Last Things

The last few months were full of the vigour of life, and ful! as ever of literary and evangelistic work, and the usual teaching. “Interpreted for Mr. Beath,” is an entry which occurs several times in the journal. He enjoyed interpreting for the dear old man, whose fervent love of his Lord and eagerness to talk of Him rejoiced his spirit.

“My birthday, feeling bad at the thought of failure; but all were so kind to me here. Letters. Comparing yesterday’s book with Edersheim. Afternoon we all read together and microscoped.”

This entry upon February 9th reads strangely to those concerned, who, knowing him as they did, yet never dreamed that their pleasure in capturing him for two delightful hours to examine the revolving cowslip balls of the lovely little Conochilus volvox, was thus humbly and affectionately regarded. Next morning normal human nature asserted itself; it was a melancholy morning. “Very tired after nearly sleepless night with a dog howling,” remarks the journal dismally. The dog had been surreptitiously adopted, and was the private luxury of the dog-loving part of the family; up till now the head of the house had possessed his soul in patience; but this was too much: “Either that dog goes, or I do,” was the fiat. The dog went.

All through the years the work growing alongside had been cared for with a peculiar land of care, half -brotherly, half -fatherly, wholly and wonderfully helpful. Two letters written in 1912 to the Rev. Hubert Brooke and Miss Bradshaw of Dublin, friends who would, he felt, understand what was required, show how thoroughly he identified himself with it.

“February 5. — I am writing now to ask you to be on the look out, during your travels, for a lady suited to take

educational charge of ’s children. God may lead you to

just the very one. You know our position as to God’s Word, and thorough evangelical principles, as also that spirituality is of the first importance. If a lady goes to an ordinary college or high school in India, she has to fall in with the Government curriculum and with established methods of work. Here she would find, I trust; a warm, spiritual atmosphere, and an unusually happy family life, and would be able to train Tamil teachers in her own way, and to develop, without Government restrictions, an original work among very intelligent children. They know far more than I was ever taught — even the tinies — about flowers, insects, birds, etc., and are very much alive on the observation side of things. I consider it a unique sphere for one who loves children and is a real educationalist. And there are great possibilities of the children’s becoming a real missionary force.... You may possibly be led to the very person whom God has in mind. Anyhow, I feel impelled to write to you. We need one very badly this autumn, if it so please Him.

“June 3. — We “must wait the Lord’s own time for the right worker. It is strange that volunteers of the right sort are so few, in spite of all the missionary study work, big conferences, etc.... We must be more instant in prayer about a new worker. Probably God has just the right one somewhere in view, and is waiting to be entreated more earnestly.... Please continue to keep your eyes open on our behalf, and to desire mercies for us of the God of heaven.”

He was always on the look out for anything which would give the children pleasure; and naturally they were devoted to him. One of the many little pictures of that last year is too pretty to forget. Now that his Divinity class was to become permanent, it had been decided that he could not be allowed to teach it any more in the narrow, crowded side-room which had served him for so many years; and the C.M.S. built a class room for him. It is an unpretentious building, and was furnished with the cheapest of procurable necessities, but it could

This photograph, taken informally by Mr. Penn of Ooty. in the Dohnavur compound

one evening in December 1905, appears to be the only one which has

caught the familiar look of keen brightness.

not help being a beautiful room, for it opened full upon the Western Ghauts: to look up from its plain little desks and writing-table was to look unto the hills.

As soon as it was colour-washed — a soft terra-cotta, the prevailing colour at Dohnavur — and its furniture arranged to suit his taste, he went to the children’s side of the compound and returned, followed by a troop of excited little people invited to come and inspect his “new kindergarten” (” Iyer’s Kindergarten” it was thereafter called). The table with its two drawers was a source of much interest, and the drawers were pulled out and inspected: what trifles live in memory! And alJ the time he was watching with amused eyes and answering the pelting questions as to what he was going to do in his new kindergarten, till at last, every minute detail of the. room examined, he suggested it was time to go, and with as many little blue-clad girls as could get at him holding on all round, he returned them safely to their nurseries.

