FIRST EDITION . .

April 1903

Reprinted . . August 1903

„ . . January 1904

„ . . November 1904

„ . . January 1905

\\

To the Memory of My Dear Friend,

ELEANOR CARR, Whose last message to the Band, before her

translation on June 16, 1901, was :

"YOU WILL BE IN THE THICK OF THE FIGHT BY THE TIME THIS

REACHES YOU,

THE BATTLE IS THE LORD'S 1

Note

YTTITHIN a few weeks of the publication of Things as They Are, » ' letters
were received from missionaries working in different parts of India,
confirming its truth. But some in England doubt it. And so it was proposed
that if a fourth edition were called for, a few con firmatory notes, written by
experienced South Indian missionaries, other than those of the district
described, would be helpful. Several such notes are appended. The Indian
view of one of the chief facts set forth in the book is expressed in the note
written by one who, better than any mis sionary, and surely better even than
any onlooker at home, has the right to be heard in this matter— and the
right to be believed.

And now at His feet, who can use the least, we lay this book again ; for "to
the Mighty One," as the Tamil proverb says, "even the blade of grass is a
weapon." May it be used for His Name's sake, to win more prayer for India
—and all dark lands—the prayer that prevails.

AMY WILSON-CARMICHAEL, Dohnavur, Tinnevelly District, S. India.

Confirmatory Notes

From Rev. D. DOWNIE, D.D., American Baptist Mission, Nizam's

Dominions, S. India.

I have felt for many years that we missionaries were far too prone to dwell
on what is called "the bright side of mission work." That it has a bright side
no one can question. That it has a "dark" side some do question ; but I for
one, after thirty years of experience, know it to be just as true as the bright
side is true. I have heard Miss Carmichael's book denounced as
"pessimistic." Just what is meant by that I am not quite sure ; but if it means
that what she has written is untrue, then I am pre pared to say that it is NOT
pessimistic, for there is not a line of it that cannot be duplicated in this
Telugu Mission. That she has painted a dark picture of Hindu life cannot be
denied, but, since it is every word true, I

rejoice that she had the courage to do what was so much needed, and yet
what so many of us shrank from doing, "lest it should injure the cause."

From Rev. T. STEWART, M.A., Secretary, United Free Church Mission,

Madras.

This book, Things as They Are, meets a real need—it depicts a phase of
mission work of which, as a rule, very little is heard. Every missionary can
tell of cases where people have been won for Christ, and mention incidents
of more than passing interest. Miss Carmichael is no exception, and could
tell of not a few trophies of grace. The danger is, lest in de scribing such
incidents the impression should be given that they represent the normal
state of things, the reverse being the case. The people of India are not
thirsting for the Gospel, nor " calling us to deliver their land from error's
chain." The fight is still one in which the " spiritual hosts of wickedness "
have to be overcome before the captive can be set free. The writer has laid
all interested in the extension of the Kingdom of God under a deep debt of
obligation by such a graphic and accurate picture of the difficulties that
have to be faced and the obstacles to be overcome. Counterparts of the
incidents recorded can be found in other parts of South India, and there are
probably few missionaries engaged in vernacular work who could not
illustrate some of them from their own experience.

From Dr. A. W. RUDISILL, Methodist Episcopal Press, Madras.

In Things as They Are are pictured, by camera and pen, some things in
Southern India. The pen, as faithfully as the camera, has told the truth, and
nothing but the truth.

The early chapters bring out with vivid, striking, almost startling reality the
wayside hearers in India. One can almost see the devil plucking away the
words as fast as they fall, and hear the opposers of the Gospel crying out
against it.

Paul did not hesitate to write things as they were of the idolaters to whom
he preached, even though the picture was very dark. It is all the more
needful now, when so many are deceived and being deceived as to the true
nature of idolatry, that people at home who give and pray should be told
plainly that what Paul wrote of idolaters in Rome and Corinth is still true of
idolaters in India.

Miss Carmichael has given only glances and glimpses, not full insights. Let
those who think the picture she has drawn is too dark know that, if the
whole truth were told, an evil spirit only could produce the pictures, and
hell itself would be the only fit place in which to publish them, because in
Christian lands eyes have not seen and ears have not heard of such things.

From Rev. C. W. CLAEKE, M.A., Principal, Noble College, Masulipatam.

I have worked as Principal of a College for over seventeen years amongst

the caste people of South India, and I entirely endorse Miss Carmichael's
views as to the actual risks run by students and others desirous of break ing
caste and being baptized. While the teaching of the Bible and English
education generally have removed a great deal of prejudice, and greatly
raised the ethical standard amongst a number of those who come under such
influences, Hinduism as held and practised by the vast majority of caste
people remains essentially unchanged. To break caste is held to be the
greatest evil a person can inflict upon himself and his community, therefore
practically any means may be resorted to to prevent such a calamity. It is a
commonplace amongst missionaries, that when a caste man or woman
shows any serious intention of being baptized,—in any case, where caste
feeling is not modified by special circumstances,— the most stringent
precautions must be taken to protect the inquirer from the schemes of his
caste brethren.

From KRISHNA RAN, Esq., B.A., Editor, Christian Patriot, Madras

(himself a convert).

The question is often asked whether a high caste Hindu convert can live
with his own people after his baptism. It is only those who know nothing of
the conditions of life in India, and of the power of caste as it exists in this
country, who raise the question.

The convert has to be prepared for the loss of parents and their tender
affection ; of brothers and sisters, relatives and friends ; of wife and chil
dren, if he has any ; of his birthright, social position, means of livelihood,
reputation, and all the power which hides behind the magic word "caste " ;
of all that he is taught from his childhood to hold as sacred.

From Miss READE, South Arcot, South India.

I am not surprised that anyone unacquainted with mission work in India

should be staggered at the facts narrated in Things as They Are. But as one
who has worked for nearly thirty years in the heart of heathenism, away
from the haunts of civilisation, I can bear testimony that the reality of things
far exceeds anything that it would be possible to put into print. One's tongue
falters to tell of what is custom in this country. I know a case where a young
girl of ten was placed in such a position that her choice lay between two
sinful courses of life, no right way being open to her. I think one of the most
distressing things we
have to meet in caste work in this country is the fact that often as soon as a
soul begins to show interest in Christ he or she disappears, and one either
hears next that he is dead, or can get no reliable information at all.

Extract from a letter to Miss CAKMICHAEL on Things as They Are. (The

writer is a veteran American missionary.)

1 could duplicate nearly every incident in the book ; so I know it is a true

picture, not alone because I believe your word, but because my expe rience
has been so similar to yours. Many times, while reading it, the memory of
the old heart-break has been so vivid that I have had to lay the book down
and look round the familiar room in order to convince myself that it was
you, and not I, who was agonising over one of the King's own children who
was being crowded back into darkness and hurled down to destruction,
because Satan's wrath is great as he realises that his time is short.

I wish the book might be read by all the Christians in the homeland.

From PANDITA RAMABAI.

"While I was reading Things as They Are, I fancied I was living my old life
among Hindus over again. I can honestly corroborate everything said in
regard to the religious and social life of the Hindus. I came from that part of
the country, and I am very glad that the book has succeeded in bringing the
truth to light.

From Miss L. TROTTER.

There is hardly a phase of all the heart-suffering retold that we have not
known : page after page might have been written out here, word for word.

Preface

THE writer of these thrilling chapters is a Keswick missionary, well known

to many friends as the adopted daughter of Mr. Eobert Wilson, the much-
respected chairman of the Keswick Convention. She worked for a time with
the Eev. Barclay Buxton in Japan; and for the last few years she has been
with the Eev. T. Walker (also a C.M.S. Missionary) in Tinnevelly, and is on
the staff of the Church of England Zenana Society.

I do not think the realities of Hindu life have ever been portrayed with
greater vividness than in this book; and I know that the authoress's accuracy
can be fully relied upon. The picture is drawn without prejudice, with all
sympathy, with full recognition of what is good, and yet with an
unswerving determination to tell the truth and let the facts be known,—that
is, so far as she dares to tell them. What she says is the truth, and nothing
but the truth; but it is not the whole truth— that she could not tell If she
wrote it, it could not be printed. If it were printed, it could not be read. But
if we read between the lines, we do just catch glimpses of what she calls "
the Actual."

It is evident that the authoress deeply felt the re sponsibility of writing such
a book; and I too feel the

responsibility of recommending it. I do so with the prayer of my heart that

God will use it to move many. It is not a book to be read with a lazy kind of
senti mental "interest." It is a book to send the reader to his knees—still
more to her knees.

Most of the chapters are concerned with the lives of Heathen men and
women and children surrounded by the tremendous bars and gates of the
Caste system. But one chapter, and not the least important one, tells of
native Christians. It has long been one of my own objects to correct the
curious general impression among people at home that native Christians, as
a body, are— not indeed perfect,—no one thinks that, but—earnest and
consistent followers of Christ. Narratives, true narratives, of true converts
are read, and these are supposed to be specimens of the whole body. But (1)
where there have been " mass movements" towards Christianity, where
whole villages have put themselves under Christian instruction, mixed
motives are certain; (2) where there have been two or three generations of
Christians it is unreasonable to expect the descendants of men who may
have been themselves most true con verts to be necessarily like them.
Hereditary Chris tianity in India is much like hereditary Christianity at
home. The Church in Tinnevelly, of which this book incidentally tells a
little, is marked by both these features. Whole families or even villages
have " come over " at times; and the large majority of the Christians were
(so to speak) born Christians, and were baptized in infancy. This is not in
itself a result to be despised. " Christian England," unchristian as a great
part of its population really is, is better than Heathen India; and in the
chapter now referred to, Miss Carmichael herself notices the difference
between a Hindu and a Christian

village. But the more widely Christianity spreads, the more will there
assuredly be of mere nominal profession.

Is the incorrect impression I allude to caused by missionaries dwelling

mostly on the brighter side of their work ? Here and there in the book there
is just a suggestion that they are wrong in doing so. But how can they help
it ? What does a clergyman or an evan gelist in England tell of ? Does he
tell of his many daily disappointments, or of his occasional encouraging
cases ? The latter are the events of his life, and he naturally tells of them.
The former he comprises in some general statement. How can he do
otherwise ? And what can the modern missionary do in the short reports he
is able to write ? Fifty years ago missionary journals of im mense length
came home, and were duly published; and then the details of Hindu idolatry
and cruelty and impurity, and the tremendous obstacles to the Gospel, were
better known by the few regular readers. Much that Miss Carmichael tells
was then told over and over again, though not perhaps with a skilful pen
like hers. But the work has so greatly developed in each mission, and the
missions are so far more numerous and extended, that neither can
missionaries now write as their prede cessors did, nor, if they did, could all
the missionary periodicals together find space for their journals.

The fault of incorrect impressions lies mainly in the want of knowledge and
want of thought of home speakers and preachers. I remember, thirty years
ago, an eloquent Bishop in Exeter Hall triumphantly flinging in the face of
critics of missions the question," Is Tinne-velly a fiction ?"—as if
Tinnevelly had become a Christian country, which apparently some people
still suppose it to be, notwithstanding the warning words to the contrary
which the C.M.S. publications have again and again

uttered. Even now, there are in Tinnevelly about twenty heathen to every
one Christian; and of what sort the twenty are this book tells. TinneveUy is
indeed "no fiction," but in a very different sense from that of the good
Bishop's speech. Again, a few months ago, I heard a preacher, not very
favourable to the C.M.S., say that the C.M.S., despite its shortcomings,
deserved well of the Church because it had " converted a nation " in
Uganda! —as if the nation comprised only 30,000 souls. Some day the "
Actual" of Uganda will be better understood, and the inevitable
shortcomings of even its Christian population realised, and then we shall be
told that we deceived the public—although we have warned them over and
over again.

But the larger part of this book is a revelation—so far as is possible—of the
"Actual" of Hinduism and Caste. God grant that its terrible facts and its
burning words may sink into the hearts of its readers! Per haps, when they
have read it, they will at last agree that we have used no sensational and
exaggerated language when we have said that the Church is only playing at
missions ! Service, and self-denial, and prayer, must be on a different scale
indeed if we are ever—I do not say to convert the world—but even to
evangelise it.

EUGENE STOCK,
AN OLD BRAHMAN Frontispiece

BANDY CROSSING A POOL . . . Facing page 5

A YOUNG TAMIL GIRL .... 11

A POTTER AT HIS WHEEL .... 24

A DEVOTEE OF SIVA .... 26

THE RED LAKE VILLAGE ... 28

DEATH SCENE .... 51

WAILING "53

THREE CEREMONIAL MOURNERS . . . „ 54

CEREMONIAL BATHING .... 56

AN ANCIENT PARIAH .... 58

VELLALA WIDOW RR

• • >»

TYPICAL OLD WIDOW . 73

„ to

HINDU SCHOOLMASTER AND BOYS . . 87

SHANAR MOTHER AND CHILD ... 91

COOKING IN A SHANAR HOUSE ... 93

FAIRLY TYPICAL VELLALAR . . . . 105

CHRISTIAN WIDOW .... 112

BRAHMAN GIRL . . . . . u n 8 THREE TYPES OF BRAHMANHOOD—

K EEN ,,132

THOUGHTFUL ..... 134

D ULL ,,138

AN OLD WOMAN AND BABY . . . . „ 143

BRAHMAN WIDOW . . . . . „ 145

BRAHMAN STREET . . . . . „ 147

SHEPHERD-CASTE HOUSE . . . . 151

VELLALA CHILD . . . . . „ 161

" UGLY DUCKLING M . . . . „ 178

DESIGNS IN CHALK . . . . . „ 194

HANDMARKS ON THE DOOR . . . . „ 202

A "HOLY BRAHMAN" ...... 221

WOMAN AND WATER-VESSEL . . . . „ 262

xiv

Glossary

A.GNI . . God of Fire.

A.IYO . . . Alas ! " Ai" runs together almost like " eye."

The word is repeated rapidly, Eye-eye Yo

Eye-eye Yo! AMMA . . Mother! (vocative case). "A" is pronounced

like " u " in " up." The word is also used by

all women in speaking to each other, and by

girls in speaking to women. AMMAL . . Lady or woman. "A" is

pronounced like "u"

in " up."

ANNA . . One penny. ARECA NUT . Nut " eaten " by the Indians with
betel leaf or

lime.

BETEL . . Leaf of a creeper. BANDY . . A bullock cart. BRAHMA . . The

first person in the Hindu Triad, regarded as

the Creator.

BRAHMAN . . The highest of the Hindu Castes. BRAMO SAMAJ . A sect

of Hindu reformers who honour Christ as

a man, but reject Him as a Saviour.

GHEE ! . . Exclamation of derision, disgust, or remonstrance.

COMPOUND . A piece of ground surrounding a house. COOLIE . . A paid
labourer. "Coolie" is the Tamil word

for pay. CURRY . . A preparation of meat or vegetables made by

grinding various condiments and mixing them

together.

GLOSSARY

FAK.EER . . Religious beggar.

GURU . . A religious teacher.

IYER . . Title given to Brahmans and Gurus.

PADDY . . Rice in the husk. Paddy fields = rice fields.

PARIAH . . A depressed class.

PUJAH . . Worship. " D " is pronounced like " oo. M

RUPEE . . Value Is. 4d.

SAIVITE . . A worshipper of Siva.

SALAAM . . A salutation meaning " peace," used in greeting

and farewell, and often in the sense of " thank

you." The right hand is raised to the forehead

as one says salaam.

SEELEY . . Tamil woman's dress of silk, muslin, or cotton. SHAXAR . . A

Caste of Palmyra-palm climbers. SIVA . . . The third person in the Hindu
Triad. The

Destroyer.

TOM-TOM . . An Indian drum. VAISHNAVITE . A worshipper of Vishnu.

VELLALAR . A Caste of landowners and cultivators. VISHNU . . The
second person in the Hindu Triad. The

Preserver.

THINGS AS THEY ARE

MISSION WORK IN SOUTHERN INDIA

CHAPTER I About the Book

"We can do nothing against the Truth, but for the Truth."
St. Paul, Asia and Europe.

"There is too little desire to know what is the actual state of mission work in
India, and a regard to the showy and attractive rather than to the solid and
practical. I will try, however, to avoid being carried away by the tide, and to
set myself the task of giving as plain and unvarnished a statement as
possible of what is actually being done or not done in the great field of our
foreign labour."

Bishop French, India and Arabia.

nnHEEE friends sat Native fashion on the floor of an JL Indian verandah.

