"Attracted by the Influence"
"It seems to have been a mistake to imagine that
the Divine Majesty on high was too exalted to take
any notice of our mean affairs. The great minds
among us are remarkable for the attention they
bestow upon minutiæ . . . 'a sparrow cannot fall to
the ground without your Father.'"
_David Livingstone, Africa._
WE have now left Dohnavur, on the West, and returned to our old
battlefield on the East. The evening after our arrival one of those
special things happened, though only a little thing some will say--a
little child was brought.
[Illustration: This is not Pearl-eyes. Pearl-eyes is tinier, and has
more sparkle; but the Caste is the same, and as we have not got
Pearl-eyes, we put this small girl here.]
There is a temple in the Hindu village near us. We have often tried to
reach the temple women, poor slaves of the Brahmans. We have often seen
the little girls, some of them bought as infants from their mothers, and
trained to the terrible life. In one of the Mission day schools there is
a child who was sold by her "Christian" mother to these Servants of the
gods; but though this is known it cannot be proved, and the child has no
wish to leave the life, and she cannot be taken by force.
Sometimes we see the little girls playing in the courtyards of the
houses near the temple, gracious little maidens, winsome in their ways,
almost always more refined in manner than ordinary children, and
often beautiful. One longs to help the little things, but no hand of
ours can stretch over the wall and lift even one child out.
Among the little temple girls in the Great Lake Village was a tiny girl
called Pearl-eyes, of whom we knew nothing; but God must have some
purpose for her, for He sent His Angel to the house one afternoon, and
the Angel found little Pearl-eyes, and he took her by the hand and led
her out, across the stream, and through the wood, to a Christian woman's
house in our village. Next morning she brought her to us. This is what
really happened, I think; there is no other way to account for it. No
one remembers such a thing happening here before.
I was sitting reading in the verandah when I saw them come. The woman
was looking surprised. She did not know about the Angel, I expect, and
she could not understand it at all. The little child was chattering
away, lifting up a bright little face as she talked. When she saw me she
ran straight up to me, and climbed on my knee without the least fear,
and told me all about herself at once. I took her to the Iyer, and he
sent for the Pastor, who sent a messenger to the Village of the Lake, to
say the child was here, and to inquire into the truth of her story.
"My name is Pearl-eyes," the child began, "and I want to stay here
always. I have come to stay." And she told us how her mother had sold
her when she was a baby to the Servants of the gods. She was not happy
with them. They did not love her. Nobody loved her. She wanted to live
with us.
But why had she run away now? She hardly seemed to know, and looked
puzzled at our questions. The only thing she was sure about was that she
had "run and come," and that she "wanted to stay." Then the Ammal came
in, and she went through exactly the same story with her.
We felt, if this proved to be fact, that we could surely keep her; the
Government would be on our side in such a matter. Only the great
difficulty might be to prove it.
Meanwhile we gave her a doll, and her little heart was at rest. She did
not seem to have a fear. With the prettiest, most confiding little
gesture, she sat down at our feet and began to play with it.
We watched her wonderingly. She was perfectly at home with us. She ran
out, gathered leaves and flowers, and came back with them. These were
carefully arranged in rows on the floor. Then another expedition, and in
again with three pebbles for hearthstones, a shell for a cooking pot,
bits of straw for firewood, a stick for a match, and sand for rice.
She went through all the minutiæ of Tamil cookery with the greatest
seriousness. Then we, together with her doll, were invited to partake.
The little thing walked straight into our hearts, and we felt we would
risk anything to keep her.
Our messenger returned. The story was true. The women from whose house
she had come were certainly temple women. But would they admit it to us,
and, above all, would they admit they had obtained her illegally?--a
fact easy to deny. Almost upon this they came; and to the Iyer's
question, "Who are you?" one said, "We are Servants of the gods!" I
heard an instructive aside, "Why did you tell them?" "Oh, never mind,"
said the one who had answered, "they don't understand!" But we had
understood, and we were thankful for the first point gained.
They stood and stared and called the child, but she would not go, and we
would not force her. Then they went away, and we were left for an hour
in that curious quiet which comes before a storm. Our poor little girl
was frightened. "Oh, if they come again, hide me!" she begged. One saw
it was almost too much for her, high-spirited child though she is.
