Before the Gods Will I Sing

THE main purpose of this book is single and simple. It is to let the song out before the gods in possession here. A sentence spoken in the Keswick Convention some years ago suggested the thought. The sentence, as it reached us in South India, ran thus:

“I will praise Thee with my whole heart; before the gods will I sing praise unto Thee” — his (the Psalmist’s) glad resolve to sing praises unto his God, not in a clear and open atmosphere, but before the gods, the giant powers which lay behind the giant heathenism of his day. He, as it were, looked them in the face, and weighed their strength and force; and although they seemed to suggest the hopelessness of the cause of God, he was not moved. “Before the gods will I sing praise unto Thee.”

If this book’s atmosphere is dark it is because the gods, the giant powers which lie behind the subtle systems of our day, still exist in strength and force. The song is sung in the night: let no one dream the night has passed.

Here and there through the valley of Christendom in India there has been a noise and a shaking, and a Coming of the Breath. We have seen and heard something which in its mystery and spontaneity passes anything we knew before. But we have not seen India stirred. No movement in the valley has as yet affected those wastes of desolation that rise like mountains bare and bleak and utterly lifeless around us. “Bow Thy heavens, 0 Lord, and come down: touch the mountains and they shall smoke” — we have not seen that yet We are waiting to see such a manifestation of Divine energy as shall convince the Hindu and Mohammedan world that the LOBD is GOD. And now in the moment of pause before the coming of the Power, now while we wait, we sing.

The book is meant mainly for those who read Things as They Are, and were discouraged by it. We know there were some who in reading it did not catch the under-song that sang through the bitter battle. The Tamil words on the cover, “Victory to Jesus,” were not interpreted. They put the book down in despair — “if these things are so, is prayer answered at all? Is it worth while going on?” “Nay, do not wrong Him by thy heavy thought,” let Overweights answer earnestly. Prayer is being answered. It is worth while going on.

But though we would praise Him with our song, His

Word alone is the cause of our sure confidence. The song may brighten the day’s work, and lighten the very night, but nothing short of the Word of the Lord stands strong through everything. This battle is His. The victory was won on the Resurrection morning. Christ our King is King of the ages. Although we could not sing we would still go on.

The “we” of the book refers usually to our small band here, Rev. T. Walker, Mrs. Walker, and our Indian comrades, who on the women’s side are the faithful Golden, Pearl, and Blessing, and, of late years, Star, Joy, Gladness,1 and others, without whose loyal co-operation the work that has grown among the Temple-children would have been impossible. But though for the sake of straightforward story-telling I explain the personnel, there is nothing we should so deprecate as the focusing of attention upon us. Rather overlook us, and look wherever in all the field you have a friend who would welcome the cheer of a freshened affection, and the sympathy which braces because it understands.

Perhaps in order to avoid needless misunderstanding it should be said at the outset that we write from Old India, and that we do not profess to touch upon aspects and problems affecting New India and India in transition, matters so delicate and intricate that they are better left to abler pens. Each phase of life as we find it here is a study in itself. Each is intensely interesting. But the voice that speaks through these pages, if indeed we have caught it clearly enough to make it articulate to others, is the voice of the old land: for of the three

1 Translated names. distinct voices sounding in India to-day, we have heard it longest and know it best.

Finally, we have tried to be true. We cannot say more. Those who have tried to be true know how difficult truth-telling is, perhaps because we see so little of the whole truth at a time. We found a large shell on the shore one day, blackened at the edges, iridescent above. It lay where the wave had washed it, wet and shining on the sand. The south-west monsoon had brought us many beautiful things. The sand was strewn with them. But this special shell for loveliness lay alone among them, and we stopped before we picked it up to look at it in its setting of sand, which on that part of the coast sparkles as if garnet dust had been sprinkled over it. Then we saw that the little Crustacea had stopped to look at it too. They were crawling over it and into it and all about it; but they did not see it as a whole. They were too small. Truth is like that shell. We are like the infant crabs and beach fleas. Perhaps the most we can hope to do is to tell the changeful colours of the little bit of the shell we see, avoiding over-colouring as we would avoid a lie. And we can resist the temptation to omit all mention of the broken, blackened edges of the shell.