Follow the Gleam
DR. HORTON, in his Life of Tennyson, explains the Gleam to be that elusive truth or beauty which it is the function of the poet to seize and express. The poet’s life must ever be a following of the Gleam.
To the missionary the Gleam is the joy set before him, the glory of his Master in the winning of souls. His whole life, if he is true, has for its motto, “Follow the Gleam.”
The rough battle view of things seen at the Shah Najaf sometimes tires. There are days when we want something less fierce. The noise of the shouting, the clash of creed on creed ceases, “quenched with quiet” at the passing of the Gleam.
The besetting sin of Evangelistic work is slackness. Our colleagues on the Educational side have certain incentives which we have not. The result is apparent. If you want to see Duty spelt with a capital letter, go to a well-worked mission school. Such a visit is a tonic.
Another tonic is to be found in the other wing, the Medical. There you can study the opposite of your own defect, for a medical mission is nothing if it is not thorough. The punishment for slovenly work is sure and swift in the Medical as in the Educational. Only the thorough succeeds. In our Evangelistic work it is somewhat different. The result of a slack hour does not show at once. The stain it leaves on the conscience, the absence of something that might have been wrought in another soul, these are symptoms of decline often invisible to our eyes. Only God and the sorrowful Angels read them aright from the first.
As tilings are, then, it is good sometimes to break away from one’s own sphere and go into another for a while. It helps to ensure against mental cramp. It draws the lowered standard up, and gives one a salutary shake. And because the Gleam is the same for Educational, Medical, and Evangelistic, one finds oneself still in one’s own world with much to learn in every direction.
The nearest medical mission to us is the London Missionary Society’s hospital at Neyoor, South Travancore, distant thirty-five miles. If one has a change of bulls, and spends much energy in hurrying them on, one may cover the distance in about the time it takes to reach Dublin from London. Our people from all over the district constantly travel to the Neyoor hospital, for in our C.M.S. Mission here we have no medical work, and the people often feel the need of the help the Neyoor hospital gives.
My introduction to Neyoor shows a side of medical mission work upon which the mission Report naturally does not dilate, it being only one of the little byways of kindness familiar to Medicals everywhere, but it may be worth while telling it. We had an epidemic of ophthalmia in the village. Every morning a succession of suffering infants were brought to be attended to. Just when they were all beginning to mend, the trouble came to me. I thought nothing of it at first — it is a most common thing in India (the children immediately gave me the verse, “In all things it behoved Him to be made like unto His brethren “) — but it soon forced one to think of it. Simple means failed. Help was sought from Palanicottah, but the Government doctor was miles away and could not come. We were reluctant to appeal to the overworked medical missionaries, but at last Mr. Walker telegraphed. Straight from the midst of what we afterwards knew was an abnormally heavy pressure of work, one of the two doctors stationed at Neyoor cycled out to us. That same night, as the blessed ease of respite from pain was felt, how I wished for a voice that would reach far to speak a clear word for medical missions!
The Neyoor hospital has thrown out offshoots into the fortunate surrounding country. One of these is a truly wonderful little place. It is a complete little hospital run on Western lines by an Indian medical evangelist. There you have the science of the West at work, with the touch of the East upon it.
When you wander round the Neyoor hospital, you see the East and West again in delightfully close company. Each patient has a friend or friends, and each of these seems to have friends. The result may not make for hospital discipline, but from a missionary view-point nothing could be more satisfactory. The kitchen system is as Indian as possible. The kitchens look like caves yawning on the face of a cliff, for they open off a blank wall with a steep back-slanting roof; each caste has its own cave. Facing the wards and hospital buildings which run round the compound, Indian fashion, there is what looks like a neat little house, built of stone on a stone platform, with a high-pitched red-tiled roof. This is the operation room, the heart of the place.
To the lay mind, and most of us are only lay, the sound of the word “operation” suggests something sinister, and the operation table is a thing we prefer to forget. I was looking, half attracted, half repelled, at the various contrivances and instruments, when a shuffling noise proclaimed an arrival, and an old man, a cataract case, was helped up the steps, and into the room, and on to the table. Then I realised that my feelings were wholly those of aversion. The little knives that were waiting in a bath of solution looked cruel. They were waiting for that poor old man.