The next was worse. A great crowd gathered on the verandah, and an
evil-faced woman, who seemed to have some sort of power over Pearl-eyes,
fiercely demanded her back. When we refused to make her go, the
evil-faced woman, whose very glance sent a tremble through the little
one, declared that Pearl-eyes must say out loud that she would not go
with her, "Out loud so that all should hear." But the poor little thing
was dumb with fear. She just stood and looked, and shivered. We could
not persuade her to say a word.
Star was hovering near. She had been through it all herself before, and
her face was anxious, and our hearts were, I know. It is impossible to
describe such a half-hour's life to you; it has to be lived through to
be understood. The clamour and excitement, and the feeling of how much
hangs on the word of a child who does not properly understand what she
is accepting or refusing. The tension is terrible.
I dared not go near her lest they should think I was bewitching her. Any
movement on my part towards her would have been the signal for a rush
on theirs; but I signed to Star to take her away for a moment. The
bewilderment on the poor little face was frightening me. One more look
up at that woman, one more pull at the strained cord, and to their
question, "Will you come?" she might as likely say yes as no.
Star carried her off. Once out of reach of those eyes, the words came
fast enough. Star told me she clung to her and sobbed, "Oh, if I say no,
she will catch me and punish me dreadfully afterwards! She will! I know
she will!" And she showed cuts in the soft brown skin where she had been
punished before; but Star soothed her and brought her back, and she
stood--such a little girl--before them all. "I won't! I won't!" she
cried, and she turned and ran back with Star. And the crowd went off,
and I was glad to see the last of that fearful face, with its evil,
cruel eyes.
But they said they would write to the mother, who had given her to them.
We noted this--the second point we should have to prove if they lodged a
suit against us--and any day the mother may come and complicate matters
by working on the child's affections. Also, we have heard of a plot to
decoy her away, should we be for a moment off guard; so we are very much
on the watch, and we never let her out of our sight.
By this time--it is five days since she came--it seems impossible to
think of having ever been without her. Apart from her story, which would
touch anyone, there is her little personality, which is very
interesting. She plays all day long with her precious dolls, talking to
them, telling them everything we tell her. Yesterday it was a Bible
story, to-day a new chorus. She insisted on her best-beloved infant
coming to church with her, and it had to have its collection too.
Everything is most realistic.
Tamil children usually hang their dolls up by their limbs to a nail in
the wall, or stow them away on a shelf, but this mite has imagination
and much sympathy.
In thinking over it, as, bit by bit, her little story came to light, we
have been struck by the touches that tell how God cares. The time of her
coming told of care. Some months earlier, the temple woman who kept her
had burnt her little fingers across, as a punishment for some childish
fault, and Pearl-eyes ran away. She knew what she wanted--her mother;
she knew that her mother lived in a town twenty miles to the East. It
was a long way for a little girl to walk, "but some kind people found me
on the road, and they were going to the same town, and they let me go
with them, so I was not afraid, only I was very tired when we got there.
It took three days to walk. I did not know where my mother lived in the
town, and it was a very big town, but I described my mother to the
people in the streets, and at last I found my mother." For just a little
while there was something of the mother-love, "my mother cried." But the
temple woman had traced her and followed her, and the mother gave her
up.
Then comes a blank in the story; she only remembers she was lonely, and
she "felt a mother-want about the world," and wandered wearily--
"As restless as a nest-deserted bird
Grown chill through something being away, though what
It knows not."
Then comes a bit of life distinct in every detail, and told with
terribly unchildish horror. She heard them whisper together about her;
they did not know that she understood. She was to be "married to the
god," "tied to a stone." Terrified, she flew to the temple, slipped past
the Brahmans, crossed the court, stood before the god in the dim
half-darkness of the shrine, clasped her hands,--she showed us
how,--prayed to it, pleaded, "Let me die! Oh, let me die!" Barely seven
years old, and she prayed, "Oh, let me die!"
She tried to run away again; if she had come to our village then, she
could not have been saved. We were in Dohnavur, and there was no one
here who could have protected her against the temple people. So God kept
her from coming then.
About that time, one afternoon one of our Tamil Sisters, whom we had
left behind to hold the fort, passed through the Great Lake Village, and
the temple women called the child, and said, "See! It is she! The
child-stealing Ammal! Run!" It was only said to frighten her, but it did
a different work. One day, _the day after we returned_, the thought
suddenly came to her, "I will go and look for that child-stealing
Ammal"; and she wandered away in the twilight and came to our village,
and stood alone in front of the church, and no one knew.
