come to us and we will tell you what is in that cup, and
keep you safely from those who would make you drink it"; for "any
attempt to induce the child to come to you, or any assistance given to
help her to escape to you, would render you liable to prosecution for
kidnapping--a criminal offence under the Penal Code." Any one of us
would gladly go to prison if it would save the child; but the trouble
is, it would not: for the law could only return her to her lawful
guardians from whose hold we unlawfully detached her. We, not they,
would be in the wrong; they did nothing unlawful in only preparing the
cup. Does someone say that we put the case unfairly--that the law does
not forbid us to warn the child, it only forbids us to snatch her away
when the cup is merely being offered her? But remember, in our part of
India at least, these cups are not given in public. The preparation is
public enough, the bare tasting is public too; but the cup in its
fulness is given in private, and once given, the poison works with
stealthy but startling rapidity. Warn the child before she has drunk of
it, and she does not understand you. Warn her after she has drunk, and
the poison holds her from heeding.
Besides, to be very practical, what is the use of warning if we may only
warn? Suppose our one isolated word weighs with the child against the
word of mother or adopted mother, and all who stand for home to her;
suppose she says (she would very rarely have the courage for any such
proposal, but suppose she does say it): "May I come to you? and will you
show me the way, for it is such a long way and I do not know how to find
it? I should be so frightened, alone in the night" (the only time escape
would be possible), "for I know they would run after me, and they can
run faster than I!" What may we say to her? What may I say to the
Harebell supposing she asks me this question? She is only six, and there
are six long miles over broken country between her home and ours. We
could not find it ourselves in the dark. But supposing she dared it all,
and an angel were sent to guide her, have we any right to protect her?
None whatever. If there are parents, or a parent, they or she have the
right of parentage; if an adopted mother, the right of adoption.[F]
We know that the law is framed to protect the good, and the rights of
parentage cannot be too carefully guarded; but to one who has not a
legal mind, but only sees a little girl in danger of her life, and has
to stand with hands tied by a law intended to deal with totally
different matters, it seems strange that things should be so. This is
not the moment (if ever there is such a moment) to choose, for
deliberate lawlessness; but there are times when the temptation is
strong to break the law in the hope that, once broken, it may be
amended. Only those who have had to go through it know what it is to
stand and see that cup of poison being prepared for an unsuspicious
child.
The last sentence in the barrister's letter begins with "I despair." The
sentence is too pungent in its outspoken candour to copy into a book
which may come back to India: "I despair": then unto Thee we turn, O
Lord our God; for now, Lord, what is our hope? truly our hope is even in
Thee: oh, help us against the enemy; for vain is the help of man. Hath
God forgotten to be gracious? Will the Lord absent Himself for ever? O
God, wherefore art Thou absent from us for so long? Look upon the
Covenant, for all the earth is full of darkness and cruel habitations.
Surely Thou hast seen it, for Thou beholdest ungodliness and wrong. The
wicked boasteth of his heart's desire. He sitteth in the lurking-places
of the villages: in the secret places doth he murder the innocent. He
saith in his heart, "God hath forgotten: He hideth His face; He will
never see it." Arise, O Lord God, lift up Thine hand! Up, Lord,
disappoint him, and cast him down; deliver the children! Show Thy
marvellous lovingkindness, Thou that art the Saviour of them which put
their trust in Thee, from such as resist Thy right hand. Thy voice is
mighty in operation: the voice of the Lord is a glorious voice. We wait
for Thy lovingkindness, O God: be merciful unto the children: O God, be
merciful unto the children, for our soul trusteth in Thee, and we call
unto the Most High God, even unto the God that shall perform the cause
which we have in hand. For Thou hast looked down from Thy sanctuary; out
of heaven did the Lord behold the earth, that He might hear the
mournings of such as are in captivity, and deliver the children
appointed to death. Arise, O God, maintain Thine own cause! Our hope is
in Thee, Who helpeth them to right that suffer wrong. The Lord looseth
the prisoners. God is unto us a God of deliverances. Power belongeth
unto Thee. Our soul hangeth upon Thee: Thou shalt show us wonderful
things in Thy righteousness, O God of our salvation, Thou that art the
hope of all the ends of the earth. And all men that see it shall say,
This hath God done; for they shall perceive that it is His work. He
shall deliver the children's souls from falsehood and wrong; for God is
our King of old; the help that is done upon earth He doeth it Himself.
