To England and Back to Dohnavur

“April 12. — S.S. Derbyshire. Lazed chiefly being thoroughly tired out, but read a little.

“April 13. — Saw captain about services, and found him very kindly. Many of passengers very nice, but feel out of their world.

“April 14. — Good Friday. Service, fair attendance; but little sign on board of a real remembrance of Calvary on the part of most. Spent the day quietly.

“April 16. — Service. Sabbath desecration painful; skittles and puerilities.

“April 17. — Tamil Apocrypha work; got through a stiffish chapter in the rough.

“April 20. — Tamil Apocrypha. Saddened by general worldliness on board, and by my own powerlessness.”

On the Derbyshire was one fellow-passenger of a spirit framed to appreciate the scholar-missionary, who when the first weariness consequent upon the long strain which had preceded this journey had passed a little, gave himself to his work uninterrupted by the interruptions of ship life. This was the Rev. A. C. Clayton of the Christian Literature Society. He writes:

“The memory of the days that we spent on the s.s. Derby shire will always remain with me; for it was then for the first time that I became really acquainted with the scholar and preacher whom I had known by correspondence for several years, and who had so often helped me.

“He was busy then on the Tamil version of the Apocrypha,

that is left unfinished by his death, and was working at it with

enthusiasm and perseverance. It was a subject which called for

the utmost care. The Greek text of the Apocrypha presents

28 «3 many problems; and the rendering of many ideas, Nee-Platonic, Alexandrian, Hellenistic, Jewish, essentially foreign to Tamil expression, afforded much matter for discussion and research. But the instincts of the scholar in him made the work not a toil but a delight; and I learned to have all the more respect and admiration for the man who could give himself as eagerly to making an accurate translation as to the work of the evangelist. He knew Tamil, and wrote it as few men do, and he used his gift to the utmost with unsparing diligence.”

But shipboard life held other possibilities: “We have a padre on board who has no time for games; but he is teaching me about the stars” — the writer, a young girl, had seen various types of missionary life in the East. This type interested her. “He has no time for games.” For others, as for her, inter course with that padre meant talk upon matters higher than the stars.

Then England, a strange medley in memory, as he described it upon his return to India, of the inspiring and the disappointing; on the whole the note of disappointment predominated. He did not always find, even among true Christians, the depth for which he looked; there was less intensity of purpose, and a greater worldliness than he had expected, and a startling increase in pleasure-loving and luxurious living. These things saddened him. He rejoiced when he met earnestness, and old-fashioned spirituality and unworldliness; but in talking over his impressions upon his return, he said to a friend who had not been out of the East for years:

“You would be terribly grieved if you went home now; you would see a great change everywhere; things seem much shallower all round. At least, that’s how it struck me.”

It was always as if he were looking through the pressing, crowding, articulate Seen, to the great, quiet Unseen behind; and he could not be satisfied with the chatter of the hour, or the new habit of collective self-congratulation, prevalent even in religious circles, the very opposite of that for which his spirit yearned. The absence, too, of the definite surprised him; it was as if the old landmarks of principle were being swept away, and in their place he seemed to see mere borders of pretty

CH. XXXTIII.] TO ENGLAND 485

flowers: “So and so has a hard time of it because of his Protestantism, and yet he is working among avowed Evangelicals,” he said, speaking of a well-known Church worker; “it’s as if people were so afraid of intolerance that they are beginning to have no convictions at all.” In some such words he told his thoughts, “I don’t often unveil,” he wrote from the midst of a great convention; “but I want something far deeper than I find here.” And from the same convention he wrote to another in India:

“There is something wrong in the Home churches that this missionary famine is upon us, and that at a time when doors are opening so widely. I only got one opportunity (here) at the missionary meeting, and tried to sound a solemn note about it. But the convention was not called to humiliation by its leaders.”

But the home months were full of work which made deep furrows in some hearts. At the C.M.S. Summer School, East bourne, as in some other gatherings, large opportunities opened. There for the last time he told the story of his surrender to what he called the Sovereign Claim of Christ.

“It was that [the Sovereign Claim] which led me finally to the mission-field. When I went into my own room, and put both hands as honestly as I knew how, quite within the Master’s Hands, and said, ‘Whatsoever Thou commandest I will do, and whithersoever Thou sendest me I will go,’ then I became a missionary. Perhaps He is calling you to-night. Will you listen to His voice: ‘Depart, and go far hence to the Gentiles ‘?

“Beloved friends, when you look at the pierced Hands of Jesus Christ our Lord, tell me, have you the heart to keep any thing back from Him? ‘By faith... when he was called to go out,... (he) obeyed; and he went out.’”