There one of our Christian women, Servant of Jesus by name, found her
some time afterwards, a very small and desolate mite, with tumbled hair
and troubled eyes, for she could not find the one she sought, that
child-stealing Ammal she wanted so much, and she was frightened, all
alone in the gathering dark by this big, big church; and very big it
must have looked to so tiny a thing as she.
Servant of Jesus thought at first of taking the little one back to her
home, but mercifully it was late (another touch of the hand of God), and
so instead she took her straight to her own little house, which
satisfied Pearl-eyes perfectly. But she would not touch the curry and
rice the kind woman offered her. She drew herself up to her full small
height and said, with the greatest dignity, "Am I not a Vellala child?
May you ask me to break my Caste?"
So Servant of Jesus gave her some sugar, that being ceremonially safe,
and Pearl-eyes ate it hungrily, and then went off to sleep.
Next morning, again the woman's first thought was to take her to her own
people. But the child was so insistent that she wanted the
child-catching Ammal, that Servant of Jesus, thinking I was the Ammal
she meant (for this is one of my various names), brought her to me, as I
have said, and oh, I am glad she did!
Nothing escapes those clear brown eyes. That morning, in the midst of
the confusion, one of the temple women called out that the child was a
wicked thief. This is an ordinary charge. They think it will compel
submission. "We will make out a case, and send the police to drag you
off to gaol!" they yell; and sometimes there is risk of serious trouble,
for a case can be made out cheaply in India. But this did not promise to
be serious, so we inquired the stolen sum. It came to fourpence
halfpenny, which we paid for the sake of peace, though she told them
where the money was, and we found out later that she had told the truth.
I never thought she would remember it--the excitements of the day
crowded it out of my mind--but weeks afterwards, when I was teaching her
the text, "Not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold,"
and explaining how much Jesus had paid for us, she interrupted me with
the remark, "Oh yes, I understand! I know how much you paid for
me--fourpence halfpenny!"
And now to turn from small-seeming things to large. Ragland, Tamil
missionary, is writing to a friend in 1847. He is trying to express
astronomically the value of a soul. He asks, "How does the astronomer
correct the knowledge of the stars which simple vision brings him?
First, having discovered that the little dot of light is thousands of
miles distant, and having discerned by the telescope that it subtends at
the eye a sensible angle, and having measured that angle, a simple
calculation shows him the size of the object to be greater perhaps than
that of the huge ball which he calls his earth." Then, "Take the soul of
one of the poorest, lowest Pariahs of India, and form it by imagination
into, or suppose it represented by, a sphere. Place this at the
extremity of a line which is to represent time. Extend this line and
move off your sphere, farther and farther _ad infinitum_, and what has
become of your sphere? Why, there it is, just as before. . . . It is
still what it was, and this even after thousands of years. In short, the
disc appears undiminished, though viewed from an almost infinite
distance. _Oh, what an angle of the mind ought that poor soul to
subtend!_"
The letter goes on to suggest another parallel between things
astronomical and things spiritual. He supposes an objector admits the
size as proved, but demurs as to the importance of these heavenly
bodies. "They are, perhaps, only unsubstantial froth, mere puffs of air,
vapoury nothings." But the astronomer knows their mass and weight, as
well as their size: "Long observation has taught him that planets in the
neighbourhood of one given heavenly body have been turned out of their
course, how, and by what, he is at first quite at a loss to tell but he
has guessed and reasoned, has found cause for suspecting the planet. He
watches, observes, and compares; and after a long sifting of evidence,
he brings it in guilty of the disturbance. If it be so, it must have a
power to disturb, a power to attract; and if so, it is not a mere shell,
much less a mere vapour. It has mass and it has weight, and he
calculates and determines from the disturbances what that weight is.
Just so with the Pariah's soul. Oh, what a disturbance has it created!
What a celestial body has it drawn out from its celestial sphere! Not a
star, not the whole visible heavens, not the heaven of heavens itself,
but Him Who fills heaven and earth, by Whom all things were created.
_Him did that Pariah's soul attract from heaven even to earth to save
it. Oh that we would thence learn, and learning, lay to heart the weight
and the value of that one soul._"
And just as the majesty of the glory of the Lord is shown forth nowhere
more majestically than in the chapter which tells us how He feeds His
flock like a shepherd, and gathers the lambs with His arm, and carries
them in His bosom, so nowhere, I think, do we see the glory of our God
more than in chapters of life which show Him bending down from the
circle of the earth, yea rather, coming down all the way to help it,
"attracted by the influence" of the need of a little child.