What do we count them worth?
"If we are simply to pray to the extent of a
simple and pleasant and enjoyable exercise, and
know nothing of watching in prayer, and of
weariness in prayer, we shall not draw down the
blessing that we may. We shall not sustain our
missionaries who are overwhelmed with the
appalling darkness of heathenism. . . . We must
serve God even to the point of suffering, and each
one ask himself, In what degree, in what point am
I extending, by personal suffering, by personal
self-denial, to the point of pain, the kingdom of
Christ? . . . It is ever true that what costs little
is worth little."
_Rev. J. Hudson Taylor, China._
SHE picked up her water-vessel, and stood surveying us somewhat
curiously. The ways of Picture-catching Missie Ammals were beyond her.
Afterwards she sat down comfortably and talked. That was a year ago.
Then in the evening she and all her neighbours gathered in the market
square for the open-air meeting. Shining of Life spoke for the first
time. "I was a Hindu a year ago. I worshipped the gods you worship. Did
they hear me when I prayed? No! They are dead gods. God is the living
God! Come to the living God!"
One after the other the boys all witnessed that evening. Their clear
boyish voices rang out round the ring. And some listened, and some
laughed.
[Illustration: She picked up her water-vessel, and stood surveying us
somewhat curiously.]
Behind us there was a little demon temple. It had a verandah barred down
with heavy bars. Within these bars you could see the form of an idol.
Beside us there was a shrine. Someone had put our lanterns on the top of
this pyramid shrine. Before us there was the mass of dark faces. Behind
us, then, black walls, black bars, a black shape; before us the black
meeting, black losing itself in black. Around us light, light shining
into the black. That was as it was a year ago. Now we are back at
Dohnavur, and almost the first place we went to was this village, where
we had taken the light and set it up in the heart of the dark. An
earnest young schoolmaster had been sent to keep that light burning
there, and we went expectantly. Had the light spread? We went straight
to our old friend's house. She was as friendly as ever in her queer,
rough, country way, but her heart had not been set alight. "Tell me what
is the good of your Way? Will it fill the cavity within me?" and she
struck herself a resounding smack in the region where food is supposed
to go. "Will it stock my paddy-pots, or nourish my bulls, or cause my
palms to bear good juice? If it will not do all these good things, what
is the use of it?"
"If it is so important, why did you not come before?" The dear old woman
who asked that lived here, and we searched through the labyrinthic
courtyards to find her, but failed. The girl who listened in her pain is
well now, but she says the desire she had has cooled. We found two or
three who seem lighting up; may God's wind blow the flame to a blaze!
But we came back feeling that we must learn more of the power of prayer
ourselves if these cold souls are to catch fire. We remembered how, when
we were children, we caught the sunlight, and focussed it, and set bits
of paper on fire; and we longed that our prayers might be a lens to
focus the Love-light of our God, and set their souls on fire.
Just one little bit of encouragement may be told by way of cheer.
Blessing went off one day to see if the Village of the Warrior were more
friendlily inclined, and Golden went to the Petra where they vowed they
would never let us in. Before Blessing entered the village she knelt
down under a banyan tree, and, remembering Abraham's servant, prayed for
a sign to strengthen her faith that God would work in the place. While
she prayed a child came and looked at her; then seeing her pray, she
said, "Has that Missie Ammal sent you who came here more than a year
ago?" Blessing said "Yes." Then the child repeated the chorus we had
taught the children that first day. "None of us forget," she said; and
told Blessing how the parents had agreed to allow us to teach if ever we
should return. The village had been opened. He goeth before.
Golden's experience was equally strengthening to our faith. In the very
street where they held a public demonstration to cleanse the road
defiled by our "low-caste" presence, twenty houses have opened, where
she is a welcome visitor. But all this is only for Love's sake, they
say. They do not yet want Christ; so let us focus the light!
Then there is need for the fire of God to burn the cords that hold souls
down. There is one with whom the Spirit strove last year when we were
here. But a cord of sin was twined round her soul. She has a wicked
brother-in-law, and a still more wicked sister, and together they
plotted so evil a plot that, heathen though she is, she recoiled, and
indignantly refused. So they quietly drugged her food, and did as they
chose with her. And now the knot she did not tie, and which she wholly
detested at first, seems doubly knotted by her own will. Oh, to know
better how to use the burning-glass of prayer!
There may be a certain amount of sentiment, theoretically at least, in
breaking up new ground. The unknown holds possibilities, and it allures
one on. But in retracing the track there is nothing whatever of this.
The broad daylight of bare truth shows you everything just as it is.
Will you look once more at things just as they are, though it is not an
interesting look.