The story should end there, but somehow refuses so to do. A few months more, and a table was required for the last thing its owner could ever have imagined in connection with himself. His Life had to be written. It could not be written straight off, but in between other work, and the accumulation of papers concerning it threatened to get into a tangle if no place could be found for them apart from the usual office litter of the day. A chance visit to the Dohnavur pastor’s house discovered the Iyer’s table sitting forlornly with the class-room benches and desks on the verandah, waiting to be sold. If David could say about a sword, “There is none like that, give it me,” it did not seem too much to say something of the same sort about a table. It was bought and kept for the one purpose now so nearly accomplished.

All through that last spring and summer there had been more anxiety about Mrs. Walker’s health:

“I am very sorry that you cannot give a better account of yourself,” he wrote on March llth; “but it will not do to face this climate till you are really stronger, so we must be patient. Only let us quite agree that the work must come before personal comfort and happiness. Let us commit the future to a loving Father Who will make no mistake.”

This, the last personal trial which was ever to touch him, was to him his Father’s will; and therefore not in theory only but in fact, good and acceptable and perfect. But week by week his letters to that brave wife in England tell what it was to him to wait on in uncertainty as to her return. And yet he was always full of hope:

“If autumn fails, you may possibly get back in time for the hills next year. But we must leave it all in faith .... Day by day, step by step, is the only real life of faith.”

The words, in their extreme simplicity, recall one of his ways: he could think thoughts that reached far, but he entirely refused anything approaching mental speculation; and if questioned upon his surmisings concerning the Unrevealed, would reply with quite chilling uninterest, “I never knock my head against stone walls.” “But don’t you ever wonder?” “What’s the good of wondering? You don’t get any further.” And a repeated allusion to stone walls would usually quench the conversation.

The last Syrian convention was held in February, and Mr. Ardill, who was his companion then, tells one sacred little story: He had left Dohnavur under anxiety. One of the workers was ill; through a series of small contrary happenings, understandable enough to missionaries, the medical help hoped for had not arrived when he left for Travancore; and as he had to be kept informed of all that went on at home, he had to be told three days later of the still continued absence of help. Mr. Ardill remembers how, after reading the letter, he went into his little cubicle; there was only a mat partition between it and the next room, a fact he had evidently forgotten, for he prayed aloud, as his custom was, pleading for awhile, then as it were waiting to listen. At last Mr. Ardill heard him say as he rose from his knees, “It’s all right, Lord!” The next Dohnavur letter told of help after a fortnight’s waiting.

When the time came for the hills, he settled everyone’s duties:

“I can’t leave the class at present, and I’m only just out, so I don’t need to go up so soon. You must all go, and I’ll keep guard here, and follow in a fortnight.”

He kept guard; and the Indian workers told afterwards how he went round the compound every evening, seeing to the well-being of everyone in it. “He used to let us bring a stool out of the nursery, and then he would sit among the children telling them stories for half an hour,” they say; and he wrote daily to those driven away, keeping them informed of everything down to the smallest detail of health and conduct.

The months were not without their measure of inward stress. One very grievous matter to which the journal constantly refers, had its root deep down in the condition of the Indian Church, which to his thinking was sorely in need of quickening. He did not find it difficult to understand and make allowances for the ways of youth, as he used to call them, however uncomfortable they made things for the time being. But he grieved with a poignant grief over much which he could not but regard as unspiritual and deceptive, even though to the greater number of onlookers, cause for such grief was unperceived. And a word he quoted a week or two before he left Dohnavur, when in a moment of deep depression he endured the last of the buffetings of life, express his sadness: “They killed them,” he quoted, “but ye build their sepulchres!” “They kill us with words,” was his thought, “with griefs and misunderstandings, with disappointments manifold: it was so in the olden days, it is so still. But their children built sepulchres for the very men whose hearts their fathers broke 1 It will be so again.” This grief was shared not only by some missionaries, but by the more spiritual among the Indian Christians. The love and sympathy of these special friends, Indian and English, always cheered him.

