No Beauty That We Should Desire Him
““VTOUE Christian poet! he was my father’s friend! a Jgreat scholar. We know his poetry.”
As the voice spoke I saw the man it named: a tall gaunt figure in white; white-turbaned head; eyes which observed; face, olive in colouring, seamed and lined all over, furrowed deep across the forehead; character in every movement of the long slender hands; strong affection in the glance of the dark piercing eyes.
I saw him as he first photographed himself’upon me. It was one of those days when one’s mental economy, instead of attending to its proper business, seems to lie out thin, like a sensitive film, intent on receiving impressions. It was the last day of my final examination in Tamil. The old scholar was one of the Examiners. He came early, seated himself comfortably, and put on his spectacles. We were alone for awhile; beyond the salaam of greeting neither of us spoke: the victim on such occasions is not talkative. But the old man looked at me, and his keen eyes filled with sympathy. “Why this fear?” he said, pointing up, “God is.”
Some words and some gestures live. That hand pointing upward, that voice saying “God is,” are as if hours, not years, had passed since then. The overwhelming nervousness which had made the impending viva voce almost a physical impossibility passed in part at least. Oh, the faithlessness, the cowardice of fear, when God, the Doer, as the name he used suggested, is.
And again I saw him. He was dying; unconscious, it was thought. I had taken a card with “Jesus” written large in Tamil. “He will not know you; he cannot read now,” said the watchers sadly. But he opened his eyes, and saw the Word, and it was as if a great light passed over his face. Never shall I forget that light and the smile that looked out of those loving old eyes as they lingered over the Word. Then we saw he was trying to lift his hand. Some one helped him, and the finger traced it as if writing it, character by character. No one spoke. He could not speak, but the trembling finger still traced the Word over and over. Then the lips moved, and the dark eyes, dim with death’s dimness, shone. We knew he was speaking to Jesus. Then with a satisfied, rested look, like the look of a little tired child that finds itself safe in its mother’s arms, and is so glad just to go to sleep, the old man turned, and fell asleep, his hand still touching caressingly the dear Word “JESUS.”
We all have a room within us, hung with pictures. Sometimes when the people about us least know it, we leave them to talk, and go into that room, and shut the door very quietly. Then their voices sound a long way off, like the sound of the sea waves falling on a far-away other-wTorld shore. And we look at our pictures. Time does not count in the Picture Room. There is no hurry- “RENEGADE!” “POET!” 91
ing of clocks, no beat of bells. But a moment may show a month’s pictures, as moments and months are counted elsewhere; and we may look at the pictures of years, quite leisurely, between the “Don’t you think so?” of the talker outside, and the “Yes” or “No” we hear ourselves say in answer. So I saw these pictures of our old friend, and many another distinctly, in the second of time between the shouts, “Kenegade!” “No, poet!” Then I came out of the Picture Room, and the voices sounded near and loud, clashing, jarring.
What created the difference wide as space between that man and these? In race, environment, ideal, he was once as they are now.
It is seldom that such a question can be answered with any degree of detail, but Mr. Walker, the old man’s friend, persuaded him to answer it in writing. This writing he translated, and one day when I was wishing I knew something more of one who had impressed me more than any Indian I had then met, he gave me the manuscript to read. It seems to me worth giving you. You will understand that it loses in translation. But the heart in sympathy will feel the heart beat through it, coldly though it must read, and heavily, in comparison with the warmth and lightness of the Indian original.
The manuscript is headed, “How I became a Christian: written in 1893.” Then the text, “Be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh a reason of the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear,” or as the Tamil has it, “with meekness and reverence.” With meekness and reverence, then, he begins: “If asked to state what was the Cause of my breaking oft with Hinduism to become a Christian, what Cause can I assign except only the tender compassion of Heavenly grace? At the same time I am ready to narrate the subsidiary means for so great a change, which that Heavenly grace employed from time to time, and to unite in order the events which proved conducive to my conversion.”
A few strenuous words as to Hinduism preface this introduction. He writes as an Indian poet does, wrapping thoughts in tight bundles, which once unfastened refuse to be packed up again in as small compass. So that we cannot do justice to its compressed intensity. English sounds diffuse after such Tamil.
As a Hindu of the stricter type, his life, he says, was sin: sin which did not recognise its sinfulness. Uttermost darkness was around him and within him. Then came the tenderness of God’s compassion, the grace which cares. As a hand it drew him, lifted him out of the abyss, set him in the Way, made him, once a Hindu and an alien, meet to be a partaker of the inheritance of the saints in light. Again and again in language which seems to be searching for words warm enough and bright enough to radiate forth the joy that is in him, he piles verse upon verse in praise of the Father who delivered him from the power of darkness, and translated him into the kingdom of His dear Son.
“I was a Hindu of the strict Vaishnavite sect.” [Vaishnavites are votaries of Vishnu, the second person in the Hindu triad.]” I had only one brother, younger than myself. My father possessed in an eminent degree the excellent characteristics of benevolence, compassion, merciful pity, and kindness to animals. With the exception of a few defects he was consistently a zealous votary of the Vaishnavite creed. He possessed great ability in understanding the meaning of the Tamil classics, and in expounding them to others. The study of these formed his mental pastime. He was neither very rich nor very poor; and he was held in high esteem by the scholars, Government officials, and magnates of his day. At the age of forty-seven the relinquishment of his body befell him, but before this he had sought out and married to me, then aged thirteen and a half, a small girl-child. Moreover, he had divided the family property so that there should be no room for trouble or disputes on the part of our relatives. This arrangement proved most serviceable to us boys, in the matter of our education. While my father still lived he had taught me the Ramayana, and my mother, who was a keen-minded woman, used to tell us the poem’s story, and explain the meaning of the stanzas.
