Correspondences
"It is very pleasant when you are in England, and
you see souls being saved, and you see the
conviction of sin, and you see the power of the
Gospel to bring new life and new joy and purity to
hearts. But it is still more glorious amongst the
heathen to see the same things, to see the Lord
there working His own work of salvation, and to
see the souls convicted and the hearts broken, and
to see there the new life and the new joy coming
out in the faces of those who have found the Lord
Jesus."
_Rev. Barclay F. Buxton, Japan._
BEFORE putting this chapter together, I have looked long at the
photograph which fronts it. The longer one looks the more pitiful it
seems. Perhaps one reads into it all that one knows of her, all one has
done for her, how one has failed--and this makes it sadder than it may
be to other eyes. And yet can it fail to be sad? Hood's lines reversed
describe her--
"All that is left of her
Now is not womanly."
The day we took her photo she was returning from her morning worship at
the shrine. She had poured her libation over the idol, walked round and
round it, prostrated herself before it, gone through the prayers she had
learned off by heart, and now was on her way home.
[Illustration: A Saivite ascetic. Siva represents the severer side of
Hinduism, the Powers of Nature which destroy. But as all disintegrated
things are reintegrated in some other form, the two Powers, Destruction
and Reconstruction, were united in the thought of the old Hindus, and
Siva represents the double Power. The Saivite form of Hinduism is older
than the Vaishnavite, and more widely spread over India. There are said
to be 30,000,000 symbols of the god Siva scattered about the land.
Saivites are instantly recognised by the mark of white ashes on their
foreheads, and sometimes on the breast and arms, and often a necklet of
berries is worn.]
We had gone to her village to take photographs, and had just got the
street scene in the morning light. The crowd followed us, eager to see
more of the doings of the picture-catching box; and she, fearing the
defiling touch of the mixed Castes represented there, had climbed up on
a granite slab by the side of the road, and stood waiting till we
passed.
There we saw her, and there we took her,--for, to our surprise, she did
not object,--and now here she is, to show with all the force of truth
how far from ideal the real may be. We looked at her as I look at her
now, stripped of all God meant her to have when He made her, deep in the
mire of the lowest form of idolatry, a devotee of Siva. She had been to
Benares and bathed in the sacred Ganges, and therefore she is holy
beyond the reach of doubt. She has no room for any sense of the need of
Christ. She pities our ignorance when we talk to her. Is she not a
devotee? Has she not been to Benares?
Often and often we meet her in the high-caste houses of the place, where
she is always an honoured guest because of her wonderful sanctity. She
watches keenly then lest any of the younger members of the household
should incline to listen to us.
One of her relatives is an English-educated lawyer, a bitter though
covert foe, who not long ago stirred up such opposition that we were
warned not to go near the place. Men had been hired "to fall upon us and
beat us." This because a girl, a connection of his, read her Bible
openly, instead of in secret as she had done before. He connected this
action on her part with a visit we had paid to the house, and so induced
certain of the baser sort to do this thing. We went, however, just the
same, as we had work we had promised to do, and saw the old gentleman
sitting on the verandah reading his English newspaper in the most
pacific fashion. He seemed surprised to see us as we passed with a
salaam; we saw nothing of the beaters, and returned with whole bones, to
the relief of the community at large. Only I remember one of our Band
was woefully disappointed: "I thought, perhaps, we were going to be
martyrs," she said.
[Illustration: Street in the Red Lake Village. An ordinary typical
village scene, except that just then there were more people than usual
before the picture-catching box. The only way to keep them from crowding
round it was to show them something else: this explains the group on the
stones at the side.]
And so we realise, as so often in India, the power of both extremes; the
one with all the force of his education, and the other with all the
force of her superstition, each uniting with the other in repelling the
coming of the Saviour both equally need.
As one looks at the photograph, does it not help in the effort to
realise the utter hopelessness, from every human point of view, of
trying to win such a one, for example, to even care to think of Christ?
There is, over and above the natural apathy common to all, an immense
barrier of accumulated merit gained by pilgrimages, austerities, and
religious observances, and the soul is perfectly satisfied, and has no
desire whatever after God. It is just this self-satisfaction which makes
it so hopeless to try to do anything with it.
And yet nothing is hopeless to God; "Set no borders to His strength," a
Japanese missionary said. We say it over and over again to ourselves, in
the face of some great hopelessness, like that photograph before us; and
sometimes, as if to assure us it is so, God lifts some such soul into
light. Just now we are rejoicing in a letter from the eastern side of
the district, telling us of the growth in the new life of one who only a
little while ago was a temple devotee.
