The Shah Najaf
IF there is one thing more than another which the average Englishman abhors, that thing is cant. We all agree about it. It is detestable. The man of the world, so called, keeps clear of it altogether. Are we who professedly belong to another world quite so clear? For example, we sincerely rejoice over stories of success from this and that quarter of the globe. But does it very much trouble us that Asia as a whole is practically an unconquered fort?
If it does trouble us, how much does it trouble us? How much are we prepared to sacrifice to win that fort? Missionaries at home on furlough are sometimes keenly disappointed in what is called an interest in missions. In some places it seems as if this same “interest” were treated as a sort of decorative afterthought to the otherwise quite complete church life. An absence of news (good news) from the front, and there is a perceptible cooling off; an honest story of defeat is told, and discouragement results. And yet we all profess to be soldiers, with a soldier’s conscience about obedience and a soldier’s courage in tackling the difficult. To the onlooker, at “DISCOURAGING” 53
least, it must sometimes seem that we are not in very burning earnest about our soldiership. And if we call ourselves soldiers, and sing, and pray, and talk on these lines, and yet are not in burning earnest, is it not possible that the thing we all agree to dislike is resident among us?
The fact is irrefutable, and the sooner we face it the better, that certain fields are “discouraging,” to quote the poor broken-backed word in use in such connections. Yet history is full of stories which rebuke the limp-souled courage based on prospects of an easy victory. We often recall these stories. One concerns the Shah Najaf in the days of the Indian mutiny.
The Shah Najaf was a tomb enclosed by masonry loopholed walls twenty-five feet high. Lord Eoberts describes its assault and capture in his Forty-one Years in India. He says it was almost concealed in dense jungle, so that its strength was unsuspected till approached. The troops were marching to the relief of Lucknow. They could not leave the fort unconquered in their rear. The artillery, a battalion of detachments, fresh infantry, attacked in succession. They foll back, riddled by the deadly fire from the fort. Our guns were only a few yards distant, but they produced no impression. The enemy, encouraged by success, grew bolder. The one hope of the little British army fighting against 30,000 desperate mutineers was to continue to advance at all hazards. Sir Colin Campbell led his men straight to the walls. The narrow path through the jungle was choked with wounded officers and dead and struggling horses. No breach in the walls could be found. The men had no scaling ladders. Passion, tumult, solid dogged steadfastness, lives wrecked upon a purpose hardly to be achieved, the hot night closing down, the foe all round, for all the North was a foe: see it, and you see stress and strain past telling, cause for immense discouragement.
We have our Shah Najaf. This ancient and highly developed creed is a tomb. The word suggests decadence, but a tomb may be strongly fortified, with a strength concealed till approached. We make little headway in our assault. The enemy is upon us. We cannot fight at night. The enemy sees this, knows with an accurate knowledge we do not possess what the odds against us are. And so, except in moments of panic, he is not afraid of us.
The critic of missions sees all this, and, marvelling at our madness in prolonging the unequal struggle, he tries to show us how very unequal it is. He laughs at what he calls our “inflated reports,” and calmly sits down to calculate. So much expenditure all told, with its present net result. So much money, so many men, devoted to the winning of those who are confessedly hardest to win, with exactly what success. The walls of the Shah Najaf, he proves, are not even slightly cracked.
But why should his sums disturb us so? It is true that he omitted to tabulate results among peoples less strongly entrenched. He knew that these results are already familiar to students of missionary literature. Heaven’s statistics were out of his reach, and possibly he may have forgotten the existence of the factor. Is his product therefore entirely wrong? Why should he for “GREAT is THE TRUTH” 55
his candour’s sake be considered unpleasant, almost profane, a pricking brier and a grieving thorn in the sensitive missionary body? Perhaps there is some truth in what he says. We do not want to be either optimistic or pessimistic, but just true. Said the wise Zerubbabel, “Great is the Truth and stronger than all things,” and proved his proposition. And all the people shouted, “Great is the Truth and mighty above all things.” “Truth beareth away the victory.” If there is a possible particle of truth in the critic’s remarks should we not set to, and search it out, and honour it when we find it?
We should, and we will, say an increasing number of mission-loving men and women at home, and missionaries abroad; but some still fear, knowing human nature well, lest subscriptions should be lost and candidates deterred by a too detailed account of what is called “the dark side” of things. But surely God’s silver and gold should not have to be dragged out of Christian pockets by force of tales of victory. It should be enough to know that the King requires the money for the prosecution of His wars. Our unselfish friends the collectors should not have to dread lest an inconvenient escape of facts make their hard work harder. And as for the missionary candidates, if the knowledge that the battle is not nearly won yet deters them in the least, let them be deterred. The kind of candidate wanted will not be deterred. What we need is more common honesty. God listens to our words however expressed, strips them bare of accessories, musical or devotional, peels off all the emotion; searches through for the pith at their heart, caring just for the white thread of Truth. If we are, as we declare we are, not our own but wholly Another’s, feeling will not affect duty either way.
