Furlough, and Back to Dohnavur
Close upon the conclusion of the Syrian mission tour comes an entry in the journal which notes the beginning, or rather continuation, of one of those weary battles which seem to end in nothing worth the expenditure of energy they cost. But that is only our lower way of looking at things; the angels from the upper air may see it differently.
“March 27. — With the Vakils, Palamcottah about the Civil suit now filed against the C.E.Z. missionaries there, Kember, and Price with me; afternoon with Miss Kember to District Munsiff’s court, Tinnevelly.”
Two days later, after his return home:
“Heard that the girl was carried off forcibly yesterday after giving evidence in court. Now may God grant a mighty intervention! Left Dohnavur at midnight, with Vakil to Magistrate and Inspector of Police about girl’s abduction. Got private
information that she is forcibly detained in K, and after much
hesitation [fearing it might do more harm than good] informed Magistrate of it. A man tried to send me off on false track, but we discovered it.”
At this point, to the immense relief of all concerned, the English Superintendent of Police appeared upon the scene, and at once organised a night expedition of mounted police, who surrounded the village where the girl had been hidden a few hours before, only to find word had been passed to the abductors that her whereabouts had leaked out, and she had been taken elsewhere. Then, as all who knew her believed, she was drugged, soon after which they allowed her to be found.
“Quiet day awaiting result of Police Superintendent’s expedition, though expect he will have found the girl has been removed- [Later] Found very questionable state of things. It seems clear that they have forced her to recant. She is to be in Palamcottah police station [with her Hindu relations] all night.... She gave a statement in Magistrate’s court. It is terribly sad. Said she left the ladies of her own accord. She has been married. Her bridegroom came to court. Magistrate handed her over to her people, and that is the end of all the battle for her.”
But it was not the end of the battle, for prolonged Court proceedings followed; battle, with all the joy of battle gone. Miss Kember and Miss Max and the C.M.S. men who fought alongside were worn out with the strain and the sorrow; but they had to live through it somehow, till at last, near the end of April, they left together for the hills.
Background again all this; but, as before, it is impossible to show a life poured forth upon the sacrifice and service, without showing something of the altar upon which it was poured:
“It is ten years ago this mouth,” writes Miss Max in December 1912, “since poor A.’s terrible ordeal began, and I have been going through it all again. You know what he was, what a splendid, brave, unselfish defender. How well I remember how he came with us day after day to that hot, crowded court, and how bravely he stood up for us; and not only that, but the long hours he gave to interviewing Vakils and going through papers, even our old milk bills and accounts, to prove that A.’s father was not the Shepherd who supplied us with milk, as he claimed to be” [a point of importance in the defence], “What Mr. Walker was to us I can never say.”
The coaching of fellow-missionaries in “sweet Tamil,” or, as it was more familiarly termed, helping lame dogs over stiles, was fitted into the last three months of the year. One of the favoured lame dogs, a young medical, as keen to help the Dohnavur household as he was to be helped over his stile, writes of those happy though anxious days:
“I can never forget how, at a time when every minute of his busy day was so precious, he gave up two and sometimes even three hours to help me when I was grinding at Tamil; and it wasn’t as if we were doing high advanced Tamil; it must have
CH. xxvii.] FURLOUGH 327
been very rudimentary stuff to him. I don’t think there is another missionary in India who, under the same circumstances, would have sacrificed so much time and patience for one whom he had never seen, and hardly even heard of before. At times I found Tamil a terribly depressing study; but with his cheery smile and lucid explanation he soon made even a complicated Tamil sentence appear, if not quite easy, at least understandable. Then you remember the great interest he took in our swimming and diving lessons. Every day at noon, when he could possibly spare the time, he accompanied us to the swimming-bath, and there, -under his tuition (he was splendid at swimming and diving), I made good progress in both branches of the art.
“I think the main impression that I had of him was that he was a strong man with a simple, unwavering faith in his Heavenly Father; and the time I was most impressed with that thought was during Mrs. Walker’s serious illness. But I need not remind you of that; you were there, and know how brave he was during that most trying time.”
For, at the back of the last few months’ work, as Dr. Hardie’s letter tells, there had been cause for concern about Mrs. Walker’s health; and this led to a journey with her to Madras, which ended, to quote from the journal, in “Doctor’s orders: Out of the tropics as soon as possible. One thinks of the converts, etc.: Lord, undertake, arrange, shield.” The good-bye came early in December: “We all felt sad at parting, but it must needs be.”
Letters were left behind for birthday and Christmas, notes for the guidance of everything so far as guidance beforehand could be provided; even the directions for the then, more than now, complicated journey to the hills, every difficulty of which he had always undertaken, were written out clearly. Has he forgotten anything? was the half-wonder, as paper after paper was turned over: nothing was forgotten. If the number of boxes for the party of some dozen converts, who had to be taken to the hills for safety’s sake, could have been foreseen, assuredly the luggage labels would have been written. He was accustomed, to quote his own expression, “to look round the corners” for his friends.