“It was during my father’s lifetime that I was initiated. This Initiation includes the Sealing, or Branding, which means the branding of both shoulders of the votary by a golden discus, heated red-hot in the sacrificial fire, in token that he is a devotee, slave of Vishnu, that he will never henceforth break his fast without having first performed the prescribed daily ceremonies, and that he will faithfully observe such and such rites. I was only a small boy at the time, so two strong men gripped me firmly from behind, and held me tight. The heat and pain were intolerable: my eyes filled with tears. But it would have been disgrace and the height of misdemeanour at such a moment to cry aloud. My father had some others branded with me, as a meritorious act of charity: the cost was one hundred rupees. I was the only one in our family on whom the rite was performed. It is now nearly fifty-two years since these brand marks were stamped upon me, but they are still only too clearly visible. I was then taught by our Guru to repeat the chief and fundamental mantra, which, being interpreted, means ‘All adoration to Vishnu, the mystic Om.’
“When I was eighteen years of age I was a bitter foe not of Christianity as such, but of those who, according to the fashion of that period, wrote down their names as Christians, while they disgraced the glorious name of Christ....
“From my eighteenth year, my brother and myself, instead of spending our time idly, studied carefully, by our own exertions, the Tamil classics. Not only so, but since printed copies of Tamil grammatical works were then unprocurable, we borrowed, from a respected senior, palm-leaf copies of the standard grammars (written in poetical form) and wrote out new copies for ourselves on palmyra leaves. At that time there were only two or three scholars in the whole district who were really versed in Tamil. One of these was a friend of my father. We took advantage of the fact, attached ourselves to him, and exerted ourselves to study. For a year and a half we rendered him the service of disciples, and so pursued our studies. Still later we worked with earnest ardour, and thus completed our grammatical studies. If I had not given myself thus to grammatical study, how should I ever have become a Tamil Pandit? Had I not become a Tamil Pandit how should I ever have become closely acquainted with Christian truth? It is clear to me, therefore, that it was the doing of the Holy Mind, and that alone, which attracted me from early youth to Tamil studies.”
Thus far the education of one who was to become pre-eminently the Christian Tamil scholar of South India. Those who are accustomed to look upon “the poor heathen” en masse, as ignorant barbarians, will read, with some surprise perhaps, this simple account of a cultured home, where the study of the classics was the pastime of the father, and the telling of beautiful old world tales to her little sons, the mother’s pleasure. Such pastime and such pleasure imply a knowledge of the ancient language in which all poetry is written, and this in itself, as any scholar versed in it will acknowledge, is the study of a lifetime.
Both brothers became Pandits, Professors of Tamil, in missionary colleges, and thus came in contact for the first time with vital Christianity.
The story continues:
“Before I undertook this work, I knew nothing really of Christianity. True, when I was about ten years old, a tract called ‘The Incarnation of Grace ’ fell into my hands. In it Vishnu’s ten incarnations were described in order, and the abominations in each were dilated upon. But this was the only impression left on my mind. The closing part of it, describing the holy attributes and deeds of Him who is the Form of Salvation, had no effect on me at all.
“When I began my Pandit work the missionary to whom I gave lessons in the language treated me with considerable kindness, and used to speak to me about the Christian Way. Though his words upon this subject were as gall and wormwood to my Hindu soul, yet by degrees his excellent character and deeds won upon me, and induced me to listen to what he said without gainsaying. A little later I borrowed a copy of the Tamil Scriptures, and began to read it. I read as far as the twentieth chapter of Exodus, in order, from the beginning. From what I thus read I got it firmly fixed in my mind, that the creation of the world, the advent of sin, the Deluge, and other following incidents, are faithfully and truly narrated in the Bible, and that all the stories which occur in the Vaishnavite books about these subjects are inventions, baseless myths, and garnished pleasantries. Thus the daily ceremonies which I, as a Vaishnavite, scrupulously observed, my fastings, attendances at the religious festivals with which each month ends, and Caste etiquette and distinctions, palled upon my taste.
“It was at this juncture that my mind became deeply impressed with the consciousness that I should have to face the responsibility of my sins, and that the paltry subterfuges and atonements which are found in Hinduism tfere useless and vain. But what of this? Does not the poet remind us how the foolish cock, through sheer force of habit, continues its idiotic scratching on the rock, as if grains of rice were there? And so it was with me. The old inclinations refused to leave my mind (such as the inclination still to search in Hinduism for what was not there); and the sinful habits in which I had so long indulged continued in unabated force. I therefore came to the conclusion that since association with Christians and the reading of their Book disturbed my mind, my best course was to cut clear of both; and accordingly I desisted entirely from such conversation and reading. If any Christian accosted me, I gave no room for conversation. Only when the missionary spoke did I go through the form of listening; but it was with a deaf ear. Some time so passed. Hard was my heart and dead.”
With a few graphic words he closes this part of his story, telling in terse Tamil poetry how he “beat, bruised, and slew, slew, ay and buried,” the living voice within him, which slain, still lived and spoke of Him who as yet had no form or comeliness to him, no beauty that he should desire Him.