Sure I am, the Lord will avenge the poor, and maintain the cause of the
helpless. Why art thou so heavy, O my soul, and why art thou disquieted
within me? Oh, put thy trust in God; for I will yet praise Him which is
the help of my countenance and my God!
Are there any prayers like the old psalms in their intense sincerity? In
the times when our heart is wounded within us we turn to these ancient
human cries, and we find what we want in them.
Let us pray for the children of this generation being trained now "to
continue the succession," whom nothing less than a Divine interposition
can save. The hunters on these mountains dig pits to ensnare the poor
wild beasts, and they cover them warily with leaves and grass: this
sentence about the succession is just such a pit, with words for leaves
and grass. Let us pray for miracles to happen where individual children
are concerned, that the little feet in their ignorance may be hindered
from running across those pits, for the fall is into miry clay, and the
sides of the pit are slippery and very steep.
More and more as we go on, and learn our utter inability to move a
single pebble by ourselves, and the mighty power of God to upturn
mountains with a touch, we realise how infinitely important it is to
know how to pray. There is the restful prayer of committal to which the
immediate answer is peace. We could not live without this sort of
prayer; we should be crushed and overborne, and give up broken-hearted
if it were not for that peace. But the Apostle speaks of another prayer
that is wrestle, conflict, "agony." And if these little children are to
be delivered and protected after their deliverance, and trained that if
the Lord tarry and life's fierce battle has to be fought--and for them
it may be very fierce--all that will be attempted against them shall
fall harmless at their feet like arrows turned to feather-down; then
some of us must be strong to meet the powers that will combat every inch
of the field with us, and some of us must learn deeper things than we
know yet about the solemn secret of prevailing prayer.
FOOTNOTE:
[F] To-day (February 16, 1912) as I go through proofs of the second
edition, I hear by post of a young girl in a distant city who lately
escaped to a missionary, and asked for what he could not give
her--protection. She had to return to her own home. In her despair, she
drowned herself.
CHAPTER XXXV
What if she misses her Chance?
"Who would be planted chooseth not the soil
Or here or there, . . .
Lord even so
I ask one prayer,
The which if it be granted
It skills not where
Thou plantest me, only I would be planted."
T. E. BROWN.
TWO pictures of two evenings rise as I write. One is of an English
fireside in a country house. The lamps have been lighted, and the
curtains drawn. The air is full of the undefined scent of
chrysanthemums, and the stronger sweetness of hyacinths comes from a
stand in the window. Curled up in a roomy arm-chair by the fire sits a
girl with a kitten asleep on her lap. She is reading a missionary book.
The other this: a white carved cupola in the centre of a piece of water
enclosed by white walls. People are sitting on the walls and pressing
close about them in their thousands. A gorgeous barge is floating slowly
round the shrine. There is very little moon, but the whole place is
alight; sometimes the water is ablaze with ruby and amber; this fades,
and a weird blue-green shimmers across the barge, and electric lamps at
the corners of the square lend brilliancy to the scene. The barge is
covered with crimson trappings, and hundreds of wreaths of white
oleander hang curtain-wise round what is within--the god and goddess
decked with jewels and smothered in flowers. Round and round the barge
is poled, and in the coloured light all that is gaudy and tawdry is
toned, and becomes only oriental and impressive; and the white shrine in
the centre reflected in the calm coloured water appears in its
alternating dimness, and shining more like a fairy creation than common
handiwork.
We who were at the festival, three of us laden with packets of marked
Gospels, met sometimes as we wandered about unobserved, losing ourselves
in the crowd, that we might the more quietly continue that for which we
were there; and in one such chance meeting we spoke of the English girl
by the fireside, and longed to show her what we saw; and to show it with
such earnestness that she would be drawn to inquire where her Master had
most need of her. But no earnestness of writing can do much after all.
It is true the eye affects the heart, and we would show what we have
seen in the hope that even the second-hand sight might do something; but
words are clumsy, and cannot discover to another that poignant thing the
eye has power to transmit to the heart. And it is well that it is so,
for something stronger and more consuming than human emotion can ever be
must operate upon the heart if the life is to be moved to purpose. "A
moving story" is worth little if it only moves the feelings. How far out
of its selfish track does it move the life into ways of sacrifice? That
is the question that matters. What if it cost? Did not Calvary cost?