Another, more tellable this, and yet quite out of reach of any except those among South Indian missionaries who have set their faces against its cause, sprang straight from caste feeling. In order to help the C.M.S. in its financial difficulties, he hadundertaken the training of the catechists; and this class was the opportunity for the trouble to discover itself: “Prayer-meeting with class, but saddened to find caste-spirit divisions.” “Troubled about caste divisions.” Such entries cover weeks of thought and effort to get things right. But the trouble was not confined to any one group of men, its ramifications were endless; and at every turn he was quietly but effectively circumvented by that active impervious entity which for want of better name is called “caste feeling.” It was a great distress to him, and caused much of what would have been fret of spirit but for the peace of God; and his letters to his wife referred often, and always in sorrow, to this fatal weakness or, as he called it, cancer, at the heart of the Church.

But troubled as he was oftentimes, a deeper, purer joyousness than had ever been in him, seemed to shine through his whole being through those last months; his little note to the South Indian Prayer Circular early in the year expresses some thing of that solemn joy:

“‘And when they had sung an hymn, they went out into the Mount of Olives.’ These words were burnt in upon my mind during the meetings of the last Keswick Convention. All around were heard the glad hymns of happy singers in the tents, in the woods, in the houses, and away on Friar’s Crag. There was music everywhere. What would it all lead to? This was the dominant thought in some of our minds, as we listened to it through missionary ears. And then came the word with overwhelming force, as the mind reverted to that last night of our Lord with His disciples on the eve of His passion, ‘And when they had sung an hymn, they went out into the Mount of Olives,’ to Gethsemane and that death-struggle with the power of darkness. In their case, at least, the hymn-singing led on to, and resulted in, deep experiences of self-humiliation and whole-hearted surrender to the Father for the salvation of the world. The disciples were slow, it is true, in following their Master into such experiences; but sooner or later they had to do so. It is almost startling, as we follow up the thought, to find that the verb translated ’ to sing a hymn ’ only occurs in two other passages in the New Testament, and invariably in the same connection of suffering and self-crucifixion. We find it in the one passage (Heb. ii. 12) as a quotation from the Septuagint of Ps. xxii. 22, the great Passion Psalm, where the singing comes as a voice from the Cross itself (see the verses which immediately precede it). In the other passage (Acts xvi. 25) the hymn comes from the lips of men who are yet bleeding from their many stripes, their feet in the stocks of the inner cell of the prison at Philippi.

“Thus, so far as this special verb is concerned, it emphasises for us the great truth that praise and passion — chant and cross — hymn and humiliation — are for the whole-hearted follower of the Lord Jesus inextricably and irrevocably linked together. Are we ready to accept this truth as an experimental fact, as we face the unknown vicissitudes of another year? God would have us go deeper yet in our conventions, in our lives, in all our attitude and actions, for the salvation of this land; aye! and also in our prayers. Let us use hymns more than ever, but God give us grace to live them out! Let us sing of holiness by all means, but may He give us the grace of practical godliness in daily life. Let us sing with our Master Who still leads the praises of His Church, but let us be willing to suffer with Him too. Real hymn-singing leads to the singer’s becoming God’s ’ corn of wheat,’ which falls into the ground and dies, and so brings forth much fruit.”

At the Ooty and Coonoor Conventions he took as his subject for the Bible readings the Second Epistle of Paul the Apostle to Timothy. Those meetings are unforgettable. He had been reading George M. Trevelyan on the struggle for the freedom of Italy, and the Bible readings were illustrated by spirited battle stories. Once, in a rare moment of sudden uplifting of .spirit, he improvised (adapting Tennyson) to press a point he wished to drive home:

“And so to the work’s
Last limit I came — And can no longer
But die rejoicing — For, thro’ the magic
Of Him the Mighty
Who empowered me in weakness,
There on the border
Of boundless Ocean,
And all but in heaven,
Hovers the Gleam.”

“All but in heaven” — it was true, but he little knew it.