But there was a little space for rest. The C.M.S. doctor had advised Switzerland for Mrs. Walker; and once more the joy of mountains, lakes, snowfields, and flowers filled five bright weeks. Long letters from those cool heights to the hot plains of India carried with them something of their coolness and a spacious sense of calm; and the journal sings little songs of content: “A day of days” is an entry after one joy-filled day; but the longing to share it all led to journal letters full of sparkling little fragments of delight.

At St. Beatenberg, after days of rain:

“The mountains displayed exquisite pictures of their aretes at intervals, shining through window-panes of cloud. Now we saw, as it were, a lovely illuminated snow-slope, or ice-ledge, through a sort of lane or vista of mist. Presently the cloud-line closed up, to make room for another glorious glimpse hard by. It was like looking at picture after picture in some celestial gallery. As the day wore on, the atmosphere cleared, and the mists rolled away to a large extent. We caught sight of the Monch’s bare head above a ridge of white cloud, and at sunset the crest of the Jungfrau blazed in gold. It looked like a golden mountain high up in the sky, and we saw and were entranced....”

En route from Lauterbrunnen to Miirren:

“The full length and breadth and height of the Jungfrau were seen spread out before us, a magnificent sight. Then the Monch came into view, and next the Eiger, till we could see all their naked beauty, glaciers, snowfields, rocks, and precipices. It was a sight surpassing all powers of description. We felt dwarfed into nothingness before these snow giants, and we gazed and admired, and broke out into cries of joy and wonder.”

Walks from Miirren to the Bliimeiithal and to the Schiltalp:

“I walked up the hill in front of the Hotel to Bliiinenthal, or the Valley of Flowers, a climb of half an hour or so. The path led by rushing streams and hillsides literally clothed with flowers. Wherever one looked it was a feast of colour to the eye. In the Bliiinenthal itself I gathered bunches of white and yellow anemones, soldanellas, and white and pink crocuses; and I looked wistfully up at the rugged hills which stood like sentinels over the valley, and longed to climb them; but it was growing dark, so I retraced my steps to the Alpenruh.... The flowers were lovely. We found the banks above the brook (Schiltbach) lined with Alpen-roses, and gathered handfuls as we passed along. Altogether our walk was a delight from beginning to end.”

On the Obersteinberg:

“It was just as though we were marching into the heart of the snow mountains, and had reached the end of everything

CH. xxxvm.] TO ENGLAND 487

lower and more ignoble. The views were magnificent. Above us, as we lunched in the garden of the little inn, towered the precipices of the Tschingelgrat, one of the Bernese giants. To the front of us glittered the glaciers and snowfields of the Breithorn, with the Tschingelhorn lifting its white head near by to the right. It is a lovely spot, confronting an amphitheatre of snow peaks which seem so near that you can almost touch them. An Englishman was staying at the inn, waiting for early morning to cross one of the snowy passes. He had with him as guides, the son and grandson of Christian Aimer, one of Whymper’s trusted companions. It was interesting to see them.

“At Miirren, after dinner, we had the joy of seeing the real Alpenglow. The snow mountains were first golden in the light of the setting sun. Then the gold deepened into pink and rose. We stood and watched entranced. The world seemed poor when that wonderful glow died away and the dark shadows crept over the mountains.”

Summit of the Schilthorn:

“Arrived at the apex of the cone, we were standing 9754 feet above the level of the sea, with the whole Bernese Oberland stretched out before us in a glorious panorama. Behind this, through a gap near the Gemmi pass, we could see the Mt. Blanc range in the far distance. At the’ other side of our picture we marked the Faulhorn ridge, and behind and beyond it Mt. Pilatus and the Rigi. But the Bernese giants occupied the foreground, and for the first time I saw the real proportions of the Bliimlisalp, clad from head to foot in virgin snow. The eye ranged from point to point of the panorama, only to find fresh pleasure everywhere. The lake of Thun lay at the foot behind us, with Thun itself glittering in the sunlight and the town of Berne visible in the distance. The whole picture was fascinating beyond expression.”

En route for the Riffelalp, and at the Rifielalp:

“Here a torrent poured forth its mass of seething waters, and there a deep gorge told of the mighty force which had cut it out of the reluctant rocks. We were charmed with the wealth of the wild flowers; dark pink lilies stood in clusters on either side, making us wish the train would stop at frequent intervals that we might pluck them by the handful.... After passing Tasch, overshadowed by the Taschhorn, we neared Zermatt; and suddenly, as we turned a corner, the glorious Matterhorn stood before us in all its unique stateliness. Nothing we had read or seen in pictures at all approached the grand reality.... Here we were in an earthly paradise, with a whole chain of snow mountains in full view, the Matterhorn still supreme in grandeur.”