Two of the three had come out to India for a few months to see the fight as
it is. And they saw it. They now proposed that the third should gather some
letters written from the hot heart of things, and make them into a book, to
the intent that others should see exactly what they had seen. The third was
not sure. The world has many books. Does it want another, and especially
another of the kind

this one would be ? Brain and time are needed for all that writing a book
means. The third has not much of either. But the two undertook to do all the
most burdensome part of the business. " Give us the letters, we will make
the book," and they urged reasons which ended in—this.

This, the book, has tried to tell the Truth. That is all it has to say about
itself. The quotations which head the chapters, and which are meant to be
read, not skipped, are more worthful than anything else in it. They are
chosen from the writings of missionaries, who saw the Truth and who told
it.

The story covers about two years. We had come from the eastern side of
this South Indian district, to work for awhile in the south of the South, the
farthest southern outpost of the C.M.S. in India. Chapter II. plunges into the
middle of the beginning. The Band Sisters are the members of a small
Women's Itinerating Band; the girls mentioned by translated names are the
young convert-girls who are with us; the Iyer is Kev. T. Walker; the Arnmal
is Mrs. Walker; the Missie Ammal explains itself.
The Picture-catching Missie Ammal is the friend who proposed the book's
making. This is her Tamil name, given because it describes her as she struck
the Tamil mind. The pictures she caught were not easy to catch. Reserved
and conservative India considered the camera intrusive, and we were often
foiled in getting what we most desired. Even where we were allowed to
catch our object peaceably, it was a case of working under difficulties
which would have daunted a less ardent

picture-catcher. Wherever the camera was set up, there swarms of children
sprang into being, burrowed in and out like rabbits, and scuttled about over
everything, to the confusion of the poor artist, who had to fix focus and
look after the safety of her camera legs at the same time, while the second
Missie Annual held an umbrella over her head, and the third exhorted the
picture, which speedily got restive, to sit still. So much for the mere
mechanical.

Finally, I should explain the book's character. " Tell about things as they
actually are "; so said the Two with emphasis. I tried, but the Actual eluded
me. It was as if one painted smoke, and then, pointing to the feeble blur,
said, " Look at the battle! ' the smoking hell of battle!' There is the smoke!"
The Poet's thought was not this, I know, when she coined that suggestive
phrase, " The Dust of the Actual," but it has been the predominating thought
in my mind, for it holds that which defines the scope and expresses the
purpose of the book, and I use it as the title of one of the chapters. It does
not show the Actual. Principalities, Powers, Eulers of the Darkness,
Potentialities unknown and uniinagined, gathered up into one stupendous
Force—we have never seen it. How can we describe it ? What we have seen
and tried to describe is only an indication of Something undescribed, and is
as nothing in comparison with it—as Dust in comparison with the Actual.
The book's scope, then, is bounded by this: it only torches the Dust; but its
purpose goes deeper, stretches wider, has to do with the Actual and our
relation to it.

But in touching the Dust we touch the outworkings

of an Energy so awful in operation that descriptive chapters are awful too.

And such chapters are best read alone in some quiet place with God. For the
book is a battle-book, written from a battle-field where the fighting is not
pretty play but stern reality; and almost every page looks straight from the
place where Charles Kingsley stood when he wrote—

" God ! fight we not within a cursed world, Whose very air teems thick with
leagued fiends-Each word we speak has infinite effects— Each soul we
pass must go to heaven or hell— And tliis our one chance through eternity
To drop and die, like dead leaves in the brake!

Be earnest, earnest, earnest; mad if thou wilt : Do what thou dost as if the
stake were heaven, And that thy last deed ere the judgment day."
CHAPTER II Three Afternoons off the Track

"They are led captive by Satan at his will in the most quiescent manner."
Dauid Brainerd, North America.

" Oh that the Lord would pour out upon them a spirit of deep concern for
their souls! " Henry Martyn, India.

"I ask you earnestly to pray that the Gospel may take saving and working 1
effect." James Gilmour, Mongolia.
THE Western Ghauts sweep down to the sea in curves. Dohnavur is in one
of the last of these curves. There are no proper roads running under the
mountains, only rough country ruts crossing the plain. We were rolling
along one of these at the rate of two miles an hour.

Crash and tumble went the bandy, a springless con struction with a mat
roof; bang over stones and slabs of rock, down on one side, up on the other;
then both wheels were sharp aslant. But this is usual. On that particular First
Afternoon the water was out, which is the South Indian way of saying that
the tanks, great lake-like reservoirs, have overflowed and flooded the land.
Once we went smoothly down a bank and into a shallow swollen pool, and
the water swished in at the lower end and floated our books out quietly. So
we had to stop, and fish them up; and then, huddled

6 THREE AFTERNOONS OFF THE TRACK

close at the upper end we sat, somewhat damp, but happy.

At last we got to our destination, reached through a lane which then was a
stream with quite a swift little current of its own. Cupid's Lake the place is
called. We thought the name appropriate. Cupid's Lake is peopled by Castes
of various persuasions; we made for the Eobber quarter first. The Eobber
Caste is honourable here; it furnishes our watchmen and the coolies who
carry our money. There is good stuff in the Eobber Caste people: a valiant
people are they, and though they were not prepared for the thing that was
coming towards them, they met it with fortitude. A little girl saw it first.
One glance at my hat through the end of the cart, and she flew to spread the
news—

" Oh! everyone come running and see! A great white man is here ! Oh what
an appalling spectacle ! A great white man !"

Then there was a general rush; children seemed to spring from the ground,
all eyes and tongues and astonish ment. " She isn't a man ! " " He is !" " She
isn't! " " He has got a man's turban ! " " But look at her seeley ! " (Tamil
dress.) A woman, and white—it staggered them till the assurances of the
Band Sisters prevailed ; and they let me into a neighbouring house, out of
the sun which made that hat a necessity. Once it was off they lost all fear,
and crowded round in the friendliest fashion; but later, one of the Band was
amused by hearing me de scribed in full: " Not a man, though great and
white, and wearing a white man's turban, too! Was it not an appalling
spectacle ?" And the old body who was

addressed held up both her hands amazed, and hastened off to investigate.

An English magazine told us lately exactly what these poor women think
when they see, for the first time in their lives, the lady missionary. They
greatly admire he_r,.the article said, and consider her fairer and more divine
than anything ever imagined before—which is very nice indeed to read; but
here what they say is \ this: "Was it not an appalling spectacle? A great
white man!"

And now that the spectacle was safe in the house, the instincts of hospitality
urged clean mats and betel. Betel (pronounced beetle) is the leaf of a
climbing plant, into which they roll a morsel of areca nut and lime. The
whole is made up into a parcel and munched, but not swallowed. This does
not sound elegant; neither is the thing. It is one of the minor trials of life to
have to sit through the process.

We took a leaf or two, but explained that it was not our custom to eat it; and
then we answered questions straight off for ten minutes. " What is your
Caste ?" " Ghee!" in a tone of remonstrance, " don't you see she is white ?
Married or widow ? Why no jewels ? What relations ? Where are they all ?
Why have you left them and come here ? Whatever can be your business
here ? What does the Government give you for coining here ?" These last
questions gave us the chance we were watching for, and we began to
explain.

Now what do these people do when, for the first time, they hear the Good
Tidings ? They simply stare.

In that house that day there was an old woman who

8 THREE AFTERNOONS OFF THE TRACK

seemed to understand a little what it was all about. She had probably heard
before. But nobody else under stood in the least; they did not understand
enough to make remarks. They sat round us on the floor and ate betel, as
everybody does here in all leisure moments, and they stared.

The one old woman who seemed to understand followed us out of the
house, and remarked that it was a good religion but a mistaken one, as it
advocated, or resulted in, the destruction of Caste.

In the next house we found several girls, and tried to persuade the mothers
to let them learn to read. If a girl is learning regularly it gives one a sort of
right of entrance to the house. One's going there is not so much observed
and one gets good chances, but to all our per suasions they only said it was
not their custom to allow their girls to learn. Had they to do Government
work ? Learning was for men who wanted to do Government work. We
explained a little, and mentioned the many villages where girls are learning
to read. They thought it a wholly ridiculous idea. Then we told them as
much as we could in an hour about the great love of Jesus Christ.

I was in the middle of it, and thinking only of it and their souls, when an old
lady with fluffy white hair leaned forward and gazed at me with a beautiful,
earnest gaze. She did not speak; she just listened and gazed, " drinking it all
in." And then she raised a skeleton claw, and grabbed her hair, and pointed
to mine. " Are you a widow too," she asked, " that you have no oil on yours
?" After a few such experiences that beautiful

gaze loses its charrn. It really means nothing more nor less than the sweet
expression sometimes observed in the eyes of a sorrowful animal.

But her question had set the ball rolling again. "Oil! no oil! Can't you even
afford a halfpenny a month to buy good oil ? It isn't your custom ? Why not
? Don't any white Animals ever use oil ? What sort of oil do the girls use ?
Do you never use castor oil for the hair ? Oh, castor oil is excellent!" And
they went into many details. The first thing they do when a baby is born is
to swing it head downwards, holding its feet, and advise it not to sin; and
the second thing is to feed it with castor oil, and put castor oil in its eyes. "
Do we do none of these things ?" We sang to them. They always like that,
and sometimes it touches them: but the Tamils are not easily touched, and
could never be described as unduly emotional.

All through there were constant and various interrup tions. Two bulls
sauntered in through the open door, and established themselves in their
accustomed places; then a cow followed, and somebody went off to tie the
animals up. Children came in and wanted attention, babies made their usual
noises. We rarely had five con secutive quiet minutes.

When they seemed to be getting tired of us, we said the time was passing, to
which they agreed, and, with a word about hoping to come again, to which
they answered cordially, " Oh yes ! Come to-morrow ! " we went out into
the street, and finished up in the open air. There is a tree at one end of the
village; we stood under it and sang a chorus and taught the

10 THREE AFTERNOONS OFF THE TRACK

children who had followed us from house to house to sing it, and this
attracted some passing grown-ups, who listened while we witnessed unto
Jesus, Who had saved us and given us His joy. Nothing tells more than just
this simple witness. To hear one of their own people saying, with evident
sincerity, " One thing I know, that whereas I was blind now I see," makes
them look at each other and nod their heads sympathetically. This is
something that appeals, something they can appreciate; many a time it
arrests attention when nothing else would.

We were thoroughly tired by this time, and could neither talk nor sing any
more. The crowd melted—all but the children, who never melt—one by one
going their respective ways, having heard, some of them, for the first time.
What difference will it make in their lives ? Did they understand it ? None
of them seemed specially interested, none of them said anything interest
ing. The last question I heard was about soap—" What sort of soap do you
use to make your skin white ? " Most of them would far prefer to be told
that secret than how to get a white heart.

Afternoon Number Two found us in the Village of the Temple, a tumble-

down little place, but a very citadel of pride and the arrogance of ignorance.
We did not know that at first, of course, but we very soon found it out.
There was the usual skirmish at the sight of a live white woman; no one
there had seen such a curiosity. But even curiosity could not draw the
Brahmans. They live in a single straggling street, and would not let us in. "
Go!" said a fat old Brahman

We were n«»t able to grt the photo of that six-rial girl in the blue seeley, hut
tins girl is so like hrr that I put hrr here. She is a Vrllalar. Thr jewels worn
hy a girl of this class run into thousands of rupees. They are

part of the ordinary dress. know we were

This girl did not coinng, she was "caught"' just as she was. She had a ball of
pink oleander' flowers in her hands and white flowers in her hair.

disdainfully ; " no white man has ever trodden our street, and no white
Woman shall. As for that low-caste child with you "—Victory looked up in
her gentle way, and he varied it to—" that child who eats with those low-
caste people—she shall not speak to one of our women. Go by the way you
have come !"

This was not encouraging. We salaamed and departed, and went to our
bandy left outside (" low-caste bandies " are not allowed to drive down
Brahman streets), and asked our Master to open another door. While we
were waiting, a tall, fine-looking Hindu came and said, " Will you come to
my house ? I will show you the way." So we went.

He led us to the Vellala quarter next to the Brah-mans, and we found his
house was the great house of the place. The outer door opened into a large
square inner courtyard. A wide verandah, supported by pillars quaintly
carved, ran round it. The women's rooms, low and windowless, opened on
either side; these are the rooms we rejoice to get into, and now we were led
right in.

But first I had to talk to the men. They were regular Caste Hindus;
courteous—for they have had no cause to fear the power of the Gospel—yet
keen and argumentative. One of them had evidently read a good deal. He
quoted from their classics; knew all about Mrs. Besant and the latest pervert
to her views; and was up in the bewildering tangle of thought known as
Hindu Philosophy. " Fog-wreaths of doubt, in blinding eddies drifted "—
that is what it really is, but it is very difficult to prove it so.

12 THREE AFTERNOONS OFF THE TRACK

* One truth struck hirn especially—Christianity is the

only religion which provides a way by which there is deliverance from sin
now. There is a certain system of philosophy which professes to provide
deliverance in the future, when the soul, having passed through the first
three stages of bliss, loses its identity and becomes absorbed in God; but
there is no way by which deliver ance can be obtained here and now. " Sin
shall not have dominion over you"—there is no such line as this in all the
million stanzas of the Hindu. Classics, He admitted this freely, admitted that
this one tenet marked out Christianity as a unique religion; but he did not go
on further; he showed no desire to prove the truth of it.

After this they let us go to the women, who had all this time been watching
us, and discussing us with interest.

Once safely into their inner room, we sat down on the floor in the midst of
them, and began to make friends. There was a grandmother who had heard
that white people were not white all over, but piebald, so to speak; might
she examine me ? There were several matronly women who wanted to
know what arrangements English parents made concerning their daughters'
marriages. There were the usual widows of a large Indian house hold—one
always looks at them with a special longing; and there was a dear young
girl, in a soft blue seeley (Tamil dress), her ears clustered about with pearls,
and her neck laden with five or six necklets worth some hundreds of rupees.
She was going to be married; and beyond the usual gentle courtesy of a
well-brought-

up Tamil girl, showed no interest in us. Almost all the women had questions
to ask. On the track it is different; they have already satisfied their lawful
curiosity con cerning Missie Animals; but here they have not had the
chance; and if we ignore their desires, we defeat our own. They may seem
to listen, but they are really occupied in wondering about us. We got them
to listen finally, and left them, cheered by warm invitations to return.

Then we thought of the poor proud Brahmans, and hoping that, perhaps, in
the interval they had inquired about us, and would let us in, we went to
them again. We could see the fair faces and slender forms of the younger
Brahman women standing ir« the shadow behind their verandah pillars, and
some of them looked as if they would like to let us in, but the street had not
relented; and a Brahman street is like a house—you cannot go in unless you
are allowed.

There was one kind-faced, courtly old man, and he seemed to sympathise
with us, for he left the mocking group of men, and came to see us off; and
then, as if to divert us from the greater topic, he pointed to one of the
mountains, a spur of the God King's mountain, famous in all South India,
and volunteered to tell me its story. We were glad to make friends with him
even over so small a thing as a mountain; but he would speak of nothing
else, and when he left us we felt baffled and sorry, and tired with the
tiredness that comes when you cannot give your message; and we sat down
on a rock outside the Brahman street, to wait till the Band Sisters gathered
for the homeward walk.

14 THREE AFTERNOONS OFF THE TRACK

It was sunset time, and the sky was overcast by dull grey clouds; but just
over the Brahman quarter there was a rift in the grey, and the pent-up gold
shone through. It seemed as if God were pouring out His beauty upon those
Brahmans, trying to make them look up, and they would not. One by one
we saw them go to their different courtyards, where the golden glow could
not reach them, and we heard them shut their great heavy doors, as if they
were shutting Him out.

In there it was dark; out here, out with God, it was light. The after-glow,
that loveliest glow of the East, was shining through the rent of the clouds,
and the red-tiled roofs and the scarlet flowers of the Flame of the Forest,
and every tint and colour which would respond in any way, were aglow
with the beauty of it. The Brahman quarter was set in the deep green of
shadowy trees; just behind it the mountains rose outlined in mist, and out of
the mist a waterfall gleamed white against blue.

We spent Afternoon Number Three in the Village of the Warrior, a lonely

little place, left all by itself on a great rough moorland—if you can call a
patch of bare land "moor" which is destitute of heather, and grows palms
and scrub in clumps instead. It took us rather a long time to get to it, over
very broken ground on a very hot day; but when we did get there we found
such a good opening that we forgot about our feelings, and entered in rejoic
ing. There were some little children playing at the entrance to the village,
and they led us straight to their own house, making friends in the most
charming way as
they trotted along beside us. They told us their family history, and we told
them as much of ours as was neces sary, and they introduced us to their
mothers as old acquaintances. The mothers were indulgent, and let us have
a room all to ourselves in the inner courtyard, where a dozen or more
children gathered and listened with re freshing zest. They understood, dear
little things, though so often their elders did not.