Away with the cold, calculating love that talks to itself about cost!
God give us a pure passion of love that knows nothing of hesitation and
grudging, and measuring, nothing of compromise! What if it seem
impossible to face all that surrender may mean? Is there not provision
for the impossible? "In the Old Testament we find that in almost every
case of people being clothed with the Spirit it was for things which
were impossible to them. To be filled with the Spirit means readiness
for Him to take us out of our present sphere and put us anywhere away
from our own choice into His choice for us." These words hold a message
alike for us as we meet and pass in that Indian crowd, and for the girl
by the fireside at home who wants to know her Lord's will that she may
do it, and whose heart's prayer is: "May Thy grace, O Lord, make that
possible to me which is impossible by nature."
Let us have done with limitations, let us be simply sincere. How ashamed
we shall be by and by of our insincerities:--
Thy vows are on me, oh to serve Thee truly,
Pants, pants my soul to perfectly obey!
Burn, burn, O Fire, O Wind, now winnow throughly!
Constrain, inspire to follow all the way!
Oh that in me
Thou, my Lord, may see
Of the travail of Thy soul,
And be satisfied.
We had only a few hours to spend in the town of the Floating Festival;
and being anxious to discover how things were among the Temple
community, I spent the first hour in their quarter, a block of
substantial buildings each in its own compound, near the Temple. I saw
the house from which two of our dearest children came, delivered by a
miracle; it looked like a fortress with its wall all round, and upstairs
balcony barred by a trellis. The street door was locked as the women
were at the Festival. In another of less dignified appearance I saw a
pretty woman of about twenty, dressed in pale blue and gold, evidently
just ready to go out. One of those abandoned beings whose function it is
to secure little children "to continue the succession" was in the house,
and so nothing could be attempted but the most casual conversation. All
the other houses in the block were locked as the women were out; but I
saw a new house outside, built in best Indian style, and finely
finished. It had been built for, and given as a free gift, to a noted
Temple woman.
These houses would open, in the missionary sense of the word, but not in
an afternoon. It would take time and careful endeavour to win an
entrance. Such a worker would need to be one whom no disappointment
could discourage, a woman to whom the word had been spoken, "Go, love,
. . . according to the love of the Lord." When will such a worker come?
As I left the Temple quarter, I met my two companions who had been at
work elsewhere, and we walked together to the place of festival.
Tripping gaily along in front was a little maid with flowers in her
hair. It was easy to know who she was, there was something in the very
step that marked the light-footed Temple child. Poor little
all-unconscious illustration of India's need of God!
Later on we saw the same illustration again, lighted up like a great
transparency, the focus for a thousand eyes. For on the dais of the
barge, in the place of honour nearest the idols, stood three women and a
child. The women were swathed in fold upon fold of rich violet silk,
sprinkled all over with tinsel and gold; they were crowned with white
flowers, wreathed round a golden ornament like a full moon set in their
dark hair; and the effect of the whole, seen in the luminous flush of
colour thrown upon them from the shore, was as if the night sky
sparkling with stars had come down and robed them where they stood. Then
when it paled, and sheet-lightning played, as it seemed, across water
and barge and shrine, the effect was wholly mysterious. The three
swaying forms--for they swayed keeping time to the music that never
ceased--resembled one's idea of goddesses rather than familiar
womenkind. To the Indian mind it was beautiful, bewilderingly beautiful;
and the simple country-folk around drew deep breaths of admiration as
they passed.
The little girl looked more human. She too was in violet silk and
spangles and gold, and her little head was wreathed with flowers. It may
have been her first Floating Festival, for she gazed about her with eyes
full of guileless wonder, and the woman beside whom she stood laid a
light, protecting hand upon her shoulder.
That little child! How the sight of her held us in pity as the barge
sailed slowly round. She was so near to us at times that we could almost
have touched her when the barge came near the wall; and yet she was
utterly remote, miles of space might have lain between; it was as if we
and she belonged to different planets. And yet our little ones who might
have been as she, were so close--we could almost feel their loving
little arms round our necks at that moment--this child, how far away she
was! Had one of us set foot on the place where she stood, the friendly
thousands about us would have changed in a second into indignant furies,
and so long as the memory of such impiety remained no white face would
have been welcome at the Floating Festival.
