The Clan
The Clan well “: this was the picturesque description the Superintendent of Police gave us when we asked him about the Clan. The people of the Clan dwell in two towns about six miles apart. They are as one man in sentiment and character, and they do not love the Christian religion.
The boy of eighteen, who, with his cousin Star, heard the Gospel preached in the open-air meeting by the well, kept silent at first as to his determination to be a Christian. His father, one of the wealthiest men in the place, would disinherit him he knew. He did not fear that. What he did fear was the abandonment of grief into which his action would plunge his family. Also, being a human boy, he feared being beaten. A beating in the Tamil country may mean anything, from a good whipping with a switch or rope up to cudgelling, from which even a grown man might shrink. So the boy was silent for a while.
Just at that time his town and its twin town were agitated over an event which had deeply affected a neighbouring village. A young girl belonging to a
much respected caste had confessed Christ openly, and been obliged to leave her home and take refuge elsewhere. Immediately following this, another girl, belonging to the twin town, took her stand as a Christian, by refusing to carry a pot, pierced with a thousand holes, which holes in Tamil are called eyes, as an offering to the goddess who had, as was believed, restored her eyesight. “It was the Christians’ God Who healed my eyes. I will not carry the pot.”
It is true that a girl is a thing of small consequence in the life of a Hindu town. It is also true that nothing creates more disturbance in that same life than any independent action on the part of a girl. The Clan, as head caste in the place, concerned itself in the case. The parents were encouraged to use extreme measures. The Clan promised to back them up in whatever they chose to do. One night, armed with a billhook and a knife, mother and father made a feint -of attacking the girl, but she was not terrified though they almost beat her to death. All this was known to the Clan. “Go on! We shall see who will conquer,” they said, “Siva or Christ.” The parents went on. They won their way at last.
Then the Hindus were triumphant. All the town seemed to know about it. When we went there we felt the triumph in the very air. “Siva has conquered! Victory to Siva!” Some openly said it; everyone looked it. In a little dark room in the heart of the town we tasted the bitterness of it, slowly drank of it, hour after hour. And yet somehow, though far cast down, at first we were not afraid. We thought God would work a miracle. He sometimes does. To us this seemed a suitable time: “Wherefore should the heathen say, where is now their God? Let Him be known among the heathen in our sight. 0 God, how long shall the adversary reproach? Shall the enemy blaspheme Thy name for ever? Why withdrawest Thou Thy hand, even Thy right hand? Pluck it out of Thy bosom! Arise, 0 God, plead Thine own cause.” But we saw no sign in that dark little room, and as we drove away we looked back upon it with a sort of shuddering horror. We had seen there, with the smirch of his finger fresh upon it, the handiwork of the evil one. We had corne into direct collision with him, and for the time had been terribly worsted. We reached home tired out, to find a convert waiting there.
Workers in hard places will know what that brief sentence means: the sudden swing from depth to height, the sudden revulsion of feeling, the inrush of exultant joy, shadowed though it was, and had to be — they will understand it. The boy who had given himself to a new service at that open-air meeting could not go on keeping silence. He confessed Christ at home. But he could not live as a Christian at home. He was forced to escape to us. He had arrived a few minutes before we came.
Immediately the storm broke round the mission-house. Crowds of relatives came, raged, pleaded, in turn. Sometimes they brought one skilled in speech to work upon him, till one felt, as one listened, influenced against one’s will, by the almost hypnotic effect of that wonderfully persuasive oratory, and marvelled at the strength
VICTORY TO CHRIST! 43
that held him constant. Sometimes they painted the mother’s sufferings so harrowingly that we to whom she was not mother could hardly bear it. But he bore it, though only God knows what it cost. The men of the Clan, who by supporting the parents in their iniquity concerning the young girl, were chiefly responsible for its result, came in wrath and humiliation, and we could not help wondering whether it ever occurred to them to connect their action in that with God’s action in this. Gladly now would they have seen that insignificant young girl a baptized Christian ten times over rather than lose their noble boy.
For from their point of view he was irretrievably lost. He broke caste from the first, and took his stand as an out-and-out Christian, in a way which dismayed them, and made them feel the Clan had been humbled to the dust. “He has fallen into the pit, and we with him! 0 blind god, blind god!” they cried, “is it thus you requite your worshippers?” We heard no more of victory to Siva.
Suddenly this bright boy died. We were from home at the time, and when we heard the news it seemed to ring the knell to all our hopes for that special Clan and town Nothing so daunts prospective inquirers as the death of a new convert. “Join the Way, and die,” they say, ignoring the fact that those who do not join occasionally die. Death is the sign of God’s frown. Were the people going to be able to think it was victory to Siva, after all?
The Christians who lived in the little house, in whose dark little room we waited that day in our weakness and grief, wrote to us: “He died here; he died in the room where you prayed. The heathen crowded the street, and looked in, and we sang as he died, so that all should hear, ‘Victory to Jesus’ name. Victory to Jesus.’ He had no fear. It was all victory, and peace. Many saw it and wondered. ‘We do not die so,’ they said; and with great astonishment they watched us, and listened.”
Then indeed it seemed to us that in each detail and incident a Divine coincident lay. Had not God purposely chosen the place of our defeat to be the place where He should show forth His triumph over the last enemy to be destroyed? Had not even that very room come into His remembrance? The thought of it was good now. It had become a porch into the Presence chamber. The influence of that victorious death still works in the town. It is an argument none can controvert for the truth of our holy religion and the keeping power of God.
This alone would have been much. There is more to tell. We feared for the town, because we have often noticed that if a town, knowing what it is doing, shuts its doors and bars its windows to the breath of the Spirit, there is a withdrawal. The Spirit does not force an entrance. The town seems left. But to the glory of God we tell it, that town has stood out as an exception. From the day the people claimed victory for Siva, the town has never been for long without a seeker after truth. First from the most opposing Clan another was won, and another. Then to the heart of things the Spirit passed, and touched one connected with Temple-service. Then back to the indignant Clan, and another was drawn “THINE is THE KINGDOM” 45
out. The next came from a hamlet dependency. The next from the Clan again. And looking widely over His work it appears that He has most markedly worked in that special Clan which, whether in village or in town, is most strong in opposition.
“When Christianity assumes an aggressive attitude,” wrote George Bo wen, “the first result is a great exhibition of Satanic power. Satan’s power to be manifested must be assaulted. There must necessarily be a complete exhibition of Satan’s power before there can be a complete revelation of the power of Christ. This last is the second result of Christian aggression. It is by what He conquers that Christ’s power is to be discovered.”
It is true that the little town as a whole, and especially its leading Clan, oppose as much as ever. There has been no general movement. Souls are saved one by one. May the day soon come when, by some great wave of irresistible Omnipotence, those who of all the world’s peoples are hardest to win, will be swept into the kingdom of God’s dear Son! Nothing less will effectually deal with Islam and with caste; our work is only the undermining of the walls of the ancient fortress of lies, that when at last the wave breaks on the shore, there may be the less to withstand it; till then may God keep us patient, “henceforth expecting.” But even now as we look through the years to that day, when we felt so heavy-laden, to that room where we saw not our signs, to that Clan of strong antipathies, to that town unshaken in its certainty of victory to Siva, and then turn, and look humbly but thankfully at what has happened since, can we fail to see and appropriate God’s Overweight of
Joy? “It is by what He conquers that Christ’s power is to be discovered.”
“Now thanks be unto God which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!” Oh to be more and more “stedfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as we know that our labour is not in vain in the Lord.”