To the North and Home Again
“On to be cast upon God really and truly in faith!” Thus begins the new tour which was to touch eight C.M.S. centres — Bombay, Nasik, Agra, Allahabad, Lucknow, Jubbalpore, Manmad, and Poona. Such a tour in retrospect looks like the sunlit peak of a spiritual Matterhorn; but the climber struggled up through clouds: his mountains seldom shone for him while he was climbing them. Among the journal notes belonging to another tour, written during a long and difficult mission taken in the midst of untoward circumstances, there are sentences which show him as few perhaps knew him:
“Handicapped by interpreter. A. has helped me hitherto here, and does splendidly. Why cannot they leave him to do it? Thy patience, Lord.... The message, weak enough in itself, was fearfully mashed. Now, Lord, use a big failure.... Spoke on the lame man healed; but it was a dead failure, flat and cold, and people on the fidget in the heat all the time. Lord, forgive the failure, and wash it and me in the Holy Blood. Lord, at Thy feet I lay the work of the last eight weeks.... Came home feeling sad; when souls are neither saved nor wish to be saved, Lord, what can man do? Spirit of God, work Thou.... People listened, but no anxious souls. Lord, forgive the failure. T feel that nothing has been done here to speak of. Do Thou fulfil Thy purpose, no matter how I be humbled. Have felt a hindrance all the time here, and I must just write ’ failure ’ over this too. Feeling sad and despondent. Lord, shall I go on or turn back? Show me. But, Lord, I lay it at Thy feet; cleanse, confirm, bless it, and give fruit unto life eternal. Amen.”
“Oh for an anointing for the meetings which begin to morrow,” is the first of the North Indian notes. “Seemed some power and touch, but oh for the Spirit. Many professed to seek eternal life; enquiry -room full. God make it real and save us from artificiality. Failure in the work, burdened, a dead block. Is it I? Mass of agents untouched, apparently; feeling dead and hindered and powerless; but at after-meeting a large number of young men and women stayed. Thank God for young men in earnest; but the agents are unbroken. Feeling defeated and miserable. What wilt Thou have me to do? After-meeting, agents’ confessions. Several in enquiry-room. We had more confessions of sin; some young men to see me at home who have decided, praise God! Pain of body made prayer and preparation difficult: God took away the pain as I spoke. He gave liberty, and there was distinct impression. A number came and stood up for fuller yielding, and then some who have decided for Christ this week, with some new desirers. I kept back the men for a talk, and made other arrangements for the women. The Lord cleanse and confirm this week’s work.”
Once more a comrade’s hand shows the missioner in his mission. And again the letter was written in the midst of stress, by one who, to quote his own words, was brother beloved to his friend, Kev. L. B. Butcher, of the C.M.S. Divinity School, Poona:
“From my diary I see it was at the Coonoor Convention in 1900 that I first met ‘Walker of Tinnevelly ‘; and ever after wards one of the chief attractions of the Nilgiris and the conventions held at Coonoor and Ooty, when I was able to go so far for my annual holiday, was the prospect of the Bible-readings he used to give.
“I met him again at Coonoor in 1903, and shall never forget the readings he gave then at the conventions there on Haggai, and on the Epistle of Jude at Ootacamund the same year. The combined scholarship, clearness of exposition, forcible and most practical application, and deep spiritual power, made a great impression on me; and few men have helped me as much as he. Again and again it seemed as if the messages he brought straight from God’s Word, drawn from the Word itself in the simplest and yet most masterly way, were just those needed for one’s life and work in the field to-day.
“So far, however, he was to me only one of the convention speakers. I was soon to be brought into much closer contact with him. Our Native Church Council was planning to hold a mela [gathering of the people] for all the Indian Christians at Nasik, and I was one of the Committee to make arrangements. This was early in 1905, and at Coonoor that year I sounded Mr. Eddy [whose line of service lay in conducting such meetings] about coming as a speaker. He was not free but, ‘Why not ask Walker? ’ he said. I jumped at the suggestion. I soon had an opportunity of talking over the matter with Walker himself, and found that he was planning a visit to North India about the very time we wanted him, so that he could take Nasik on his way; and it was arran ged for him to come first to Bombay at the time of our semi-annual conference of missionaries, and to take all the addresses on our Quiet Day; then go on with us to the mela at Nasik. This programme was carried out; and I remember well how stimulating and encouraging were the addresses he gave us on the Quiet Day, especially one on God’s purpose and power to open springs of water on the bare heights.
“After this interval I have only one or two outstanding recollections of that mela. One is the sight of our Nasik church filled to overflowing on the Sunday morning. Some of our Christians had come from far-away places where they were only a handful in the midst of the heathen; and it was a great source of strength and cheer to them to find themselves part of a large body of fellow-Christians, while at the same time they received the helpful yet searching messages of the chosen trio of speakers — Walker the one European, the two others being a converted Parsi and a converted Brahman, both ordained clergy of the Church of England, the latter working with the Cowley Fathers.
“Another of my recollections is that of a quasi-pastor coming and confessing his sin in the matter of debt. Walker’s addresses, while simple, had been very practical and searching; and numbers were brought under conviction of sin, judging by their prayers in a special confession meeting. This man, with several others, was quite broken down, and went away from Nasik to commence at once to devote the greater part of his income to pay off his debt. Others were convicted of sin in other respects; and I shall not soon forget the wise and sane way in which he conducted that meeting, encouraging those who had burdens on their conscience to confess their sin to God in prayer, and then go away to make restitution where possible.