We stood by the wall awhile and watched; the sorrow of it all sank into
us. There in the holiest place of all, according to their thinking,
close to the emblems of deity, they had set this grievous perversion of
the holy and the pure. Right on the topmost pinnacle of everything known
as religious there they had enthroned it, and robed it in starlight and
crowned it as queens are crowned. "Oh, worship the Lord in the beauty of
holiness!" "One thing have I desired of the Lord . . . to behold the fair
beauty of the Lord"--such words open chasms of contrast. God pity them;
like those of old, they know not what they do.
We came away, our books all sold and our strength of voice spent out,
for everywhere people had listened; and as we came home, strong
thanksgiving filled our hearts, thanks and praise unspeakable for the
little lives safe in our nursery, for the two especially who but for
God's interposition might have been on that barge--and oh, from the
ground of our heart we were grateful that He had not let us miss His
will concerning these little children. We thought of those special two
with their dear little innocent ways. We could not think of them on the
barge. We could not bear to think of it--again and again we thanked God,
with humble adoring thanksgiving, that He kept us from missing our
chance.
But the mere thinking of that intolerable thought brought us back upon
another thought. What of that girl by the fireside? What if she misses
her chance? We know, for letters confess it, that many a life has missed
its chance. What of the woman, strong and keen, with pent-up energies
waiting for she knows not what? What of the girl by the fireside
crushing down the sense of an Under-call that will not let her rest? The
work to which that Call would lead her will not be anything great: it
will only mean little humble everyday doings wherever she is sent. But
if the Call is a true Call from heaven, it will change to a song as she
obeys; and through all the afterward of life, through all the loneliness
that may come, through all the disillusions when her "dreams of fair
romance which no day brings" slip away from her--and the usual and
commonplace are all about her--then and for ever that song of the Lord
will sing itself through the quiet places of her soul, and she will be
sure--with the sureness that is just pure peace--that she is where her
Master meant her to be.
Not that we would write as if obedience must always mean service in the
foreign field. We know it is not so: we know it may be quite the
opposite; but shall we not be forgiven if we sometimes wonder how it is
that with so much earnest Church life at home, with so many evangelistic
campaigns, and conventions, there is so poor an output so far as these
lands abroad are concerned? Can it be that so many are meant to stay at
home? We would never urge any individual friend to come, far less would
we plead for numbers, however great the need; we would only say this:
Will the girl by the fireside, if such a one reads this book, lay the
book aside, and spend an hour alone with her Lord? Will she, if she is
in doubt about His will, wait upon Him to show it to her? Will she ask
Him to fit her to obey? "And this I wish to do, this I desire;
whatsoever is wanting in me, do Thou, I beseech Thee, vouchsafe to
supply."
Forgive if we seem to intrude upon holy ground, but sometimes we see in
imagination some great gathering of God's people, and we hear them
singing hymns; and sometimes the beautiful words change into others not
beautiful, but only insistent:--
The Lord our God arouse us! We are sleeping,
Dreaming we wake, while through the heavy night
Hardly perceived, the foe moves on unchallenged,
Glad of the dream that doth delay the fight.
O Christ our Captain, lead us out to battle!
Shame on the sloth of soldiers of the light!
* * * * *
Good Shepherd, Jesus, pitiful and tender,
To whom the least of straying lambs is known,
Grant us Thy love that wearieth not, nor faileth;
Grant us to seek Thy wayward sheep that roam
Far on the fell, until we find and fold them
Safe in the love of Thee, their own true home.
CHAPTER XXXVI
"Thy Sweet Original Joy"
Beacons of hope, ye appear!
Languor is not in your heart,
Weakness is not in your word,
Weariness not on your brow.
WITHIN the last few months a friend, a lover of books, sent me _The
Trial and Death of Socrates_, translated into English by F. J. Church.
Opening it for the first time, I came upon this passage:--
_Socrates:_ "Does a man who is in training, and who is in earnest about
it, attend to the praise and blame of all men, or of the one man who is
doctor or trainer?"
_Crito:_ "He attends only to the opinion of the one man."
_Socrates:_ "Then he ought to fear the blame and welcome the praise of
the one man, not the many?"
_Crito:_ "Clearly."
And Socrates sums the argument thus: "To be brief; is it not the same in
everything?"