The reports from the most hotly contested fields contain serious facts. A South Indian missionary lately wrote, that if our estimate of the progress made during the past twenty years in a certain Indian city were correct, we must admit that the Gospel we have been teaching does not appear to have had very much power in view of all that has been done. “We might well ask ourselves whether we really are preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ as He means we should.” The weapons of our warfare are mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds. Why are they not oftener pulled down?
The soldiers before the Shah Najaf were repulsed till further attack seemed suicide. Then the tide of victory turned. Two men, searching along the wall, discovered a single opening, looked through, climbed through. They found the foe flying from the Shah Najaf.
We have the promise of triumph. The fortress of the high fort of those walls of creed and caste shall God bring down, lay low, and bring to the ground, even to the dust. We believe in God, Jehovah is His Name: that strengtheneth the spoiled against the strong, so that the spoiled shall come against the fortress. We have no right to be discouraged.
But, are we soldiers after all? What those soldiers could not tolerate, rushed on death rather than tolerate, we tolerate comfortably; thankful that things are no worse than they are. Where is our enthusiasm for the kingdom of our Lord? If enthusiasm is love on fire, where, then, is our love? Do we count our lives too dear unto us to risk them under loopholed walls? Is Christ’s battalion the only one in which it is counted too much to die? We would not conceal it, it does mean death. Reputation for soul-winning power dies under the walls of the Shah Najaf. All that the “I” in us loves should live, is sentenced to death at the Shah Najaf. “Except it fall into the ground and die” — the law of the seed is the soldier’s law. “There is no gain except by loss, there is no life except by death.... And that eternal Passion saith, ‘Be emptied of glory and right and name.’”
One more look: look at the two, solitary for the moment, as they search along that wall. They have found the gap, they are climbing through it into the fort: are they solitary now? No! for the Highlanders close behind, each man keen to be first to go through, needing no urging. Then look again at the other wall, at the few who are searching for the gap. Say, when your comrades find the gap will they have to go in alone?
Do we press all to come and join in the storming of the Shah Najaf? For answer, we quote words written in one of her last letters, by an Indian missionary, Louise Benedict Pierson, who received the victor’s palm on the battlefield. It is a warrior’s message to a brother, a comrade to be:
“I write words for you to ponder and pray over. Do not go to any foreign field until you know beyond a doubt that God has Himself sent you to that particular field at that particular time. There is a romance or halo about being a missionary which disappears when you get on the field, I assure you. And, believe me, from the first moment you step upon shipboard upon your way to the field, the devil and all his agents will attack, and entice, and ensnare you, or try to do all these, in order to defeat the purpose for which you cut loose and launched out. Nothing but the fulness of the Holy Spirit will carry anyone through; and if you do not know that you have received this, do not fail to obey the command to ’ tarry until you be endued with power from on high.’
“Believe me, the foreign field is already full enough of prophets that have run, and He did not send them. If you know beyond a doubt — and you may — that God is empowering and sending you there, and now, go and fear not; and when, through the days, months, and years of suffering, that are sure to be in this cross-bearing life, the question arises again and again, ‘Why is this? Am I in God’s plan and path? ’ the rock to which you will hold in this sea of questionings and distresses is, ‘God sent me here, I know beyond a doubt; therefore I may go on fearing nothing, for He is responsible, and He alone.’ But if you have to admit, ‘I do not know whether He sent me or not, you will be thrown into an awful distress of mind by the attacks of the great adversary, not knowing what will be the outcome, and you will find yourself crying out, ‘Oh that it were time to go home. What a fool I was to run ahead of the Lord.’ Do not think, my brother, that God sends us to the field sweetly to tell the story of Jesus, and that is all. He sends us there to do what Jesus came into the world to do — to bear the cross. But we will be able to trudge on, though bowed under the weight of that cross of suffering, and even of shame, if our hearts are full of Him, and our eyes are ever looking upon the One who is invisible, the One who sent us forth, and therefore will carry us through.
“Forgive me for writing thus plainly. I pray that this message may shake in you all that can be shaken, that that which cannot be shaken may remain firm as the Rock of Ages.”