Alone
ONE would like to write straight on of glad things now, without a break to the end. But that would not be true. And it is on my mind to win your help for our Indian comrades situated as Victory and her husband, and so very many are, alone among Hindus or Mohammedans, who, however friendly on the common plane of life, consider the Christian a mistake, and his religion a delusion or a sin, according to the intensity with which their own is held. To such there must come moments of peculiar loneliness. I realised this more acutely than one can easily describe, when not long ago I spent an afternoon alone with some opposing Hindus.
We had gone as a band of women to a neighbouring town, famous for its temple built into a rock. The separate castes live in separate quarters. We had divided two and two so as to reach as many as possible. The Brahman quarter had fallen to my share. My companion was a young convert girl.
We were walking quietly towards the Brahman street when a boy was sent to tell us that a deputation of Bralimans would wait upon me in the rest-house at the
No CHOICE BUT TO OBEY 79
entrance to the street. I could not refuse to go, for no man-missionary had visited that town for over two years. I could not expose a young girl to the gaze and remarks of the men. So I went alone.
The rest-house is a lofty stone-built room, with a raised dais on either side. It was crowded with men on one side. The other side was left for me. The door was open, and packed with spectators. They pointed to the empty side of the dais, and all fronted round facing me.
I found they knew a good deal about Christianity. Several had studied in Mission schools. All knew Christians; so there was something to go upon. But they began by asking why in the first instance we brought a message to India which India did not want. I told them how long ago their forefathers and ours lived as brothers on the northern tableland; how we and they had drifted apart, they travelling south, we west; how the Good Tidings came to us of the west; and how our ascended Redeemer and King had told us to share the great joy with others.
They were interested in this, and observed that such being the wish of our Guru, we as His disciples had no choice but to obey. (The East has much to teach the West upon the duty of obedience.) Only, they added, in the interval of separation, God the Supreme had divided their half of the brotherhood into many subdivisions, whereas ours had remained a homogeneous mass. The message we had brought would, they believed, tend to disorganise the existing order, and reduce their complex system into something as simple as ours — in other words, do away with caste: and that therefore Christianity was not a desirable religion for India.
“The truth is,” writes the keen observer quoted before, “that the Asiatics, like the Jews, dislike Christianity, see in it an ideal they do not love, a promise they do not desire, and a pulverising force which must shatter their civilisations.” That is exactly how those men viewed it, and they spoke out the feeling of their race. I had no desire to attack their social system, or to defend ours (though a word of explanation seemed required). I only wanted to witness to a living, loving, personal Saviour. And I longed for more power and glow to show that love in its breadth, length, depth, height. Tamil is rich in words expressing almost every shade of thought. Our message never sounds more alluring than when told in a language which seems formed to convey spiritual ideas. So, confident in the promise that words would be given, and would, though spoken in weakness, be clothed in strength, and glad in the consciousness that I had brought them no foreign religion (the book is an Eastern book, permeated with the spirit of the East), and gladder still in the certainty that the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation whether in East or West, I spoke and hoped with a great hope.
They listened splendidly. There is something in the story which draws. But even as they listened, leaning forward, watchful, silent, wholly attentive, their inscrutable faces told me nothing.
After listening patiently, as is the Eastern way, they spoke at some length. The message was wonderful, beautiful, excellent truly for those to whom it pertained.
“WE DON’T WANT IT” 81
But as for themselves, “Why throw away the fruit in one’s hand, and long for the fruit on the tree?” Desire is maya, illusion; virtue consists in cessation from desire. “But we are glad,” they added, “to form friendship with you. As our friend, we believe, you have come to our town.” And in the circumlocution of the courteous and leisurely East, many speeches followed, to which answers were allowed, till we came to closer quarters, and they spoke more directly what they meant. Like drops of icy water, dropping, dropping, fell their words on one’s hot hope.
“If a heap of sugar were piled on the floor, would you have to call the ants to come? They would come without any call. If your religion were good for this land, those best fitted to judge of its merits, we, the Brahmans, would have led the way to it. As it is, the undiscerning run. The poor and profoundly ignorant run. We are not found in your Way.”