“Gloriously and wonderfully clear this morning, Hurrah!” is the postscript to a private letter; mountains for him meant a sort of intoxication of pleasure, something appreciable perhaps only by born mountain lovers. The purity of untrodden snow, the vastness and the silence, and the glory of colour moved him as nothing in nature, except the star depths, ever did. And yet the last biography he read had this one sentence copied from it; the last note in the last notebook: “John Wesley stood admiring a beautiful landscape. Then suddenly turning away said, I remembered that there is an eternity.”

The work of the time was the preparation of a key for his little study book on The Acts, and the inevitable correspondence which followed him everywhere. To the comrade at Dohnavur whose battle he had shared and was still sharing, one whose letters might possibly be tampered with on the way, he wrote from St. Beatenberg on June 14th:

“All who know anything know that you have been fighting a righteous cause. If we suffer for righteousness’ sake, happy are we. I need say no more. Let us continue in prayer. If anyone opens my letters, which I don’t anticipate, they shall have good advice. We know we have done our best to save a little one from evil. If things seem to have gone against us, we can do no more; and it is by no means an invariable rule that truth and right triumph in the law courts of earth. They will triumph, however, in God’s tribunal; and we shall yet praise Him, when He manifests His kingdom and glory.”

The Keswick Convention followed upon this good time in Switzerland. “Went to Webb Peploe’s Bible Reading, strong and helpful. Long talk with Bardsley, C.M.S. hon. secretary,” with whom he felt himself at one in loving fellowship, is the journal note on July 25th. On the whole, the missionary prayer-meetings were the best hours of the week to him, and a little

CH. xxxvin.] TO ENGLAND 439

meeting of inner circle friends in the woods for prayer, comforted his spirit. For he was hungry for prayer, prayer of the sort which means access to the Eternal, traffic between earth and heaven.

Then came business of various kinds, chiefly missionary; long talks with leaders; his last address to the Mpwapwas; letters to friends in India, whose affairs he was trying to pilot through some shoals; a pleasant visit to Hembury Fort; and a time with the Rev. Hubert Brooke of Hindhead, Surrey — a refreshment, this. “He met me like a brother,” was the way he described it, and it was this brotheiiiness which so refreshed the missionary within him; for he, like others of his calling, had sometimes missed something of this in England. So the two men touched in spirit, finding themselves of one accord; and this new friend knowing him so slightly, recognised him for what he was: “We had a very full time of converse together,” he writes, “from 10.40 a.m. to 3.30 p.m., when I set him back for half an hour on his way home. On the llth I was at C.M.S. house for a little farewell to him, and our next meeting will be in the Presence. He was one of ten thousand.”

“One of ten thousand,” the words do not sound too strong to Indian missionaries. “Any one of us would have died for him,” his friend Mr. Ardill of Tinnevelly wrote a few months later. The words were just true.

“One feels a stranger in England in spite of relations and friends,” he wrote to a fellow- worker in India; “I am longing to be back and bearing my share of the burden.”

The weeks that remained were very full; but he made time to go and see the Tinnevelly children who were in England, whether at school, at Limpsfield, or with relatives. Some were his godchildren, for whom, naturally, he felt specially responsible; and he followed the course of each one of them with interest. One whose home he thus visited, writes that they were all struck by the look of holy joy about him. It was more than ordinary brightness, it was a “disciplined gladness.” Few could have known its cause, nor can it be fully told now; such matters, like others touched through these pages, demand a careful reticence; but something may be said: the months in England had held for him certain hours that were hot with a peculiar kind of pain. “Anything, Lord, anything,” he had answered as from the heart of the fire, and the purging flame had done its work. It was part of his long Patmos, and it opened into visions of God. It was this, this dealing with his Master in secret, which lent to his very bearing something that was not of earth. And those saw it who had eyes to see.

There were some days of home pleasure, touched though such days must be as life goes on, by a certain wistfulness. One such day is recalled by his sister, who tells how he and she and her little daughter Kathleen went for one of the old walks:

“One by one we visited the well-remembered spots, and spoke of bygone days. Especially he paused for a long time at the gate of a field once rented by my father, and told Kathleen about his romps in the hay there; and of how later in the year he and his brothers were busy preparing a huge bonfire for November 5th, when Guy Fawkes was duly burned and potatoes roasted.”

And now it was October; he had settled Mrs. Walker in a country cottage in Liphook with her sisters, and all was ready for the last departure to India. Upon October 12th came the last pang of good-bye he was ever to experience: “Goodness and mercy” is the journal note — the mind instinctively continues the verse — “shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.” “Blessed is the man whom Thou choosest, and receivest unto Thee: he shall dwell in Thy court, and shall be satisfied with the pleasures of Thy house, even of Thy holy temple.”

So, all unknowing, he set sail for the Haven where he would be, leaving behind him one who had accepted, as he had, the terms of discipleship laid down in his clear fashion a few months before in a booklet for the C.M.S.