There were some fine walks that May; one specially noted in the journal was up the Droog, a forest-covered mountain near Coonoor. “All went up Droog together; grand views; happy day “; but within a mouth he was back at work, and June and July were, if possible, fuller than ever, for every hour he could get between classes was full of preparation for the campaign which was to be his last, the series of meetings to be held in Masulipatam in August. There was one sunny little visit in July when his old friend, Mr. Carr, spent a day with him, a day packed with all sorts of business; but once there was a break, and he got him to sing Mozart’s ’ 0 send out Thy light and Thy truth, that they may lead me; and bring me unto Thy holy hill and to Thy dwelling.” Those who knew him well will all but see him as he listened, leaning back in his chair, rapt, lost to everything but the beautiful words and music. Such breaks in a day hallow it.

Books and magazines, as of old, still came happily to table, and the talk was always a refreshment to fellow-workers. For his mind was like the house of which the wise king wrote, whose chambers are rilled with all precious and pleasant riches. The last paper brought to table was the Spectator of July 17th. “Isn’t this good?” and he read the poem, quoted in Chapter XXIII., beginning, “When you have started forth towards your vision.”

“I don’t like the words Divine conceit,” he said, alluding to words in the last verse; “but the verses are fine. There is the touch of true poetry in them.” And the last of the many pencilled slips, fragments from the book of the day copied for a fellow- worker, was this from Ecclesiasticus: “He comforteth them that are losing patience.”

The Sunday before he left for the Masulipatam meetings was a day with a glory upon it. In September 1910 he had begun to study the Psalms with the English-speaking members of the Dohnavur family, proposing to take the first book in those Sunday-afternoon studies. There were many interruptions. He went to England; returned, was often absent from home on Sunday; dropped the Bible-readings upon various occasions when the day was too full to spare the restful hour to the workers; but on that last Sunday he came to breakfast with a smile, “Do you know where we are in the Psalms?” and he quoted the verse preceding the doxology in the 41st Psalm which closes the first book: “Thou upholdest me ... and settest me before Thy face for ever.” “Isn’t that a good place to leave off? ‘Before His face for ever.’”

Is the little incident symbolical of the life as God regarded it? Not imperfect, not broken off in the middle (cut ofl in the midst of his work, is the unhappy phrase), but its purpose accomplished, its whole round finished, a perfected thing?

After tea that afternoon he played with the children according to custom, giving two specially beloved little five-year-old girls rides on his foot, and rides round the room on his shoulder. A week later one of the two ran as it were to overtake him, and out-running him in that short race, reached home first.

Next morning, as usual, he read the Psalms for the day at morning tea out in the compound. It was some little time before dawn, and the moon, almost full, gave light enough for the meal; as the sun rose, the two lights met, and in that mysterious blend of silver and golden light he read the beautiful Psalm. “Thus have I looked for Thee in holiness, that I might behold Thy power and glory,” was the last verse talked over.

Then came the quick Good-bye. It was clear sunrise now, and the air felt alive with that lightness which belongs to dawn, as he piled his things into his bandy, thinking of nothing more tragic than how to get them all in and yet leave room enough for himself. It was the kind of Good-bye he would have chosen; no sentiment about it: “God be with you,’5 and he was off, deep in his Expositor before he reached the gate. At the gate stood old Sundarie, faithful servant and friend over whose baptism he had rejoiced on that happy Day of Prayer in Pannaivilai fourteen years ago, “Salaam, Sundarie! I go and come,” he called out to her in the idiom of the country. “Salaam, lya! Go and come,” she returned. Thus was the going.

The first halt was at Shermadevi, eighteen miles distant; here he had a somewhat sorrowful talk with two friends living there about the state of the Church. Then on to Palamcottah, where he was cheered by the joys of comradeship, for the C.M.S. missionaries had gathered to consider with him a certain difficult Church question, and all were unanimous as to what their attitude should be regarding this matter. It was a cheer to him to find himself one of a united band; and he wrote back to Dohnavur in good spirits, “War is declared” — war against what he regarded as compromise and unfaithfulness to Truth. He hated battles, as has been said before; but face to face with one, his courage rose and he never turned back.

