Notes in Notebooks, Book Friends, and a Character Study, 1905
Study
“COMMENCED Higher Criticism notes to crystallise subject a little” is an entry in December of the previous year. “Plunged carefully into Driver’s Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament. Read through Kirkpatrick’s Divine Library of the Old Testament. Made notes on Sayce’s Higher Criticism and the Monuments. Read hard at Pinches’ Old Testament in the Light of Historical Records of Assyria and Babylon, and found it fascinating.” These are some of the journal entries of 1905.
“It was an especial joy to me to realise the thoroughness with which he was giving himself to study and scholarship with reference to the needs of the Indian Church,” writes Professor Griffith Thomas, now of Toronto, “and in this respect, as well as in others, his loss will be deeply, and, perhaps increasingly, felt. What I particularly valued about him was his strenuous and courageous championship of the old faith, together with his modern outlook and his readiness to adopt everything that was real and true in present-day thought and life. It was this blend of the conservative and assimilative elements that attracted me to him; and, in common with very many others, I grieve over his — humanly speaking — mysterious death. We greatly need men of his type who are firmly fixed on the Rock of the Supreme Authority of the Bible, and who are yet able to stretch out loving hands to all who are seeking to know and follow the will of God.”
Dr. Griffith Thomas has found the fitting word: there was in truth a blend of the conservative and assimilative elements in a character and mind by nature conservative. For his mind was never a house with the blinds drawn down; every window was thrown open wide for fresh air and light: “Oh light, light, light, I hail light everywhere,” is underscored with red, in Aristophanes’ Apology, and he was quick to share his light. Tapping at the door of a friend’s room one day and handing in a slim little book, he said, “You should read this, Deissmann on the records of the Graeco-Roman period, quite a small book, but so fresh.” He had always tried to keep abreast of the times; but now, foreseeing what was soon to come upon the Indian Church, he read more and more widely, and, as always, carefully, sifting every statement, comparing view with view, entirely unimpressed by the sound of a great name, but with a mind open to weigh every argument adduced in support of some new conclusion; only requiring that it should be argument, and not mere clap-trap — verbal jugglery he called it — and he was quick to recognise this same quality in others:
“Thanks for letting me see enclosed,” he wrote to a friend who had shared with him a letter from a distinguished woman; “whatever else, Miss M. is plainly a decided Christian, and one who disapproves of modern extremes of criticism. The air is full of it; and we need to keep our heads, and our feet, not to say our souls.”
The notebook in which the subject is crystallised deals with Kirkpatrick’s Divine Library of the Old Testament, Kyle’s Canon of the Old Testament, Driver’s Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament, Moller’s Are the Critics Right? Sayce’s The Higher Criticism and the Monuments, and Pinches’ Old Testament in the Light of Historical Records of Assyria and Babylon, altogether about a hundred quarto pages of close writing. To look through it is to have access to the workshop of a brain; the book under review is studied, its views are summarised, then the results are worked out under different headings, thus:
“His admissions carry consequences with them. His conclusions are often highly conjectural. Differs from Cheyne and Driver considerably. Admits differences among critics. Cites certain examples to question accuracy of Hebrew text.”
Each heading is followed by quotations germane to the subject, copied from the book in question, and the summing up of the notes just quoted is:
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“In any case the number of discrepancies in the O.T. which, so far as our present knowledge goes, are not explainable, is not very great: and it is one thing to face them, and quite another to accept hypotheses throwing doubt on the date and authenticity of whole books.”
As to his own views, he endorsed the opinion of those scholars who held that many of the conclusions accepted by critics are not justified by scientific principles; he agreed with them in thinking that merely philological preparation was inadequate for the study of historical problems; and he held this “philological attitude” responsible for much erroneous thinking. Again and again he noted the absence of what he called the mathematical sense in many of the critical writers. “They accept hypotheses too easily,” he used to say. “You can see they have never had a mathematical training.” And he would compare them with scientists like Clerk Maxwell, Stokes, and Kelvin, with their patient search after truth and humility born of profound knowledge. Once at a meeting held for missionaries he pleaded earnestly for caution in accepting opinions which the research of to-morrow might subvert: “Don’t let us be afraid of being called old-fashioned and narrow-minded; all the scholarship is not on the side of the critics.” And his well-known habit of studying the Scriptures, not only book by book and period by period, but literally word by word in the original languages, in conjunction with the best that could be had of modern scholarship, gave weight to his opinion; and strengthened many a younger man — dazzled perhaps by the fascinating brilliance of some new writer, or beguiled by that calm custom of taking it for granted that “no one” holds the old views now — to wait awhile before being sure. “For there is bound to be a reaction,” he would say, “against these extremes of criticism.” And he thought the reaction from what he considered an extraordinarily uncritical acceptance of German speculations by English scholars, might come sooner than anyone imagined. He was not fond of satire where such matters were concerned, he felt the whole question too serious for satire; but he marked with appreciation the lines in Coleridge’s Vision of the Nations,
WALKER OF TINNEVELLY [CH. xxvm.
