“Stiffly for the Name of the Lord”

The matter of the Memorandum was much in mind through the following years. To one who longed to see the Indian Church free to develop on its own lines, anything which in his opinion would prove crippling to such development could not but fail to be a deep and increasing anxiety. He felt, too, his isolation in holding out against persuasion: not that he was quite alone, for there were some who shared his anxiety; but he appeared at times to be alone, and, in 1912, read these verses from the Spectator with feelings of appreciation born of long experience:

“When you have started forth towards your vision,

When you have counted up the gain and cost,
When you have faced the old, old world’s derision,

Its scoffing tale of all endeavours lost;
When all is said, leave it the sane, wise clinging

To proven ways you never can recall;
It has not heard your golden trumpet ringing....

O Pioneer, the end is worth it all.

“When by your cause you stand, its one defender,

And hear the jeers and anger grow more loud;
When greater men than you, grave -eyed and tender,

Look on your lone defiance from the crowd:
Then, then the joy of battle surges in you,

The splendour of the quite unequal strife;
And all the strength of soul and brain and sinew

Proclaims that you will win, and this is Life!”

The verses expressed more than he meant in certain directions, for he knew little of the splendour side of strife; nor was it, in one sense at least, strife at all, for those who contended were at bottom one in aim; and he had not the hope of ultimate victory, for the matter was hardly one which allowed the expectation that even in the far future his view would prevail: and yet those who listened heard the note of assured joy ring through the last four lines of the powerful little poem:

“How shall you fail, how shall your faith diminish,
Faith less in self than in your splendid dream?
You heard God speak to you, and at the finish
Far in the East you saw your vision gleam.”

That vision never failed. It shone steadfastly through many a misty trouble, and brightened many an hour which would other wise have been depressing; and perhaps this is the place to pause and gather into a single chapter the brief record of some such experiences, although unconnected with memoranda matters: more for the sake of showing him as he met them one by one, than for the sake of anything in them worth remembrance.

His Bible-readings, for example, opened the way into lonely roads occasionally. Those Bible-readings, which were from the first, and continued to be to the end, seasons of sometimes quite extraordinary power, had something very solemn behind them. Few who listened to the speaker’s burning words knew how his own soul had been burned through and through before he spoke, “burned by red embers from a secret fire.” His journal sometimes tells of these inward matters, and shows in brief how he spread out his whole being before the search-light of his God before ever he stood before men for God.

But apart from the penetrating character of the addresses there was always solid teaching:

“Oh that I knew how all thy lights combine,

And the configurations of their glorie!
Seeing not only how each verse doth shine,
But all the constellations of the storie.”

This stanza from George Herbert, which he frequently quoted, recalls the savour of his Bible -readings; for listeners, following as it were from star to star, often felt that he showed, in an unusual fashion, how all the “lights combine and the configurations of their glorie.” But he never imagined that he did BO. One who esteemed him highly, although because of

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divergence of judgment upon ecclesiastical matters he never was in close touch with him, writes:

“I think I enjoyed him most in prayer; and what came nearest it, in the moments of rapture, almost of inspiration, when in speaking of his Lord he would forget himself, audience, subject, and place, and allow himself to dwell on the love or sorrow or faithfulness of Christ Jesus. These occasions were to me even more solemn and blessed than his powerful calls to holiness and prayer and service.”

It was noticeable about him that whatever he was doing at the moment — with one exception, mechanical work, for which he had no liking, finding the simplest piece of machinery most perplexing if it went wrong — seemed to be the one special thing which he was created to do. “He should concentrate upon that” was the impression produced upon the onlooker. But if he found any spiritual work more enjoyable than another it was the giving of Bible-readings: “It’s all there, you have only to get it out,” he said one day, evidently thinking the getting it out quite a simple matter. And truly the listeners invariably recognised that “it was there,” though the getting it out was not quite so simple as he appeared to imagine.

And yet few undertakings brought him more hard knocks than these very Bible-readings. Once he was invited to hold a series of them for missionaries at a certain hill station, upon the one condition that he would not allude to the pet amusement of the place. “I had never intended to; but fancy tying one’s hands like that!” was his comment. And again his journal tells of a difficult morning, when he was invited to meet a group of men notable in the religious world:

“At prayers they raised the question of separation; and I had a bad time, as the others were not with me. Came home feeling bad, as it is so hard to be thought to be judging others when advocating abstinence from things in themselves lawful.”

“If any man in any way would be
The one man, he shall be so to his cost;”

he proved the truth of this, not only then but often.

For though his attitude towards things lawful, but in his opinion not expedient, did not lead him to judge others, it did often lead to sorrow of heart over matters which to most seemed trivial; and this sorrow was open to misunderstanding:

“Feeling troubled about the Vanity Fair business at Y.W.C. A. sale of work, which came off to-night. Those who went to it reported it as such that my heart sank. It is not for me to judge; but oh, it does sound so much of the earth, earthy. Lord, make me more and more unworldly; and oh, cleanse and defend Thy Church.”

