"The Dust of the Actual"
"This may be counted as our richest gain, to have
learned afresh one's utter impotency so completely
that the past axiom of service, '_I can no more
convert a soul than create a star_,' comes to be
an awful revelation, so that God alone may be
exalted in that day."
_Rev. Walter Searle, Africa._
WE have just come back from a Pariah village. Now see it all with me.
Such a curious little collection of huts, thrown down anywhere; such
half-frightened, half-friendly faces; such a scurrying in of some and
out of others; and we wonder which house we had better make for. We stop
before one a shade cleaner than most, and larger and more open.
"May we come in?" Chorus, "Come in! oh, come in!" and in we go. It is a
tiny, narrow slip of a room. At one end there is a fire burning on the
ground; the smoke finds its way out through the roof, and a pot of rice
set on three stones is bubbling cheerfully. No fear of defilement here.
They would not like us to touch their rice or to see them eating it, but
they do not mind our being in the room where it is being cooked.
At the other end of the narrow slip there is a goat-pen, not very clean;
and down one side there is a raised mud place where the family
apparently sleep. This side and the two ends are roofed by palmyra
palm. It is dry and crackles at a touch, and you touch it every time you
stand up, so bits of it are constantly falling and helping to litter the
open space below.
[Illustration: An ancient Pariah, but the baby in her arms is a son of
the Caste of Palmyra Climbers. Both faces--the old crone's and the baby
boy's--are very typical. The baby is a "Christian," I should explain,
and his parents are true Christians, otherwise the Pariah woman would
not have been allowed to touch him.]
Five babies at different stages of refractoriness are sprawling about on
this strip of floor; they make noises all the time. Half a dozen
imbecile-looking old women crowd in through the low door, and stare and
exchange observations. Three young men with nothing particular to do
lounge at the far end of the platform near the goats. A bright girl,
with more jewellery on than is usual among Pariahs, is tending the fire
at the end near the door; she throws a stick or two on as we enter, and
hurries forward to get a mat. We sit down on the mat, and she sits
beside us; and the usual questions are asked and answered by way of
introduction. There is a not very clean old woman diligently devouring
betel; another with an enormous mouth, which she always holds wide open;
another with a very loud voice and a shock of unspeakable hair. But they
listen fairly well till a goat creates a diversion by making a remark,
and a baby--a jolly little scrap in its nice brown skin and a
bangle--yells, and everyone's attention concentrates upon it.
The goat subsides, the baby is now in its mother's arms; so we go on
where we left off, and I watch the bright young girl, and notice that
she listens as one who understands. She looks rather superior; her
rose-coloured seeley is clean, and two large gold jewels are in each
ear; she has a little gold necklet round her throat, and silver bangles
and toe rings. All the others are hopelessly grubby and very
unenlightened, but they listen just as most people listen in church,
with a sort of patient expression. It is the proper thing to do.
I am talking to them now, and till I am half-way through nobody says
anything, when suddenly the girl remarks, "We have ten fingers, not just
one!" which is so astonishing that I stop and wonder what she can be
thinking of. I was talking about the one sheep lost out of one hundred.
What has that got to do with one finger and ten? She goes on to explain,
"I have heard all this before. I have a sister who is a Christian, and
once I stayed with her, and I heard all about your religion, and I felt
in my heart it was good. But then I was married" ("tied," she said),
"and of course I forgot about it; but now I remember, and I say if ten
of our people will join and go over to your Way, that will be well, but
what would be the use of one going? What is the use of one finger moving
by itself? It takes ten to do the day's work."
"If ten of you had cholera, and I brought you cholera medicine, would
you say, 'I won't take it unless nine others take it too'?" I replied.
She laughs and the others laugh, but a little uneasily. They hardly like
this reference to the dreaded cholera; death of the body is so much more
tremendous in prospect than death of the soul. "You would take it, and
then the others, seeing it do you good, would perhaps take it too"; and
we try to press home the point of the illustration. But a point pricks,
and pricking is uncomfortable.
The three men begin to shuffle their feet and talk about other things;
the old mother-in-law proposes betel all round, and hands us some
grimy-looking leaves with a pressing invitation to partake. The various
onlookers make remarks, and the girl devotes herself to her baby. But
she is thinking; one can see old memories are stirred. At last with a
sigh she gets up, looks round the little indifferent group, goes over to
the fireplace, and blows up the fire. This means we had better say
salaam; so we say it and they say it, adding the usual "Go and come."
It will be easier to help these people out of their low levels than it
will be to help their masters of the higher walks of life. But to do
anything genuine or radical among either set of people is never really
easy.