Then the mothers got interested, and sat about the door. The girls were with
me. (We usually divide into two parties; the elder and more experienced
Sisters go off in one direction, and the young convert-girls come with me.)
And before long, Jewel of Victory was telling out of a full heart all about
the great things God had done for her. She has a very sweet way with the
women, and they listened fascinated. Then the others spoke, and still those
women listened. They were more intelligent than our audience of yesterday;
and though they did not follow nearly all, they listened splendidly to the
story-part of our message. In the meaning, as is often the case, their interest
was simply nil.

But we were sorry, and I think so were they, when a commotion outside
disturbed us, and we were sorrier when we knew the cause. The village
postman, who only visits these out-of-the-way places once a week, had
appeared with a letter for the head of the house. One of the men folk had
read it. It told of the death of the son in foreign parts—Madras, I think—
and the poor old mother's one desire was to see us out of the room. She had
not liked to turn us out; but, as the news spread, more women gathered
clamouring round the door; and the

moment we left the room empty, in they rushed, with the mother and the
women who had listened to us, and flinging themselves on the floor, cried
the Tamil cry of sorrow, full of a pathos of its own i * Ai-yo! Ai-yo! Ai-Ai-
yo!"

It was sad to leave them crying so, but at that moment we were certainly
better away. The children came with us to the well outside the village, and
we sat on its wall and went on with our talk. They would hardly let us go,
and begged us to come back and " teach them every day," not the Gospel—
do not imagine their little hearts craved for that—but reading and writing
and sums ! As we drove off some of the villagers smiled and salaamed, and
the little children's last words followed us as far as we could hear them: "
Come back soon !"

Sometimes, as now, when we come to a new place, we dream a dream,

dream that perhaps at last it may be possible to win souls peacefully.
Perhaps these courteous, kindly people will welcome the message we bring
them when they understand it better. Perhaps homes need not be broken up,
perhaps whole families will believe, or individual members believing may
still live in their own homes and witness there. Perhaps—perhaps— ! And
snatches of verse float through our dream—

"Oh, might some sweet song Thy lips have taught us,

Some glad song, and sweet,

Guide amidst the mist, and through the darkness, Lost ones to Thy feet!"

It sounds so beautiful, so easy, singing souls to Jesus. And we dream our

dream.

Till suddenly and with violence we are awakened.

Someone—a mere girl, or a lad, or even a little child— has believed, has
confessed, wants to be a Christian. And the whole Caste is roused, and the
whole countryside joins with the Caste; and the people we almost thought
loved us, hate us. And till we go to the next new place we never dream that
dream again.

CHAPTER III Humdrum

"A missionary's life is more ordinary than is supposed. Plod rather than
cleverness is often the best missionary equipment." Reu. J. Hey wood
Horsburgh, China.

11 Truly to understand the facts of work for Christ in any land, we must
strip it of all romance, and of everything which is unreal." Af/ss S. S.
Hewlett, India.
rriHERE have been times of late when I have had to hold on to one text
with all my might : " It is required in stewards that a man be found faithful."
Praise God, it does not say " successful."

One evening things came to a climax. We all spent a whole afternoon

without getting one good listener. We separated as usual, going two and two
to the different quarters of a big sleepy straggly village. Life and I went to
the potters. Life spoke most earnestly and well to an uninterested group of
women. After she had finished one of them pointed to my hat (the only
foreign thing about me which was visible —oh that I could dispense with
it!). "What is that?" she said. Not one bit did they care to hear. One by one
they went back to their work, and we were left alone.

We went to another quarter. It was just the same. At a rest-house by the way
I noticed a Brahman, and went to see if he would listen. He would if I
would

talk " about politics or education, but not if it was about religion." However,
I did get a chance of pleading with him to consider the question of his soul's
salvation, and he took a book and said he would read it at his leisure. And
then he asked me how many persons I had suc ceeded in joining to my Way
since I began to try. It was exactly the question, only asked in another form,
which the devil had been pressing on me all the after noon. After this he
told me politely that we were knocking our heads against a rock; we might
smash our heads, but we never would affect the rock.

" Eock ! Kock ! when wilt thou open ? " It is an old cry ; I cried it afresh.
But the Brahman only smiled, and then with a gesture expressing at once
his sense of his own condescension in speaking with me, and his utter
contempt for the faith I held, motioned to me to go.

Outside in the road a number of Hindus were stand ing; some of them were
his retainers and friends. I heard them say, as I passed through their midst, "
Who will fall into the pit of the Christian Way!" And they laughed, and the
Brahman laughed. "As the filth of the world, the offscouring of all things,
unto this day."
We walked along the road bordered with beautiful banyan trees. We sat
down under their shade, and waited for what would come. Some little
children followed us, but before we could get a single idea clearly into their
heads a man came and chased them away. " It is getting dark," he said. "
They are only little green things; they must not be out late." It was broad
day light then, and would be for another hour. Some coolies

passing that way stopped to look at us ; but before tbey had time to get
interested they too remarked that dark ness was coming, and they must be
off, and off they went.

We were left alone after that. Within five minutes' walk were at least five
hundred souls, redeemed, but they don't know it ; redeemed, but they don't
want to know it. Sometimes they seem to want to know, but however
tenderly you tell it, the keen Hindu mind soon perceives the drift of it all —
Redemption must mean loss of Caste. One day last week I was visiting in
the

of the K<-d Lake. Sl;inding in one of its court yards you see the Western
Ghauts rising straight up behind. The Eed Lake lies at the mountain foot ;
we call it Derwentwater, but there are palms and bamboos, and there is no
Friar's Crag.

That afternoon I was bound for a house in the centre of the village, when an
old lady called me to come to her house, and I followed her gladly. There
were six or eight women all more or less willing to listen ; among them
were two who were very old. Old people in India are usually too attached to
their own faith, or too utterly stupid and dull, to care to hear about another ;
but this old lady had been stirred to something almost like active thought by
the recent death of a relative, and she felt that she needed something more
than she had to make her ready for death. She was apparently devout. Ashes
were marked on her brow and arms, and she wore a very large rosary. It is
worn to accumulate merit. I did not refer to it as I talked, but in some dim
way she seemed to feel it did not fit with what I was saying, for,

with trembling hands, she took it off and threw it to a child. I hoped this
meant something definite, and tried to lead her to Jesus. But as soon as she
understood Who He was, she drew back. " I cannot be a disciple of your
Guru, here," she said; " would my relations bear such defilement ?" Being a
Christian really meant sooner or later leaving her home and all her people
for ever. Can you wonder an old lady of perhaps seventy-five stopped at
that ?

The little children in the Village of the Warrior are not allowed to learn. The
men of the place have con sulted and come to the decision. The chill of it
has struck the little ones, and they do not care to run the chance of the
scolding they would receive if they showed too much interest in us. The
mothers are as friendly as ever, but indifferent. " We hear this is a religion
which spoils our Caste," they say, and that is the end of it. In the great house
of the Temple Village they listened well for some weeks. Then, as it
gradually opened to them that there is no Caste whatever in Christianity,
their interest died.

How much one would like to tell a different story! But a made-up story is
one thing and a story of facts is another. So far we have only found two
genuine earnest souls here. But if those two go on—! Praise God for the joy
on before!

We went again to the potters' village and sat on the narrow verandah and
talked to a girl as she patted the pots into shape underneath where the wheel
had left an open place. She listened for awhile; then she said, " If I come to
your Way will you give me a new seeley

and good curry every day?" And back again we went to the very beginning
of things, while the old grand father spinning his wheel chuckled at us for
our folly in wasting our time over potters. "As if we would ever turn to your
religion ! " he said. " Have you ever heard of a potter who changed his
Caste ?"

Caste and religion ! They are so mixed up that we do not know how to
unmix them. His Caste to the potter meant his trade, the trade of his clan for
genera tions ; it meant all the observances bound up with it; it meant, in
short, his life. It would never strike him that he could be a Christian and a
potter at the same time, and very probably he could not; the feeling of the
Caste would be against it. Then what else could he be ? He does not argue
all this out; he does not care enough about the matter to take the trouble to
think at all. He has only one concern in life—he lives to make pots and sell
them, and make more and sell them, and so eat and sleep in peace.

But the girl had the look of more possibility; she asked questions and
seemed interested, and finally sug gested we should wait till she had
finished her batch of pots, and then she would " tell us all her mind." So we
waited and watched the deft brown hands as they worked round the gaping
hole till it grew together and closed; and at last she had finished. Then she
drew us away from the group of curious children, and told us if we would
come in three days she would be prepared to join our Way and come with
us, for she had to work very hard at home, and her food was poor and her
seeley old, and she thought it would be worth risking the wrath

of her people to get all she knew we should give her if she came; and this
was all her mind.

She had touched a great perplexity. How are we to live in India without
raising desires of this sort ? It is true the Brahmans look down upon us, and
the higher Castes certainly do not look up, but to the greater number of the
people we seem rich and grand and desirable to cultivate. The Ulterior-
Object-Society is a fact in South India. We may banish expensive-looking
things from our tables, and all pictures and ornaments from our walls, and
confine ourselves to texts. This certainly helps; there is less to distract the
attention of the people when they come to see us, and we have so many the
fewer things to take care of—a very great advantage—but it does not go far
towards disillusioning them as to what they imagine is our true position. We
are still up above to them ; not on a level, not one of themselves.

The houses we live in are airy and large, and they do not understand the
need of protection from the sun. The food we eat is abundant and good, and
to them it looks luxurious, for they live on rice and vegetable curry, at a cost
of twopence a day. Our walls may be bare, but they are clean, and the texts
aforesaid are not torn at the corners; so, whatever we say, we are rich.

Identification with the people whom we have come to win is the aim of
many a missionary, but the diffi culty always is the same—climate and
customs are dead against it; how can we do it ? George Bowen struck at
English life and became a true Indian, so far as he could, but even he could
not go all the way. No matter how far you may go, there is always a
distance you

cannot cover—yards or inches it may be, but always that fatal hiatus. We
seem so undeniably up, far up above them in everything, and we want to get
to the lowest step down, low enough down to lift lost souls up./

On and on, if they will let us, time after time, by text and hymn and story,
we have to explain what things really mean before they are able to
understand even a fraction of the truth. The fact that this girl had thought
enough to get her ideas into shape was encouraging, and with such slender
cause for hope we still hoped. But when after some weeks' visiting she
began to see that the question was not one of curries and seeleys but of
inward invisible gifts, her interest died, and she was " out" when we went,
or too busy patting her pots to have time to listen to us.

Humdrum we have called the work, and humdrum it is. There is nothing
romantic about potters except in poetry, nor is there much of romance about
missions except on platforms and in books. Yet " though it's dull at whiles,"
there is joy in the doing of it, there is joy in just obeying. He said " Go,
tell," and we have come and are telling, and we meet Him as we " go and
tell."

But, dear friends, do not, we entreat you, expect to hear of us doing great
things, as an everyday matter of course. Our aim is great—it is India for
Christ! and before the gods in possession here, we sing songs unto Him. But
what we say to you is this: Do not expect every true story to dovetail into
some other true story and end with some marvellous coincidenc'e or
miraculous conversion. Most days in real life end exactly as they

MMHBEfc *'~ I
1 { -i-*3

i S5-SS

began, so far as visible results are concerned. We do not find, as a rule,

when we go to the houses—the literal little mud houses, I mean, of literal
heathendom—that anyone inside has been praying we might come. I read a
missionary story " founded on fact" the other day, and the things that
happened in that story on these lines were most remarkable. They do not
happen here. Practical missionary life is an unexciting thing. It is not
sparkling all over with incident. It is very prosaic at times.

CHAPTER IV Correspondences

" It is very pleasant when you are in England, and you see souls being
saved, and you see the conviction of sin, and you see the power of the
Gospel to bring new life and new joy and purity to hearts. But it is still
more glorious amongst the heathen to see the same things, to see the Lord
there working His own work of salvation, and to see the souls convicted
and the hearts broken, and to see there the new life and the new joy coming
out in the faces of those who have found the Lord Jesus." Reu. Barclay F.
Buxton, Japan.

BEFOEE putting this chapter together, I have looked long at the photograph
which fronts it. The longer one looks the more pitiful it seems. Perhaps one
reads into it all that one knows of her, all one has done for her, how one has
failed—and this makes it sadder than it may be to other eyes. And yet can it
fail to be sad ? Hood's lines reversed describe her—

" All that is left of her Now is not womanly."

The day we took her photo she was returning from her morning worship at
the shrine. She had poured her libation over the idol, walked round and
round it, pros trated herself before it, gone through the prayers she had
learned off by heart, and now was on her way home. We had gone to her
village to take photographs, and
A Saivite ascetic. Siva represents the severer side of Hinduism, the Powers
of Nature which destroy. But as all disin tegrated things are reintegrated in
some other form, the two Powers, Destruction and Keconstruction, were
united in the thought of the old Hindus, and Siva represents the double
Power. The Saivite form of Hinduism

is older than the Vaishuavite, and more widely spread over India. There are
said to be 30,000,000 symbols of the god Siva scattered about the land.
Saivites are in stantly recognised by the mark of white ashes on their
foreheads, and sometimes on the breast and arms, and often a necklet of
berries is worn.
had just got the street scene in the morning light. The crowd followed us,
eager to see more of the doings of the picture-catching box; and she, fearing
the defiling touch of the mixed Castes represented there, had climbed up on
a granite slab by the side of the road, and stood waiting till we passed.

There we saw her, and there we took her,—for, to our surprise, she did not
object,—and now here she is, to show with all the force of truth how far
from ideal the real may be. We looked at her as I look at her now, stripped
of all God meant her to have when He made her, deep in the mire of the
lowest form of idolatry, a devotee of Siva. She had been to Benares and
bathed in the sacred Ganges, and therefore she is holy beyond the reach of
doubt. She has no room for any sense of the need of Christ. She pities our
ignorance when we talk to her. Is she not a devotee ? Has she not been to
Benares ?

Often and often we meet her in the high-caste houses of the place, where
she is always an honoured guest because of her wonderful sanctity. She
watches keenly then lest any of the younger members of the household
should incline to listen to us.

One of her relatives is an English-educated lawyer, a bitter though covert

foe, who not long ago stirred up such opposition that we were warned not to
go near the place. Men had been hired " to fall upon us and beat us." This
because a girl, a connection of his, read her Bible openly, instead of in
secret as she had done before. He connected this action on her part with a
visit we had paid to the house, and so induced certain of the baser

sort to do this thing. We went, however, just the same, as we had work we
had promised to do, and saw the old gentleman sitting on the verandah
reading his English newspaper in the most pacific fashion. He seemed
surprised to see us as we passed with a salaam; we saw nothing of the
beaters, and returned with whole bones, to the relief of the community at
large. Only I remember one of our Baud was woefully disappointed: " I
thought, perhaps, we were going to be martyrs," she said.

And so we realise, as so often in India, the power of both extremes; the one
with all the force of his educa tion, and the other with all the force of her
superstition, each uniting with the other in repelling the coming of the
Saviour both equally need.

As one looks at the photograph, does it not help in the effort to realise the
utter hopelessness, from every human point of view, of trying to win such a
one, for example, to even care to think of Christ? There is, over and above
the natural apathy common to all, an immense barrier of accumulated merit
gained by pilgrimages, austerities, and religious observances, and the soul is
perfectly satisfied, and has no desire whatever after God. It is just this self-
satisfaction which makes it so hopeless to try to do anything with it.

And yet nothing is hopeless to God; " Set no borders to His strength," a
Japanese missionary said. We say it over and over again to ourselves, in the
face of some great hopelessness, like that photograph before us; and
sometimes, as if to assure us it is so, God lifts some such soul into light.
Just now we are rejoicing in
a letter from the eastern side of the district, telling us of the growth in the
new life of one who only a little while ago was a temple devotee.

One has often longed to see Him work as He worked of old, healing the
sick by the word of His power, raising the dead. But when we see Him
gathering one—and such a one !—from among the heathen to give thanks
unto His holy Name and to triumph in His praise, one feels that indeed it is
a miracle of miracles, and that greater than a miracle wrought on the body is
a miracle wrought on the soul. But nothing I can write can show you the
miracle it was. In that particular case it was like seeing a soul drawn out of
the hand of the Kuler of Darkness. All salvation is that in reality, but some
times, as in her case, when the whole environment of the soul has been
strongly for evil in its most dangerous phase, then it is more evidently so.