Surely the wise man spoke the truth: it is the same in everything. The
one thing that matters is the opinion of the One. If He is satisfied,
all is well. If He is dissatisfied, the commendation of the many is as
froth. "Blessed are the single-hearted, for they shall have much peace."
But Nature is full of pictures of bright companionship in service; the
very stars shine in constellations. This book of the skies has been
opening up to us of late. Who, to whom the experience is new, will
forget the first evenings spent with even a small telescope, but
powerful enough to distinguish double stars and unveil nebulae? You look
and see a single point of light, and you look again and twin suns float
like globes of fire on a midnight sea; and sometimes one flashes golden
yellow and the other blue, each the complement of the other, like two
perfectly responsive friends. You look and see a little lonely cloud, a
breath of transparent mist; you look and see spaces sprinkled with
diamond dust, or something even more awesome, reaches of radiance that
seem to lie on the borderland of Eternity.
And the shining glory lingers and lights up the common day, for the
story of the sky is the story of life.
Far was the Call, and farther as I followed
Grew there a silence round my Lord and me--
is for ever the inner story, as for ever the stars must move alone,
however close they are set in constellations or strewn in clusters; but
in another sense is it not true that there is the joy of companionship
and the pure inspiration of comradeship? God fits twin souls together
like twin suns; and sometimes, with delicate thought for even the
sensitive pleasure of colour, it is as if He arranged them so that the
gold and the blue coalesce.
And we think of the places which were once blank, mere misty nothings to
us. They sparkle now with friends. Some of them are familiar friends
known through the wear and tear of life; some we shall never see till we
meet above the stars. And there the nebula speaks its word of mystery
beyond mystery, but all illuminated by the light from the other side.
In the work of which these chapters have told there has been the
wonderful comfort of sympathy and help from fellow-missionaries of our
own and sister missions; and, as all who have read, understand, nothing
could have been done without the loyal co-operation of our Indian
fellow-workers whose tenderness and patience can never be described. We
think of the friends in the mission houses along the route of our long
journeyings; we remember how no hour was too inconvenient to receive us
and our tired baby travellers; we think of those who in weariness and
painfulness have sought for the little children; and we think of those
who have made the work possible by being God's good Ravens to us. We
think of them all, and we wish their names could be written on the cover
of this book instead of the name least worthy to be there. And now
latest and nearest comfort and blessing, there are the two new
"Sitties," whose first day with us made them one of us. What shall I
render unto the Lord for all His benefits towards me?
The future is full of problems. Even now in these Nursery days questions
are asked that are more easily asked than answered. We should be afraid
if we looked too far ahead, so we do not look. We spend our strength on
the day's work, the nearest "next thing" to our hands. But we would be
blind and heedless if we made no provision for the future. We want to
gather and lay up in store against that difficult time (should it ever
come) a band of friends for the children, who will stand by them in
prayer.
There has been another compelling influence. We recognise something in
the Temple-children question which touches a wider issue than the
personal or missionary. Those who have read _Queen Victoria's Letters_
must have become conscious of a certain enlargement. Questions become
great or dwindle into nothingness according as they affect the honour
and the good of the Empire. We find ourselves instinctively "thinking
Imperially," regarding things from the Throne side--from above instead
of from below.
We fear exaggerated language. We would not exaggerate the importance of
these little children or their cause. We have said that we realise, as
we did not when first this work began, how very delicate and difficult a
matter it would be for Government to take any really effective action,
and less than effective action is useless. We recognise the value of our
pledge of neutrality in religious matters, and we know what might happen
if Government moved in a line which to India might appear to be contrary
to the spirit of that pledge. It would be far better if India herself
led the way and declared, as England declared when she passed the
Industrial Schools Amendment Act of 1880, that she will not have her
little children demoralised in either Temple houses recognised as such,
or in any similar houses, such as those which abound in areas where the
Temple child nominally is non-existent. But must we wait till India
leads the way? Scattered all over the land there are men who are against
this iniquity, and would surely be in favour of such legislation as
would make for its destruction. But few would assert that the people as
a whole are even nearly ready. A great wave of the Power of God, a great
national turning towards Him, would, we know, sweep the iniquity out of
the land as the waters of the Alpheus swept the stable-valley clean, in
the old classic story. Oh for such a sudden flow of the River of God,
which is full of water! But must we wait until it comes? Did we wait
until India herself asked for the abolition of suttee? Surely what is
needed is such legislation as has been found necessary at home, which
empowers the magistrate to remove a child from a dangerous house, and
deprives parents of all parental rights who are found responsible for
its being forced into wrong. Surely such action would be Imperially
right; and can a thing right in itself and carried out with a wise
earnestness, ever eventually do harm? Must it not do good in the end,
however agitating the immediate result may appear? Surely the one calm
answer, "_It is Right_," will eventually silence all protest and still
all turbulence!