"=It takes the Ideal to blow a hair's-breadth off the Dust of the
Actual.="
It takes more. It takes =God=. It takes =God= to do anything anywhere.
Yesterday we were visiting in one of the Caste villages, and one old
lady, who really seems to care for us, said she would greatly like to
take my hand in hers; "but," she explained, "this morning one of the
children of the place leaned over the edge of the tank to drink, and he
fell in and was drowned; so I have been to condole with his people, and
I have now returned from bathing, and do not feel equal to bathing
again." If she touched me she would have to bathe to get rid of the
defilement. Of course I assured her I quite understood, but as she sat
there within two inches of me, yet so carefully preserving inviolate
those two inches of clear space, I felt what a small thing this
caste-created distance was, the merest "Dust of the Actual" on the
surface of the system of her life; and yet, "to blow a hair's-breadth
of it off, nothing less is needed than the breath of the power of God."
"Come, O Breath, and breathe!" we cry. Nothing else will do.
Something in our talk led to a question about the character of Jesus,
and, as we tried to describe a little of the loveliness of our dear Lord
to her, her dark eyes kindled. "How beautiful it is!" she said; "how
beautiful He must be!" She seemed "almost persuaded," but we knew it was
only almost, not quite; for she does not yet know her need of a Saviour,
she has no sense of sin. Sometimes, it is true, that comes later; but we
find that if the soul is to resist the tremendous opposing forces which
will instantly be brought to bear upon it if it turns in the least
towards Christ, there must be a _conviction_ wrought within it; nothing
so superficial as a _feeling_, be it ever so appreciative or hopeful or
loving, will stand that strain.
So, though the eyes of this dear woman fill with tears as she hears of
the price of pain He paid, and though she gladly listens as we read and
talk with her and pray, yet we know the work has not gone deep, and we
make our "petitions deep" for her, and go on.
In India men must work among men, and women among women, but sometimes,
in new places, as I have told before, we have to stop and talk with the
men before they will let us pass. For example, one afternoon I was
waylaid on my way to the women by the head of the household I was
visiting, a fine old man of the usual type, courteous but opposed. He
asked to look at my books. I had a Bible, a lyric book, and a book of
stanzas bearing upon the Truth, copied from the old Tamil classics. He
pounced upon this. Then he began to chant the stanzas in their
inimitable way, and at the sound several other old men drew round the
verandah, till soon a dozen or more were listening with that
appreciative expression they seem to reserve for their own beloved
poetry.
After the reader had chanted through a dozen or more stanzas, he stopped
abruptly and asked me if I really cared for it. Of course I said I did
immensely, and only wished I knew more, for the Tamil classics are a
study in themselves, and these beautiful ancient verses I had copied out
were only gleanings from two large volumes, full of the wisdom of the
East.
They were all thoroughly friendly now, and we got into conversation. One
of the group held that there are three co-eternal substances--God, the
Soul, and Sin. Sin is eternally bound up in the soul, as verdigris is
inherent in copper. It can be removed eventually by intense meditation
upon God, and by the performance of arduous works of merit. But these
exercises they all admitted were incompatible with the ordinary life of
most people, and generally impracticable. And so the fact is, the
verdigris of sin remains.
I remember the delight with which I discovered that Isaiah i. 25 uses
this very illustration; for the word translated "dross" in English is
the colloquial word for verdigris in Tamil; so the verse reads, "I will
turn My hand to thee, and thoroughly purify thee, _so as to remove thy
verdigris_."
Most of the others held a diametrically opposite view. So far from Soul
and Sin being co-eternal with God they are not really existent at all.
Both are illusory. There is only one existent entity. It is the Divine
Spirit, and it has neither personality nor any personal qualities. All
apparent separate existences are delusive. Meditation, of the same
absorbing type held necessary by the other, is the only way to reach the
stage of enlightenment which leads to reabsorption into the Divine
essence, in which we finally merge, and lose what appeared to be our
separate identity. We are lost in God, as a drop is lost in the ocean.
Some of the men advocated a phase of truth which reminds one of
Calvinism gone mad, and others exactly opposite are extravagantly
Arminian. The Calvinists illustrate their belief by a single
illuminating word, _Cat-hold_, and the Arminians by another,
_Monkey-hold_. Could you find better illustrations? The cat takes up the
kitten and carries it in its mouth; the kitten is passive, the cat does
everything. But the little monkey holds on to its mother, and clings
with might and main. Those who have watched the "cat-hold" in the house,
and the "monkey-hold" out in the jungle, can appreciate the accuracy of
these two illustrations.