Perhaps we should explain. We know that in its widest sense environment

simply means "all that is." We know that " all that is" includes the existence
of certain beings, described as " Powers " in Ephesians vi. 12. Some of us
are more or less unconscious of this part of our environment. We have no
conscious correspondence with it, but it is there. Others, again, seek and
find such correspondence, to their certain and awful loss.

Such a subject can hardly bear handling in language. Thank God we know
so little about it that we do not know how to speak of it accurately. Neither,
indeed, do we wish to intrude into those things which we have not seen by
any attempt at close definition; but we know there is this unhallowed
correspondence between men

and demons, which in old days drew down, as a lightning conductor, the
flash of the wrath of God.

Here in India it exists; we often almost touch it, but not quite. We would not
go where we knew we should see it, even if we might; so, unless we happen
upon it, which is rare, we never see it at all. A year ago I saw it, and that
one look made me realise, as no amount of explanations ever could, how
absolutely out of reach of all human influence such souls are. Nothing can
reach them, nothing but the might of the Holy Ghost.

So I close with this one look. Will you pray for those to whom in the
moonless night, at the altar by the temple, there is the sudden coming of
that which they have sought—the " possession," the " afflatus," which for
ever after marks them out as those whose correspondences reach beyond
mortal ken. All devotees have not received this awful baptism, but in this
part of India many have. We were visiting in a high-caste house. The walls
were decorated with mythological devices, and even the old wood-carvings
were full of idolatrous symbols. The women were listening well, asking
questions and arguing, until one, an old lady, came in. Then they were
silent. She sat down and discussed us. We thought we would change the
subject, and we began to sing. She listened, as they always do, interrupting
only to say, " That's true ! that's true !" Till suddenly—I cannot describe
what— something seemed to come over her, and she burst into a frenzy,
exclaiming, " Let me sing ! let me sing !" And then she sang as I never
heard anyone sing before—the wildest, weirdest wail of a song all about
idolatry, its uselessness and folly, its sorrow and sin.

So far I followed her, for I knew the poem well, but she soon turned off into
regions of language and thought unreached as yet by me. Here she got
madly excited, and, swaying herself to and fro, seemed lashing herself into
fury. Nearer and nearer she drew to us (we were on the floor beside her);
then she stretched out her arm with its clenched fist, and swung it straight
for my eye. Within a hair's-breadth she drew back, and struck out for
Victory's; but God helped her not to flinch.

Then I cannot tell what happened, only her form dilated, and she seemed as
if she would spring upon us, but as if she were somehow held back. We
dare not move for fear of exciting her more. There we sat for I know not
how long, with this awful old woman's clenched fist circling round our
heads, or all but striking into our eyes, while without intermission she
crooned her song in that hollow hum that works upon the listener till the
nerve of the soul is drawn out, as it were, to its very farthest stretch. It was
quite dark by this time; only the yellow flicker of the wind-blown flame of
the lamp made uncertain lights and shadows round the place where we were
sitting, and an eerie influence fell on us all, almost mesmeric in effect. I did
not need the awe struck whispers round me to tell me what it was. But oh! I
felt, as I never felt before, the reality of the presence of unseen powers, and
I knew that the Actual itself was in the room with me.

At last she fell back exhausted, trembling in every limb. Her old head hit
the wall as she fell, but I knew we must not help her; it would be pollution
to her if we touched her. The people all round were too frightened

to move. So she fell and lay there quivering, her glitter ing eyes still fixed
on us; and she tried to speak, but could not.

Softly we stole away, and we felt we had been very near where Satan's seat
is.
Think of someone you love—as I did then—of some one whose hair is
white like hers; but the face you think of has peace in it, and God's light
lightens it Then think of her as we saw her last—the old face torn with the
fury of hell, and for light the darkness thereof.

Oh, friends, do you care enough ? Do we care enough out here ? God give
us hearts that can care!

CHAPTER V The Prey of the Terrible

" I believe we are in the midst of a great battle. We are not ourselves
fighting, we are simply accepting everything that comes; but the Powers of
Light are fighting against the Powers of Darkness, and they will certainly
prevail. The Holy Spirit is working, but the people do not as yet know it is
the Spirit." Hester Needham, Sumatra.

THE devil's favourite device just now is to move interested people to far -
away places. We have had several who seemed very near to the Kingdom.
Then suddenly they have disappeared.

There was Wreath, of the Village of the Temple. She used to listen in the
shadow of the door while we sat on the outside verandah. Then she got
bolder, and openly asked to see Golden, and talk with her. One day, un
expectedly, Golden was led to the Ked Lake Village, and to her surprise
found Wreath there. She had been sent away from the Village of the
Temple, and was now with some other relations, under even stricter guard.
But God led Golden, all unknowingly, to go straight to the very house
where she was. So she heard again.

Next time Golden went she could not see her alone, but somehow Wreath
got her to understand that if she went to a certain tree near the women's
bathing-place, at a certain time next week, she would try to meet her

there. Golden went, and they met. Wreath told her she believed it all, but
she could not then face breaking Caste and destroying her family's name.
They had been good to her, how could she disgrace them ? Still, she eagerly
wanted to go on hearing, and we felt that if she did, the love of God would
win. So we were full of hope.
Next time Golden went she could find no trace of her. She has never seen
her since. There is a rumour that she has been carried off over the
mountains, hundreds of miles away.

In another village a bright, keen boy of seventeen listened one day when we
taught the women, and, becom ing greatly interested, openly took the
Gospel's part when the village elders attacked it. After some weeks he
gathered courage to come and see the Iyer. He was a very intelligent boy,
well known all over the country side, because he had studied the Tamil
classics, and also because of his connection with one of the chief temples of
the district.

A fortnight after his visit here, our Band went to his village. They heard that
he was married and gone, where, no one would say. The relations must have
heard of his coming to us (of course he was urged to tell them), and they
rushed him through a marriage, and sent him off post haste. So now there is
another key turned, locking him into Hinduism.

In the Village of the Wind a young girl became known as an inquirer. Her
Caste passed the word along from village to village wherever its members
were found, and all these relations and connections were speedily leagued
in a compact to keep her from hearing more. When we

went to see her, we found she had been posted off some where else. When
we went to the somewhere else (always freely mentioned to us, with
invitations to go), we found she had been there, but had been forwarded
elsewhere. For weeks she was tossed about like this; then we traced her, and
found her. But she was thoroughly cowed, and dared not show the least
interest in us. It is often like that. Just at the point where the soul-poise is so
delicate that the lightest touch affects it, something, someone, pushes it
roughly, and it trembles a moment, then falls—on the wrong side.

The reason for all this alertness of opposition is, that scattered about the
five thousand square miles we call our field, here and there seeds are
beginning to grow. Some of the sowers are in England now, and some are in
heaven—sowers and reapers, English and Tamil, rejoice together! This is
known everywhere, for the news spreads from town to town, and then out to
the villages, and the result is opposition. Sometimes the little patch of
ground which looked so hopeful is trampled, and the young seedlings
killed; sometimes they seem to be rooted up. When we go to our Master and
tell Him, He explains it: " An Enemy hath done this." But as the measure of
the Enemy's activity is in direct pro portion to the measure of God's
working, we take it as a sign of encouragement, however hindering it may
be. Satan would not trouble to fight if he saw nothing worth attacking; he
does not seem to mind the spread of a head knowledge of the Doctrine, or
even a cordial appreciation of it. Often we hear the people say how
excellent it is, and how they never worship idols now,

but only the true God; and even a heathen mother will make her child repeat
its texts to you, and a father will tell you how it tells him Bible stories; and
if you are quite new to the work you put it in the Magaziiw, and at home it
sounds like conversion. All this goes on most peacefully; there is not the
slightest stir, till some thing happens to show the people that the Doctrine is
not just a Creed, but contains a living Power. And then, and not till then,
there is opposition.

This opposition is sufficiently strong in the case of a boy or young man

(older Caste men and women rarely " change their religion " in this part of
South India), but if a girl is in question, the Caste is touched at its most
sensitive point, and the feeling is simply intense. Men and demons seem to
conspire to hold such a one in the clutch of the Terrible.

There is a young girl in Cupid's Lake Village whose heart the Lord opened
some weeks ago. She is a gentle, timid girl, and devoted to her mother. "
Can it be right to break my mother's heart ?" she used to ask us piti fully.
We urged her to try to win her mother, but the mother was just furious. The
moment she understood that her daughter wanted to follow Jesus, or "join
the Way," as she would express it, she gathered the girl's books and burnt
them, and forbade her ever to mention the subject; and she went all round
the villages trying to stop our work.

At last things came to a crisis. The girl was told to do what she felt would
be sin against God. She refused. They tried force, sheer brute force. She
nerved herself for the leap in the dark, and tried to escape to us. But
in the dark night she lost the way, and had to run back to her home. Next
morning the village priest spread a story to the effect that his god had
appeared to him, told him of her attempt to escape, and that she would try
twice again, " but each time I will stand in the way and turn her back," he
said.

This naturally startled the girl. " Is his god stronger than Jesus ?" she asked
in real perplexity. We told her we thought the tale was concocted to frighten
her; the priest had seen her, and made up the rest. But twice since then,
driven by dire danger, that girl has tried to get to us, and each time she has
been turned back. And now she is kept in rigorous guard, as her
determination to be a Christian is well known to all in the place.

Do you say, " Tell her to stay at home and bear it patiently " ? We do tell her
so, when we can see her, but we add, " till God makes a way of escape ";
and if you knew all there is to be known about a Hindu home, and what
may happen in it, you would not tell her otherwise.

But supposing there is nothing more than negative difficulty to be feared,

have you ever tried in thought to change places with such a girl ? Have you
ever con sidered how impossible it is for such a one to grow ? The simple
grace of continuance is in danger of wither ing when all help of every sort is
absolutely cut off, and the soul is, to begin with, not deeply rooted in God.
Plants, even when they have life, need water and sunshine and air. Babes
need milk.

You find it hard enough to grow, if one may judge from the constant wails
about "leanness," and yet you are surrounded by every possible help to
growth. You

have a whole Bible, not just a scrap of ife; and you can read it all, and
understand at least most of it. You have endless good books, hymn-books,
and spiritual papers; you have sermons every week, numerous meetings for
edification, and perhaps an annual Convention. Now strip yourself of all
this. Shut your Bible, and forget as completely as if you had never known it
all you ever read or heard, except the main facts of the Gospel. Forget all
those strengthening verses, all those beautiful hymns, all those inspiring
addresses. Likewise, of course, entirely forget all the loving dealings of God
with your self and with others—a Hindu has no such memories to help her.
Then go and live in a devil's den and develop saintliness. The truth is, even
you would find it difficult; but this Hindu girl's case is worse than that, a
million times worse. Think of the life, and then, if you can, tell her she must
be quite satisfied with it, that it is the will of God. You could not say that it
is His will! It is the will of the Terrible, who holds on to his prey, and would
rather rend it limb from limb than ever let it go.

We are often asked to tell converts' stories; and certainly they would thrill,
for the way of escape God opens sometimes is, like Peter's from prison,
miraculous; and truth is stranger than fiction, and far more interest ing. But
we who work in the Terrible's lair, and know how he fights to get back his
prey, even after it has escaped from him, are afraid to tell these stories too
much, and feel that silence is safest, and, strange as it may seem to some,
for the present most glorifies God.

For a certain connection has been observed between publicity and peril.
And we have learned by experience

to fear any attempt to photograph spiritual fruit. The old Greek artist turned
away the face that held too much for him to paint; and that turned-away
face had power in it, they say, to touch men's hearts. We turn these faces
away from you; may the very fact that we do it teach some at home to
realise how much more lies in each of them than we can say, how great a
need there is to pray that each may be kept safe. The names of one and
another occur, because they came in the letters so often that I could not
cross them all out without altering the character of the whole; they are part
of one's very life.

But as even a passing mention may mean danger, unless a counteracting

influence of real prayer pro tects them, we ask you to pray that the tender
protec tion of God may be folded round each one of them; and then when
we meet where no sin can creep into the telling, and no harm can follow it,
they will tell you their stories themselves, and God will give you your share
in the joy, comrades by prayer at home! But let us press it on you now—
pray, oh, pray for the converts ! Pray that they may grow in Christ. Pray that
He may see of the travail of His soul, and be satisfied with each of them.
And pray that we may enter into that travail of soul with Him. Nothing less
is any good. Spiritual children mean travail of soul—spiritual agony. I
wonder who ainono- those who read this will realise what I mean.

Some will, I think; so I write it. It is a solemn thing to find oneself drawn
out in prayer which knows no relief till the soul it is burdened with is born.
It is no less solemn afterwards, until Christ is formed in them. Converts are
a responsible joy.

And now we have told you a little of what is going on. There are days when
nothing seems to be done, and then again there are days when the Terrible
seems almost visible, as he gathers up his strength, and tears and mauls his
prey. And so it is true we have to fight a separate fight for each soul. But
another view of the case is a strength to us many a time. "We are not
ourselves fighting, but the Powers of Light are fighting against the Powers
of Darkness," and the coming of the victory is only a question of time.
"Shall the prey be taken from the Mighty or the captives of the Terrible be
delivered ? But thus saith the Lord, Even the captives of the Mighty shall be
taken away and the prey of the Terrible shall be delivered."

CHAPTER VI Missed Ends

" If you could only know what one feels on finding; oneself . . . where the
least ray of the Gospel has not penetrated ! If those friends who blame . . .
could see from afar what we see, and feel what we feel, they would be the
first to wonder that those redeemed by Christ should be so backward in
devo tion and know so little of the spirit of self-sacrifice. They would be
ashamed of the hesitations that hinder us ... We must re member that it was
not by interceding for the world in glory that Jesus saved it. He gave
Himself. Our prayers for the evangelisation of the world are but a bitter
irony so long as we only give of our superfluity, and draw bach before the
sacrifice of ourselves." M. Frangois Coillard, Africa.

"Someone must go, and if no one else will go, he who hears the call must
go ; I hear the call, for indeed God has brought it before me on every side,
and go I must."
Rev. Henry Watson Fox, India.

tom-toms thumped straight on all night, and the JL darkness shuddered

round me like a living, feeling thing. I could not go to sleep, so I lay awake
and looked ; and I saw, as it seemed, this :

That I stood on a grassy sward, and at my feet a precipice broke sheer down
into infinite space. I looked, but saw no bottom ; only cloud shapes, black
and furiously coiled, and great shadow-shrouded hollows, and
unfathomable depths. Back I drew, dizzy at the depth.

Then I saw forms of people moving single file along

the grass. They were making for the edge. There was a woman with a baby
in her arms and another little child holding on to her dress. She was on the
very verge. Then I saw that she was blind. She lifted her foot for the next
step ... it trod air. She was over, and the children over with her. Oh, the cry
as they went over!

Then I saw more streams of people flowing from all quarters. All were
blind, stone blind; all made straight for the precipice edge. There were
shrieks as they suddenly knew themselves falling, and a tossing up of
helpless arms, catching, clutching at empty air. But some went over quietly,
and fell without a sound.

Then I wondered, with a wonder that was simply agony, why no one
stopped them at the edge. I could not. I was glued to the ground, and I could
not call; though I strained and tried, only a whisper would come.

Then I saw that along the edge there were sentries set at intervals. But the
intervals were far too great; there were wide, unguarded gaps between. And
over these gaps the people fell in their blindness, quite unwarned; and the
green grass seemed blood-red to me, and the gulf yawned like the mouth of
hell.

Then I saw, like a little picture of peace, a group of people under some
trees, with their backs turned towards the gulf. They were making daisy
chains. Sometimes when a piercing shriek cut the quiet air and reached
them it disturbed them, and they thought it a rather vulgar noise. And if one
of their number started up and wanted to go and do something to help, then
all

the others would pull that one down. "Why should you get so excited about
it ? You must wait for a definite call to go! You haven't finished your daisy
chains yet. It would be really selfish," they said, " to leave us to finish the
work alone."

There was another group. It was made up of people whose great desire was
to get more sentries out; but they found that very few wanted to go, and
sometimes there were no sentries set for miles and miles of the edge.

Once a girl stood alone in her place, waving the people back; but her
mother and other relations called, and reminded her that her furlough was
due; she must not break the rules. And being tired and needing a change,
she had to go and rest for awhile; but no one was sent to guard her gap, and
over and over the people fell, like a waterfall of souls.