Such a law, it is well to understand at the outset, will always be
infinitely more difficult to enforce in India than in England, because
of the immensely greater difficulty here in getting true evidence; and
because--unless that River of God flow through the land--there will be
for many a year the force of public opinion as a whole against us, or if
not actively against, then inert and valueless. Caste feeling will come
in and shield and circumvent and get behind the law. The Indian
sensitiveness concerning Custom will be all awake and tingling with a
hidden but intense vitality; and this, which is inevitable because
natural, will have to be taken into account in every attempt made to
enforce the law. The whole situation bristles with difficulties; but are
difficulties an argument for doing nothing?
"Whoever buys hires or otherwise obtains possession of, whoever sells
lets to hire or otherwise disposes of any minor under sixteen with the
intent that such minor shall be employed or used for . . . any unlawful
purpose or knowing it likely that such minor will be employed or used
for any such purpose shall be liable to imprisonment up to a term of ten
years and is also liable to a fine."
_But_ where it appeared that certain minor girls were being taught
singing and dancing and were being made to accompany their grandmother
and Temple woman to the Temple with a view to qualify them as Temple
women, it was held that this did not amount to a disposal of the minors
within the meaning of the section.
Ought this interpretation of the Indian Penal Code to be possible? The
proof the law requires at present, proof of the sale of the child or its
definite dedication to the idol, is rarely obtainable. The fact that it
is being taught singing and dancing (although it is well known, as the
barrister's letter proves, that among orthodox Hindus such arts are
never taught to little children except when the intention is bad) is not
considered sufficient evidence upon which to base a conviction. To us it
seems that the presence of the child in such a house, or in any house of
known bad character, is sufficient proof that it is in danger of the
worst wrong that can be inflicted upon a defenceless child--the
demoralisation of its soul, the spoiling of its whole future life,
before it has ever had a chance to know and choose the good.
[Illustration: From the Rock, Dohnavur.]
And so we write it finally as our solemn conviction that there is need
for a law like our own English law, and we add--and those who know India
know how true this sentence is--_such legislation, however carefully
framed, will be a delusion, a blind, a dead letter, unless men of no
ordinary insight and courage and character are appointed to see that it
is carried out_.
God grant that these chapters, written in weakness, may yet do something
towards moving the Church to such prayer that the answer will be, as
once before, that an angel will be sent to open the doors of the
prison-house!
The frontispiece shows the rock to which we go sometimes when we feel
the need of a climb and a blow. It is associated in our minds with a
story:--"Between the passages by which Jonathan sought to go over unto
the Philistines' garrison there was a sharp rock on the one side and a
sharp rock on the other side. . . . And Jonathan said to the young man
that bare his armour: 'Come and let us go over unto the garrison of
these uncircumcised: it may be that the Lord will work for us: for there
is no restraint to the Lord to save by many or by few.' And his
armour-bearer said unto him: 'Do all that is in thine heart: turn thee,
behold I am with thee according to thy heart.'"
We have a rock to climb, and there is nothing the least romantic
about it. We shall have to climb it "upon our hands and upon our feet."
It is all grim earnest. "We make our way wrapped in glamour to the
Supreme Good, the summit," writes Guido Rey, the mountaineer, in the joy
of his heart. But later it is: "One precipice fell away at my feet, and
another rose above me. . . . It was no place for singing." Friends, we
shall come to such places on the Matterhorn of life. As we follow the
Gleam wherever it leads, may we count upon the upholding of those for
whom we have written--the lovers of little children?
