Come, Wind of God

“India is in an interesting and transition stage; but, spiritually speaking, there seems to be a reaction at present from the promise of the widespread revival which seemed so imminent a few years ago. We need a spirit of life from God both in the Christian congregations and among the non-Christian millions of the land. The present condition of things calls loudly for earnest prayer.”

So he wrote to the C.M.S. towards the end of the year. It was a year of the intense sort, intense watching unto prayer in the longing hope that that which had gone might return; and intense earnestness in buying up every opportunity to reach souls before the chill which had fallen upon the land should harden them past desire for better things. To read the journal, knowing what lies behind each entry, is like tracing the course of a strong runner, running, as Simeon of Cambridge ran, with all his might because the goal was so near.

The Ordination class ended. The students gave each his farewell message in the Dohnavur church, and were ordained at Mengnanapuram by Bishop Williams in presence of a large congregation:

“The whole service was very solemn and impressive. The newly ordained men are now in charge of pastorates and are busy preparing for presbyters’ orders,” he wrote to the C.M.S.

Then, after some days spent mainly in trying to help a weak soul to put on strength, off to North Tinnevelly for meetings, where there was, the journal notes, real response; then home for a few days of life’s sundries.

“My birthday,” he writes upon February 9th; “another year of life gone, and so little to show for it.” Then, towards the end of the month, Travancore.

“MARAMANA. — Larsen [of the Danish Mission] turned up about 5 p.m. Archibald [Children’s Special Service missioner] arrived.”

Welcome entries at the beginning of such a campaign. The three friends were housed in what they called the rabbithutches, little booths made of cocoanut matting put up in a garden about eight minutes’ walk from the pandal — a comfortable arrangement, and a vast improvement upon that of earlier days. As always, the kindness of the Syrians was unbounded.

For once there is not a word in the journal record, other than the bare details of addresses. Not one of the familiar, brief, pressed- out prayers; it might be a business record of a business undertaking. But the time lives in the memory of those who shared it:

“From that convention I carried away an eternal blessing,” writes the younger of the two, R. T. Archibald;” not the sight of so many thousands, nor anything which was said during those days. The Syrian Bishop had given us booths with three cubicles. Mr. Walker was in the middle one, and as I passed his cubicle to get to mine from time to time, the curtain would blow aside and disclose a kneeling figure, that made an ineffaceable impression, and I longed for such a spirit of prayer. How little those thousands knew that throughout the convention he practically lived on his knees receiving bread for them from the Master. It was the explanation of the overflowing love which characterised the delivery of every address.

“At the average convention — if any notice is taken of the children at all — meetings are arranged for them rather as a ’ side-show ’ than anything else. At least, such has been my experience. They don’t want the children in the bigger gatherings, and so something apart is arranged for them to keep them quiet. Consequently little is accomplished; for those who might offer their services are busy about ’ the more important meetings.’ The children’s gatherings which were held at Maramana for the first time, I believe, that year, were not considered a mere adjunct. Mr. Walker told me the first day that he was sorry not to be able to come himself, as he needed all his time to prepare whenever it was his turn to address the big morning meeting. One morning in the week he was free, and he took the first opportunity to give us a helping hand. He sat right in the midst of the children; and when I beckoned to him to come up to the platform he shook his head, intimating that he was happier where he was.

“I was struck, too, by his practical life. As our host he anticipated all our wants, and nothing escaped his attention; for instance, he kept his eye on our plates, and was never behind hand with the next slice of bread, or whatever was needed — a rarely cultivated habit in India, where everything of the kind is left to servants. His well-known greeting, ‘Well, man, and how are you? ’ soon dispelled the notion that there was anything soapy about his saintliness.

“I remember that on the occasions when he was to be the speaker at the big convention, he always walked to the meeting ahead of us, in order to be alone and away from casual conversation. “His silence about results after a mission was also a great lesson. He always seemed to me to be keeping secrets with God. And with all his spirituality he was so sane. On the day before the last day of the convention I was speaking, and as we closed, the whole congregation (17,000) broke out into audible prayer. The noise increased every moment, and I turned to him for a word of counsel. He said, ‘Let them go on; they will stop soon.’ In five minutes all had subsided, and then he came forward and said, ‘We don’t mind the noise, but we want the faith ‘; and made them face the appeal of the morning once more in silent prayer before sending them away. To have deprecated the noise might have been a stumbling-block to many. On the other hand, much might have been lost by allowing the meeting to end in noise. The quiet time at the close, and those wise words which I have never forgotten, solved the problem.”

This was the man as his comrades knew him, not only through one week of special high-level life, but through the common days of common years.

This habit of silence before meetings was very marked always. Mr. Ward, fellow-worker in many a convention, recalls how, when he was his guest, he “was struck again and again with the silence that he maintained during a meal preceding a meeting. The message was indeed a burden of the Lord. It was not exactly a contrast to that, but another aspect of the same earnestness, which led him, after meetings were over, to join so heartily in the life of our home, and especially in the hymn-singing with which during the convention the day closed.”

