Hold Me On with a Steady Pace
WHEN a convert comes out, and especially after she is baptized, those who have faithfully prayed so far draw a breath of relief. She is safe now, they think, and relax. Intensity in anything is tiring. Intensity in prayer leaves us spent. But it is not safe to relax.
In the year 1897 a South Indian missionary, the leader of a men’s Itinerancy, in writing to his committee about his Band, mentioned one especially as being very earnest. In compiling the year’s report, attention was drawn to this man by a marginal note, “A successful soul-winner.” “The leader,” the text said, “knows few men who seem so wholly fitted as he is to point men to the Saviour.” When this was written it was true. Before the printed report reached South India the successful soul-winner was back in Hinduism; to-day he is a Saivite, an avowed worshipper of Siva.
He was one of the first converts I knew intimately. He came with the men’s Band to preach in the villages round our home. Every day at noon we used to teach the men new choruses, and the man who struck us most because of his keenness in learning the choruses and delight in using them was Spiritual-Guide, as his name means, a man with a strong thoughtful face, and a kind, frank manner. The chorus which had helped Star, as a child, was the one he appropriated at once, “Jesus loves, saves, keeps.” He used to sing it all over the compound, and once in a dry meeting of nominal Christians this convert from Hinduism startled the dulness by breaking out with his chorus, and then pleading with those cold hearts to let the love of Jesus in. For three years he worked in the men’s Itinerancy. He had special access to the Brahmans because of his perfect command of the higher Tamil language, and once he had won a hearing, his fervency held them to listen to the end. He was beloved by the band’s leader, and thoroughly trusted by all. Suddenly one day they missed him, found he had gone to the nearest great Saivite temple, and traced him home. He was last seen sitting on the ground as a Hindu guru, with a rosary of Siva’s berries round his neck, and Siva’s ashes smeared on his forehead.
In the midst of his student days M’Cheyne prayed, “God hold me on with a steady pace!” God hold us on with a steady pace in prayer for those who have lately come out of Hinduism, lest we stop before the goal is reached. It is safe to say that in India, at least, defection is a possible contingency which can never be ignored. There are fine threads woven round the newly won convert’s soul which even his break from Hinduism has not wholly snapped: these threads can pull. He hears voices inaudible to us, or if audible, unmeaning; to him they are intense in meaning, wooing as siren songs. There are influences about him of which we are not sensible. Oh for more discerning sympathy with those whose temptations, like their sorrows, pass the bounds of our experience!
A potent cause of declension where the truly earnest are concerned is found in the weariness of repulse day after day, as the message they are so eager to give is carelessly and often contemptuously refused. Christ lifted up does draw. A missionary on fire to see souls saved does see souls saved. But it is no less true that often the call is to enter deep into the fellowship of His sufferings. Then, if this aspect of things is forgotten, and we look around instead of up into the face of Jesus, we get hopeless, and cold and hard, uncaring that souls are perishing. From this the step is easy to slackness in effort for them and indolence in prayer. Then we get sidetracked, engrossed in something other than what makes for the winning of souls; and Satan, content, directs his attention elsewhere. Something of the same sort happens if the worker is a Christian born. If he is a convert he retrogrades often irreparably.
Perhaps the strain to which those for whom we now ask your special prayer are subjected, will be better understood if I tell you what has lately happened here.
About two miles from Dohnavur, across a bare bit of scorching plain, there is a small old-fashioned place called the Village of the Temple. None of us may walk down the Brahman street. When the men’s Itinerating Baud comes round it has to stand at the end of the street and speak down it to any who will condescend to listen. The women of this village were unevangelised when we first went there. Two of the converts, Star and Joy, went regularly with an older woman for several months. Then the great heat of March and early April almost forced them to desist, for the plain is quite unshaded on that side, and they are not accustomed to exposure. But they would not give in, and toiled on till the following November, with only a six weeks’ break when we went to the hills. The monsoon rains then threatened to stop them. They waded sometimes knee-deep through the morass rather than miss their afternoon for that village. They had their reward in winning an entrance to many houses there.
At last, to their delight, they saw what they believed was the first green blade. They almost ran as they came home to tell us of it. A girl of eighteen, unaccountably still unmarried, wanted to be a Christian; she had let her people know; they did not seem opposed. It sounded too good to be true. And another, lately married, had begun to talk to her husband, who also seemed interested. Two little slender blades of hope, but how precious to the sowers, to whom they were the earnest of a harvest that seemed to their quickened imagination quite near that day.
A few weeks passed; the two first to become impressed went on satisfactorily; others began to learn, others wanted to learn. One of these last was a young girl whose face, looking through a window, attracted them as they passed. They stopped at the door, and asked a middle-aged man who was working at a fine gold chain on the verandah if they might come in. He answered curtly that his sister had no time for conversation.