And now, in conclusion, all I would say has already been so perfectly
said, that I cannot do better than copy from the writings of two who
fought a good fight and have been crowned--Miss Ellice Hopkins, brave,
sensitive, soldier-soul on the hardest of life's battlefields; and
George Herbert, courtier, poet, and saint. "Often in that nameless
discouragement," wrote Miss Hopkins, as she lay slowly dying, "before
unfinished tasks, unfulfilled aims and broken efforts, I have thought of
how the creative Word has fashioned the opal, made it of the same stuff
as desert sands, mere silica--not a crystallised stone like the diamond,
but rather a stone with a broken heart, traversed by hundreds of small
fissures which let in the air, the breath, as the Spirit is called in
the Greek of our Testament; and through those two transparent mediums of
such different density it is enabled to refract the light, and reflect
every lovely hue of heaven, while at its heart burns a mysterious spot
of fire. When we feel, therefore, as I have often done, nothing but
cracks and desert dust, we can say: So God maketh His precious opal!"
We would never willingly disguise one fraction of the truth in our
desire to win sympathy and true co-operation. There will be hours of
nameless discouragement for all who climb the rock. For some there will
be the "broken heart."
And yet there is a joy that is worth it all a thousand times--well worth
it all. Who that has known it will doubt it? This reach of water
recalls it. The palms, as we look at them, seem to lift their heads in
solemn consciousness of it. For the water-side--where we stand with
those for whom we have travailed in soul, when for the first time they
publicly confess their faith in Christ--is a sacred place to us.
[Illustration: THE PLACE OF BAPTISM.]
Has our story wandered sometimes into sorrowful ways? To be true it has
to be sorrowful sometimes. We look back to the day of its beginning, the
day that our first little Temple child came and opened a new door to us.
Since that time many a bitter storm
My soul hath felt, e'en able to destroy,
Had the malicious and ill-meaning harm
His swing and sway;
But still Thy sweet original joy
Sprung from Thine eye did work within my soul,
And surging griefs when they grew bold control,
And got the day.
It is true. Many a bitter storm has come; there have been the shock and
the darkness of new knowledge of evil, and grief beside which all other
pain pales, the grief of helplessness in the face of unspeakable wrong.
But still, above and within, and around, like an atmosphere, like a
fountain, there has been something bright, even that "sweet original
joy" which nothing can darken or quench.
If Thy first glance so powerful be
A mirth but opened and sealed up again,
What wonders shall we feel when we shall see
Thy full-orbed love!
When Thou shalt look us out of pain,
And one aspect of Thine spend in delight,
More than a thousand worlds' disburse in light
In heaven above!
And not alone, oh, not alone, shall we see Him as He is! There will be
the little children too.
_Those who care to know how the Temple Children's work began will find
the story in_ "THINGS AS THEY ARE." _Preface by Eugene Stock; 320 pp.
and Thirty-two Illustrations from Photographs taken specially for this
work. Cloth, 2s. 6d. net (post free 2s. 10d.) Also,_ "OVERWEIGHTS OF
JOY." _Preface by Rev. T. Walker, C.M.S. With Thirty-four Illustrations
chiefly from Photographs taken specially for this work. Cloth, 2s. 6d.
net (post free 2s. 10d.), Morgan & Scott Ld., 12, Paternoster Buildings,
London._
ONLY A LIMITED NUMBER OF COPIES REMAIN
OF THE
ORIGINAL EDITION OF
LOTUS BUDS
CONTAINING
FIFTY PHOTOGRAVURE ILLUSTRATIONS.
* * * * *
Cloth Boards, 14s. 6d. _net_ (_post free_, 15s.).
* * * * *
"THE MOST STRIKING MISSIONARY BOOK EVER PUBLISHED."
_Her Majesty Queen Alexandra graciously accepted a copy._
"The feature of the book is fifty photogravure
illustrations from photographs specially taken of
the children. Many of these--indeed, all of
them--are very charming. Some of them are mere
babies, others of larger growth, but in each case
the photographer has succeeded in presenting
pictures which will elicit high admiration. The
laughing faces, curly hair, and fine physical
development of the little Indians, make
photographs exceedingly attractive. Indeed, we
have never seen a more 'taking' series of children
of the Orient. . . . The book will interest not only
supporters of missions but all lovers of
children."--_The Westminster Gazette._
"The photogravure illustrations--fifty in
number--are perfect as works of art. Some are
pictures of scenery; most are characteristic
representations of the children. All are
full-page."--_British Weekly._
". . . the beautiful little faces depicted in the
photogravures which adorn the volume. There are
fifty of these photogravures in the book, the
major portion being of children, and we regard it
as extremely improbable that more splendid
pictures are to be found in any other
work."--_Baby._
"The most wonderful photographs."--_Contemporary
Review._
"We have seldom seen more attractive illustrations
than those of the Indian children which are here
reproduced."--_East and West._
"They are the finest photographs of children we
have ever seen, and beautifully produced."--_The
Record._
"We must, in conclusion, compliment all concerned
in the manner in which this appeal for the
children has been issued--the author, the artist,
and the publishers (Messrs. Morgan & Scott Ld.),
having combined to produce in 'Lotus Buds' a fine
piece of work."--_The Publishers' Circular._
* * * * *
MORGAN & SCOTT LD., 12, Paternoster Buildings, London, E.C.