“Look at this town,” said another, pointing out through the door to the long stretching Brahman street; “have you a Christian here?”
“Yes, one; but such a one! And he is here for pay!”
“Look at the next town, and the next.” They named half a dozen towns. “Have you any living there who are not there for pay?”
“And then,” continued a triumphant voice, “look how your Christians live. Do your Christians never lie? never steal? never bear false witness? And supposing they were exemplary, what are they worth after all? How many belong to us?”
“Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed on Him?” It was not a new question. As for the slur cast on the Christians’ character, though one could not say all were true, one could name those who were. There was a confusion of conflicting voices, as the names were tossed about. “Your Christian poet! He was my father’s friend. A great scholar, we know his poetry!” “Eenegade! Eenegade!” “No, poet!” Then, naming another of God’s noblemen, one from the caste which has yielded most Christians, I set the ball rolling in an opposite direction; all there knew him and his stainless life, and had to confess it was good.
It is something to have such names to name; but no names, no facts, can compel a Hindu to come out in the open and face them. With him an argument consists in dodging about from tree to tree. You follow him to one, to find he is looking at you from round the slippery trunk of another. For in this interminable jungle the trees are palms with stems like poles. Nothing so four-square as an oak confronts you anywhere.
It was vain to follow from tree to tree, and seeing one could not be drawn to try, they came back to the first, and repeated that the nation (meaning themselves) had shown no appreciation of our religion. The ants avoided the sugar; which proved it was not sweet or nutritious to them, whatever it might be to us. There was another skirmish round divers inviting objections, but their final return to the argument based on an illustration, gave one the chance to explain why all who hear of Him do not taste and see that the Lord is good. The ants have nothing to leave behind in
order to taste the sugar. We have to leave our sin before we can truly taste the heavenly food.
This started questions. What is sin? When did it come into existence? Why is it allowed to continue? Which is stronger, good or evil? If good, then how is it that it is overcome by evil? If the doctrine of reincarnation, which teaches that suffering in this life is resultant from sin in a former birth, is untrue, how then do we account for the suffering of innocent children? If we answer that often they suffer for their parents’ sin, how do we prove God just? What about the hereafter? How will those be dealt with who know nothing of the way which we affirm is the only way to bliss? These were a few of the questions showered upon us from all sides at once. One sympathised with the questioners, for the questions are as old as the mind of man.
So looking up for answers which should satisfy even where they could not explain, I began with the last question, and was reading that heart-resting word of the Lord: “But he that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes,” — when a voice broke in authoritatively:
“We cannot accept answers from that book. Your own Gurus are not agreed about it. Some say it is composed of legends and fables, mere myths at best. Yes,” and he turned to the men, “there are Christian scholars who say so. The book is not to be regarded as entirely true.”
It was evident he had read, and somewhat misunderstood, translations of certain English articles bearing upon the inspiration of the Bible, which have begun to appear in India. One felt as if one had been hit by mistake by a shot from one’s own side. I was not prepared to find this objection in a remote country town, and not wishing to get involved in such discussion, tried to lead them back to the great central truth upon which all Christians, whatever their opinion may be about other matters, are certainly agreed. But the men were impatient now. “You come to us with a mutilated book about which you differ among yourselves! You want us to introduce the religion which it teaches to our women! We will not have it. We do not want it. You are one, alone. We are the many; how can the one be right, and all the number wrong? We have our god. You see his temple there. We have our books, which your wise men greatly prize. Many of your sages are coming to see that ours, the ancient religion, is true, and yours, born but yesterday; is false.” (They love this fallacious argument.) “Listen!” and they named the few converts won from nominal Christianity to nominal Hinduism. “Listen!” and they quoted the remarks of one, a Christian visitor to India, who, in his anxiety to show sympathy with the best there is in the higher Hinduism, seemed to these men, its votaries, almost to apologise to it for the vandalism of venturing to differ from it in anything.
