Seed Corn

Ir was just then, then in her desperate hour, that succour came,

There were a few Christian families in the village, but none of them took any notice of Mimosa; for, with the exception of one family, they were of another caste, and they were all of the kind known as Name-Christians. It is easy to blame them and wonder at their lovelessness; but if they had interfered in her affairs it is not likely they could have continued to live peacefully in the village. Her caste would have made life most unpleasant for them. Only a very ardent love will face things being made uncomfortable, and is ardent love found everywhere? The one Christian family belonging to Mimosa’s caste was confessedly nominal — Christian only because the grandfather and grandmother had joined the Way years ago, and, being conservative in feeling, the family stayed on in the religion. But between its kind of Christianity and Hinduism pure and simple there had never been much of a hedge, and the hedge, such as it was, had many gaps now, through which one might comfortably creep. (To such, a converted, en-

48 lightened Mimosa would have been very unwelcome.

But the old grannie who was not “nominal” still lived. Her picture, drawn once for all, will be found in Faber’s “Old Labourer.”

“What doth God get from him?
His very mind is dim,
Too weak to love, and too obtuse to fear.
Is there glory in his strife?
Is there meaning in his life?
Can God hold such a thing-like person
dear?”

Thing-like person? So she may have seemed; but she was a King’s messenger. She had been away from her village for some time, and now returned, very old, very stupid, very ignorant. She had never learned to read, and she had long ago forgotten or ceased to be able to tell any Bible story she had ever known. The very name of Jesus our Lord seems to have slipped from her; she only spoke of God, using a word she might have used if she had been a Hindu; but she remembered it meant Father, and this was the word she gave Mimosa, to whom every lightest syllable was a crumb from the loaf of life.

“He will never forsake you; He has never forsaken me, Meditate on Him and He will not

forsake you. In Heaven (she used the word that means Release) there is no pain. To that good place He will take you. He will wonderfully lead you. In every least thing He will wonderfully lead you.”

And she repeated this over, as the aged will, and said: “He who is God is your Father. He will wonderfully lead you, ix every least thing fe will wonderfully lead you.”

Soon afterwards she lost the little memory she had, and no one knew what her thoughts were. But “she heard the angels sing when she was dying.”

One other help was given.

In Mimosa’s village there was a room where the Christians worshipped, and in the same room the children of their families were taught by a loud-voiced teacher, who chanted his lessons in a sing-song tone, caught up and echoed down the street by the children.

One day when Mimosa was passing she heard the verse being chanted.

“Do not rub on ashes,
Do not offer matted hair to idols.
The boast of the boaster is like the bite of the
snake;
When the Coming King arrives to judge,
excuses will not pass with Him.”

It was rather a medley of words, tossed together more because of their Tamil sound than for mental affinity. The gist of it, however, caught her fancy, so the jostle of ideas did not matter. Siva’s ashes, the matted, undressed hair of the devotee offered to the gods, the prideful boast that falls before the Coming King — a new name this — led straight to a new idea. Her Lord must be coming back to the world. That was the one arresting thought.

We can gather up the less than an infant’s fistful of seed corn given to Mimosa. We can count the seeds, they were so few: there were nine. That God is, that He loves, guides, and, being the God of gods, is all-powerful, that He listens when we pray, that as a Father we may think of Him and that “He who plants the tree will water it.” That the Place of Release is much better than this world, for there is no pain there, and that the Lord who lived here before will come back. She had also heard that “some time, at the last,” there would be a judgment and excuses would not stand. But this event felt too remote to find much place in her theology.

Of her Saviour as Christ crucified she knew nothing yet. In the few minutes she was with us we could only begin to tell His story, and chiefly we spoke of Him as the Lord who loved her. But she had seen Him without knowing Him. “Who is the Lord, that I might believe on Him?” And before the Saviour of the world had time to answer, “It is He that talketh with thee,’ she — was caught away. But what can hinder the following power of the love of Christ? And who can measure the force of the life of a seed? Open one of earth’s little seeds and find the plant that is to be, carved in polished ivory. See the packing of the nourishment required. See, and worship and adore.

Of all the stories we have touched since we came to India, hardly one has humbled us so much, as we thought of our faithless fears for the little Mimosa. But hardly one has lifted us so high in adoration, and in wonder, and in awe.