which describe those who, deeming themselves free, chain down thought, and cheat themselves
“With noisy emptiness of learned phrase,
Their subtle fluids, impacts, essences,
Self-working tools, uncaused effects,”
and he thought it was true, as the verse goes on to say, that the ultimate end of all such work is to untenant creation of its God. More like him, however, is the little poem facing this chapter. It touched him deeply. And the sentence which follows from Bishop Moule’s Ephesian Studies, expresses his attitude of mind towards anything which sought to rob the Word of God of its supreme power to deal with the consciences and lives of men: “We may have come to take ’ liberal ’ views of the Bible, till we hardly know what it is to approach it except as its critics. Yet on a sudden this book turns upon us, rises as it were in new and awful life from the dissecting table, and speaks to us with even more than its old authority about temperance, righteousness, and judgment to come, till we tremble all through.”
Lighter books of the year were Dr. Horton’s Life of Tennyson, “which has given me an insight into the poet I never had before”; Dr. Adam Smith’s Henry Drummond, “a mysterious, but attractive and useful life “; and Browning, whom he read conscientiously straight through. For that was always his way of cutting the pomegranate; and the thirty odd volumes of poetry upon his shelves — beginning with Shakespeare and working on to John Drinkwater, whose noble poem, “Lord, not for light in darkness do we pray,” he often quoted — are marked in almost every case from the first poem to the last. He never felt he knew a poet until he had read him from cover to cover.
His reading of the poets was as fresh and untrammelled by the opinion of the hour as was his other reading. Tennyson was his delight. “Revelling in Tennyson” is a journal entry. He liked his careful observation and his exactness in using metaphors; and the combined strength and refinement characteristic of the poet appealed to him; he never could understand why poets, or anyone else for that matter, should feel it necessary to fish in muddy waters. Browning he liked immensely in parts; but he
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did not like his obscurities. Matthew Arnold’s Rugby Chapel was a favourite; and he would read it aloud at dinner — the time of most leisure when the family met — little thinking his listeners saw something of him in it:
“If, in the paths of the world,
Stones might have wounded thy feet,
Toil or dejection have tried
Thy spirit, of that we saw
Nothing — to us thou wast still
Cheerful, and helpful, and firm!
Therefore to thee it was given
Many to save with thyself;
And, at the end of thy day,
0 faithful shepherd! to come,
Bringing thy sheep in thy hand.”
Parts of many of the older poets, and occasionally verses from the modern, used to be read aloud at those happy meal-times, or in rare whole holidays on the hills. One such whole day of bliss was spent with Charles Fox, “Poet buried to be heard,” who should always be read on the mountains or in woods by running water. For pure fun there was Calverley, with his inimitable parodies; but the poem of joy was Follow the Gleam. Everything was forgotten in the enchantment of that little poem, “After it, follow it, follow the Gleam!”
Perhaps the treat of the week was Monday morning’s mail with its bundle of home papers. (He could not understand people’s being uninterested in politics and current events. “I like to watch God making history,” he would say, if any wondered at his keenness over the tri-weekly Madras Mail, or for Church doings, The Record.) The Times Weekly Edition, The Spectator, always specially welcomed, any notably good cartoon in Punch — these were among his pleasant things to be legitimately enjoyed, at any rate occasionally, in that hot, heavy noontide hour when all the Indian world goes to sleep. In religious literature, perhaps there was nothing which gave him greater pleasure than the discovery of a new voice. Mr. Harrington Lees, for instance, was recognised at once as refreshing, and welcomed. And Sayce and Ramsay and other keen workers in new fields were on his shelves almost as soon as they appeared in England.
But bandy and train journeys were the great opportunities for serious reading; and no one who ever saw him off can fail to remember how, long before the bandy had reached the gate, he was deep in his book, or in the Expositor, often saved up for such times, as it was light to hold. Once, by some oversight, he had nothing more sustaining than his Hebrew grammar, which he had been revising; and stranded with this and this alone, he spent a foodless day at a wayside station, having missed his connection through a delay on the line. Usually, at least one solid book, some current papers, and packets of Tamil MSS. for review, were his companions upon a journey.