Once a child caught at a tuft of grass that grew at the very brink of the gulf;
it clung convulsively, and it called—but nobody seemed to hear. Then the
roots of the grass gave way, and with a cry the child went over, its two little
hands still holding tight to the torn-off bunch of grass. And the girl who
longed to be back in her gap thought she heard the little one cry, and she
sprang up and wanted to go; at which they reproved her, reminding her that
no one is necessary anywhere; the gap would be well taken care of, they
knew. And then they sang a hymn.

Then through the hymn came another sound like the pain of a million
broken hearts wrung out in one full drop, one sob. And a horror of great
darkness was upon me, for I knew what it was—the Cry of the Blood.

Then thundered a Voice, the Voice of the Lord : " And He said, What hast
thou done ? The voice of thy brothers' blood crieth unto Me from the
ground."

The tom-toms still beat heavily, the darkness still shuddered and shivered
about me; I heard the yells of the devil-dancers and the weird wild shriek of
the devil-possessed just outside the gate.

What does it matter, after all ? It has gone on for years; it will go on for
years. Why make such a fuss about it ?

God forgive us ! God arouse us ! Shame us out of our callousness ! Shame

us out of our sin !

One afternoon, a few weeks after that night at the precipice edge, Victory
and I were visiting in the Eed Lake Village, when we heard the death-beat
of the tom tom and the shriek of the conch shell, and we knew that another
had gone beyond our reach. One can never get accustomed to this. We
stopped for a moment and listened.

The women we were teaching broke in with eager explanations. " Oh, he
was such a great one ! He had received the Initiation. There will be a grand
ceremonial, grander than ever you have !" Then they told us how this great
one had been initiated into the Hindu mysteries by his family priest, and
that the mystical benefits accru ing from this initiation were to be caused to
revert to the priest. This Reverting of the Initiation was to be one of the
ceremonies. We watched the procession pass down the street. They were
going for water from a

sacred stream for the bathing of purification. When they return, said the
women, the ceremonies will begin.

A little later we passed the house, and stood looking in through the
doorway. There was the usual large square courtyard, with the verandah
running round three sides. The verandah was full of women. We longed to
go in, but did not think they would let us. The courtyard was rather
confused; men were rushing about, putting up arches and decorating them;
servants were sweeping, and cooking, and shouting to one another ; the
women were talking and laughing. And all the time from within the house
came the sound of the dirge for the dead, and the laugh and the wail struck
against each other, and jarred. No one noticed us for awhile, but at last a
woman saw us, and beckoned us to come. " We are all defiled to-day; you
may sit with us," they said; and yielding to the instincts of their kindly
Tamil nature, they crushed closer together to make room for us beside them.
How I did enjoy being squeezed up there among them. But to appreciate
that in the least you would have to work in a caste-bound part of old India;
you can have no idea, until you try, how hard it is to refrain from touching
those whom you love.

The house door opened upon the verandah, and we could hear the moan of
the dirge. " There is sorrow on the sea; it cannot be quiet." There was no
quietness, only the ceaseless moan, that kept rising into a wail; there were
tears in the sound of the wail, and I felt like a sort of living harp with all its
strings drawn tight.

But the women outside cared nothing at all. It was strange to see how
callous they were. It was not their own who had died, so they chatted and
laughed and watched the proceedings—the tying of the garlands round the
arches, the arrangement of offerings for the Brahmans. It was all full of
interest to them. We tried to turn their thoughts to the Powers of the World
to Come. But no. They did not care.

Presently there was a stir. " The men are coming ! " they said. " Kun ! there
is a shady corner under those palms on the far verandah ! Kun and hide !
They are here !" And, even as they spoke, in streamed the men, each with
his brass water-vessel poised on his head, and they saw us standing there.
We thought they would turn us out, and were quite prepared to go at a sign
from the head of the clan. But he was a friend of ours, and he smiled as we
salaamed, and pointed to a quiet corner, out of the way, where we could see
it all without being too much seen.

To understand this, which to me was a surprise, one must remember that by

nature the Indian is most courteous, and if it were not for Caste rules we
should be allowed to come much closer to them than is possible now. To-
day they were all ceremonially unclean, so our presence was not considered
polluting. Also the Indian loves a function ; sad or glad, it matters little.
Life is a bubble on the water ; enjoy it while you may. And they
sympathised with what they thought was our desire to see the show. This
was human; they could understand it. So they let us stay; and we stayed,
hoping for a chance later on.
Then the ceremonies began. They carried the dead man out and laid him in
the courtyard under the arch of palms. He was old and worn and thin. One
could see the fine old face, with the marks of the Hindu trident painted
down the forehead. He had been a most earnest Hindu; all the rites were
duly performed, and morning and night for many years he had marked those
marks on his brow. Had he ever once listened to the Truth ? I do not know.
He must have heard about it, but he had not received it. He died, they told
us, " not knowing what lay on the other side."

The water-bearers laid their vessels on the ground. Each had a leaf across its
mouth. The priest was crowned with a chaplet of flowers. Then came the
bathing. They threw up a shelter, and carried him there. It was reverently
done. There was a touch of refinement in the thought which banished the
women and children before the bathing began. Tamils bathe in the open air,
and always clothed, but always apart. And as the women's verandah
overlooked the screened enclosure, they were all ordered off. They went
and waited, silent now, awed by the presence of the men. While the bathing
was going on the priests chanted and muttered incantations, and now and
again a bell was rung, and incense waved, and tapers lighted. Now they
were causing that mysterious Something which still hovered round the
lifeless form to leave it and return to them, and when the bathing was over
they signified that all was done; the Influence had departed, descended; the
funeral ceremonies might proceed.

And all this time, without a break, the dirge was

being sung by the mourners in the house. It was a sort of underuote to all
the sounds outside. Then the old man, robed in white and crowned and
wreathed with flowers, was carried round to the other side; and oh, the
pitifulness of it all! St. Paul must have been thinking of some such scene
when he wrote to the converts, " That ye sorrow not even as others which
have no hope." And I thought how strangely callous we were, how
superficial our sympathy. The Lord's com mand does not stir us, the sorrow
of those we neglect does not touch us; we think so much more of ourselves
and our own selfish pleasure than we think of the pur pose for which we
were saved—and at such a tremendous cost! Oh for a baptism of reality and
obedience to sweep over us! Oh to be true to the hymns we sing and the
vows we make! God make us true.

Forgive all this. It was burnt into me afresh that clay as I sat there watching
the things they did and listening to what they said. We had come too late for
that old dead man, too late for most of the living ones too. Can you wonder
if at such solemn times one yields oneself afresh and for ever to obey ?

Pace was prepared for the dead man's use, and balls of rice were ready to be
offered to his spirit after his crema tion ; for the Hindus think that an
intermediate body must be formed and nourished, which on the thirteenth
day after death is conducted to either heaven or hell, according to the deeds
done on earth. The ceremonies were all characterised by a belief in some
future state. The spirit was somewhere—in the dark—so they tried to light
the way for him. This reminds me of one

ceremony especially suggestive. All the little grand children were brought,
and lighted tapers given to them; then they processioned round the bier,
round and round many times, holding the tapers steadily, and looking
serious and impressed.

Then the widow came out with a woman on either side supporting her. And
she walked round and round her husband, with the tears rolling down her
face, and she wailed the widow's wail, with her very heart in it. Why had he
gone away and left her desolate ? His was the spirit of fragrance like the
scented sandal-wood; his was the arm of strength like the lock that barred
the door. Gone was the scent of the sandal, broken and open the door; why
had the bird flown and left but the empty cage ? Gone ! was he gone ? Was
he really gone ? Was it certain he was dead ? He who had tossed and turned
on the softest bed they could make, must he lie on the bed of his funeral
pyre ? Must he burn upon logs of wood ? Say, was there no way to reach
him, no way to help him now ? "I have searched for thee, but I find thee
not." And so the dirge moaned on.

I could not hear all this then; Victory told it to me, and much more,
afterwards. " Last time I heard it," she said, " I was inside, wailing too."
As the poor widow went round and round she stopped each time she got to
the feet, and embraced them fervently. Sometimes she broke through all
restraint, and clasped him in her arms.

After many ceremonies had been performed, the men all went away, and the
women were left to bid farewell to

the form soon to be carried out. Then the men came back 4

and bore him across the courtyard, and paused under the arch outside, while
the women all rushed out, tearing their hair and beating themselves and
wailing wildly. As they were lifting the bier to depart the cry was, " Stop !
stop ! Will he not speak ?" And this, chanted again and again, would have
made the coldest care. Then when all was over, and the long procession,
headed by the tom-toms and conch shells, had passed out of sight, the
women pressed in again, and each first let down her hair, and seized her
nearest neighbour, and they all flung themselves on the ground and knocked
their heads against it, and then, rising to a sitting posture, they held on to
one another, swaying backwards and forwards and chanting in time to the
swaying, in chorus and antiphone. All this, even to the hair-tearing and
head-knocking, was copied by the children who were present with terrible
fidelity.

We sat down among them. They took our hands and rocked us in the
orthodox way. But we did not wail and we did not undo our hair. We tried to
speak comforting words to those who were really in grief, but we found it
was not the time. A fortnight later we went again, and found the house door
open because we had been with them that day.

But we could not help them then, so we rose and were going away, when,
held by the power of that dirge of theirs, I turned to look again. The last
rays of the afternoon sun were lighting up the courtyard, and shining on the
masses of black hair and grey. As I looked they got up one by one, and put
their disordered dress to rights, and shook out the dust from their glossy
hair,

JU 5? 52 *>
and did it up again. And one by one, without farewell of any sort, they went
away. An hour later we met groups of them coming home from bathing.
They would not touch us then. Afterwards the chief mourners came out and
bathed, and went all round the village wailing. And the last thing I saw, as
the sun set over the hills and the place grew chill and dark, was the old
widow, worn out now, returning home in her wet things, wail ing still.
I write this under a sense of the solemnity of being "a servant . . . separated
unto the Gospel." I would not write one word lightly. But oh ! may I ask
you to face it ? Are we honest towards God ? If we were, would these
people be left to die as they are being left to die ?

We feel for them. But feelings will not save souls; it cost God Calvary to
win us.

It will cost us as much as we may know of the fellowship of His sufferings,

if those for whom He died that day are ever to be won.

I am writing in the midst of the sights and the sounds of life. There is life in
the group of women at the well; life in the voices, in the splash of the water,
in the cry of a child, in the call of the mother; life in the flight of the parrots
as they flock from tree to tree; life in their chatter as they quarrel and
scream; life, everywhere life. How can I think out of all this, back into
death again ?

But I want to, for you may live for many a year in India without being
allowed to see once what we have

seen twice within two months, and it cannot be foi nothing that we saw it.
We must be jneant to show it to you.

The Picture-catching Missie and I were in the Village of the Tamarind Tree,
when for the second time I saw it. They are very friendly there, and just as
in the Red Lake Village they let us look behind the curtain, so here again
they pushed it back, and let us in, and went on with their business, not
minding us. We crouched up close together on the only scrap of empty
space, and watched.

Everything was less intense ; the dead was only a poor and very old widow
who had lived her life out, and was not wanted. There were no near kindred,
only relations by marriage; it was evident everyone went through the form
without emotion of any sort.

The woman lay on a rough bier on the floor, and round her crowded a dozen
old women. At her head there was a brass vessel of water, a lamp-stand,
some uncooked rice, and some broken cocoanuts. Just before we came in
they had filled a little brass vessel from the larger one. Now one of the old
hags walked round the dead three times, pouring the water out as she
walked. Then another fed her—fed that poor dead mouth, stuffed it in so
roughly it made us sick and faint. There were other things done hurriedly,
carelessly; we could not follow them. The last was the rubbing on of ashes
—she had been a worshipper of Siva—also they covered the closed eyes
with ashes and patted them down flat. And all the time the gabble of the
women mocked at the silence of death. There was no reverence, no seiise of
solemnity ; the ceremonial so full of symbol to its makers, the thinkers of
Vedic times, was to them simply a custom, a set of customs, to be followed
and got through as quickly as might be by heedless hands. And yet they
faithfully carried out every detail they knew, and they finished their
heartless work and called to the men to come. The men were waiting
outside. They came in and carried her out.
It seemed impossible to think of a photograph then; it was most unlikely
they would let us take one, and we hardly felt in the spirit of picture-
catching. Yet we thought of you, and of how you certainly could never see
it unless we could show it to you; and we wanted to show it to you, so we
asked them if we might. Of course if there had been real grief, as in the
other I had seen, we could not have asked it, it would have been intrusion;
but here there was none— that was the pathos of it. And they were very
friendly, so they put their burden on the ground, and waited.

There it is. To the right the barber stands with his fire-bowl hanging from a
chain; this is to light the funeral pyre. The smoke interfered with the photo,
but then it is true to life. To the left stands the man with the shell ready to
blow. At the back, with the sacred ashes rubbed on forehead and breast and
arms, stand the two nearest relatives, who to-morrow will gather the ashes
and throw them into the stream.

The picture was caught. The man with the shell blew it, the man with the
fire came in front, the bearers lifted the bier; they went away with their
dead.

Then the old women, who had been pressing through

the open door, rushed back in the usual way and began the usual rock and
dirge. These Comparison Songs are always full of soul. They have sprung
into being in times of deepest feeling, taken shape when hearts were as
finely wrought moulds which left their impress upon them. And to hear
them chanted without any soul is somehow a pitiful thing, a sort of
profanation, like the singing of sacred words for pay.

The photograph was not easy to take, the space was so confined, the
movement so continuous, the commotion so confusing. How it was taken I
know not ; the women massed on the floor were not still for more than a
moment. In that moment it was done. Then we per suaded three of them to
risk the peril of being caught alone. They would not move farther than the
wall of the house, and as it was in a narrow street, again there were
difficulties. But the crowning perplexity was at the water-side. It was
windy, and our calls were blown away, so they did not hear what we wanted
them to do, and they splashed too vigorously. Their only idea just then was
to get themselves and their garments ceremonially clean, defiled as they
were by contact with the dead.

But let those six whom you can partly see stand for the thousands upon
thousands whom you cannot see at all. Those thousands are standing in
water to-day from the North to the uttermost South, as the last act in the
drama which they have played in the presence of the dead.

The women have gone from the well. The parrots have flown to other trees.
The Tamils say the body is the sheath of the soul. I think of that empty
sheath

I saw, and wonder where the soul has flown. It has

gone but where ? Has it gone home, like the women

from the well ? Has it flown far, like the birds among the trees ? It has gone,
it has gone, that is all we know. It has gone.

Then I read these words from Conybeare and Howson's translation: " If the
tent which is my earthly house be destroyed I have a mansion built by God .
. . eternal in the heavens. And herein I groan with earnest longings, desiring
to cover my earthly raiment with the robes of my heavenly mansion. . . .
And He who has prepared me for this very end is God."

The dead man missed his End. That old dead woman missed it too. And the
millions around us still alive are missing their End to-day. " This very End
"—think of it—Mortality swallowed up in Life—Death only an absence,
Life for ever a presence—Present with the Lord who has prepared us " for
this very End."

Can we enjoy it all by ourselves ? Will there be no sense of incompleteness

if the many are outside, missing it all because they missed their End ? Will
the glory make us glad if they are somewhere far away from it and God ?
Will not heaven be almost an empty place to one who has never tried to fill
it ? Yet there is room, oh so much room, for those we are meant to bring in
with us !

And there is room, oh so much room, along the edge of the precipice. There
are gaps left all unguarded. Can it be that you are meant to guard one of
those gaps? If so, it will always remain as it is, a falling-point for those
rivers of souls, unless you come.

Are these things truth or are they imagination ? If they are imagination—
then let the paper on which they are written be burnt, burnt till it curls up
and the words fall into dust. But if they are true— then what are we going
to do ? Not what are we going to say or sing, or even feel or pray— lut what
arc ice going to do ?

: :>
&l

8.S

* 01

0S

^1

I!

CHAPTER VII "The Dust of the Actual"

"This may be counted as our richest gain, to have learned afresh one's utter
impotency so completely that the past axiom of service, '/ can no more
convert a soul than create a star,' comes to be an awful revelation, so that
God alone may be exalted in that day." Reu. Walter Searle, Africa.

WE have just come back from a Pariah village. Now see it all with me.
Such a curious little collection of huts, thrown down anywhere; such half-
frightened, half-friendly faces; such a scurrying in of some and out of
others; and we wonder which house we had better make for. We stop before
one a shade cleaner than most, and larger and more open.