A WOMAN’S CASTE is HER KELIGION 187
They passed on, but as they passed they caught another glimpse of the bright face with its dark sparkling eyes, and a curious quick sympathy sprang into life between them. Each drew to the other without the interchange of words.
Shortly afterwards I went to see the obdurate brother. Lean of soul he seemed, and stiff of mind. “Beautiful, my sister, is busy; she has no time to receive instruction.” Pressed further, he declared himself adverse to this new-fangled teaching of women, “who are inferior beings, to whom religion does not pertain, whose whole duty consists in obedience. A woman’s caste is her religion; her husband is her god.”
Beautiful listened to her brother’s tirade from a dark corner behind the door. She had heard it a hundred times before, saw nothing unnatural in it. But all the same she craved for more. She had been made for more than this. And through her cousin, the unmarried girl who had begun to be interested, she came to an understanding with our girls that sooner or later she would hear all they could tell her about Jesus. We think her idea was that, after her marriage, which was impending, she would be able to learn. But she was married into a family resident twenty miles distant. So that plan failed.
For some months after her marriage all went well. Her mother answered our questions as to her health and happiness with a smiling face. Beautiful had married well. The jewels she wore were magnificent. Her new relations were charmed with her; the mother was content. But suddenly, as things happen here, we heard that Beautiful was dead, — had hanged herself.
Gradually the truth oozed out. Beautiful’s caste, like all strict castes, forbids the eating of flesh food. But as a concession to the needs of young children, fish is allowed till the marriage day. After that, never. Beautiful conformed of course to the rules of her caste; but she was not strong, an uncontrollable craving for the food to which she had been accustomed took possession of her, and she appealed to her young husband to let her have it. He was surprised, and as she insisted, angry. The mother-in-law made mischief. The girl was punished. Her spirit was broken. One day she was left alone in a room. When her people returned, she was found hanging from a rope tied to a beam. They cut her down, but the pretty little head fell limp. Then they noticed her jewels were gone, and they searched and found them all in a packet marked for her husband. It was a sort of mute protestation that she had meant to be good.
When the story reached the Village of the Temple, the immediate result was that every girl who was learning with us was told to return her books. Beautiful had wanted to learn, and Beautiful had disgraced her caste. The inconsequence of the argument did not seem to strike anybody. The girl who had seemed so warm, cooled; the young wife ceased to read to her husband. Several girls who appeared to be drawing towards a vital interest in ‘the things of Christ were hurriedly married and despatched to distant villages. The fear and the hurry would have been ludicrous if it had not been for the tragedy — that one young life so suddenly “LET THINE OWN RAIN FALL” 189
ended; these many young lives pushed back into death.
The workers who had so patiently toiled through the heat, and the rain, and the burning heat again, for over a year, could not believe at first that the people would hold to their decision, and they continued going till convinced that it was useless. Not a house would open to them. They knew this phase would pass; leave the village for a year, and the people would forget; they would get in again. But in the meantime the natural sequence, the watering after the planting, would be wholly interrupted. It would be impossible to follow the various girls who would be married and sent to other places before the village would open again. The increase that follows true planting and watering seemed projected into a far-away future. “0 Lord of the Harvest! we count upon Thee to water Thine own seeds Thyself,” they prayed: “we wanted to be Thy wateringpot, but we may not be even that. Let Thine own rain fall on Thy seeds.”
And yet, though they prayed so, they could not help sorrowing. Those who have learned to love their own generation cannot rest while that generation passes unblessed. People tell us to be patient, and read us homilies on patience. We do indeed need the patience of God. “We will remember the years of the right hand of the Most High.” But platitudes, however kindly offered, are as sawdust to hearts thirsty to see souls saved, not afterwards, but now. We could say all the nice-sounding things ourselves; they do not comfort us. We go to our Lord for sympathy. We find He understands. “When He was come near, He beheld the city, and wept over it, saying, If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace!” Thou, even thou: thou, and not another.
“0 my God,
Thus let me weep at times and sigh to Thee,
Holding Thy feet; not desolate myself;
But for the desolate in every land:
Thus let me pray, embracing Thy dear cross,
For evsry banished soul — Thy banished ones
And mine.”
Of the three workers, the one who had been the most in earnest about the Village of the Temple was now the most utterly broken-hearted. She came home crying bitterly the evening they heard about Beautiful’s death, and she threw herself down beside me and buried her face in my lap. “0 Amma, Amma! I never knew how it could hurt!” She was hurt all over, soul and body, and for a time lost that elasticity of spirit which helps us through our hurts. Then we feared for her lest she should lose tone. A change in the kind of work arranged for her saved her from that, and the healing touch of the Man of Sorrows, who understood her, put all right again. But as we lived through it with her we realised that if these young converts are to become soldiers strong to endure, someone must hold on for them long after baptism is passed: God hold us on with a steady pace.