“Doctors revel in operations: I wonder if they remember that their victims are not equallv inured. I wonder if bodies are just cases without feelings “: — these were the thoughts that came at that moment, quite irrespective of reason. “He’s nervous,” said the doctor, who was vigorously scrubbing his hands. “You might talk to him: tell him it won’t hurt.” Some questions are quickly answered.
The patient was a thin old man. He lay like a corpse, with a quilt for a shroud, his blind eyes staring straight up, his lips tense. He was a Hindu from our district,
I found. The home voice seemed to reassure him. He lay more naturally.
There was prayer for a successful issue. The merciful cocaine had done its work. The eye was ready. The doctor began.
Being so very lay, we found our chief interest in the human element rather than the surgical, and stood a little aside watching the faces of the two or three concerned. There was something fascinating in their absorption, something inspiring too. And the sense of the barbarous wholly passed as a figment of gross ignorance. It was one man trying to help another, bending all his skill upon him, and all in the way of following the Gleam.
I had been through the wards, had talked with the people in bed and on the floor, for the hospital had overflowed its beds, and some had mats on the floor. Then I had mingled in the crowd of impotent folk in the outer hall, men and women of all castes and conditions, and I had visited that surprisingly cheerful place, the lepers’ quarters. There had been a mixture of opposites; horrible things, beautiful things, heart-breaks and heart-rejoicing things were jumbled up close together, so that the impression left upon one’s mind was more curious than clear. But everywhere I had found one single satisfying thing, unbounded opportunity to speak to people about Jesus Christ. “After it, follow it, follow the Gleam” might have been written all over the walls. Some poor sufferers naturally were too preoccupied to listen. Some were too careless. Some too hard. But the greater number were ready, and a few were even eager. There was no need to search for a way to the heart. The approaches lay all open. Perhaps one has to be an Evangelistic missionary, unaccustomed to find sympathy ready created, and affection already awakened, to appreciate at its full value such an opportunity.
It was the effect of an evident cause. The cause was familiar enough. But, standing alongside that Cause at work, the familiar took edge and point, and its force was felt in a new fashion. We realised then as we had not before how much hung upon how little. One infinitesimal carelessness as to surgical cleanliness, one moment’s diverted attention, one swerve of the knife in the doctor’s hand, and that particular door of access to a soul for whom Christ died might be for ever barred. It was awesome to feel that such a tremendous consequence depended on something so delicate that when you would define it exactly, you could not. Viewed in this searching surgical light, everything short of the most scrupulous attention to even apparently unimportant minutiae, everything short of intense concentration, seemed criminal.
But only a few minutes had passed since the old man had lain down. “Look!” said the doctor, and I saw the yellow-ochre lens slip smooth like a ripe little seed from its cell. The doctor held up his fingers, “Count!” And the old man counted four. There was a moment of pure human pleasure then.
Later I saw that happy old man. He had a room to
himself where his friends were allowed to wait on him.
He was peaceful, had no pain, did not mind his bandages,
wearied not at all. To one who finds half a day’s idle captivity pure misery, the patience of these people is rebuking. He made a perfect recovery, and it needs but a little imagination to see him as he truly is in his distant village to-day, a contented old man, an inspirer of hope to those in whose eyes “the cataract flower has fallen.” He and his heard daily while in hospital about the great Eye Opener for whose sake that help was given. In his case the result is not known. But it is impossible to believe the story would leave no mark upon him. And could there be a kinder way of making a mark for Eternity?
Are any dispirited still, and still in perplexity as to our ways of trying to win souls for Jesus Christ? May I say, stop looking at us. Look instead at the Medical Missions. They are dotted about from the South to Cashmere. Focus upon one of them, and forget discouragement in giving some practical bit of help. Viewed every way, discouragement is surely a weak and cowardly thing, sign of a spiritual nearsightedness which must limit one all round. True work can never die. Let us believe it and be glad. We have only one thing to do: “This one thing I do. I press.” Let us press on all together in the missionary enterprise, past the dull joy of discouragement, and through it, out into the clear air where we can see The Gleam.