"May we come in?" Chorus, "Come in! oh, come in!" and in we go. It is a
tiny, narrow slip of a room. At one end there is a fire burning on the ground;
the smoke finds its way out through the roof, and a pot of rice set on three
stones is bubbling cheerfully. No fear of defile ment here. They would not
like us to touch their rice or to see them eating it, but they do not mind our
being in the room where it is being cooked.

At the other end of the narrow slip there is a goat-pen, not very clean; and
down one side there is a raised mud place where the family apparently
sleep. This side

and the two ends are roofed by palmyra palm. It is dry and crackles at a
touch, and you touch it every time you stand up, so bits of it are constantly
falling and helping to litter the open space below.

Five babies at different stages of refractoriness are sprawling about on this

strip of floor; they make noises all the time. Half a dozen imbecile-looking
old women crowd in through the low door, and stare and exchange
observations. Three young men with nothing particular to do lounge at the
far end of the platform near the goats. A bright girl, with more jewellery on
than is usual among Pariahs, is tending the fire at the end near the door; she
throws a stick or two on as we enter, and hurries forward to get a mat. We
sit down on the mat, and she sits beside us ; and the usual questions are
asked and answered by way of introduction. There is a not very clean old
woman diligently devouring betel; another with an enormous mouth, which
she always holds wide open; another with a very loud voice and a shock of
unspeakable hair. But they listen fairly well till a goat creates a diversion by
making a remark, and a baby— a jolly little scrap in its nice brown skin and
a bangle— yells, and everyone's attention concentrates upon it.

The goat subsides, the baby is now in its mother's arms; so we go on where
we left off, and I watch the bright young girl, and notice that she listens as
one who understands. She looks rather superior; her rose-coloured seeley is
clean, and two large gold jewels are in each ear; she has a little gold necklet
round her throat, and silver bangles and toe rings. All the others are

An ancient Pariah, but the baby in her arms is a son of the Caste of Palmyra
Climbers. Both faces—the old crone's and the baby boy's—are very typical.
The baby

is a "Christian," I should explain, and his parents are true Christians,

otherwise the Pariah woman would riot have been 'allowed to touch him.
hopelessly grubby and very unenlightened, but they listen just as most
people listen in church, with a sort of patient expression. It is the proper
thing to do.

I am talking to them now, and till I am half-way through nobody says

anything, when suddenly the girl remarks, " We have ten fingers, not just
one!" which is so astonishing that I stop and wonder what she can be
thinking of. I was talking about the one sheep lost out of one hundred. What
has that got to do with one finger and ten ? She goes on to explain, " I have
heard all this before. I have a sister who is a Christian, and once I stayed
with her, and I heard all about your religion, and I felt in my heart it was
good. But then I was married" ("tied," she said), "and of course I forgot
about it; but now I remember, and I say if ten of our people will join and go
over to your Way, that will be well, but what would be the use of one going
? What is the use of one finger moving by itself ? It takes ten to do the day's
work."

" If ten of you had cholera, and I brought you cholera medicine, would you
say, 'I won't take it unless nine others take it too'?" I replied. She laughs and
the others laugh, but a little uneasily. They hardly like this reference to the
dreaded cholera; death of the body is so much more tremendous in prospect
than death of the soul. "You would take it, and then the others, seeing it do
you good, would perhaps take it too "; and we try to press home the point of
the illustration. But a point pricks, and pricking is uncomfortable.

The three men begin to shuffle their feet and talk about other things; the old
mother-in-law proposes

betel all round, arid hands us some grimy -looking leaves with a pressing
invitation to partake. The various onlookers make remarks, and the girl
devotes herself to her baby. But she is thinking; one can see old memories
are stirred. At last with a sigh she gets up, looks round the little indifferent
group, goes over to the fireplace, and blows up the fire. This means we had
better say salaam; so we say it and they say it, adding the usual " Go and
come."

It will be easier to help these people out of their low levels than it will be to
help their masters of the higher walks of life. But to do anything genuine or
radical among either set of people is never really easy.

"It takes the Ideal to blow a hair's-breadth off the Dust of the Actual."

It takes more. It takes God. It takes God to do anything anywhere.

Yesterday we were visiting in one of the Caste villages, and one old lady,
who really seems to care for us, said she would greatly like to take my hand
in hers ; " but," she explained, " this morning one of the children of the
place leaned over the edge of the tank to drink, and he fell in and was
drowned ; so I have been to condole with his people, and I have now
returned from bathing, and do not feel equal to bathing again." If she
touched me she would have to bathe to get rid of the defilement. Of course I
assured her I quite under stood, but as she sat there within two inches of me,
yet so carefully preserving inviolate those two inches of clear space, I felt
what a small thing this caste-created distance was, the merest " Dust of the
Actual" on the surface of the system of her life; and yet, " to blow a

hair's-breadth of it off, nothing less is needed than the breath of the power
of God. " Come, 0 Breath, and breathe!" we cry. Nothing else will do.

Something in our talk led to a question about the character of Jesus, and, as
we tried to describe a little of the loveliness of our dear Lord to her, her
dark eyes kindled. " How beautiful it is!" she said; " how beautiful He must
be!" She seemed " almost persuaded," but we knew it was only almost, not
quite; for she does not yet know her need of a Saviour, she has no sense of
sin. Sometimes, it is true, that comes later; but we find that if the soul is to
resist the tremendous opposing forces which will instantly be brought to
bear upon it if it turns in the least towards Christ, there must be a conviction
wrought within it; nothing so superficial as a feeling, be it ever so
appreciative or hopeful or loving, will stand that strain.

So, though the eyes of this dear woman fill with tears as she hears of the
price of pain He paid, and though she gladly listens as we read and talk with
her and pray, yet we know the work has not gone deep, and we make our "
petitions deep " for her, and go on.

In India men must work among men, and women among women, but
sometimes, in new places, as I have told before, we have to stop and talk
with the men before they will let us pass. For example, one after noon I was
waylaid on my way to the women by the head of the household I was
visiting, a fine old man of the usual type, courteous but opposed. He asked
to look at my books. I had a Bible, a lyric book, and a book of stanzas
bearing upon the Truth, copied from the old

Tamil classics. He pounced upon this. Then he began to chant the stanzas in
their inimitable way, and at the sound several other old men drew round the
verandah, till soon a dozen or more were listening with that appreciative
expression they seem to reserve for their own beloved poetry.

After the reader had chanted through a dozen or more stanzas, he stopped
abruptly and asked me if I really cared for it. Of course I said I did
immensely, and only wished I knew more, for the Tamil classics are a study
in themselves, and these beautiful ancient verses I had copied out were only
gleanings from two large volumes, full of the wisdom of the East.

They were all thoroughly friendly now, and we got into conversation. One
of the group held that there are three co-eternal substances—God, the Soul,
and Sin. Sin is eternally bound up in the soul, as verdigris is inherent in
copper. It can be removed eventually by intense meditation upon God, and
by the performance of arduous works of merit. But these exercises they all
admitted were incompatible with the ordinary life of most people, and
generally impracticable. And so the fact is, the verdigris of sin remains.

I remember the delight with which I discovered that Isaiah i. 2 5 uses this
very illustration; for the word trans lated "dross" in English is the colloquial
word for verdigris in Tamil; so the verse reads, " I will turn My hand to
thee, and thoroughly purify thee, so as to remove thy verdigris"

Most of the others held a diametrically opposite view So far from Soul and
Sin being co-eternal with God

they are not really existent at all. Both are illusory. There is only one
existent entity. It is the Divine Spirit, and it has neither personality nor any
personal qualities. All apparent separate existences are delusive.
Meditation, of the same absorbing type held necessary by the other, is the
only way to reach the stage of enlighten ment which leads to reabsorption
into the Divine essence, in which we finally merge, and lose what appeared
to be our separate identity. We are lost in God, as a drop is lost in the ocean.

Some of the men advocated a phase of truth which reminds one of

Calvinism gone mad, and others exactly opposite are extravagantly
Arrninian. The Calvinists illustrate their belief by a single illuminating
word, Cat-hold, and the Arminians by another, Monkey-hold. Could you
find better illustrations? The cat takes up the kitten and carries it in its
mouth; the kitten is passive, the cat does everything. But the little monkey
holds on to its mother, and clings with might and main. Those who have
watched the " cat-hold" in the house, and the " monkey-hold " out in the
jungle, can appreciate the accuracy of these two illustrations.

But running through every form of Hinduism, how ever contradictory each
to the other may be, there is the underlying thought of pure and simple
Pantheism. And this explains many of the aforesaid contradictions, and
many of the incongruities which are constantly cropping up and
bewildering one who is trying to understand the Hindu trend of thought. So,
though those men all affirmed that there is only one God, they admitted that
they each worshipped several. They saw nothing incon-

sistent in this. Just as the air is in everything, so God is in everything,

therefore in the various symbols. And as our King has divers representative
Viceroys and Governors to rule over his dominions in his name, so the
Supreme has these sub-deities, less in power and only existing by force of
Himself, and He, being all-pervasive, can be worshipped under their forms.

This argument they all unitedly pressed upon me that afternoon, and though
capital answers probably present themselves to your mind, you might not
find they satisfied the Hindu who argues along lines of logic peculiar to the
East, and subtle enough to mystify the practical Western brain ; and then—
for we are conceited as well as practical—we are apt to pity the poor Hindu
for being so unlike ourselves; and if we are wholly unsympathetic, we
growl that there is nothing in the argument, whereas there is a good deal in
it, only we do not see it, because we have never thought out the difficulty in
question. Quite opposite, sometimes we have to meet a type of mind like
that of MacDonald's student of Shakespeare, who " missed a plain point
from his eyes being so sharp that they looked through it without seeing it,
having focussed themselves beyond it." Assuredly there is much to learn
before one can hope to understand the winding of the thread of thought
which must be traced if one would follow the working of the Hindu mind.
Let no one with a facility for untying mental knots think that his gift would
be wasted in India!

The word that struck those men that afternoon was 1 John v. 11 and 12:
"God hath given us eternal life,

and this life is in His Son. He that hath the Son hath life, and he that hath
not the Son of God hath not life." I was longing to get to the women, but
when they began to read those verses and ask about the meaning, I could
not go without trying to tell them. Oh, how one needed at that moment
Christ to become to us Wisdom, for it is just here one may so easily make
mistakes. Put the truth of God's relation to the soul subjectively—"He that
hath the Son hath life "—before thoughtful Hindus such as these men were,
and they will be perfectly enchanted; for the Incarnation presents no
difficulty to them, as it would to a Mohammedan; and perhaps, to your
sudden surprise and joy, they will say, that is exactly what they are prepared
to believe. " Christ in me"—this is comprehensible. " The indwelling of the
Spirit of God "—this is analogous to their own phrase: " The indwelling of
the Deity in the lotus of the heart." But probably by trading on words and
expressions which are already part of the Hindu terminology, and which
suggest to them materialistic ideas, we may seriously mislead and be
misled. We need to understand not only what the Hindu says, but also what
his words mean to himself, a very different thing.

That talk ended in a promise from the men that they would arrange a
meeting of Hindus for the Iyer, if he would come and take it, which of
course he did. I should like to finish up by saying, "and several were
converted," but as yet that would not be true. These deep-rooted ancient and
strong philosophies are formid able enough, when rightly understood, to
make us feel how little we can do to overturn them; but they are 5

just as " Dust" in comparison with the force of the " Actual" entrenched
behind them. Only superficial Dust; and yet, as in every other case, nothing
but the Breath of God can blow this Dust away.
We left the old men to their books and endless dis quisitions, and went on to
the women's quarter. There we saw a young child-widow, very fair and
sweet and gentle, but quieter than a child should be; for she is a widow
accursed. Her mind is keen—she wants to learn ; but why should a widow
learn, they say, why should her mind break bounds ? She lives in a tiny
mud-built house, in a tiny mud-walled yard; she may not go out beyond
those walls, then why should she think beyond ? But she is better off than
most, for she lives with her mother, who loves her, and her father makes a
pet of her, and so she is sheltered more or less from the cruel scourge of the
tongue.

There is another in the next courtyard; she is not sheltered so. She lives with
her mother-in-law, and the world has lashed her heart for years; it is simply
callous now. There she sits with her chin in her hand, just hard. Years ago
they married her, an innocent, playful little child, to a man who died when
she was nine years old. Then they tore her jewels from her, all but two little
ear-rings, which they left in pity to her; and this poor little scrap of
jewellery was her one little bit of joy. She could not understand it at first,
and when her pretty coloured seeleys were taken away, and she had to wear
the coarse white cloth she hated so, she cried with impotent childish wrath ;
and then she was punished, and called bitter names,—the very word widow
means bitter-
Another widow. She was never a wife; and, moved by some sort of pity,
they let her keep one jewel in each ear. She is a Vellalar; her people are
wealthy landowners. She was ashamed of having yielded to the weakness of

letting us take her photo ; and when we wen to show it to her, she would not
look at it She has no desire whatever to hear ; and sb and the young girl on
the step at her feet ar< resolute in opposing the teaching.

nesg> —and gradually she understood that there was something the matter
with her. She was not like other little girls. She had brought ill-fortune to
the home. She was accursed.
It is true that some are more gently dealt with, and many belong to Castes
where the yoke of Custom lies lighter; for these the point of the curse is
blunted, there is only a dull sense of wrong. But in all the upper Castes the
pressure is heavy, and there are those who feel intensely, feel to the centre
of their soul, the sting of the shame of the curse.

" It is fate," says the troubled mother; " who can escape his fate ?" " It is
sin," says the mother-in-law ; and the rest of the world agrees. "' Where the
bull goes, there goes its rope.' ' Deeds done in a former birth, in this birth
burn.'"

Much of the working of the curse is hidden behind shut doors. I saw a
young widow last week whose mind is becoming deranged in consequence
of the severity of the penance she is compelled to perform. When, as they
put it, " the god of ill-fortune seizes her," that is, when she becomes violent,
she is quietly " removed to another place." No one sees what is done to her
there, but I know that part of the treatment consists in scratching her head
with thorns, and then rubbing raw lime juice in—lime juice is like lemon
juice, only more acid. When the paroxysm passes she reappears, and does
penance till the next fit comes. This has been repeated three times within
the last few months.

I was visiting in a Hindu house for two years before

I found out that all that time a girl of seventeen was kept alone in an upper
room. " Let her weep," they said, quoting a proverb; "' though she weeps,
will a widow's sorrow pass?" Once a day, after dark, she was brought
downstairs for a few minutes, and once a day, at noon, some coarse food
was taken up to her. She is allowed downstairs now, but only in the back
part of the house ; she never thinks of resisting this decree —it, and all it
stands for, is her fate. Sometimes the glad girl-life reasserts itself, and she
plays and laughs with her sister-in-law's pretty baby boy; but if she hears a
man's voice she disappears upstairs. There are proverbs in the language
which tell why.

I sat on the verandah of a well-to-do Hindu house one day, and talked to the
bright-looking women in their jewels and silks. And all the time, though
little I knew it, a widow was tied up in a sack in one of the inner rooms.
This wrong is a hidden wrong.

I do not think that anyone would call the Hindus distinctively cruel; in
comparison with most other Asiatics their instincts are kind. A custom so
merciless as this custom, which punishes the innocent with so grievous a
punishment, does not seem to us to be natural to them. It seems like a
parasite custom, which has struck its roots deep into the tree of Hindu social
life, but is not part of it. Think of the power which must have been exerted
somewhere by someone before the disposi tion of a nation could be
changed.

This custom as it stands is formidable enough. Many a man, Indian and

foreign, has fought it and failed. It is a huge and most rigorous system of
tyrannical oppres-

sion, a very pyramid to look at, old, immovable. But there is Something
greater behind it. It is only the effect of a Cause—the Dust of the Actual.

What can alter the custom ? Strong writing or speaking, agitations, Acts of
Parliament ? All these surely have their part. They raise the question, stir
the Dust—but blow it off ? Oh no ! nothing can touch the conscience of the
people, and utterly reverse their view of things, and radically alter them, but
God.

Yes, it is true, we may make the most of what has been done by
Government, by missionaries and reformers, but there are times in the heart
histories of all who look far enough down to see what goes on under the
surface of things, when the sorrow takes shape in the Prophet's cry, " We
have not wrought any deliverance in the earth ! "

It is true. We have not. We cannot even estimate the real weight of the
lightest speck of the Dust that has settled on the life of this people. But we
believe that our God, Who comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure,
comprehends to the uttermost the Dust of the Actual, and we believe to see
Him work, with Whom is strength and effectual working.
We believe to see, and believing even now we see; and when we see
anything, be it ever so little, when the Breath breathes, and even " a hair's-
breadth " of that Dust is blown away, then, with an intensity I cannot
describe, we feel the presence of the Lord our God among us, and look up
in the silence of joy and expectation for the coming of the Day when all
rule, and all authority and power, yea, the power of the very Actual itself,
shall be put down, that God may be all in all.

