He Maketh the Stars
year of our first attempt upon the Fort was a J year of organised opposition from the Hindus in our neighbourhood. They had been exceedingly friendly; but they had been alarmed by seeing several of their young people beginning to take an interest in Christianity, and while they were debating about what to do, one of these inquirers became a convert.
This clinched matters. The order went forth that every caste town and village within a working distance of our home was to be closed to us. Then all the district round became like a rock at low tide studded with limpet shells. Limpetwise, each little coterie resented the lightest touch on its shell, and showed its feelings by fastening the firmer to the rock. Those were the days when our appearance in the most offended villages brought handfuls of dust thrown from behind walls full in our faces. We did not mind the dust, but we did mind being shut out of the people’s hearts. And yet we could not wonder at them. From their point of view it was the only thing to do.
Mr. Meredith Townsend’s book, Asia and Europe, contains a careful study of Indian character. Attention is drawn to the singular tenacity of will which, coexistent as it is with a surface flexibility, so often perplexes the observer. “The will of an Asiatic, once fairly roused, closes on its purpose with a grip to which nothing in the mind of a European can compare, a grip which seems too strong for the conscience, the judgment, and even the heart. The man is like one possessed, and cannot, even if he would, change his self-appointed course.”
Shortly after the stir caused by a break in the serried ranks of caste, a young Brahman barrister whose interest in books had brought us into touch with him, remonstrated on our iniquity in receiving converts whose caste had forbidden them to have dealings with us. No one feels the misery of this necessity more keenly than the Missionary, and, longing that its cause should cease, we besought him to use his influence towards winning liberty of conscience for his people. “Why should they not be Christians at home?” we urged, fired with a sudden hope that this well-educated man who quoted the English poets in every second sentence, this platform orator, newspaper writer, social reformer, would come to the rescue, and in his home at least do something persuasive and brave. He looked at us fixedly for a moment, and something looked out from his eyes, and then with a concentration of scorn we shall never forget, he spoke the truth to us, “Liberty of conscience? Christians at home? There is absolutely nothing we would not do to prevent such a thing occurring.” The will had closed there.
It was impossible to do much among the villages where the caste cabal had power. There were others open to us, so we went to them. All we wanted was “The glory of going on,” a commonplace glory truly, when going on means ploughing through deep sand in hot weather to reach dull little villages, where interesting things do not happen very often; but a glory all by itself because of the joy wrapped up in its heart. Then this was stopped. Fever came. The dull villages did not respond. News reached us of the declension of some for whom we had hoped great things. Everything seemed going wrong. It was during this time, which was night to us, that God lighted a star in our sky.
We knew nothing about it at first. We had left our headquarters and were itinerating outside the prescribed area, when we camped near a town whose citizens chiefly belong to a Clan notoriously turbulent and careless as to spiritual things. There is no large temple there. The people are immersed in the mundane. One evening we had a large open-air meeting. Looking back we see that day crowned.
For two heard then who believed. One was a lad of eighteen who had learnt in a mission school. At that meeting God met him and reversed his life-purpose. The other, and the first to come out as a Christian, was just a little girl. Star, we called her afterwards.
Sometimes when we are tired we spend an hour with the poets. Thought-music, word-music holds a charm like the music of moving waters, to soothe and heal. Sometimes rest comes otherwise. The mystery of mighty spaces, the splendour of great forces, or the magic of colour, the marvel of the loveliness about us seems to open suddenly as if another finer sense than sight perceived it, and one’s very being thrills with
an incommunicable joy. Sometimes a different thing happens. One can hardly tell what. Only one knows that, through and through, one is strong and glad and well again. One has seen part of the Ways of God.
It was late evening, a year after that open-air meeting in the Clansmen’s town. We were in camp. Our tents were pitched on a large expanse of white sea sand; far inland, but refreshingly suggestive of the sea. The day had been hot, and all day long people had been coming from the village near, not to listen, but to stare and talk. Our crowded little tents had been stifling. The noisy day, in which little of moment had been done, had left us tired. “Come,” I said to Star, who was with us, “let us go out and cool.” So we wandered hand in hand over the sand. Only the shadow of some stunted palms crossed its whiteness. Only the rustle of their leaves, as the light night-wind blew over the plain, broke its silence. We lay down on it and looked at the long ribs and ripples where the wind had played with it, and we let the moon-waves lap about us, and were still. “Amma,” whispered Star at last, so gently that it might have been the night-wind speaking softly, “this reminds me of the first night I spoke with God.” We had often wondered how it was that a child who had heard nothing before should so quickly understand and respond. “Tell me about it,” I said; and she t jld me.
She had often asked her father to tell her who made her. She would look at her hands and feet, and realising that they must have been created by someone, she would go to her wise old father and weary him with questions about this unknown Creator. Was it the heavenly Siva, whose ashes they all rubbed across their foreheads every morning after bathing? There were so many gods, she grew puzzled as she counted. Of all the gods, who was greatest? Was it Siva? Could he change dispositions? She felt if she could only find this out she would be satisfied, for the god who could change dispositions must be the greatest, and surely the greatest must be Creator. Her father did not seem to know, and tried to put her off. This disheartened her. But she would not give in. There was one way, she reflected, by which she could bring creatorship and sovereignty down to the test of practical life. She would discover the hidden being by a process of elimination. She would go through all the gods she knew, and find out which of them could change dispositions. She decided to begin with Siva, whose name her Clansmen bore. Had not her father gone to his temple month by month, with fasting and with prayer, pleading for children to be born to him? And had not the heavenly Siva granted him eleven? Her heart went out to Siva with a trustful expectation. He would change her disposition.
For she had a trying temper. Often when she was playing with other children she would get so overbearing that they would not play with her. She had tried to conquer the fault, but there it was, strong, and growing stronger in her. So she prayed to Siva, prostrating herself before him, crying her passionate broken prayer over and over into the air that never answered her back again.” 0 heavenly Siva, hear me! Change my disposition that other children may love me and
wish to play with me! 0 heavenly Siva, hear me! hear me! hear me!”
“And was your disposition changed?” “Oh no, no, no. Not even was it moved towards changing. Then I used to go away alone where nobody would see me, far out into the jungle, and lay my head down on the ground, and stretch my arms out, and wonder if no one would come. And I tried some other gods, but I got tired of it. And I wondered the more who made me, and why I was made. And I wondered who I was. I said, I am I; I am I. But how is it that I am I? Then I got tired of wondering. And I got tired of wanting to be good, for I could not change my disposition, and I did not know who could.”
She went on, however, questioning any who would listen. The cousin who could have answered her questions never spoke to her, nor did she speak to him. It would not have been proper, each being who they were. So no one answered her questions. People thought them foolish, almost blasphemous, considered her peculiar, because she was unlike themselves. An uncomfortable child they thought her, as we gathered from what others told us; a sort of feminine freak, not to be taken seriously. And they looked at her in a curious way, and talked about her among themselves, and pitied her mother. “Being observed, when observation is not sympathy, is just being tortured.” The sensitive flower of our South Indian river banks folds up its petals and leaves at less than a touch. The shiver of a shadow is enough to rob it of the heart to look up. Poor little human sensitive flowers, growing only God knows where, how often it must happen that they are chilled and hurt just when their petals open and smile up to the sky! The child repulsed made up her mind that she never would ask any questions again. But she thought the more. In this way she was being prepared to listen when the answer came, and to understand.