“He bids us renounce all earthly ties, even the nearest and dearest, which would stand between the disciple and his Lord. ‘If any man cometh unto Me, and hateth not his own father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.’ These words burn and throb with intense meaning for many a convert in the mission -field.” [And for many a missionary, too, he might have added.]

May the words which follow carry far.

“And yet are there not many among us who allow the tender ties of home to come between them and the claims of Christ? Parents hold back their children from the mission-field with the strong arms of human love; and children cling to the ’ sheltering nest of home.’ Brothers and sisters refuse to part with one another; and friend declines to surrender friend. Arguments and reasons are adduced, till the real issue is confused; while all the time the Master’svoice sounds on, ‘Lovest thou Me more than these? ‘Let us look at His thorn-crowned brow, and give Him the true answer of willing acquiescence. So shall we be His disciples.

“October 13. — Arrived in Marseilles. Went on board the Warwickshire — two nice cabin companions, Scotchmen, for which I am profoundly thankful. Sea quiet, all lovely. Took service and spoke briefly on God’s way of joy, all having to be compressed into 35 minutes. Some talk during day. Grieved at general irreligion, skittles, etc., and kind of concert in drawing-room after dinner. God save us poor English folk.”

For weekday work there was correspondence and the translation of new hymns into Tamil. Once, stirred by the frivolity surrounding him, he wonders at the poverty and paltriness of such pleasures. Again he is cheered, for two congenial friends were among the passengers, and there were many opportunities to help others. Sometimes that which he prized most was given, and fellow-passengers sought him out for talk about the things which abide. But the voyage was burdened more than any previous voyage had been by the sight of so much forgetfulness of God. On October IGth he wrote to his wife:

“The people on board are very nice on the whole, but there are few in sympathy. You know the sort of thing, lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God. It makes one anxious about Britain’s future, for an Empire on which true religion seems to be losing its hold is in a precarious condition. Still a number of the people seem to have appreciated yesterday’s service, they came together well. Only, alas! there was not much Sabbath-keeping beyond that.”

And again on the 26th:

“One’s heart sinks when one sees one’s fellow-countrymen so entirely given up to pleasure-hunting, without God’s Word or prayer or any sort of true religion for the most part.”

“It is not pleasant to be separated; but God’s work requires it, and that comes first, does it not?” is a word from another voyage letter. There was only one answer to that question. It did come first.

A day before Colombo was reached, the Dohnavur hills were visible, the Mahendra mountain some five miles from the compound showed clearly far out at sea, and welcomed him home. Three days later the entry is: “Dohnavur at 5 a.m.”

It was a joyful morning for those in Dohnavur. He had sent blue Cambridge ribbons to the family to be worn as shoulder knots, yards of it, narrow and wide. This from one who rather eschewed demonstration, meant a good deal. When, a day after his arrival, his godson, Dr. Merill Schafiter, then on his way to Persia, came to Dohnavur, and noticing the blue ribbons asked what they meant, he himself explained the little sign of joy. Everything was bright that day; the expectation that Mrs. Walker would soon follow, prevented the disappointment of her absence from shadowing the place: it was all blue sky, blue ribbons, blue garments — for the children were in his favourite blue — all that the happy colour seems to express as no other colour can, filled the day. And he wrote in his journal that evening, “Glad to be back home.” It was surely more than human gladness; for he had greatly hoped to bring his wife back with him, but to him accepting the will of God meant an ungrudging acceptance.

Then came the plunge into work, broken by the arrival of the parents and sisters of one of the Dohnavur workers. “Preparing for Mr. and Mrs. Beath,” is a word in the journal which recalls a visit full of kindness and cheer.

As usual, he was always on the look out for pleasant sundries, and one evening just before dinner produced this to the general enjoyment:

“Oh, I am sick of the Big things,

The Big with a Big, Big B — The important Things That Are Strictly Such,
The Great Big Things That Matter So Much,

They never can leave you free.
For I love to live in the little things

(If little they really be);
The mere little things, the near little things,
The dear little things, the queer little things,

That make up the world for me.”

All the verses were delightful; and when he got to the last, he fairly shook with laughter:

“A trio of excellence, wisdom, and worth —

And I’m weary of all the three.
And it is not good to feel like that;
It’s exceedingly wicked to feel like that;
I’m sure you never could feel like that;

It’s only the case with me.
But then, I was born a little bit cracked,

So I hardly count, you see;
And — it wouldn’t be fair to omit the fact,

They are wearier far of me.”

Thus, with a light upon it, the old year passed, his last whole year on earth.

“Death is not an interruption of being, but a change of the mode of being — a going to the Father.”

WESTCOTT on St. John xiii. 3.

“I have lived my life, and that which I have done
May He within Himself make pure.”

The Passing of Arthur.

1912]