One has often longed to see Him work as He worked of old, healing the
sick by the word of His power, raising the dead. But when we see Him
gathering one--and such a one!--from among the heathen to give thanks
unto His holy Name and to triumph in His praise, one feels that indeed
it is a miracle of miracles, and that greater than a miracle wrought on
the body is a miracle wrought on the soul. But nothing I can write can
show you the miracle it was. In that particular case it was like seeing
a soul drawn out of the hand of the Ruler of Darkness. All salvation is
that in reality, but sometimes, as in her case, when the whole
environment of the soul has been strongly for evil in its most dangerous
phase, then it is more evidently so.
Perhaps we should explain. We know that in its widest sense environment
simply means "all that is." We know that "all that is" includes the
existence of certain beings, described as "Powers" in Ephesians vi. 12.
Some of us are more or less unconscious of this part of our environment.
We have no conscious correspondence with it, but it is there. Others,
again, seek and find such correspondence, to their certain and awful
loss.
Such a subject can hardly bear handling in language. Thank God we know
so little about it that we do not know how to speak of it accurately.
Neither, indeed, do we wish to intrude into those things which we have
not seen by any attempt at close definition; but we know there is this
unhallowed correspondence between men and demons, which in old days
drew down, as a lightning conductor, the flash of the wrath of God.
Here in India it exists; we often almost touch it, but not quite. We
would not go where we knew we should see it, even if we might; so,
unless we happen upon it, which is rare, we never see it at all. A year
ago I saw it, and that one look made me realise, as no amount of
explanations ever could, how absolutely out of reach of all human
influence such souls are. _Nothing_ can reach them, nothing but the
might of the Holy Ghost.
So I close with this one look. Will you pray for those to whom in the
moonless night, at the altar by the temple, there is the sudden coming
of that which they have sought--the "possession," the "afflatus," which
for ever after marks them out as those whose correspondences reach
beyond mortal ken. All devotees have not received this awful baptism,
but in this part of India many have.
We were visiting in a high-caste house. The walls were decorated with
mythological devices, and even the old wood-carvings were full of
idolatrous symbols. The women were listening well, asking questions and
arguing, until one, an old lady, came in. Then they were silent. She sat
down and discussed us. We thought we would change the subject, and we
began to sing. She listened, as they always do, interrupting only to
say, "That's true! that's true!" Till suddenly--I cannot describe
what--something seemed to come over her, and she burst into a frenzy,
exclaiming, "Let me sing! let me sing!" And then she sang as I never
heard anyone sing before--the wildest, weirdest wail of a song all about
idolatry, its uselessness and folly, its sorrow and sin.
So far I followed her, for I knew the poem well, but she soon turned off
into regions of language and thought unreached as yet by me. Here she
got madly excited, and, swaying herself to and fro, seemed lashing
herself into fury. Nearer and nearer she drew to us (we were on the
floor beside her); then she stretched out her arm with its clenched
fist, and swung it straight for my eye. Within a hair's-breadth she drew
back, and struck out for Victory's; but God helped her not to flinch.
Then I cannot tell what happened, only her form dilated, and she seemed
as if she would spring upon us, but as if she were somehow held back. We
dare not move for fear of exciting her more. There we sat for I know not
how long, with this awful old woman's clenched fist circling round our
heads, or all but striking into our eyes, while without intermission she
crooned her song in that hollow hum that works upon the listener till
the nerve of the soul is drawn out, as it were, to its very farthest
stretch. It was quite dark by this time; only the yellow flicker of the
wind-blown flame of the lamp made uncertain lights and shadows round the
place where we were sitting, and an eerie influence fell on us all,
almost mesmeric in effect. I did not need the awestruck whispers round
me to tell me what it was. But oh! I felt, as I never felt before, the
reality of the presence of unseen powers, and I knew that the Actual
itself was in the room with me.
At last she fell back exhausted, trembling in every limb. Her old head
hit the wall as she fell, but I knew we must not help her; it would be
pollution to her if we touched her. The people all round were too
frightened to move. So she fell and lay there quivering, her glittering
eyes still fixed on us; and she tried to speak, but could not.
Softly we stole away, and we felt we had been very near where Satan's
seat is.
Think of someone you love--as I did then--of someone whose hair is white
like hers; but the face you think of has peace in it, and God's light
lightens it. Then think of her as we saw her last--the old face torn
with the fury of hell, and for light the darkness thereof.
Oh, friends, do you care enough? Do we care enough out here? God give us
hearts that can care!