ALSO BY AMY WILSON-CARMICHAEL
* * * * *
THINGS AS THEY ARE: MISSION WORK IN SOUTHERN INDIA
With Preface by EUGENE STOCK. 320 pages, and Thirty-two beautiful
Illustrations from Photographs taken specially for this work. Ninth
Edition. Paper, 1s. 6d. _net_ (_post free_, 1s. 9d.); Cloth Boards,
2s. 6d. _net_ (_post free_, 2s. 10d.).
DR. A. RUDISILL, M.E. Press, Madras:--"In 'Things as They Are' are
pictured by pen and camera some things as they are. It is all the more
needful now when so many are deceived, and are being deceived, as to the
true nature of idolatry, that people at home who give and pray should be
told plainly that what Paul wrote about idolaters in Rome and Corinth is
still true of idolaters in India."
"The account of native life, of the customs of the people, of the few
pleasures they enjoy, and the many sorrows that oppress them, is as
accurate as it is lucid and entertaining. It will be well to give this
book studious attention; it is so completely sincere and so free from
prejudice; and there are many excellent illustrations after
photographs."--_Literary World._
OVERWEIGHTS OF JOY: MISSION WORK IN SOUTHERN INDIA
Preface by Rev. T. WALKER, C.M.S. 320 pages, and Thirty-four beautiful
Illustrations from Photographs taken specially for this work. Paper 1s.
6d. _net_ (_post free_, 1s. 9d.).; Cloth Boards, 2s. 6d. _net_
(_post free_, 2s. 10d.). (Companion Volume to "Things as They Are.")
"There is a life and enthusiasm and devotion, combined with literary
ability and winsomeness of style, which make the book very captivating,
as well as very touching. It is quite wonderfully illustrated with
sunsets on the Ghauts and all kinds of wonders, and withal it is a song
of spiritual triumph from a soul that feels intensely the cost of the
Cross. A book, indeed, for every Christian home."--_The Churchman._
"One of the most striking and inspiring missionary books of recent
years."--_The Christian World._
THE BEGINNING OF A STORY
Being the story of the beginning of the work among Temple children,
related for the friends of the Temple children. Bound in Art Covers,
tied with silk cord. Artistic design embossed in gold, 6d. _net_
(_post free_, 8d.).
"This little book tells a touching story. It is hoped that many who are
interested in the work on behalf of Indian children exposed to terrible
peril will circulate this booklet to further a cause which has aroused
widespread and prayerful interest."--_Irish Baptist Magazine._
"This is a delightful booklet in its attractive blue and gold covers,
and with the picture of the smiling Indian maiden looking out upon
us."--_Bible Standard._
* * * * *
MORGAN & SCOTT LD., 12, Paternoster Buildings, London, E.C.
* * * * *
Transcriber's note:
Obvious punctuation errors were corrected.
The original contained each chapter number and title on a page preceding
the actual start of the chapter. These repeated Chapter Titles were
removed to avoid redundancy.
Varied hyphenation, such as "armchair" and "arm-chair", was retained.
The Bear Garden is not hyphenated when used in titles but is hyphenated
within the text.
Page 22, "subjeect" changed to "subject" (is the subject of)
Page 237, "form" changed to "from" (from Bunyan's)
Page 237, "C. H." changed to "G. H." (by G. H. Morrison)
Page 238, "suprintends" changed to "superintends" (superintends the
more)
Page 256, "opportunties" changed to "opportunities" (watching for
opportunities)
Page 256, "aviod" changed to "avoid" (To avoid the Penal)
Page 298, "own their" changed to "their own" (from their own homes)