A courtyard where the women have often heard. May we come in? Oh yes,
come in! But with us in comes an old fakeer of a specially villainous
type. His body is plastered all over with mud; he has nothing on but
mud. His hair is matted and powdered with ashes, his face is daubed with
vermilion and yellow, his wicked old eyes squint viciously, and he shows
all his teeth, crimson with betel, and snarls his various wants. The
women say "Chee!" Then he rolls in the dust, and squirms, and wriggles,
and howls; and he pours out such unclean vials of wrath that the women,
coerced, give him all he demands, and he rolls off elsewhere.
Now may we read to the women? No! Many salaams, but they have no time.
Last night there was a royal row between two friends in adjoining
courtyards, and family histories were laid bare, and pedigrees
discovered. They are discussing these things to-day, and having heard it
all before, they have no time to read.
Another courtyard, more refined; here the fakeer's opposite, a dignified
ascetic, sits in silent meditation. "We know it all! You told us
before!" But the women are friendly, and we go in; and after a long and
earnest talk the white-haired grandmother touches her rosary. "This is
my ladder to heaven." The berries are fine and set in chased gold, but
they are only solidified tears, tears shed in wrath by their god, they
say, which resolved themselves into these berries. How can tears make
ladders to heaven? She does not know. She does not care. And a laugh
runs round, but one's heart does not laugh. Such ladders are dangerous.
Another house; here the men are kind, and freely let us in and out. The
Way, they say, is very good; they have heard the Iyer preach. But one
day there is a stir in the house. One of the sons is very ill. He has
been suffering for some time; now he is suddenly getting worse, and
suspicions are aroused. Then the women whisper the truth: the father and
he are at daggers drawn, and the father is slowly poisoning him--small
doses of strychnine are doing the work. The stir is not very violent,
but quite sufficient to make an excuse for not wanting to listen well.
This sort of thing throws us back upon God. Lord, teach us to pray!
Teach us the real secret of fiery fervency in prayer. We know so little
of it. Lord, teach us to pray!
"_Oh, Amma! Amma! do not pray! Your prayers are troubling me!_"
We all looked up in astonishment. We had just had our Band Prayer
Meeting, when a woman came rushing into the room, and began to exclaim
like this. She was the mother of one of our girls, of whom I told you
once before. She is still in the Terrible's den. Now the mother was all
excitement, and poured out a curious story.
"When you went away last year I prayed. I prayed and prayed, and prayed
again to my god to dispel your work. My daughter's heart was impressed
with your words. I cried to my god to wash the words out. Has he washed
them out? Oh no! And I prayed for a bridegroom, and one came; and the
cart was ready to take her away, and a hindrance occurred; the marriage
fell through. And I wept till my eyes well-nigh dissolved. And again
another bridegroom came, and again an obstacle occurred. And yet again
did a bridegroom come, and yet again an obstacle; and I cannot get my
daughter 'tied,' and the neighbours mock, and my Caste is
disgraced"--and the poor old mother cried, just sobbed in her shame and
confusion of face. "Then I went to my god again, and said, 'What more
can I offer you? Have I not given you all I have? And you reject my
prayer!' Then in a dream my god appeared, and he said, '_Tell the
Christians not to pray. I can do nothing against their prayers. Their
prayers are hindering me!_' And so, I beseech you, stop your prayers for
fourteen days--only fourteen days--till I get my daughter tied!"
"And after she is tied?" we asked. "Oh, then she may freely follow your
God! I will hinder her no more!"
Poor old mother! All lies are allowed where such things are concerned.
We knew the proposed bridegroom came from a place three hundred miles
distant, and the idea was to carry the poor girl off by force, as soon
as she was "tied." We have been praying night and day to God to hinder
this. And He is hindering! But there is need to go on. That mother is a
devotee. She has received the afflatus. Sometimes at night it falls upon
her, and she dances the wild, wicked dance, and tries to seize the girl,
who shrinks into the farthest corner of the little house; and she dances
round her, and chants the chant which even in daylight has power in it,
but which at night appeals unspeakably. Once the girl almost gave way,
and then in her desperation, hardly knowing the sin of it, ran to the
place where poison was kept, drank enough to kill two, straight off,
then lay down on the floor to die. Better die than do what they wanted
her to do, she thought. But they found out what she had done, and
drastic means were immediately used, and the poison only made her ill,
and caused her days of violent pain. So there is need for the hindering
prayer. Lord, teach us how to pray!
Is India crammed with the horrible? "Picturesque," they call it, who
have "done it" in a month or two, and written a book to describe it. And
the most picturesque part, they agree, is connected with the temples.