The attitude of mind which led to this entry was manifested in a certain aloofness, which, according to the multitude, even the Christian multitude, was “narrow “; and yet, for there was nothing mawkish about his Christianity, sooner or later people recognised the spiritual integrity of the man from whom they differed, and respected him. But he felt the shade of difference with an inward sensitiveness, sometimes concealed awkwardly enough under a manner which misled those who did not go far enough to penetrate through it to the simple, humble heart behind.

His line of out-and-out separation from the world and its ways was no new thing. His first curacy had shown it; his life on board ship — easiest place to compromise — had always shown it. Upon his first voyage, one of those little incidents occurred which seem sufficient answer to the objection that such a course leads to loss of influence. For one of the ship’s officers, being attracted by the unostentatious other-worldliness of the young missionary, sought him out, invited him to his cabin, tried to discover the secret of his happiness”, and eventually found it for himself.

The first pages of the journal show it in a quite observable bewilderment:

“By Bishop’s advice accepted an invitation to dinner. We got little opportunities for words by the way, and on the whole spent a pleasant evening; though I cannot help feeling that the missionary ought to be more fully devoted to simplicity of life. Still, it seems unwise to alienate unnecessarily our fellow-countrymen.”

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Three years later:

“Coming more and more to the conclusion that these things [the so-called claims of Society] lower the Church rather than ’ higher ’ the World.”

Still later we have these entries: “Rejoicing in the unworldly character of our mission.” But again, “Sad about our state as a mission party. Lord, work Thy will, cost us what it may; and make me honest in this prayer.” And once more:

“Longings for better things; distressed at the inclination of some of our mission party to gaiety and pleasure. Lord, show them (and me) Thyself and Thy full salvation.”

A sentence he marked in Zinzendorf’s Life expresses the feeling with which he regarded all that seemed to him hindering or weakening, or even only tame and useless. “I dare not appear before God with the responsibility incurred by frittering my days in such puerilities.” And he never found himself misunderstood by civilian friends when once the matter was explained to them; in fact, few wondered enough to require an explanation. They took it for granted he had his work to do, even as they had theirs, and respected his whole -heartedness in the doing of it. In later years, when he lived in the country, his house was always open to I.C.S. and other friends in Government service whose duty led them to camp in the neighbourhood; and they seemed to recognise that the welcome of that happy home was as sincere as it was cordial. For it was not that he had to fortify himself against the desire for pleasure, using the word in its unspoiled sense; it was that he had found a pleasure beside which the ordinary pleasures of life pale into nothingness. He often quoted in this connection a word spoken by the woman missionary on board ship, who when questioned as to why she did not join in the diversions of life, said, “I find Christ enough.” To him joy in Christ, and the joy of direct service for Him by speech or by writing, outweighed a thousandfold all lesser joys. When the sun arises in his strength, who counts the stars?

But though such a position has its moments of secret suffering, it has also its secret rewards: “He set the standard,”

wrote a retired S. Indian missionary in 1912, “and though many never followed it, yet his life was the living testimony of what Christ calls His followers to be.” For truly his actions were always of a decisive sort; he was not made for compromise, and the modern attitude towards doubtful things never appealed to him. “Whatsoever was not of faith was sin,” so far as he personally was concerned. The word in 2 Esdras, “Then began I greatly to commend them that stood so stiffly for the name of the Lord,” exactly expresses him. And what he commended he practised.

It is a temper of mind out of fashion for the moment, and blessed by the adjective “narrow.” Something more nebulous, a more delicate blending of neutral tints, is in vogue to-day. But whatever the voice of the hour may say, wherever a strong character is laid hold upon by an overmastering Power, there we have that sudden flashing forth of a clear band of primary colour; and the eye, accustomed to the scheme which allows of nothing definite, is arrested: this is something new. Though truly it is not new, it is as old as the beginning; no age, how ever frivolous, has been wholly bereft of the deeper note of this tremendous earnestness. The life this book sets forth caught that deeper note, and passed it on; from the outset the only thing to be done was to let it sound un weakened by any padding of soft words, so that those to whom the tinkle of the day is more alluring music might put the book aside forthwith, and only those go on whose ear is attuned to the solemn note struck out from a soul possessed by a sense of the Eternal.

Perhaps it was the unconscious call in this deeper note which drew so many to share their deepest with him. There were times when the quiet old house at Pannaivilai, and more frequently that place of peace, Dohnavur, became as it were a spiritual storm-centre, round which whirled the winds of other people’s troubles. For that last little Indian home especially, rejoiced in a wider set of correspondences than might have been expected;

1 This paragraph is left as it was written; though no one will realise more keenly than the writer that it belongs in spirit to the day before the War. — A. C.