“I expect my husband will have told you of the last precious hours we had with him,” writes Mrs. Price, at whose home he stayed during that last brief visit to Palamcottah. “He arrived about 2.30; from 4 o’clock till after 7 he was busy with Mr. Carr, Mr. Ardill, Mr. Breed, and my husband, discussing the Bishop of Bombay’s charge; all this seemed to take his mind off his Masulipatam work, and he did not seem as burdened as usual before a mission. It rained, and we kept Mr. Carr and Mr. Breed to dinner, and all were talking very brightly till we got on the subject of possible war. With this in his mind my husband turned to Mr. Walker, and instead of asking, ‘Will you lead us in prayer? ’ he said, ‘Will you lead us to war? ‘Mr. Walker laughed and said, ‘No, I won’t lead you to war! ’ and then he led us in prayer so beautifully, as he always did, remembering our children. Next morning before leaving he had a very long talk about the future of the Tinnevelly Church.”

In Madras he was met and welcomed by his old friend, Mr. Stewart of the United Free Church Mission, with whom he spent the day, which was full of interviews and talks. “All through he was just his own bright cheerful self,” Mr. Stewart writes, and plans were talked over for another attack upon the forces of darkness in Madras. He suggested autumn as a suitable time.

He had left Dohnavur in perfect health. “I feel better than I have felt for years,” he said one evening shortly before leaving home; “I think that time in Switzerland did me no end of good.” He had not had his pain for months; and with the exception of a bad cold caught at Ooty, had not had a day’s illness, or, as he put it, “missed a meal” since his return from

England. But long, hot railway journeys with broken nights had always tried him greatly; and upon his arrival at Masulipatam, instead of resting as he had half-promised he would, he spent the day in visiting friends there, winning, as one of them afterwards wrote, universal love and loyalty for the cause upon which he was embarked. “Tired,” he wrote in his journal that night.

There was another cause for tiredness: All unprepared, he had heard read out from the newspaper the announcement of the sudden death of his dear friend, Mrs. Hopwood of Ooty. “News overwhelming,” he wrote in his journal. “How she cared for God’s servants!” That night he could not sleep.

Next day he felt ill: the weariness of travel, the heat — it was very hot at the time — the shock, the suffering by sympathy with the bereft daughter at Ooty, the strain of the work, it was too much for him. He who hardly ever telegraphed if he could help it, telegraphed to Dohnavur after hearing of Mrs. Hop wood’s death, and the few words told the keenness of his grief; but he said little to the friends with whom he was staying, and no one knew how deeply, to use his own word, “overwhelming,” the news had been. Another almost sleepless night, and another day of straggle to keep up and do the work for which he was utterly unfit; still another broken night, and Sunday’s duty before him. On Sunday night he wrote in his journal:

“Seven a.m., Holy Communion, and spoke by interpretation, Jer. viii. 22. Long Communion service, not over till nearly 10 o’clock. Very tired. Preparation. 3.45 p.m., pandal [meeting], spoke on Acts viii. 21. 6.30 p.m., English service, spoke on Luke x. 21.”

His text, “He rejoiced in the Holy Spirit,” led him into rich and joyful fields of thought. “It was all scholarly and simple and absolutely sincere, so that no one could move from beginning to end. His tired face was alight with the Master’s joy all the time.... His choice of hymn after the sermon was ‘Love Divine,’” wrote Rev. C. H. C. Cranswick, one of his comrades there.

“Woke up seedy,” this is the last day’s entry. “Monday, August 19th, 7 a.m. Spoke in pandal on Gehazi. Feeling all to pieces. 4 p.m., spoke on Hosea vi. 4, but heavy rain interrupted.”

Interrupted, for his work was finished. Perhaps, as a Tamil brother wrote, “Our Lord thought he had done more than He required.”