But running through every form of Hinduism, however contradictory each
to the other may be, there is the underlying thought of pure and simple
Pantheism. And this explains many of the aforesaid contradictions, and
many of the incongruities which are constantly cropping up and
bewildering one who is trying to understand the Hindu trend of thought.
So, though those men all affirmed that there is only one God, they
admitted that they each worshipped several. They saw nothing
inconsistent in this. Just as the air is in everything, so God is in
everything, therefore in the various symbols. And as our King has divers
representative Viceroys and Governors to rule over his dominions in his
name, so the Supreme has these sub-deities, less in power and only
existing by force of Himself, and He, being all-pervasive, can be
worshipped under their forms.
This argument they all unitedly pressed upon me that afternoon, and
though capital answers probably present themselves to your mind, you
might not find they satisfied the Hindu who argues along lines of logic
peculiar to the East, and subtle enough to mystify the practical Western
brain; and then--for we are conceited as well as practical--we are apt
to pity the poor Hindu for being so unlike ourselves; and if we are
wholly unsympathetic, we growl that there is nothing in the argument,
whereas there is a good deal in it, only we do not see it, because we
have never thought out the difficulty in question. Quite opposite,
sometimes we have to meet a type of mind like that of MacDonald's
student of Shakespeare, who "missed a plain point from his eyes being so
sharp that they looked through it without seeing it, having focussed
themselves beyond it." Assuredly there is much to learn before one can
hope to understand the winding of the thread of thought which must be
traced if one would follow the working of the Hindu mind. Let no one
with a facility for untying mental knots think that his gift would be
wasted in India!
The word that struck those men that afternoon was 1 John v. 11 and 12:
"God hath given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He that
hath the Son hath life, and he that hath not the Son of God hath not
life." I was longing to get to the women, but when they began to read
those verses and ask about the meaning, I could not go without trying to
tell them. Oh, how one needed at that moment Christ to become to us
Wisdom, for it is just here one may so easily make mistakes. Put the
truth of God's relation to the soul subjectively--"He that hath the Son
hath life"--before thoughtful Hindus such as these men were, and they
will be perfectly enchanted; for the Incarnation presents no difficulty
to them, as it would to a Mohammedan; and perhaps, to your sudden
surprise and joy, they will say, that is exactly what they are prepared
to believe. "Christ in me"--this is comprehensible. "The indwelling of
the Spirit of God"--this is analogous to their own phrase: "The
indwelling of the Deity in the lotus of the heart." But probably by
trading on words and expressions which are already part of the Hindu
terminology, and which suggest to them materialistic ideas, we may
seriously mislead and be misled. We need to understand not only what the
Hindu says, but also what his words mean to himself, a very different
thing.
That talk ended in a promise from the men that they would arrange a
meeting of Hindus for the Iyer, if he would come and take it, which of
course he did. I should like to finish up by saying, "and several were
converted," but as yet that would not be true. These deep-rooted ancient
and strong philosophies are formidable enough, when rightly understood,
to make us feel how little we can do to overturn them; but they are
just as "Dust" in comparison with the force of the "Actual" entrenched
behind them. Only superficial Dust; and yet, as in every other case,
nothing but the Breath of God can blow this Dust away.
[Illustration: Another widow. She was never a wife; and, moved by some
sort of pity, they let her keep one jewel in each ear. She is a
Vellalar; her people are wealthy landowners. She was ashamed of having
yielded to the weakness of letting us take her photo; and when we went
to show it to her, she would not look at it. She has no desire whatever
to hear; and she and the young girl on the step at her feet are resolute
in opposing the teaching.]
We left the old men to their books and endless disquisitions, and went
on to the women's quarter. There we saw a young child-widow, very fair
and sweet and gentle, but quieter than a child should be; for she is a
widow accursed. Her mind is keen--she wants to learn; but why should a
widow learn, they say, why should her mind break bounds? She lives in a
tiny mud-built house, in a tiny mud-walled yard; she may not go out
beyond those walls, then why should she _think_ beyond? But she is
better off than most, for she lives with her mother, who loves her, and
her father makes a pet of her, and so she is sheltered more or less from
the cruel scourge of the tongue.