India ends off in a pointed rock; you can stand at the very point of the
rock, with only ocean before you, and almost all Asia behind. A temple
is set at the end of the point, as if claiming the land for its own. We
took our convert boys and girls to the Cape for the Christmas holidays,
and one morning some of us spent an hour under an old wall near the
temple, which wall, being full of hermit crabs, is very interesting. We
were watching the entertaining ways of these degenerate creatures when,
through the soft sea sounds, we heard the sound of a Brahman's voice,
and looking up, saw this:
A little group of five, sitting between the rocks and the sea, giving a
touch of life to the scene, and making the picture perfect. There were
two men, a woman, a child, and the priest. They were all marked with the
V-shaped Vishnu mark. The priest twined the sacred Kusa grass round the
fingers of his right hand, and gave each a handful of grass, and they
did as he had done. Then they strewed the grass on the sand, to purify
it from taint of earth, and then they began. The priest chanted names of
God, then stopped, and drew signs on the sand. They followed him
exactly. Then they bathed, bowing to the East between each dip, and
worshipping; then returned and repeated it all. But before repeating it,
they carefully painted the marks on their foreheads, using white and red
pigment, and consulting a small English hand mirror--the one incongruous
bit of West in this East, but symbolical of the times. The child
followed it all, as a child will, in its pretty way. She was a dainty
little thing in a crimson seeley and many gold jewels. The elder woman
was dressed in dark green; the colouring was a joy to the eye, crimson
and green, and the brown of the rock, against the blue of the sea.
It was one of those exquisite mornings we often have in the Tropics,
when everything everywhere shows you God; shines the word out like a
word illumined; sings it out in the Universe Song; and here in this
South niche of Nature's cathedral, under the sky's transparency, these
five, in the only way they knew, acknowledged the Presence of one great
God, and worshipped Him. There was nothing revolting here, no hint of
repulsive idolatry. They worshipped the Unseen. Very stately the
Sanscrit sounded in which they chanted their adoration. "King of
Immensity! King of Eternity! Boundless, Endless, Infinite One!" It might
have been the echo of some ancient Christian hymn. It might have been,
but it was not.
They are not worshipping God the Lord. _They might be, but they are
not._ Whose is the responsibility? Is it partly yours and mine? The
beauty of the scene has passed from us; the blue of the blue sky is
blotted out--
"Only like souls I see the folk thereunder,
Bound who should conquer, slaves who should be kings;
Hearing their one hope with an empty wonder,
Sadly contented with a show of things.
Then with a rush the intolerable craving
Shivers throughout me like a trumpet call:
Oh to save these! To perish for their saving,
Die for their life, be offered for them all!"
The picture is made of souls--souls to be saved. "Oh to save these! To
perish for their saving!" That is what the picture says. Picture! There
is no picture. In the place where it was, there is simply a pain--God's
world, and God dishonoured in it! Oh to see these people as souls!
Refined or vulgar, beautiful or horrible, or just dull, oh to see them
"only as souls," and to yearn over them, and pray for them as souls who
must live eternally somewhere, and for whom each of us, in our measure,
is responsible to God. Do you say we are not responsible for those
particular souls? Who said that sort of thing first? "Where we disavow
being keeper to our brother we're his Cain." If we are not responsible,
why do we take the responsibility of appealing to them in impassioned
poetry?
"Let every kindred, every tribe,
On this terrestrial ball,
To Him all majesty ascribe,
And crown Him Lord of all!"
What is the point of telling people to do a certain thing if we have no
concern in whether they do it or not? The angels and the martyrs and the
saints, to whom we appealed before, have crowned Him long ago. Our
singing to them on the subject will make no difference either way; but
when we turn to every kindred and tribe, the case alters. How can they
crown Him Lord of all when they do not know about Him? Why do they not
know about Him? Because we have not told them. It is true that many whom
we have told heard "their one hope with an empty wonder"; but, on the
other hand, it is true that the everlasting song rises fuller to-day
because of those who, out in this dark heathendom, heard, and responded,
and crowned Him King.
But singing hymns from a distance will never save souls. By God's grace,
coming and giving and praying will. Are we prepared for this? Or would
we rather sing? Searcher of hearts, turn Thy search-light upon us! Are
we coming, giving, praying _till it hurts_? Are we praying, yea
agonising in prayer? or is prayer but "a pleasant exercise"--a holy
relief for our feelings?
We have sat together under the wall by the Southern sea. We have looked
at the five as they worshipped Another, and not our God. Now let this
little South window be like a little clear pane of glass, through which
you may look up far to the North, over the border countries and the
mountains to Tibet, over Tibet and away through the vastness of Central
Asia, on to China, Mongolia, Manchuria; and even then you have only seen
a few of the great dark Northern lands, which wait and wait--for you.
And this is only Asia, only a part of Asia. God looks down on all the
world; and for every one of the millions who have never crowned Him
King, Christ wore the crown of thorns. What do we count these millions
worth? Do we count them worth the rearrangement of our day, that we may
have more time to pray? Do we count them worth the laying down of a
single ambition, the loosening of our hold on a single child or friend?
Do we count them worth the yielding up of anything we care for very
much? Let us be still for a moment and think. Christ counted souls worth
Calvary. _What do we count them worth?_