The voyage was uneventful. “The sea must be pretty well strewn with Tamil literature,” he wrote from the first port; for day after day lie read and pitched overboard books lie had taken to examine for the Literature Committee. At Naples a picture seen fills three lines of journal:
“Struck by a picture of the blind leading the blind; one man has fallen into the ditch, dragging after him another who holds his staff, and behind him four other blind men in one fatal row; faces a study.”
Naples, Rome, words of enchantment, then on to San Remo, where he helped at a convention, and other work opened. Then, with Mrs. Walker’s sisters, who had joined them, in early April to Bex, where the Hopwoods of Ooty met them at the station, and a perfect holiday began. For here there were no conventions, no meetings, only mountains and wild flowers, and ever new surprises of delight.
“Glorious view of Dent de Midi and other snow mountains; gathering crocuses and gentians; scenery indescribably lovely. Charlton of Bengal came for afternoon from Montreux to see us; a true man of God and a real missionary.”
The very reading of the Swiss journal does one good; there is such vigour of life about it:
“Up the Flegere, which has a chalet standing at height of 6158 feet, magnificent views of the bewitching cloud effects. Then we climbed up over the snows and cliffs to a height of some 400 feet above, enjoying the whole immensely. Walked up the hill to Merle, a village high up on green slopes beyond fir woods, where we found lovely anemones on a hilltop.... Some of us walked to Argentiere to sight the glaciers, there scrambled up the hills to the left of Bossons glacier, and found soldanellas and other wild flowers. A fine glorious day, mountains clear, air crisp and frosty.... Took a guide and ascended to the Bel Achat, 7067 feet, the greater part of the ascent being up steep banks of snow, since the path is at present buried. Then on to the Brevent, 8285 feet, crossing a huge snow-field and up cliffy slopes. Then descended to Planpiar, 6772 feet, the way lying down very steep snow-covered slopes, and so back to Chamonix. Views magnificent, one long feast of loveliness. We got back to tea after a day of climax pleasure.”
CH. xxvii.J FURLOUGH 829
The paragraph lies like a handful of enow on the heart of the hot years.
It was the one holiday; afterwards, with the exception of the too rare and too short retreats to the houses of relatives and friends, the record of the English months is one of perpetual travelling from engagement to engagement, with little more in its entries than the names of places and people connected with such work. Quite a booklet might be evolved from such lists of proper names, by dint of much correspondence with the people who live in the places, if the object of writing were to describe what is usually called “a well-earned furlough.” But as this is not the object, the months may be dealt with, as the journal deals with them, in brief.
Six weeks locum-tenens at Chilvers Coton was a specially fruitful time, but, as was his wont, he was sure he “was useless there, no help to anyone:
“Feeling it all a dead failure, and being much troubled thereby. Oh to see people turning to Christ! My last Sunday in Chilvers Coton. May God accept and cleanse and seal the work done here.”
Conventions and special meetings followed, at Guildford, Southsea, Sidmouth, Kingswood, North London, Baling, Reading; and missionary and other sermons, missionary addresses and Bible readings in churches and halls, too numerous to mention, all over the country. As he would never travel on Sunday, feeling it impossible to rob the working man of his day of rest — a fact friends occasionally forgot in making out his Sunday programmes — this work of ten involved long walks, and sometimes ended in overmuch weariness. At his old church, St. James’s, Holloway, he preached an evangelistic sermon one Sunday evening, after which there were decisions for Christ: “Lord, work Thou.” At the Keswick Convention an address which much impressed him was Dr. Torrey’s on soul winning. “Very solemn, for he was in dead earnest,” he said afterwards. “You felt the power of God upon him.” Each day during that full week he went away alone to the woods for the quiet without which he could not live. From that quiet he emerged with eyes clear to see anything waiting to be done from a missionary point of view. A medical missionary now in the field is one of the results.
Sometimes there were pleasant little breaks, days spent with his own family; “a happy day” is the journal note on such a day; or quiet spaces with Mrs. Walker in the restful atmosphere of such a home as Hembury Fort, where the unworldly life of its household was a refreshment to the spirit. But the pages as a whole are so crowded with work that such entries as — “Walk with two girl cousins over the hills and moors. Afternoon I spent in talking to little Sydney about India. Took the three children to Madame Tussaud’s,” are, even to the reader of these packed pages, something of a relief. One missionary meeting was specially after his own heart: “Went to China Inland Valedictory meeting; a most inspiring time.” There was one amusing incident at Oxford, where he was speaking on missionary work in its relation to Hindu thought. Dr. Pope, Member of the Royal Asiatic Society and Professor of Tamil at the University, was sitting near him on the platform. Turning to him and waving his hand with a gesture of airy pity towards the assembled dignitaries, the old Doctor remarked sotto voce in Tamil, “Mere ignoramuses!” They knew no Tamil. The point lay in the word “ignoramus,” literally “wisdomless,” which word in colloquial Tamil signifies heathen; it is the word which, curiously enough, is used by the more rustic members of the Hindu confraternity in speaking of themselves as distinguished from Christians: “Wisdomless are we, mere heathen.” The little episode was never recalled without a twinkle of the eye: “Those Dons! Wouldn’t they have enjoyed it? Mere heathen!”