The year was full of journeys: meetings in North Tinnevelly, camp in South Tinnevelly, the usual tour in Travaucore, missions to scattered Christian congregations in the South, the Kandy Convention; then South Tinnevelly mission tours again; a six weeks mission tour in Western and Northern India, and, lastly, a happy run across to Colombo to meet Mrs. Walker in November.
The first few weeks of the year were spent in comradeship, always a pleasure; for, his opposite in natural temperament and therefore his perfect complement, G. S. Eddy of the Student Volunteer Movement, now Secretary of the Y.M.C.A. for Asia, joined him for a campaign in North and South Tinnevelly. Then came one single great convention at Maramana, described in Chapter XXI. Its final journal note is “Laus Deo.”
Those to whom the return home after such tours is a remembrance distinct in every detail, recall the small happenings of such times with a vividness which makes it difficult to believe they will not be again. First there was the welcome jingle of the bullock bells, usually some time before dawn; then a sound of doors flung open; a tired but very happy voice, “Here I am!” then more opening of doors and getting out of things, and then silence for awhile. Or if it were too early for that, a quieter entrance with muffled voice so as to wake nobody; but, which ever way it was, there was the good, glad sense of “All’s well now.”
Then a little later, morning tea out in the compound, with the calm shapes of mountains looking through gaps in the trees; a time of hearing all about everything and of telling the home story: nothing was too small to be interesting. Followed invariably a vigorous set-to upon the sdmdn. Every article of clothing had to be hung out on a rope in the fresh air after the close heat of boxes; books and papers had to be put each in its proper place. “I can do nothing till I’m straight,” he would say. It was in vain that those about him suggested rest after the sleepless night or nights — he always looked thoroughly tired out after such nights — he would not listen, would not accept any sort of help, would do nothing, in fact, but go his own way with a perfectly cheerful disregard of admonitions, quoting a Tamil proverb, perhaps, about the impossibility of getting the curl out of an old dog’s tail. Then, the pile of arrears upon his study-table dealt with, and the stream of callers satisfied, he would, if so moved, live through the campaign just over, and send it to friends in England in the shape of an open letter; and then the journal, as a rule, reverts to the usual:
“Heavy correspondence. Coached Eddy [not, however, a usual pleasure]. Going through specimens of all the Tamil hand bills to find out the worthy ones. Young Muhammadan to read St. Matthew.... Letters. People from village for an enquiry. Casteman for long talk; he occupied almost the whole day. Address preparation at intervals. Tamil with Eddy.
“March 24. — Eddy and I left for Colombo. Reached Colombo at daylight. Felt done after two broken nights, and could not work to-day.
“March 26. — Preached in Galle Face Church in Tamil to very full congregation. Took English service in Galle Face Church.”
Then came the Kandy Convention.
Of one early difficult meeting the journal says:
“Did not seem very warm or real; but God knows. We both felt defeated afterwards, though a good many gave in their names.”
But a break was granted at the close, and the convention ends with “God has blessed us; to Him be praise!”
Much lies between the first of such entries and the last. Those whose lot is cast in the spiritual battlefields of the world will find themselves looking instinctively behind the shown to what is not shown. Something of it appears in the following sketches written for this book by the friend and comrade of that Kandy campaign, whose Dohnavur name is Zinzendorf (because of what the name connotes, “I have one Passion; it is Christ and Him only “); and something more will appear in later letters. But when all is shown we shall only know in part; who can push behind the mystery, and explain how it was that when Moses held up his hands Israel prevailed?
“I am sending you a few hastily written words as we are riding along in the train amid noise and dust. I do not feel that they are adequate or worthy of the great warrior they so feebly describe.” [But words which bear the mark of battle are most fitting: after all, to show a warrior.]” The news of his death came to me as a great blow. Even now I cannot find words to measure the loss which India has sustained in his being taken away from us. His was a unique nature. In fifteen years’ travel in every province of India I found no man quite like him in this great empire. His mind was clear, penetrating, working with mathematical exactness, and always under superb control. His clear-cut, intense, white face, with dark, glowing, penetrating eyes, and finely-chiselled features, reminded one of Francis of Assisi, or some of the old saints and men of God of a bygone age. His character was of the type of John the Baptist, for he was ever a prophet of righteousness.