“I should mention the care and pains he took in preparing his interpreter. Although the pastor who interpreted for him most frequently on the different occasions he visited our mission was a really excellent interpreter, knowing English well, and interpreting most sympathetically, yet Walker never left any thing to chance; but would arrange for him to come an hour before each service that he might talk over the subject, and be sure he would understand any allusions, and have the different heads and points clear in his mind. This no doubt helped materially to the success of the interpretation, as the pastor was never at fault.
“The mela ended, with a consecration meeting in the evening, and the next day the camp broke up, and the speaker left.
“Just four weeks passed, and then on November 7th we welcomed him to our home and station. The meetings began that evening in the large new schoolroom of the Z.B.M. Orphanage, and they continued for two days. The messages were solemn indeed. He knew there had been trouble in the congregation, and a quarrel which had divided the C.M.S. agents into two parties, each bitterly opposed to the other. Long and earnestly he pleaded with them; but, as he confessed to me, it was like speaking to a stone wall. Finally, on the last day, he separated the men and the women, to get the Z.B.M. widows and girls alone, and escape the utterly deadening resistance felt in the spiritual atmosphere when the men were present and refused to yield. He had the men alone first, and pleaded most lovingly with them not to let anything stand in the way of getting right with God; but not a man would give way. and as he went away he said so sorrowfully, ‘We go away defeated.’ But in the women’s meeting all was changed. The atmosphere was now as different as could be imagined; and when he gave an opportunity for decision, asking all who would to say to the Lord Jesus, ‘I give my heart to Thee,’ first one and then another began, and then from all over the hall came the sound of young voices uttering the words of consecration. A large number professed to decide that evening; and, thank God, the testimony of the ladies in charge, after several years, is that they were real conversions, and those girls have been true Christians ever since.
“Dear Walker never spared himself, but literally poured himself out for the people. The impression he left behind him was one which was deeply engraven in the hearts of both Indians and Europeans, and of all with whom he came in contact, who looked on him as one of God’s prophets and as a brother beloved.”
“He poured himself out for the people “; it is a true word. In his copy of The Tonque of Fire, this sentence is underlined:
“a gunner working heavy guns, but with silver barrels, and scented powder, and balls of frozen honey.” Honey balls, scented powder, silver barrels — of these things he knew nothing.
Such tours opened many opportunities for quiet meetings for missionaries, similar to the convention Bible-readings, now a recognised feature of the various hill conventions. He never wrote about work of this character, nor ever broke faith with those who trusted him with their confidence by using such confidences as an illustration of “How to deal with souls,” or in any other fashion. He prepared, if possible, more carefully for work of this sort than for any other, knowing too, as only a missionary can know it, the manner of mind with which he had to deal.
For missionaries, at any rate Indian missionaries of a certain calibre, are not the most malleable of audiences. The men and women there are for the most part accustomed to work their way through tough vernaculars, and it may be that gives a certain decisive force to their thinking, for they are not fond of platitudes; and they burrow — some of them — far under ground on their own account, and detect the superficial with fatal facility. Then, too, they have a private set of weights and measures, seldom discussed even among themselves, and certainly never disclosed to the confiding stranger, who stands before them as somebody who has kindly come to do them good, and is searched up and down by eyes practised in character study. He has not been through the mill as they know it; and if he is not aware of the fact, and frank and humble enough to act accordingly, he has lost his chance. On the other hand, anything like a promiscuous throwing of halos is the most resented of crimes. Missionaries, who know well enough what poor stuff they are made of at best, do not enjoy being assured they are noble heroes in the forefront of the battle. Of course, here as elsewhere there are those pleasant people whose approaches stand wide open — kind, uncritical folk; but the type is otherwise. So at least this missionary found, and he had fair experience: “The hardest possible audience to speak to — till they know you,” he used to say. Therein lay the secret. The missionaries of India grew to know him; he had been through the mill, shirked nothing of it, spoke not from the platform, but from the ground-floor of life. And they listened, recognising him as one of themselves; and those inner doors opened to him which, once opened, do not shut again.
“November 20, DOHNAVUR. — Met by boys, teachers, girls, etc. Cheered to find real tokens that God has been working.
“November 23. — Revising Tamil book. Preparing for
Colombo and B.!!
“November 27, COLOMBO. — B. arrived on the Caledonia about 7.30 a.m. Thank God for bringing her back safely.
“November 29. — Reached Dohnavur about 2.30 p.m. Met by many on way. Sanihippu [gathering of Christians in welcome]. Quiet evening.”
It was a joyful quietness. Dohnavur in its new dress of green after the rains, its mountains cool in clouds, its fresh washed air, was all awake in welcome. And the family, complete at last, settled down to its usual state of perfect happiness. “Are you always so absolutely happy in Dohnavur?” a guest asked once, after spending a day or two in that home where unkind words were never spoken of the absent, and those who met at meal-times were always glad to meet. The answer had a low laugh of content at its heart: Dohnavur had its troubles, some times it seemed to have rather a large share of many and grievous troubles; but it was always happy, perfectly happy within itself.
So the year closed full to the brim. As usual, the journal looks back with no feeling of personal satisfaction. “Oh for God’s presence and power! And now for His pardon for the poor life and work of 1905.” But a word from a letter looks across the few remaining years to the gladness at the end:
“What a gathering we shall have by and by round the Throne in the Glory land! As the Tamils would say, one’s heart boils to think of it. ‘Only a few stiles to cross, and I shall reach my Father’s house.’”
“Indeed it seemed to myself as if I could rain hail and love upon them at the same time; or, in other words, that I could rain upon them hail, in love.”
CHARLES G. FINNEY.
“Lord, give me this new year a burning zeal
For souls immortal; make me plead with such
With earnestness intense, love strong as death,
And faith God-given. Will the world cry ’ mad ‘?
Such madness be my joy.”
CHARLES KINGSLEY.
1906]