So again and yet again we ask you to pray not less for the Keform
movement, and the Educational movement, and the Civilising movement of
India, but far more for the Movement of the Breath of God, and far more for
us His workers here, that we may abide in Him without Whom we can do
nothing.

CHAPTER VIII Roots

" It is not an easy thing- in England to lead an old man or woman to Christ,
even though the only ' root' which holds them from Him is love of the
world. As the Tamil proverb says, 'That which did not bend at five will not
be bent at fifty,' still less at sixty or seventy. When a soul in India is held
down, not by one root only, but by a myriad roots, who is sufficient to
deliver it? Only He who overturneth the moun tains by the roots. ' This kind
goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.'" An Indian Missionary.

A MMA, you are getting old." JL\. " Yes (grunt), yes." •

" When we are old then death is near."

" Yes (grunt), yes."

" Then we must leave our bodies and go somewhere else."

Three more grunts.

" Anima, do you know where you are going ?"

Then the old woman wakes up a little, grunts a little more, " Who knows
where she is going ?" she mumbles, and relapses into grunts.
" I know where I am going," the girl answers. " Amma, don't you want to
know ?"

" Don't I want to know what ?"

" Where you are going."

" Why do I want to know what ?"

The girl goes over it again. The old woman turns to

her daughter-in-law. " Is the rice ready ? " she says. The girl tries again. The
old woman agrees we all must die. Death is near to the ancient; she is
ancient, there fore death is near to her, she must go somewhere after death.
It would be well to know where she is going. She does not know where she
is going. Then she gazes and grunts.

The girl tries on different lines. Whom is the old woman looking to, to help
her when death comes?

" God."

" What God ?"

"The great God." And rousing herself to express herself she declares that
He is her constant meditation, therefore all is well. " Is the rice ready ?"

"No."

" Then give me some betel leaf," and she settles down to roll small pieces of
lime into little balls, and these balls she rolls up in a betel leaf, with a bit of
areca nut for taste, and this betel leaf she puts into her mouth—all this very
slowly, and with many inarticulate sounds, which I have translated "
grunts." And this is all she does. She does not want to listen or talk, she
only wants to scrunch betel, and grunt.

This is not a touching tale. It is only true. It happened this evening exactly
as I have told it, and the girl, a distant connection of the old woman, who
had come with me so delightedly, eager to tell the Good Tidings, had to
give it up. She had begun by speaking about the love of Jesus, but that had
fallen perfectly flat; so she had tried the more startling form of address,
with this result—grunts.

Enlargement of one of the old dames interesting old people, but very rarely
seen in chapter vi. A capital typical find they have any desire to "change
face. We have a number of these keen, their religion." they are " rooted/'

I spent an afternoon not long ago with a more intelli gent specimen. Here
she is, a fine sturdy old character, one of the three you saw before. She was
immensely interested with her photo, which I showed her, and she could not
understand at all how, in the one moment when she stood against a wall, her
face " had been caught on a piece of white paper." A little explanation
opened the way for the greater thing I had come about. We were sitting on a
mud verandah, opening on to a square courtyard; two women pounding
rice, two more grinding it, another sweeping, a cow, some fowls, a great
many children, and several babies, made it exceedingly difficult to
concentrate one's attention on anything, and still more difficult to get the
wandering brains of an old woman to concentrate on a subject in which she
had no interest. She had been interested in the photograph, but that was
different.

The conversation ended by her remarking that it was getting dark, ought I
not to be going home? It was not getting dark yet, but it meant that she had
had enough, so I salaamed and went, hoping for a better chance again. Next
time we visited the Village of the Tamarind she was nowhere to be seen; she
had gone to her own village, she had only come here for the funeral. Would
she return, we asked ? Not probable, they said, " she had come and gone." "
Come and gone." As they said it, one felt how true it was. Come, for that
one short afternoon within our reach; gone, out of it now for ever.

In that same village there is one who more than any other drew one's heart
out in affection and longing, but so far all in vain.

I first saw her in the evening as we were returning home. She was sitting on
her verandah, giving orders to the servants as they stood in the courtyard
below. Then she turned and saw us. We were standing in the street, looking
through the open door. The old lady, in her white garments, with her white
hair, sat among a group of women in vivid shades of red, behind her the
dark wood of the pillar and door, and above the carved verandah roof.

The men were fresh from the fields, and stood with their rough-looking
husbandry implements slung across their shoulders ; the oxen, great meek-
eyed beasts, were munching their straw and swishing their tails as they
stood in their places in the courtyard, where some little children played.

The paddy-birds, which are small white storks, were flying about from
frond to frond of the cocoanut palms that hung over the wall, and the sunset
light, striking slanting up, caught the underside of their wings, and made
them shine with a clear pale gold, gold birds in a darkness of green. A
broken mud wall ran round one end, and the sunset colour painted it too till
all the red in it glowed ; and then it came softly through the palms, and
touched the white head with a sort of sheen, and lit up the brow of the fine
old face as, bending forward, she beckoned to us. " Come in ! come in ! "
she said.

We soon made friends with her. She was a Saivite and we heard afterwards
had received the Initiation; the golden symbol of her god had been branded
upon her shoulder, and she was sworn to lifelong devotion to Siva; but she
had found that he was vain, and she never

worshipped him, she worshipped God alone, "and at night, when the
household is sleeping, I go up alone to an upper room, and stretch out my
hands to the God of all, and cry with a long, loud cry." Then she suddenly
turned and faced me full. " Tell me, is that enough ?" she said. " Is it all I
must do for salvation ? Say !"

I did not feel she was ready for a plunge into the deep sea of full knowledge
yet, and I tried to persuade her to leave that question, telling her that if she
believed what we told her of Jesus our Lord, she would soon know Him
well enough to ask Him direct what she wanted to know, and He Himself
would explain to her all that it meant to follow Him. But she was deter
mined to hear it then, and, as she insisted, I read her a little of what He says
about it Himself. She knew quite enough to understand and take in the force
of the forceful words. She would not consent to be led gently on. " No, I
must know it now," she said; and as verse by verse we read to her, her face
settled sorrowfully. "So far must I follow, so far?" she said. "/ cannot follow
so far"

It was too late for much talk then, but she promised to listen if we would
come and read to her. She could not read, but she seemed to know a great
deal about the Bible.

For some weeks one of us went once a week ; some times the men of the
house were in, and then we could not read to her, as they seemed to object;
but oftener no one was about, and she had her way, and we read.

She told us her story one afternoon. She was the head of a famous old
house; her husband had died many
years ago; she had brought up her children successfully, and now they were
settled in life. She had a Christian relation, but she had never seen him ; she
thought he had a son studying in a large school in England—Cambridge, I
knew, when I heard the name; the father is one of our true friends.

All her sons are greatly opposed, but one of her little girls learnt for a time,
and so the mother heard the Truth, and, being convinced that it was true,
greatly desired to hear more.

But the child was married, and went away, and she feared to ask the Missie
Ammal to come again, lest people should notice it and talk. So the years
passed emptily, " and oh, my heart was an empty place, a void as empty as
air !" And she stretched out her arms, and clasping her hands she looked at
the empty space between, and then at me with inquiring eyes, to see if I
understood.

How well one understood!

"I am an emptiness for Thee to fill, My soul a cavern for Thy sea, . . . I have
done nought for Thee, am but a Want."

She had never heard it, but she had said it. We do not often hear it said, and
when we do our whole heart goes out to meet the heart of the one who says
it; every thing that is in us yearns with a yearning that cannot be told, to
bring her to Him Who said " Come."

We were full of hope about her, and we wrote to her Christian relative, and
he wrote back with joy. It seemed so likely then that she would decide for
Christ.

But one day, for the first time, she did not care to

read. I remember that day so well; it was the time of our monsoon, and the
country was one great marsh. We had promised to go that morning, but the
night before the rivers filled, and the pool between her and us was a lake.
We called the handyman and explained the situation. He debated a little, but
at last—" Well, the bulls can swim," he said, and they swam.
We need not have gone, she was " out." " Out," or " not at home to-day," is
a phrase not confined to Society circles where courtesy counts for more
than truth. " I am in, but I do not want to see you," would have been true,
but rude.

This was the first chill, but she was in next time, and continued to be in,
until after a long talk we had, when again the question rose and had to be
faced, " Can I be a Christian here ?"

It was a quiet afternoon; we were alone, only the little grandchildren were
with her—innocent, fearless, merry little creatures, running to her with their
wants, and pulling at her hands and dress as babies do at home. Their
grandmother took no notice of them beyond an occasional pat or two, but
the childish things, with their bright brown eyes and little fat, soft, clinging
hands went into the photo one's memory took, and helped one the better to
understand and sympathise in the humanness of the pretty home scene, that
humanness which is so natural, and which God meant to be. I think there is
nothing in all our work which so rends and tears at the heart-strings within
us, as seeing the spiritual clash with the natural, and to know that while
Caste and bigotry reign it always must be so.

We had a good long talk. " I want to be a Chris tian," she said, and for a
moment I hoped great things, for she as the mistress of the house was
almost free to do as she chose. I thought of her influence over her sons and
their wives, and the little grandchildren ; and I think my face showed the
hope I had, for she said, looking very direct at me, " By a Christian I mean
one who worships your God, and ceases to worship all other gods; for He
alone is the Living God, the Pervader of all and Provider. This I fully
believe and affirm, but I cannot break my Caste."

" Would you continue to keep it in all ways ?"

" How could I possibly break my Caste ? "

" And continue to smear Siva's sign on your forehead ? "

" That is indeed part of my Caste."

More especially part of it, I knew, since she had received the Initiation.

Then the disappointment got into my voice, and she felt it, and said, " Oh,
do not be grieved! These things are external. How can mere ashes affect the
internal, the real essential, the soul ?"

It was such a plausible argument, and we hear it over and over again; for
history repeats itself, there is nothing new under the sun.

I reminded her that ashes were sacred to Siva.

" I would not serve Siva," she answered me, " but the smearing of ashes on
one's brow is the custom of my Caste, and I cannot break my Caste."

Then she looked at me very earnestly with her search ing, beautiful, keen
old eyes, and she went over ground she knew I knew. She reminded me
what the require-

ments of her Caste had always been, that they must be fulfilled by all who
live in the house, and she told me in measured words and slow that I knew
she could not live at home if she broke the laws of her Caste. But why make
so much of trifling things ? For matter and spirit are distinct, and when the
hands are raised in prayer, when the lamp is lighted and wreathed with
flowers, the outward observer may mistake and think the action is pujah to
Agni, but God who reads the heart under stands, and judges the thought and
not the act. " Yes, my hand may smear on Siva's ashes, while at the same
moment my soul may commune with God the Eternal, Who only is God."

I turned to verse after verse to show her this sort of thing could never be,
how it would mock at the love of Christ and nullify His sacrifice. I urged
upon her that if she were true, and the central thought of her life were
towards God, all the outworkings would correspond, creed fitting deed, and
deed fitting creed without the least shade of diversity. But faith and practice
are not to be confused, each is separate from the other; the two may unite or
the one may be divorced from the other without the integrity of either being
affected: this is the unwritten Hindu code which she and hers had ever held;
and now, after years of belief in it, to face round suddenly to its opposite—
this was more than she could do. She held, as it were, the Truth in her hand,
and turned it round and round and round, but she always ended where she
began; she would not, could not, see it as Truth, or perhaps more truly,
would not accept it. It meant too much.

There she sat, queen of her home. The sons were expected, and she had
been making preparations for their coming. Her little grandchildren played
about her, each one of them dear as the jewel of her eye. How could she
leave it all, how could she leave them all—home, all that it stands for ;
children, all that they mean ?

Then she looked at me again, and I shall never forget the look. It seemed as
if she were looking me through and through, and forcing the answer to
come. She spoke in little short sentences, instinct with intensity. " I cannot
live here and break my Caste. If I break it I must go. I cannot live here
without keeping my customs. If I break them I must go. You know all this. I
ask you, then, tell me yes or no. Can I live here and keep my Caste, and at
the same time follow your God ? Tell me yes or no !"

I did not tell her—how could I ? But she read the answer in my eyes, and
she said, as she had said before, " I cannot follow so far—so far, / cannot
follow so far ! "

" Keverence for opinions and practice held sacred by his ancestors is
ingrained in every fibre of a Hindu's character, and is, so to speak, bred in
the very bone of his physical and moral constitution." So writes Sir Monier
Williams. It is absolutely true.

Oh, friends, is it easy work ? My heart is sore as I write, with the soreness
that filled it that day. I would have given anything to be able truthfully to
say " yes " to her question. But " across the will of nature leads on the path
of God " for them; and they have to follow so very far, so very, very far!

All trees have roots. To tear up a full-grown tree by

the roots, and transplant it bodily, is never a simple process. But in India we
have a tree with a double system of roots. The banyan tree drops roots from
its boughs. These bough roots in time run as deep under ground as the
original root. And the tap root and its runners, and the branch roots and
theirs, get knotted and knit into each other, till the whole forms one solid
mass of roots, thousands of yards of a tangle of roots, sinuous and strong.
Conceive the uprooting of such a tree, like the famous one of North India,
for instance, which sheltered an army of seven thousand men. You cannot
conceive it ; it could not be done, the earthward hold is so strong.

The old in India are like these trees ; they are doubly, inextricably rooted.
There is the usual great tap root common to all human trees in all lands —
faith in the creed of the race ; there are the usual running roots too —
devotion to family and home. All these hold the soul down.

But in India we have more — we have the branch-rooted system of Caste;

Caste so intricate, so precise, that no Western lives who has traced it
through its ramifications back to the bough from which it dropped in

This Caste, then, these holding laws, which most would rather die than
break, are like the branch roots of the banyan tree with their infinite
strength of grip. But the strangest thing to us is this : the people love to have
it so ; they do not regard themselves as held, these roots are their pride and
joy. Take a child of four or five, ask it a question concerning its Caste, and
you will see how that baby tree has begun to drop branch rootlets 6

down. Sixty years afterwards look again, and every rootlet has grown a tree,
each again sending rootlets down ; and so the system spreads.

But we look up from the banyan tree. God! what are these roots to Thee ?
These Caste-root systems are nothing to Thee! India is not too hard for
Thee! 0 God, come 1

CHAPTER IX The Classes and the Masses

"Wespeak of work done against the force of gravitation. If the magnitude of

a force can be estimated in any sense by the resistance which it has to
overcome, then verily there is no land under the sun more calculated than
India to display the Grand Forces of God's Omnipotent Grace. For here it
has to face and overcome the combw§d..Jt:e&istance§_.oLihQ- Caste
system, entrenched heathenism, and deeply subtle philosophies. " Praise
God! it can and will be done. Thou, who alone doest wondrous things, work
on. ' So will we sing and praise Thy power.'" Rev. T. Walker, India.

PEKHAPS it would help towards the better under standing of these letters if
we stopped and explained things a little. Some may have been wondering,
as they read, how it is that while the South Indian fields are constantly
quoted as among the most fruitful in the world, we seem to be dealing with
a class where fruit is very rare, and so subject to blighting influences after it
has appeared, that we hardly like to speak of it till it is ripe and reaped and
safe in the heavenly garner. I think it will be easier to understand all this if
we view Hindu Tamil South India (with which alone this book deals) from
the outside, and let it fall into two divisions the Classes and the Masses.
There is, of course, the border line between, crossed over on either side by
some who belong to the Classes bub are almost of the Masses,

and by some who belong to the Masses but are almost of the Classes.
Broadly speaking, however, there is a dis tinct difference between the two.
As to their attitude towards the Gospel, the Classes and the Masses unite;
they are wholly indifferent to it.