But still no thought of it crossed his mind. He wrote to his wife on that Monday evening:

“The first news I got on arrival here, and that through the Madras Mail, was that dear Mrs. Hopwood was dead and buried. I was rather overwhelmed by it, and it is still on my mind. They could not communicate with me, as I was travelling for three days.... How little one thought in saying good-bye in June that it was for the last time on earth; and I feel as though almost our greatest friend were gone.... Mr. and Mrs. Panes are most kind, and the whole missionary party have given me a most cordial reception. But the climate is muggy and most uncomfortable. I find it hard to sleep. It is trying not to feel very fit; however, one goes on day by day. The fourth day is now over. It is a struggle to exist, let alone do active work. The nights are hot and breathless even on the verandah.

“The Pastor interprets for me, a very nice man; I take to him much. I hope his voice will hold out, he is not physically strong.

“August 20. — I have had the doctor, who says I must go to bed. Mrs. Panes is ill with the same thing [severe choleraic attack]. It is all right. A little rest will settle matters.”

There is little more to tell. Swiftly a storm of sorrow gathered and fell upon the missionary house where he had been a welcome guest. After a few hours of intense suffering, Mrs. Panes, his hostess, entered into rest. He meanwhile was not so seriously ill, and the doctor was hopeful, “confident of his recovery,” he wrote. But he was unremitting in his care, and upon Wednesday moved his patient to another missionary home, where the Rev. G. Ennis and his wife nursed him through that Thursday night. Next day two sisters of the C.E.Z. came and cared for him till the last. Nothing that could have been done was left undone.

But it was a fight which could have but one end: “He told me that he had not felt well since coming to Masulipatam,” is a word from the doctor’s report which serves as background for the whole. He had worked on though feeling ill; and there was the cumulative effect of days of strain to contend with, following upon a life lived every day up to its furthest limits of strength.

He said little through those days, sent no messages except one to the people gathered in the pandal, “Prepare to meet thy God.” It is hardly likely he thought the great joy was so near. When that knowledge came, he was too ill to speak; and when asked for a word for Mrs. Walker, could only send a smile. But before he was so weak, and yet it was a moment of extremity of physical distress, he sat up in bed, and, thinking himself alone, said aloud, “I am so happy.” It is the only conscious word that has come back from the land where the Shining Ones commonly walk, because it is upon the borders of heaven. Once, thinking he was teaching his class, he said, “You know we have come to the last chapter.” He had come in truth to the last chapter. Early on Saturday morning, August 24th, he was with Christ.

There will be those who will ask for more. To give it would be to return to earth again. Bather let us use the last page upon the last poem quoted in the last Sunday evening sermon — with never a thought that the next Sunday would find him who had long loved the beautiful, enraptured words, passed in very truth “From House to Home.” The verses, copied in full, came back with his notes:

“Then earth and heaven were rolled up like a scroll;

Time and space, change and death, had passed away; Weight, number, measure, each had reached its whole; The day had come, that day.

“Multitudes — multitudes — stood up in bliss,
Made equal to the angels, glorious, fair;
With harp?, palms, wedding-garments, kiss of peace,
And crowned and haloed hair.

“They sang a song, a new song in the height,

Harping with harps to Him who is strong and true:
They drank new wine, their eyes saw with new light,
Lo, all things were made new.

“Tier beyond tier they rose, and rose, and rose,

So high that it was dreadful, flames with flames:
No man could number them, no tongue disclose
Their secret, sacred names.

“As though one pulse stirred all, one rush of blood

Fed all, one breath swept through them myriad-voiced, They struck their harps, cast down their crowns, they stood, And worshipped and rejoiced.

“Each face looked one way like a moon new-lit,

Each face looked one way towards its Sun of Love;
Drank love, and bathed in love, and mirrored it,
And knew no end thereof.

“Glory touched glory on each blessed head,

Hands locked dear hands never to sunder more,
These were the new-begotten from the dead,
Whom the great birthday bore.

“Heart answered heart, soul answered soul at rest,

Double against each other, filled, sufficed:
All loving, loved of all; but loving best
And best beloved of Christ.”

There let us leave him, and in a true if lesser sense each other, in Heavenly Places, in Christ Jesus.