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and strong men misjudged in their day and generation, men who, in ways never published to the world, endured reproach rather than smother their convictions, men — and women too — who refused to “play to the gallery,” and continued to refuse, these found that little hidden place out, and in spirit belonged to it, and shared their troubles with it; troubles, not personal and petty, but noble troubles, with soul and purpose in them. Such, for example, was that of one whose courageous action on behalf of Protestant principles had brought him into difficulties. The matter, as his friend at Dohnavur believed, had been misrepresented to those responsible for the conduct of affairs, and the result was what a poet once called a “brave distress.”

This trouble was shared to the full in Dohnarvur. A printed paper setting forth the indiscretion of the tactless protester lies harmlessly now among the archives of the time; it was first read in the small book-lined study, the one little “still room” of the house. If the kindling of a generous wrath had had power in it to scorch paper, that sheet would be black. But the paper is white, only a little old looking; and the incisive remarks pencilled on the wide margins are all that is left to tell the tale of an indignation that verily blazed.

Sometimes it seems as if this book were to end in being a mere egg-shell, with all the force sucked out of it; for the strong meat which abounds in journal and memoranda, for the most part has to be withheld. But if the instinct followed so far is a true instinct, the real strong meat is being given. As for the suffering that is bound up with the championship of unpopular causes, it is not a matter for too minute remembrance: “I was some time in being burned.... For me, I have forgot it all.” Do not the words from the catacombs pull us back from too greatly dwelling on the perishable element in things? The imperishable, the character of the man we have set out to know, will be sufficiently shown by a brief statement of what he did on this occasion and many similar occasions; for with all the ardour of his nature he straightway plunged into the fray, and, of course — for he was heart and soul with him — he took sides with the under dog, without a thought of how he should come out of the scuffle, if so undignified a name may be given to a dignified ecclesiastical discussion. In other words, he refused, as usual, to sit with the naked souls who keep themselves “in mean neutrality,” and therefore of necessity became involved in a somewhat unpleasant correspondence, with never a thought for himself and his own reputation, except that once or twice he said with a half smile: “Another bad mark for me; but it’s all in the day’s work!”

Sometimes the troubles were personal; but almost invariably they sprang from something done for someone else, or for the general good. One such, transient by nature, was bitter enough while it lasted. His advice had been asked upon a certain delicate matter; and those who profited by his counsel, given under pressure, were indiscreet in their use of it. The result was disastrous. Bound in honour, as he considered himself to be, to explain nothing, clear himself of nothing, he found himself misunderstood on all sides, and misrepresented by those who should have known better than to believe the gossip of the hour. This is how he deals with the trouble:

“The X.Y.Z. business is not yet over; but we are keeping it constantly before God in prayer. I believe that many things are being said about me which are unkind and untrue; but we have learnt to leave our self-defence with God, and to use no weapon but prayer. In God’s work it often happens that you have to choose between loyalty to His cause and popularity among fellow- workers. And surmises and suspicions breed untruth, without any wish on the part of those who indulge in them to be untrue. It is so much better to speak openly than to enquire into things behind people’s backs. But do not say anything to anyone, only pray. ‘I have been crucified with Christ,’ says St. Paul (R.V.); and a sight of our ’ old man ’ on the Cross settles the whole question, and should keep us from being mortified even in the slightest. If our pride is really nailed on the Cross, and we accept the position which God assigns, ‘In me ... no good thing,’ we need not wonder if reproach be our lot sometimes.”

And again:

“I am a very unpopular person in certain quarters for

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standing up for what I believe to be right. Pray for me, that the God of holiness may burn out the dross from each of us; and then the God of peace will breathe His blessing upon us.”

He felt this sort of thing acutely; but he had no patience with those who pressed upon him that sloppy concoction mis called charity, which is made up of a mixture of selfishness and cowardice, and evasion of facts. Let the results to himself be ever so muddy, he faced straight; and if asked for his opinion, gave it honestly, however reluctantly. It was during a time of strain in this connection that a book came to the house which in its stern translation of the great words of Duty and Sacrifice seemed to him, with certain reservations, strikingly true; and the book (Ibsen’s Brand) was read aloud more than once, and heavily underscored. “Humane, that word’s relaxing whine is now the whole world’s countersign,” was an often quoted line, and another to the effect that the holy word “love” was often misused to fill the flaws and breaches in will and character. But as with Brand, so with him, there was a tender side open to hurts of all kind; and no words came more consolingly to those who knew him well, when they heard that his warfare was accomplished, than these: “Now he is comforted.”

“For He our life hath left us free,
Free that was thrall, and blessed that was banned;
Nor ought demands but that we loving be,
As He Himself hath loved us aforehand,
And bound thereto with an eternal band,
Him first to love that us so dearly bought,
And next our brethren, to His image wrought.”

SPENCER.

1901]