There is another in the next courtyard; she is not sheltered so. She
lives with her mother-in-law, and the world has lashed her heart for
years; it is simply callous now. There she sits with her chin in her
hand, just hard. Years ago they married her, an innocent, playful little
child, to a man who died when she was nine years old. Then they tore her
jewels from her, all but two little ear-rings, which they left in pity
to her; and this poor little scrap of jewellery was her one little bit
of joy. She could not understand it at first, and when her pretty
coloured seeleys were taken away, and she had to wear the coarse white
cloth she hated so, she cried with impotent childish wrath; and then she
was punished, and called bitter names,--the very word _widow_ means
bitterness,--and gradually she understood that there was something
the matter with her. She was not like other little girls. She had
brought ill-fortune to the home. She was accursed.
It is true that some are more gently dealt with, and many belong to
Castes where the yoke of Custom lies lighter; for these the point of the
curse is blunted, there is only a dull sense of wrong. But in all the
upper Castes the pressure is heavy, and there are those who feel
intensely, feel to the centre of their soul, the sting of the shame of
the curse.
"It is fate," says the troubled mother; "who can escape his fate?" "It
is sin," says the mother-in-law; and the rest of the world agrees.
"'Where the bull goes, there goes its rope.' 'Deeds done in a former
birth, in this birth burn.'"
Much of the working of the curse is hidden behind shut doors. I saw a
young widow last week whose mind is becoming deranged in consequence of
the severity of the penance she is compelled to perform. When, as they
put it, "the god of ill-fortune seizes her," that is, when she becomes
violent, she is quietly "removed to another place." No one sees what is
done to her there, but I know that part of the treatment consists in
scratching her head with thorns, and then rubbing raw lime juice
in--lime juice is like lemon juice, only more acid. When the paroxysm
passes she reappears, and does penance till the next fit comes. This has
been repeated three times within the last few months.
I was visiting in a Hindu house for two years before I found out that
all that time a girl of seventeen was kept alone in an upper room. "Let
her weep," they said, quoting a proverb; "'though she weeps, will a
widow's sorrow pass?'" Once a day, after dark, she was brought
downstairs for a few minutes, and once a day, at noon, some coarse food
was taken up to her. She is allowed downstairs now, but only in the back
part of the house; she never thinks of resisting this decree--it, and
all it stands for, is her fate. Sometimes the glad girl-life reasserts
itself, and she plays and laughs with her sister-in-law's pretty baby
boy; but if she hears a man's voice she disappears upstairs. There are
proverbs in the language which tell why.
I sat on the verandah of a well-to-do Hindu house one day, and talked to
the bright-looking women in their jewels and silks. And all the time,
though little I knew it, a widow was tied up in a sack in one of the
inner rooms. This wrong is a hidden wrong.
I do not think that anyone would call the Hindus distinctively cruel; in
comparison with most other Asiatics their instincts are kind. A custom
so merciless as this custom, which punishes the innocent with so
grievous a punishment, does not seem to us to be natural to them. It
seems like a parasite custom, which has struck its roots deep into the
tree of Hindu social life, but is not part of it. Think of the power
which must have been exerted somewhere by someone before the disposition
of a nation could be changed.
This custom as it stands is formidable enough. Many a man, Indian and
foreign, has fought it and failed. It is a huge and most rigorous system
of tyrannical oppression, a very pyramid to look at, old, immovable.
But there is Something greater behind it. It is only the effect of a
Cause--the Dust of the Actual.
What can alter the custom? Strong writing or speaking, agitations, Acts
of Parliament? All these surely have their part. They raise the
question, stir the Dust--but blow it off? Oh no! nothing can touch the
conscience of the people, and utterly reverse their view of things, and
radically alter them, but =God=.
Yes, it is true, we may make the most of what has been done by
Government, by missionaries and reformers, but there are times in the
heart histories of all who look far enough down to see what goes on
under the surface of things, when the sorrow takes shape in the
Prophet's cry, "We have not wrought any deliverance in the earth!"
It is true. _We_ have not. We cannot even estimate the real weight of
the lightest speck of the Dust that has settled on the life of this
people. But we believe that our God, Who comprehended the dust of the
earth in a measure, comprehends to the uttermost the Dust of the Actual,
and we believe to see Him work, with Whom is strength and effectual
working.
We believe to see, and believing even now we see; and when we see
anything, be it ever so little, when the Breath breathes, and even "a
hair's-breadth" of that Dust is blown away, then, with an intensity I
cannot describe, we feel the presence of the Lord our God among us, and
look up in the silence of joy and expectation for the coming of the Day
when all rule, and all authority and power, yea, the power of the very
Actual itself, shall be put down, that God may be all in all.
So again and yet again we ask you to pray not less for the Reform
movement, and the Educational movement, and the Civilising movement of
India, but far more for the Movement of the Breath of God, and far more
for us His workers here, that we may abide in Him without Whom we can do
nothing.