Persist
“So look up, friends! You who indeed
Have possessed in your house a sweet piece Of the Heaven which men strive for, must need Be more earnest than others are, — speed Where they loiter, persist where they cease.”
WE could not have uncovered so personal, and, after all, so common a hurt, had we not been pressed by the hope that the story of the loosing of these little lives might loose some prayers. Will not some who read entreat with a new intensity for the life of these innocent children, devoted in their infancy to the service of the gods? Most of us have little loved ones with Jesus. We “must need be more earnest than others are, speed where they loiter, persist where they cease.” So, at least, it seemed to us after the numbness of grief had passed, and we could think again.
At first it seemed as if it would never pass — as if comfort could never come. We just wanted Indraneela, nothing else. One day, some quaint words from old Samuel Rutherford came with such healing in them, that because there are so many sorrowful people in the world, and perhaps some sorrowful one may read this, I copy them:
“You have lost a child: nay, she is not lost to you who is found to Christ; she is not sent away, but only sent before, like unto a star, which, going out of our sight, doth not die or vanish, but shineth in another hemisphere. You see her not, yet she doth shine in another country. If her glass was but a short hour, what she wanteth of time that she hath gotten of eternity; and you have to rejoice that you have now some treasure laid up in Heaven.... There is less of you out of Heaven that the child is there” We never understood before how true in its simplicity is the familiar verse: “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”
Another word that had comfort in it was Golden’s. We were walking home together after church. Golden was speaking of little Lotus, who had been with my mother during the service: “You had not sore longing for her,” she said, “although she was not with you.” “Was it not different?” I answered, for the moment not seeing her thought: “I knew I should have her again as soon as the service was over.” “Will you not have Indraneela again as soon as the service is over?”
Sometimes a word lights up a truth. There had not been solid comfort in the view so often taken of a treasure lent reclaimed.
“Think what a present thou to God hast sent,
And render Him with patience what He lent,”
Milton’s beautiful lines to a mother “On the death of a fair infant,” had soothing in them, and yet there was somehow the inconsequence of an uncompleted thought. It was joy to have anything so dear to send; but had she been only lent?
“GIVE HER THE GLORY OF GOING ON” 287
“He lends not, but gives to the end
As He loves to the end. If it seem
That He draws back a gift, comprehend
“Pis to add to it rather, amend,
And finish it up to your dream.”
There is hearts-ease in the knowledge that the gifts of our God are without repentance — irrevocable. Often since then, when we have found ourselves picturing what she would have been by now, if we had been allowed to keep her here — such a bonnie little girl, just learning to talk
—and winced with the sharp pain of it, we have pulled up, remembering how much sweeter than our picturing she must be there, where the Hands that fashioned her so perfectly at first have their way with her, unhindered by any touch of ours or any influence of earth.
‘Tis to add to it rather, amend and finish it up to your dream “; the words mean much if they mean anything. And the gift will be all the dearer for such keeping until the service is over.
When we went back to the empty nursery, and folded up the babys’ little things and put them away, we felt as if we could not begin all over again. But we were shown that what we had been through was only meant to make us the more earnestly Persist. So we set apart the sixth of each month, the date of our little Indraneela’s passing, as a Prayer day for the Temple children, that they may be found and redeemed from Temple service; and for ourselves that we may love them accordng to the love of the Lord. Sometimes in far-away places, upon that very day God has signally worked for the deliverance of a little one in danger, and always He has met us and renewed our strength. We have never had another Indraneela, but our empty nursery has been filled to overflowing. “Impossible” things have been done. Children dedicated in suchwise that deliverance seemed, as the Tamil says, “out of hand’s reach,” are safely with us now. When such things happen we know Whose hand has worked.
Of late months a most helpful development has been effected through the comradeship of the medical missionaries at Neyoor. We have a branch nursery there now, with Ponammal (Golden) in charge of five nurses, and an absorbing family of the tiniest of our babies. The relief of knowing that, should they need it, all the help that skill and kindness can command will be given to those babies is something that perhaps only a mother who has known the anxiety of a large little family far away from reliable help will understand. We have no words to thank the medical missionaries and their Indian fellow-workers, whose kindness has no limits.
Another year lies between the last chapter and this. For we can only write in odd corners of time, and sometimes time does not seem to have any odd corners. Quiet is even rarer. Just now I am sharing a room with seven very young people — the middle-aged babies we call them — and the only possible quiet is when they all elect to go to sleep together, a happiness not granted every day. The year that has passed since Indraneela left us has held some rainy days. But perhaps the little seed of the Temple children’s work must be watered much before it will spring and grow. Perhaps, if we only knew it, all sheaves have such rain at the root. But to-day, as I look up from the writing to the dear little seven so kindly all asleep, and then through the western window with its glorious mountain view, to the other nursery where the older little ones are settling down to their midday rice and curry, and when I stop to remember just where each might have been to-day if things had been otherwise, then I feel no watering could be too costly, if only in the end there may be the joy of sheaves.
The joy of sheaves — we have had it already; and when the time comes to tell the South Indian Temple children’s story in full, if God will, we will share it with you. The story is a story by itself. Before it can be told there must be much laborious digging in places out of sight. So we do not attempt more now than these few simple nursery chapters, written for the comfort of those, known and unknown, who are praying that something may be done. And there is larger comfort to offer: India is so great a word that in writing we confine ourselves on purpose to the South, but we rejoice to remember that elsewhere there are those whose eyes are open to look for these little children, and to work for them and save them. Soon we trust our dream will be fulfilled, and each Province where the need is found to exist will have its own nursery, and its own band of volunteer Indian searchers.
For, in the South at least, the actual work of discovering the children must be done by the Indian workers. Most emphatically, no one else can do it. Our part is to inspire others, to hope through all discouragement, to do the detail work behind the scenes, and to pray, and set all who have hearts to whom the helplessness of a little child carries its own appeal, praying as they have never prayed for the life of these young children. Our great need then, is wise and earnest Indian fellow-workers. One by one those upon whom we can depend are being given to us, and now in many Temple towns and villages we have friends on the watch for little ones in danger. One of the Overweights of Joy to-day is the knowledge that the memory of our little Indraneela is being used to touch hearts to more purposeful effort, and a love that will not give in. One, a pastor’s wife who lately helped in the salvation of a little child, writes: “I never knew how very difficult it would be to save these children until I began to try. Then I despaired. I found Satan at every point. I nearly gave up hope. I began to think it has gone on so long — this traffic — it will go on to the end. Who can stop it? What can we do? But then the remembrance of little Indraneela, and a letter I read about her, came to me, and revived my determination, for it made my whole heart tender for these little ones. And I could not bear to think they must go on perishing.”
God make our hearts tender, and revive our determination, and give it to us to care so that we shall not be able to bear that the children go on perishing. And though for many of us hereafter the laughter of life must have tears at its heart, God give it to us to Persist.