Let It Bring Forth Tender Grass
WHEN we rose from our knees we saw a change in the devotee’s face and manner. Those who have seen such changes wrought will understand: to those who have not, all this tale will seem foolishness. There was no violent emotion; but something had gone, something had come. Rather, Some One had come.
She began to pray herself. What she said was a medley of heathen phrases mixed with a word of sense here and there. Wisdom, the ex-devil-dancer who had joined us, looked shocked. We told her God would wash the prayer clean and make it all right. But Wisdom drew us aside. “You do not know her as we know her,” she said, and amplified the word dropped by the bystander: “she is possessed by a strong demon. I used to serve devils. I know all about it. Sometimes I too was possessed. But she is different entirely. She sold herself to her demon, and he abides in her continually. Often he seizes her and makes her do terrible things in his name. She is helpless in his hands. Between times she is as you see her, like one without a mind. We think she is insane. This praying is not real. Do not believe in her. You will be disappointed afterwards.”
The only perplexity to Wisdom was the devotee’s coming to us. All the rest was plain hypocrisy or stupidity, or both. Her coming in that strange way was inexplicable upon either theory. The devotee lived her life alone, and never went near the Christians.
But to me this fact was eloquent. I had not thought of her as possessed. As I saw her there was nothing of the special phenomena we associate with such inhabitation. She seemed to us the dullest of all the dull women we had seen in that dull village, the deadest of the dead. There was nothing uncanny about her, nothing impressive. The one remarkable thing was just her coming to us as she did, rushing straight for us when we appeared, falling down at our feet. “They arrived at the country of the Gadarenes. And when He went forth to land there met Him out of the city a certain man which had devils long time. When he saw Jesus he cried out and fell down before Him.” Could her coming so be chance? Was it not that the Spirit before whom devils quail had drawn her to meet Him who had come to her village, and caused her to fall down before Him? For He must have been with us according to His promise as we stood on the sand by the cart. There are times when one feels that if a Voice spoke one’s name, and one turned and saw Him — Eabboni, Master — it could hardly be a surprise.
Wisdom and her husband, who had returned from work, listened at first rather doubtfully. “The heavens touch the earth on the horizon of our vision, but it always seems farthest to the sky from the spot where we stand.” It is easier to believe in miracles happening is HUSHING ME” 171
a long way off than just here. But as we talked together it was as if we were all swung up to higher altitudes of faith and expectation. Husband and wife, our little band, and the bewildered devotee knelt down in Wisdom’s courtyard, and praised God, and asked for perfect recovery, mental health, and spiritual health. And then putting the devotee’s hand in Wisdom’s we left her to her care. A few weeks afterwards the message reached us, “Come quickly. The devotee’s only daughter is dead.”
A blow like this often follows the first turning towards Christ, and if the new convert is not staggered by it, another often follows confession in baptism. This is another of the facts we never concern ourselves to explain. We only know it happens so.
We went at once. We found the poor mother sitting quietly with Wisdom, in Wisdom’s little house. She was in sore grief, but perfectly calm. “Jesus is holding me in His arms, as I held my child when she was a babe. He is hushing me,” she said. We could hardly believe that she was the one who had seemed so imbecile.
The heathen were jubilant, quite sure taey would have her back. “Did we not warn you? Did we not tell you your demon would avenge himself? Now he has taken your golden girl. Next he will take your eye’s jewel (her boy). Lastly, he will come for you. You will surely all be slain: and we shall see.”
There was cause for their words. In a neighbouring village a devil dancer of some note had recently publicly professed faith in Christ. Two days later her only son sickened with cholera and died. Trouble upon trouble followed till she yielded; then all went well. So their talk stirred up every superstitious fear, and blew upon Wisdom’s friend from all four sides at once. Would she stand? She stood. “For He is holding me,” she said.
Months of trial followed. Her boy was a constant source of anxiety. Any little ailment seemed serious. “Is what they are saying true? Will he, too, die?” she asked us one day pitifully. But she learned to roll her burden off, and not to take it back. She was spared this crowning grief. Her boy was protected, her faith braced.
One of the wonderful things to watch in connection with the devotee was the change that passed over her face. It had been coarse. It became refined. That refinement of expression, which so occupies you as you look that you do not notice fleshly details, was hers now — “For soule is forme, and doth the bodie make.” Her mind was renewed. It was good to see it clearing as the landscape clears in the morning. We read learned disquisitions on the impossibility of the Creative Word taking immediate and visible effect. “Let there be light: and there was light,” is too simple for our wisdom now — or too profound? And we turn from the book’s page straight to life’s, and wonder as we look, spelling slowly out the words that are being written there, whether those who write in the other books have watched God writing His. Perhaps they have not the leisure of Marioah and his wife, who, when the Angel did wondrously, looked on.
God, who quickeneth the dead, and calleth the things that are not as though they were, God whose Creative “IF IT BE NOT HE, THEN WHO IS IT?” 173
Word does take immediate and visible effect upon that mysterious Thing, more mysterious than matter, which we call Soul: God, Creator, and Saviour, did wondrously; and we looked on.
The temple devotee was that no longer. She withdrew at once from all connection with the temple. Her boy had been trained to chant prayers and idol songs, for which service the priests paid well. She took him away and sent him to school. This left her poor; but she got some humble work in the village, and from the first spent her spare time in what she called “looking for lost sheep.” She and Wisdom talked to their neighbours, and went about where they could, telling any who would listen about Jesus.