There is much that is noble in ancient Hindu thought. Anything like an intolerant attitude towards it can only repel those whom we would win. God spoke to men in the old days. His light enlightened them. But the echoes have become confused, the light “You ARE ALONE” 85
blurred. And this is taking Hinduism at its best, as the Ve’das show it, as scholars think it. Very far different is its worst, as the masses know it and live it. But taking it at its best, is this blur and this confusion good enough for men who are brothermen with us? Go back if you will to the old books: can you find soul-food in them? Dare you die on them? Oh, there is only one Book which feeds, only one Book upon which we dare die! Lord, to whom shall this nation go? Lord, to whom shall we go, or they? Thou hast the words of eternal life.
There was some angry astonished talk among the men. Personally they were perfectly courteous, but the preposterous nature of our proposals roused them, much as a proposal made in all seriousness to a company of Englishmen to become Mohammedans would have roused them, had they stopped to consider it at all. They talked the more unrestrainedly because I, being only a woman, did not count as anybody, and if one had been detached enough to listen from an outside position it would have been wonderfully interesting. Chances for such character study are rare in tae South. But one felt too much concerned in the issue of that conversation to be able to detach oneself. All I could see just then was this body of strong intelligent men, refusing our Lord Jesus Christ.
“You are alone,” said one at last, when the excitement had subsided, “and you see how many we are. This is how the case stands all over India. Who fill the highest positions open as yet to us? Hindus. Who then rule the land, though you white rulers do not know it? Hindus. And who will rule it? Do you think your Lord Jesus Christ will rule it?” And they laughed in scorn. Outside in the street people pressed round the door. They caught the laugh, and passed it on, till it seemed as if the whole town were laughing that scornful laugh. One felt alone then.
Do you wonder at it? I wondered, when I thought of it, for of course I was not alone. And quickly the soothing of that knowledge came, and yet there was for the moment the sense of human loneliness. I searched through the long row of faces opposite, and then through the crowd of faces round the door, to find one with a look of recognition in it; but I did not find one. I listened as the many voices spoke, to hear one with a note of responsiveness in it, but I did not hear one. It was as if one’s whole being were laid bare to the grief of seeing His love refused. Oh, that one could have shown Him more clearly, that there had been someone else to speak! But there was no one else to speak, no one else just then to care. That was the loneliness of it.
“The stars in their courses fought against Sisera,” comes a voice to us from the brave new West. “It is foolish for you to be lonely. You and the stars are fighting together.” And yet this loneliness, weak, foolish, unreasonable, what you will, is often the portion of our Indian comrades out in the firing line. We have your sympathy. Have they?
Had this day’s work ended otherwise, you would have heard of it long ago. No effort of ours could have confined the rumour of it. For it is not usual in the history of Indian missions to find a company of Brahmans receive the truth with intention to obey it. But we believe to see the unusual, and it never becomes a light thing to see in literal fact what the prophet foresaw, and the first great missionary experienced, the rejection of our Lord Jesus Christ by those best fitted to understand Him. There are places where He stands now, “all day long,” with “hands stretched forth,” and there still are those who push those hands away, or ignore them. Lord, we sympathise with Thee! Let us never be unresponsive to Thee. Let us never be a disappointment to Thee.
But even as one writes, the swift thought turns and flashes up. One is out in that scoffing crowd again, the tumult of voices is round one, as one stands now out in the street; and for the moment the blue above becomes, as it were, all transparent, cleft through by a sudden ray;
“Multitudes — multitudes — stood up in bliss,
Made equal to the angels, glorious, fair;
With harps, palms, wedding garments, kiss of peace,
And crowned and haloed hair.
“Tier above tier they rose and rose and rose
So high that it was dreadful, flames with flames, No man could number them, no tongue disclose Their sacred secret names.
“As though one pulse stirred all, one rush of blood
Fed all, one breath swept through them, myriad-voiced They struck their harps, cast down their crowns, they stood And worshipped and rejoiced.”
Thank God for that flash through the blue. Thank God for the many in whom Love will have its way, for the great multitude of all nations and kindreds and peoples and tongues. But through the little while that may intervene till we hear the loud voice saying in heaven, “Now is come salvation and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ,” will you remember your Indian comrades who are often stationed in places where there is little upon which human hope can feed; and will you ask for them that they may be filled with quenchless, abounding, victorious hope by the power of the Holy Ghost, and comforted in loneliness by the presence of our Lord?