Upon October 28th came the parting which had to be; for Mrs. Walker had to wait for another year in England. “But the Lord strengthens us both,” the journal says. A fellow-passenger has written about the voyage:
“There were between twenty and thirty missionaries of different missions on board. Every day we had family prayer on deck together, and passengers from the first class joined us. But many were not satisfied with this and the regular services on Sunday, so they asked our brother to give a series of daily Bible studies. How they were enjoyed! Mrs. Walker, it may be remembered, could not return to India that year, so Mrs. Carmichael went out to stay with her daughter for a time. Mr. Walker showed her the devotion of a son.”
The journey ended in the happy welcome home, and the dropped threads, or rather reins, were soon in hand. “I feel as if I hadn’t been away a day,” he said; “India is home now.”
Home meant now as ever, interests wide as India itself, and soon the study table began to fill up with piles of letters; these were dealt with for the most part as they came, and were promptly and with a keen sense of pleasure torn up the moment they were answered: but some were of more permanent interest. Such, notably, was a vigorous correspondence upon Intercommunion, for the subject was coming to the front in India in consequence of the action of some of the Bishops who had sounded their trumpets and prohibited it; and two years before, the Quinquennial Conference of C.M.S. missionaries meeting in Madras had appointed a Committee to deal with it. This Committee drew up a Resolution stating the facts of the case as they appeared to the large majority of C.M.S. men in India:
“The fact that the Church of England is working alongside and in co-operation with many other Christian bodies for the conversion of India, that the gifts of God’s grace are as manifestly bestowed upon these other bodies for their work as upon our own Church; that not only in the work of evangelisation, but also in that of building up the Church, it is impossible to deny that God has granted them the blessing of His Holy Spirit in a very marked degree, makes it imperative that the Church of England should give the fullest recognition and sympathy to her fellow-workers in the great cause of extending the kingdom of Christ. There is no doubt that these our fellow-workers in the cause of Christ feel deeply the fact that of late years the clergy of the Church of England have been prohibited by certain of the Bishops from uniting with them in the celebration of the Holy Communion on public occasions, such as the Decennial and other Conferences, and there is no doubt also that the consciences of many earnest and devoted clergy of the Church of England have been deeply wounded by this prohibition.”
The Resolution went on to show that this prohibition created an entirely novel situation in India; it proved from historical records that such action is new in the history of the Church of England since the Reformation, and continued:
“In our own times it is a well-known fact that Archbishops Tait and Benson, and several other Bishops, have been in the habit of communicating in Presbyterian Churches when in Scotland, while the fact that the Sovereign who is the temporal head of our Church is at the same time the temporal head of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland, and a communicant of that Church, is a standing witness to the fact that the Church of England does not authoritatively forbid her members to partake of the Holy Communion upon occasion at the hands of ministers of non -episcopal churches.
“The general attitude of the Church of England towards non-episcopal churches in not pronouncing their orders invalid and in permitting considerable latitude in practice in the inter course between her own members and theirs, from the time of the Reformation onwards, can hardly be seriously disputed; and it becomes a question of very grave concern whether the Church of England can afford to change that attitude under her peculiar conditions in this non-Christian land of India.”
The argument naturally is too long to give in full; but it was straightforwardly set forth and backed by a quiet sentence stating that, knowing that the question of prohibition becomes ultimately a question of law, the writers had consulted certain eminent ecclesiastical lawyers, whose opinion was that occasional acts of Intercommunion did not constitute any breach of ecclesiastical law. But the reference throughout was to the spiritual; and with an earnest appeal to that supreme Court, the resolution summed up its convictions and desires.
Thus the Republic rang its bells. Or to change the figure, thus the men to whom “heaven’s high etiquette” appeared to be a desirable thing even on earth, “drew towards the future law,” and refused to ask Who? and Whence? about members of the household of God. In face of the great peril of a divided front, the matter seems too trivial for discussion; but the trumpets had been sounded, so the bells had to be rung. For this reason the furlough just over had been partly spent in getting into touch with like-minded men of the C.M.S.; and ecclesiastical lawyers had been consulted again. For as one of that little group had written before the Quinquennial Conference met:
“I do not know what the Committee on Intercommunion appointed at Madras propose doing, but it seems to me that we C.M.S. men in India should be prepared to speak with no uncertain sound on a matter which will be the key of any serious attempt to avoid perpetuating indefinitely our divisions in India.”
Letter after letter was written that autumn upon this subject, and a little band of men worked quietly together in patience.
“Just as water-vapour refuses to condense into rain unless there are particles of dust to form nuclei, so an idea before taking shape requires a nucleus of solid fact round which it can condense,”
The Spectator, September 10, 1909.
“With eager knife that oft has sliced
At Gentile gloss, or Jewish fable,
Before the crowd you lay the Christ
Upon the lecture table.
“From bondage to the old beliefs
You say our rescue must begin,
But I want refuge from my griefs
And saving from my sin.
“The strong, the easy and the glad
Hang, blandly listening, on your word;
But I am sick, and I am sad,
And I want Thee, O Lord I”
CANON AINGER.
1905]