“Home upon March yd. Hard at work with arrears of correspondence. Got off revision of Philippians for second edition. Preparation for Madras. My old pain came on and hindered evening work.

“March 9. — Left for Madras, Eddy joining me.”

Again the journal is silent as to deeper things, except for the word at the end, “Lord, cleanse, and bless, and confirm it all,” and as is its wont, so is the annual letter. Only upon very rare occasions do we find more than the most guarded of surface news in anything written for print; but the friend who organised that mission, Rev. John Stewart of Madras, overheard some Hindus talking together as they went out of the hall. They were wondering at the intense earnestness of the speaker. That, rather than what he had said, had struck them and impressed them. “Do be in earnest” — Madame Coillard’s dying words seemed ever ringing in his soul.

“April 6. — Dohnavur at daybreak. Correspondence. Finished review of Acts MS. and despatched to press. Reviewed a Tamil MS. for opinion, etc.”

That “etc.” covered much; for the time was hot with a battle in which he shared, trying to save those to whom it properly belonged from the full brunt of it. It concerned a brave and innocent young girl who for four years had set Dohnavur before her as her one hope, believing that, if only she could reach it, she would be protected from the worst that could befall her.

There are hours of life which burn. Such an hour had to be lived through upon April 12th when, with Mrs. Walker alone in prayer in the room on one side of the bungalow, and the child with those who loved her, waiting in tension beyond speech, on the other, he in the room between, while wicked men and women clamoured around him, pleaded, reasoned, threatened, in

CH. xxxin.] COME, WIND OF GOD 398

vain. Power, the power of lawful authority, was on the wrong side that day; the child had to be given up. With a set white face and eyes that looked unutterable things, he left the room, when the deed was done, and threw himself upon his knees. There were few prayers in words in the house that day. There are things that scorch words.

Then Ooty; but towards the close of the month he came down into the heat to meet half-way a member of the Dohnavur family who had been detained over the child’s battle and other matters. The one thus met at a wayside station was not expecting him; and the relief to a tired traveller may be imagined when the flicker of a distant lamp fell upon his face, the one white face among the many brown faces pressing round a gate which was locked and could not be opened till the sleepy official could be found and roused. Once more that reposeful sense of all’s right now: the batch of converts undertaken and piloted across the line; the minor burdens, luggage and tickets, lifted off: such is comradeship.

“Not very warm or free,” thus he summarises one of the hill conventions. There was earnest speaking; but it required more spiritual power than was apparently present to pass beyond the usual, and reach a wealthy place.

Followed a series of missions in various places in the South and in Ceylon: at the last of which, Mr. Larsen and Mr. Eddy joined him, so the work was immensely lightened. There are few notes. One of the few, however, is characteristic: “Preached in a church not according to my liking, but tried to make the best of it.” Then, on the way to Dohnavur, a pause in Palamcottah for what, viewed with human eyes, was nothing of importance. “Gave evidence in Court in case of little M.”

It was the child given up upon that pitiful day in April; for her kindred had gone to law among themselves, a criminal case was in progress, the little girl was Court witness, and Dohnavur was summoned to give evidence which to the human eye could do nothing for her salvation. Then on to Dohnavur, but only en route for Nagercoil, a station of the London Missionary Society in

South Travancore. The journal says nothing about the meetings there, but never had missionary warmer friends outside his own mission; and such excursions were often very fruitful.

Early in August there is a bright record; he must have wanted to dip his pen in something other than common ink

the night he wrote:” came, bringing little M. [spoils

of battle], accompanied by Price” [as escort]; for God had interposed, and in open Court, by the consent of all concerned, the child was given up to the people of her choice.

“I sent you out with mourning and weeping; but God will give (yea rather, has given) you back to me with joy and gladness for ever.” In some such words the Dohnavur family, with the child set in the midst, praised and rejoiced; and he who had suffered before as only a chivalrous man can suffer in the presence of wrong triumphant, could not rest till he had heard the whole story of the deliverance: and his prayer that night was a song.

The next undertaking was a long stretch of itinerating work among remote villages where he spent week after week, smitten to the heart by the prevailing apathy, but always going on. Whenever possible, Rev. Luke John, Dohnavur’s good pastor, worked with him. Together they toiled through those little village missions, and together they grieved over the great need around them of life and life more abundant; but the greater the need the greater the call to be up and doing and to go on doing.

Sometimes, in thinking back over the chapters written, it seems to the writer that enough has not been shown of this simple going on. Special missions represent spiritual stress and strain; still, there is the sense of movement, the zest of cooperation with a band of like-minded colleagues, something not ordinary. But the normal life of the years was as ordinary as it is possible to imagine. And this is the part which, if only it could be shown, would appeal most to the average worker, the toiler out of sight.

The missionary usually comes out warm; the tendency is to cool when the influences around begin to tell upon the spirit.