“Though he was one of the mountain-peak men and lived on the lonely heights in close fellowship with God, he had not attained this easily or at a bound. Those who knew him in the earlier years did not see perhaps in his life the final touches which were manifest at the close. Those who have not attained, and those who look up to such mountain-peak men, need not to be discouraged or think that such attainment is impossible. We all have our faults and limitations, and he had his. I question whether by nature he had the breadth, the sympathy, the tolerance, the patience, and the loving-kindness that ripened with his later years. I had much to learn from him, and was never thrown with him without receiving blessing; but I watched him grow in gentle sympathy, in fondness for little children, in kindly tolerance for those who differed from him, and in more tender love made perfect through suffering.
“I have often heard him say that the iron had entered his soul in India; and if it had made him strong, it also made him tender, for he had large capacity for suffering. Keserved, retiring, he was high-strung and keenly sensitive. To be misunderstood, to have his good evil spoken of, to be misjudged or mistrusted by those whom he had sought to serve, found him often unable to express or defend himself, yet none the less loving those who unconsciously injured him.
“It was mygoodfortune to spend many weeks in his own home, receiving his help in Tamil, when I was studying the language. Never have I seen quite such a missionary home in India. The prayer that rose, spontaneous and free, and often in strong striving, as we knelt after each morning meal, and the still evenings sitting out under the stars, resting at the end of the day, and ending with his own quiet petition, left an abiding impression upon my mind. I was thrown with him as a fellow-worker time after time in missions, in conventions, or student camps. I often found myself unable, through sheer lack of physical strength or of spiritual attainment, to hold on with him in the lonely hours of continued and concentrated prayer; or in the terrible soul struggles, as he sought to turn the tide in a convention or meeting from defeat to victory, from indifference to spiritual hunger, and from sin to righteousness, in the vast throngs that he faced from time to time. Truly he was one of God’s noblemen, an Elijah in modern times, a John the Baptist, a prophet of righteousness, a watcher in the lonely heights, fearless in conflict, whether he met with the praise or the blame of men. He combined elements of character rare indeed in our superficial and worldly age. His was a life that was holy, humble, and that seemed to keep ’ the unstained spirit of a little child.’ His was a mind pure as the heart of a flame.
“Such a life has its message for our day. As a practical mystic, he combined both fellowship and service, the fullest use of human means with the most complete dependence upon God in prayer. Though intense, he was never carried away by winds of false doctrine and specious new teachings; with an absolute loyalty for truth, he yet had a tender forbearance for men from whom he differed in convictions. He moved among us a strong man; and many, from Ceylon to North India, from Travancore to Madras, are richer for the true life that he lived. I, for one, thank God for having known Christ in him.”
Many village missions were organised that year. The journal reads seriously:
“Solemnised myself, but oh for the solemnising Spirit to work in every heart! Not happy about things here. Worldliness is eating up the leading families. Not much response; people seem very dead as a whole.”
Perhaps no one unfamiliar with these missions for unilluminated Christians in a heathen land can quite understand the impression produced upon the mind by the sense of death where life should be. There is something almost tangible, too, in the sense of an encompassing opposition crushing in upon the spirit, paralysing its energies — against this the only weapon of defence is prayer. Many hours were spent by this missioner upon his knees in the little hot mud prayer-room, sometimes the only shelter possible in the remoter villages; or in tent, where privacy was even more difficult to secure; or, if the meetings were being held in some central station, in the quietest place obtainable in the mission bungalow. “With God for men: with men for God” was the watchword of those days. All of which may seem to contradict what has been written before about the real difference between a heathen and an even only nominal Christian community. But life is full of contradictions: we need not stay to reconcile them; both views are true.
“September 23. — A lazy day; did a little address-preparation
for North India. Helped to see ’s babies off to Neyoor for
the new venture.”
“I liked him best in his everyday clothes of the plains, with nothing admirable about him but himself. The man of God, the saint, and the hero stood the more clearly revealed for the absence of the clerical, the saintly, and the heroic in those ill-fitting grey garments.”
A friend and frequent guest said it; one who had frequently seen him engaged in simple things like this “seeing the babies off to Neyoor “; it is recorded for the truth in its simplicity.
“The only way to gain spiritual power is by secret waiting at the throne of God for the baptism of the Holy Spirit. Every moment spent in real prayer is a moment spent in refreshing the fire of God within the soul.”
WILLIAM ARTHUK, The Tmgue of Fire.
1905]