CH. xxxiii.] COME, WIND OF GOD 895

Just at this point, perhaps, his lot is cast in some obscure little place where there is neither the inspiration of numbers, nor the cheer of sympathy, nor anything else the least quickening to the natural man. There may be vivid incidents; but life is not made up of such incidents, but of matter-of-fact routine. Some times, as he plods along, the man who came out keen is conscious in his inner being of having lost something. It is as if a breath had dulled his mirror: it does not reflect as it did. He could mount up with wings as eagles, but this walking without fainting is a different matter.

To see the life this book is meant to show, to fit it into its true place in the landscape, it must somehow be seen moving quietly day by day over the plain flats of the quite prosaic. Such levels are rich as corn lands: could there be better places for proving that the joy of the Lord is strength and sufficient stimulus? but they offer nothing the least romantic. It may be different in newer fields, while the glamour of newness is still upon them; but even they soon become old; many of the world’s fields are old, and yet they are needy enough, and some must be willing to serve in them. Tinnevelly is such a field.

There will be some to whom this paragraph will not appear worth printing. They find everything inspiring, and they are delightful people to be with for awhile, for they throw a shining veil upon everything they see. But a time comes when even they touch bottom, and the veil wears thin, and they look round with a sort of desperation to find somebody graced with a single glory, the Glory of Going on. There is very little said about these village missions in the journal. There is nothing to say except that he went on. But one afternoon that August, in the cramped and noisy quarters of a local chieftain’s house where he was staying, he set down his heart’s desire upon paper and signed it” A Lover of Wind in an upper room on a sultry

day “:

Come, Wind of God! Blow, Breeze of heaven!
Move through this still and stifling air;
Be clouds of mercy o’er us driven,
Breathe life and coolness everywhere.

Come, Wind of God! Blow, Breeze benign!
Our languid spirits droop and fail;
We long, we pant for Breath Divine,
Awake! arise! Thou heavenly Gale!

Come, Wind of God! breathe on us now,
This deadly stillness stir, remove;
Cause every heart to bend and bow
Before the swelling Breeze of Love.

Come, Wind of God! and fill this place,
Sweep on with mighty, rushing sound;
Bouse, cheer, renew us with Thy grace,
Shed health and vigour all around.

Come, Wind of God! thrice welcome Guest,
Thy grand approach we hear, we greet!
Our quickened spirits spring refreshed
To happy toil and service sweet.

This, all it stands for, explains the going on. Immediately upon his return home from these weeks among the villages, he began to prepare for a Bible school for the Tamil clergy, who were to meet at a house a little way out of Tinnevelly town, fittingly called the Retreat. Then there were a few days of busy home life before the tour of the year to Western India and to some places in the United Provinces.

These few days at home were always very full. He was so thoroughly played out after a long mission that a little rest seemed very desirable; but half an hour’s walk up and down the drive, in the short twilight, with his wife, was as much as he would consent to, over and above the one hour later under the stars; and though that later hour was sometimes taken for Commentary work, he always considered he had had it, and regarded the half-hour before as a great concession. Work for the Tamil Literary Committee or the Madras Text Book Committee, the preparation of various memoranda (one on Prayer- Book revision was the subject of some thought just then), the revision of old hymns, and the writing of new — these things consumed the day. Always they were accomplished between the usual interruptions of headquarters; the pastor would come with a string of difficulties, a schoolmaster with a grievance, or a catechist with a tangle taking hours to unravel. Sometimes a new convert would appear for a talk. Once a lately attempted robbery had to be enquired into (for Dohnavur lies open to such diversions, being guarded solely by robber-caste people subsidised to restrain their fellows from pillage); all these things, each so minute taken alone, but so time-absorbing, belonged to the day’s work. And fitted into the corners of such days was the endless business of translation. For he was translating the Apocrypha into Tamil, working direct from Professor Swete’s Cambridge Old Testament in Greek, and noting the variations of the English Revised Version in the margin — a work which, as he said, needed “considerable application.” Sometimes something specially fine from the book of the day was read aloud at dinner, to the blank discomfiture of the faithful Michael, who, concerned for his master’s highest good, would persist in pressing pudding or some such triviality upon him just at the wrong moment. One such shared pleasure was the portion which sets forth the contention of the young man of King Darius’ bodyguard, that above all things Truth beareth away the victory; for

“Truth abideth, and is strong for ever; she liveth and conquereth for evermore.... And she is the strength, and the kingdom, and the power, and the majesty, of all ages. Blessed be the God of Truth. And with that he held his tongue. And all the people then shouted, and said, Great is truth, and strong above all things.”

A passage like this was pure pleasure to translate, and did much to atone for the tedious parts which were sometimes so tedious that he all but regretted having undertaken the work. Still he held on to it; not only because he had undertaken it and it was not his custom to change his mind, but because he felt that certain passages required more than ordinary care in translation, lest the result should be misleading.

“We must act like men who have the enemy at their gates, and at the same time like men who are working for Eternity.”

MAZZINI.

“Every minute was an opportunity.”

JOHN MACPHERSON, Life of Duncan Matheson.

1909y