In a paper read at the Student Volunteers' Conference in 1900, a South

Indian missionary summed up the matter in a comprehensive sentence: "
Shut in for millenniums by the gigantic wall of the Himalayas on the North,
and by the impassable ocean on the South, they have lived in seclusion
from the rest of the world, and have developed social institutions and
conceptions of the universe, and of right and wrong, quite their own. Their
own religion and traditionary customs are accepted as sufficiently meeting
their needs, and they are not con scious of needing any teaching from
foreigners. They will always listen courteously to what we say, and this
constitutes an open door for the Gospel, but of conscious need and
hungering for the Gospel there is little or none. So long as it is only a matter
of preaching, there are in the world no more patient listeners than the
Hindus. But as soon as a case arises of one of their number abandoning the
Caste customs and traditionary worship, all their hostility is aroused, and
the whole community feels it a duty of patriotism to do its utmost to deprive
that individual of liberty of action, and to defend the vested rights of
Hinduism."
For the true Hindu is fervently Hindu. His religion 14 may be described as
bound up in the bundle of his everyday existence." His intense belief in it,
and in his Caste, which is part of it, gives edge to the blade

with which he fights the entrance of a new religion to his home. This new
religion he conceives of as some thing inherently antagonistic to his Caste,
and as Caste is at every point connected with Hinduism, a thing inter woven
with it, as if Hinduism were the warp and Caste the woof of the fabric of
Indian life, we cannot say he is mistaken in regarding Christianity as a foe
to be fought if he would continue a Caste Hindu. So far, in South Indian
religious history, we have no example on a large scale of anything
approaching the Bramo Sarnaj of the North. In the more conservative South
there is almost no compromise with, and little assimila tion of, the doctrine
which makes all men one in Christ. To return to the division—Classes and
Masses—the Classes comprise members of what are known as the higher
Castes, and in speaking of towns and villages where these dwell, and of
converts from among them, the prefix " Caste" is sometimes used. Among
the Classes we find women of much tenderness of feeling and a culture of
tiieir own, but their minds are narrowed by the petty lives they live, lives in
many instances bounded by no wider horizon than thoughts concerning
their husbands and children and jewels and curries, and always their next-
door neighbour's squabbles and the gossip of the place. Much of this gossip
deals with matters which are not of an elevating character. It takes us years
to understand it, because most of the conversation is carried on in allusion
or innuendo. But it is understood by the children. One of our converts told
me that she often prays for power to forget the worcls she heard, and the
things she saw, and the games

she played, when she was a little child in her mother's room.

The young girls helonging to the higher Castes are kept in strict seclusion.
During these formative years they are shut up within the courtyard walls to
the dwarfing life within, and as a result they get dwarfed, and lose in
resourcefulness and independence of mind, and above all in courage; and
this tells terribly in our work, making it so difficult to persuade such a one
to think for herself or dare to decide to believe. Such seclusion is not felt as
imprisonment; a girl is trained to regard it as the proper thing, and we never
find any desire among those so secluded to break bounds and rush out into
the free, open air. They do not feel it cramped as we should; it is their
custom.

It is this custom which makes work among girls ex ceedingly slow and
unresultful. They have to be reached one by one, and it takes many months
of teaching before the mind opens enough to understand that it may be free.
The reaction of the physical upon the mental is never more clearly
illustrated than in such cases. Some times it seems as if the mind could not
go out beyond the cramping walls; but when it has, by God's illumina tion,
received light enough to see into the darkness of the soul, and the glory that
waits to shine in on it, conceive of the tremendous upheaval, the shock of
finding solid ground sink, as gradually or suddenly the conviction comes
upon such a one that if she acts upon this new knowledge there is no place
for her at home. She must give everything up— everything !

Po you wonder that few are found willing to " follow

so far " ? Do you wonder that our hearts nearly break sometimes, as we
realise the cost for them ? Do you wonder that, knowing how each is set as
a target for the archer who shoots at souls, we fear to say much about them,
lest we should set the targets clearer in his sight ?

The men and boys of the Classes live a more liberal life, and here you find
all varying shades of refinement. There is education, too, and a great respect
for learning, and reverence for their classic literature and language, a
language so ancient that we find certain Tamil words in the Hebrew
Scriptures, and so rich, that while " nearly all the vernaculars of India have
been greatly enriched from the Sanscrit, Sanscrit has borrowed from
Tamil." Almost every Caste village has its own little school, and every town
has many, where the boys are taught reading, writing, poetry, and mental
arithmetic.

There is not much education among the Masses. Here and there a man
stands out who has fought his way through the ignorance of centuries, up
into the light of the knowledge of books. Such a man is greatly respected by
the whole community. The women have the same kindly nature as the
women of the Classes, and there is surprising responsiveness sometimes,
where one would least expect it. We have known a Tamil woman, distinctly
of the Masses, never secluded in her girlhood, but left to bloom as a wild
flower in the field, as sensitive in spirit as any lady born. The people are
rough and rustic in their ways, but there are certain laws observed which
show a spirit of refinement latent among them; there are customs which
compare favourably with the customs of the masses at home. As a whole,
they are like

the masses of other lands, with good points and bad points in strong relief,
and just the same souls to be saved.

Converts from among the Masses, as a general rule, are able to live at
home. There is persecution, but they are not turned out of village, street, or
house. Often they come in groups, two or three families together perhaps, or
a whole village led by its headman comes over. There is less of the single
one-by-one conversion and confession, though there is an increasing
number of such, and they are the best we have.

It is easy to understand how much more rapidly Christianity spreads under

such conditions than among those prevailing among the Classes ; we see it
illustrated over and over again. For example, in a certain high-caste Hindu
town some miles distant from our station on the Eastern side, a young man
heard the Gospel preached at an open-air meeting ; he believed, and con
fessed in baptism, thus breaking Caste and becoming an alien to his own
people. He has never been able to live at home since, and so there has been
no witness borne, no chance to let the life show out the love of God. The
men of that household doubtless know something of the truth; they know
enough, at least, to make them responsible for refusing it; but what can the
women know ? Only that the son of the house has disgraced his house and
name; only that he has destroyed his Caste and broken his mother's heart.
"Shame upon him," they cry with one voice, " and curses on the cause of
the shame, the ' Way ' of Jesus Christ!" It is useless to say they are merely
women, and do not count; they do count. Their influence counts for a very
great deal

Theoretically, women in India are nothing where religion is concerned;

practically, they are the heart of the Hindu religion, as the men are its sinew
and brain. There has never been a convert in that town since that young man
was banished from it, out-casted by his Caste.

But in a village only a few miles from that town a heathen lad believed, and
was baptised, and returned home, not so welcome as before, but not
considered too defiled to be reckoned a son of the household still. His father
is dead, his mother is a bitter opponent, but his brother has come since, and
within a stone's - throw another; and so it goes on: the life has a chance to
tell. Almost every time we have gone to that village we have found some
ready for baptism, and though none of the mothers have been won, they
witness to the change in the life of their sons. " My boy's heart is as white as
milk now," said one, who had stood by and seen that boy tied up and
flogged for Christ's sake. They rarely "change their religion," these staunch
old souls; " let me go where my husband is; he would have none of it! " said
one, and nothing seems to move them; but they let their boys live at home,
and perhaps, even yet, the love will break down their resistance. They are
giving it a chance.

I think this one illustration explains more than many words would the
difference between work among the Classes and the Masses, and why it is
that one form of work is so much more fruitful than the other.

The Masses must not be understood as a vast casteless Mass, out-casted by

the Classes, for the Caste system runs down to the very lowest stratum, but
their Caste rules allow of freer intercourse with others. We may visit

in their houses more freely, enter more freely into their thoughts, share
more freely in the interests of their lives. We are less outside, as it were. But
the main difference between the one set of people and the other lies deeper;
it is a difference underground. It works out, however, into something all can
see. Among the Masses, " mass movements" are of common occurrence;
among the Classes, with rare exceptions, each one must come out alone.

This is often forgotten by observers of the Indian Field from the home side.
There are parts of that field where the labourers seem to be always binding
up sheaves and singing harvest songs; and from other parts come fewer
songs, for the sheaves are fewer there, or it may be there are none at all,
only a few poor ears of corn, and they had to be gathered one by one, and
they do not show in the field.
•

A village woman of the Shanar Caste. The

I)hoto shows the baby's ears being prepared or the jewels her mother hopes
will fill them

by and by. Holes are made first and filled" with cotton wool, graduated
leaden weights are added till the lobes are long enough.

CHAPTER X The Creed Chasm

" I have had to deal in the same afternoon's work, on the one hand with men
of keen powers of intellect, whose subtle reasoning made one look to the
foundations of one's own faith ; and on the other hand with ignorant
crowds, whose conception of sin was that of a cubit measure, and to whom
the terms 4 faith' and ' love' were as absolutely unknown as though they had
been born and bred in some undeveloped race of Anthro poids." Rev. T.
Walker, India.

IN writing about the Classes and the Masses of South India, one great
difference which does not exist at home should be explained. In England a
prince and a peasant may be divided by outward things—social position,
style of life, and the duty of life—but in all inward things they may be one
—one in faith, one in purpose, one in hope. The difference which divides
them is only accidental, external; and the peasant, perhaps being in advance
of the prince in these verities of existence, may be regarded by the prince as
nobler than himself: there is no spiritual chasm between them. It is the same
in the realm of scholarship. All true Christians, however learned or however
unlearned, hold one and the same faith. But in India it is not so. The scholar
would smile at the faith of the simple villagers, he would even teach them
to believe that which he did not believe himself, holding that it was more

suitable for them, and he would marvel at your ignor ance if you
confounded his creed with theirs; and yet in name both he and they are
Hindus.
Sir Monier Williams explains the existence of this difference by describing
the receptivity and all-compre hensiveness of Hinduism. " It has something
to offer which is suited to all minds, its very strength lies in its infinite
adaptability to the infinite diversity of human characters and human
tendencies. It has its highly spiritual and abstract side, suited to the
metaphysical philosopher; its practical and concrete side, suited to the man
of affairs and the man of the world; its aesthetic and ceremonial side, suited
to the man of poetic feeling and imagination; its quiescent and
contemplative side, suited to the man of peace and lover of seclusion. Nay,
it holds out the right hand of brotherhood to nature worshippers, demon
worshippers, animal worshippers, tree worshippers, fetich worshippers. It
does not scruple to permit the most grotesque forms of idolatry and the
most degrading varieties of superstition, and it is to this latter fact that yet
another remarkable peculiarity of Hinduism is mainly due— namely, that in
no other System of the world is the chasm more vast which separates the
religion of the higher, cultured, and thoughtful Classes, from that of the
lower, uncultured, and unthinking Masses"

Naturally, therefore, work among them is different; one almost needs a

different vocabulary for each, and cer tainly one needs a different set of
ideas. I remember how, in one afternoon's work, we saw the two types most
perfectly. In thinking of it, it is as if one saw again the quiet face of the old
scholar against a background

of confusion, the clear calm features carved as in ivory, and set with a light
upon it; chaotic darkness behind. We were visiting his wife, when he came
out from the inner room, and asked if he might talk with us. Usually to such
a question I say no; we have come to the women, who are far the more
needy, the men can easily hear if they will. But he was such an old man, I
felt I could not refuse; so he began to tell me what he held as truth, which
was, in brief, that there are two sets of attachment, one outer, one inner; that
deliverance from these, and from Self, the Ego, which regards itself as the
doer, constitutes Holiness; that is, that one must be completely disentangled
and completely self-less. This attained, the next is Bliss, which is
progressive. First comes existence in the same place as God. Second,
nearness to God. Third, likeness to God. Fourth, identity with God. Then he
quoted from a classic beloved by all the old Tamil school, stanza after
stanza, to prove the truth of the above, ending with one which Dr. Pope has
thus translated—

" Cling thou to that which He to Whom nought clings hath bid

thee cling y Cling to that bond, to get thee free from every clinging thing."

He knew Sanscrit, and read me strange-sounding passages from a huge

ancient book, and then, in return for a booklet, he gave me one of Mrs.
Besant's translations from the JBhagavad G-ita.

The talk ended in my quoting what he could not deny was the true heart-cry
of one of his greatest poets. " I know nothing ! nothing ! I am in darkness !
Lord, is there no light for me?" And another, from the

poem he had quoted, which asks the question, "What is the use of
knowledge, mere knowledge, if one does not draw near to the All-knowing,
All-pure One ? " And this led into what he would not listen to at first, a
little reading from the Book of books, before whose light even these
wonderful books pale as tapers in clear sun shine. The marvel of our Bible
never shows more marvellous than at such times, when you see it in deed
and in truth the Sword of the Spirit, and it cuts.

The old man asked me to come again, and I did, as the Iyer was away. He
often got out of my depth, and I longed to know more; but I always found
the Bible had the very word he needed, if he would only

take it. So far as I know, he did not, and I left him

to quote his own words, though not spoken of himself, alas !—" bewildered
by numerous thoughts, meshed in the web of delusion."

As we left our old scholar, we came upon a thing wholly foolish and
brainless, animalism in force. It was the difference between the Classes and
the Masses once for all painted in glare. A huge procession was tearing
along the streets and roads, with all the usual uproar. They stopped when
they got to a big thorn bush, and then danced round it, carrying their idols
raised on platforms, and borne by two or three dozen to each. We passed,
singing as hard as ever we could "Victory to Jesus' Name ! Victory !" and
when we got rather out of the stream, stopped, and sang most vigorously,
till quite a little crowd gathered, and we had a chance to witness.

It was dark, and the flaming torches lit up the wildest most barbaric bit of
heathenism I have seen for a long time.
The great black moving mass seemed like some hellish sea which had burst
its bounds, and the hundreds of red-fire torches moving up and down upon
it like lights in infernal fishermen's boats, luring lost souls to their doom.

As we waited and spoke to those who would hear, a sudden rush from the
centre of things warned us to go; but before we could get out of the way, a
rough lad with a thorn-branch torch stuck it right into the bandy, and all but
set fire to us. He ran on with a laugh, and another followed with an idol, a
hideous creature, red and white, which he also pushed in upon us. Our
bullocks trotted as fast as they could, and we soon got out of it all, and
looking back saw the great square of the devil temple blazing with torches
and firebrands, and heard the drummings and clangings and yells which
announced the arrival of the procession.

All that night the riotous drumming continued, and, as one lay awake and
listened, one pictured the old scholar sitting in the cool night air on his
verandah, reading his ancient palm-leaf books by the light of the little lamp
in the niche of his cottage wall.

CHAPTER XI Caste viewed as a Doer

11 It is matter for especial notice that in every department of applied

science we have to deal with the unseen. All forces, whether in physics,
mechanics, or electricity, are invisible." Alexander Mackay, Africa.

THE division of the Tamil people, over fifteen million strong, into Classes
and Masses, though convenient and simple, is far too simple to be of value
in giving an accurate idea of the matter as it is understood from within. As
we said, it is only an outside view of things. A study of Caste from an
Indian point of view is a study from which you rise bewildered.

What is Caste ? What is electricity ? Lord Kelvin said, on the occasion of

his jubilee, that he knew no more of electric and magnetic force . . . than he
knew and tried to teach his students of natural philosophy fifty years ago in
his first session as Professor. We know that electricity exists, we are
conscious of its presence in the phenomena of light, heat, sound; but we do
not know what it is.
Nothing could more perfectly illustrate Caste. You cannot live long in a
conservative part of India, in close contact with its people, without being
conscious of its presence; if you come into conflict with it, it manifests

x*-

itself in a flash of opposition, hot rage of persecution, the roar of the tumult
of the crowd. But try to define it, and you find you cannot do it. It is not
merely birth, class, a code of rules, though it includes all these. It is a force,
an energy; there is spirit in it, essence, hidden as the invisible essence which
we call electricity.

Look at what it does. A few months ago a boy of twelve resolved to be a

Christian. His clan, eight thousand strong, were enraged. There was a riot in
the streets; in the house the poison cup was ready. Better death than loss of
Caste.

In another town a boy took his stand, and was bap tised, thus crossing the
line that divides secret belief from open confession. His Caste men got hold
of him afterwards; next time he was seen he was a raving lunatic. The Caste
was avenged.

It may be someone will wonder if these things are confined to one part of
the field, so I quote from another, working in a neighbouring field, Tamil,
but not " ours."

She tells of a poor low-caste woman who learned in her home, and
believed. Her husband also believed, and both thought of becoming
Christians. The village sooth sayer warned them that their father's god
would be angry ; they did not heed him, but went on, and suddenly their
baby died. This was too much for their faith then, and they both went back
to idolatry.

A few years afterwards their eldest child began to learn to read, and the
mother's faith revived. The sooth sayer and her husband reminded her of the
infant's fate, but she was brave, and let her child learn. Then her cow
suddenly died. " Did we not tell you so ?" they 7
gaid, and for the moment she was staggered ; but she rallied, and only
became more earnest in faith. So tho soothsayer threatened worse.

Then a Caste meeting was called to determine what could be done with this
woman. The husband attended the meeting, and was treated to some rice
and curry; before he reached home he was taken violently ill, and in three
days he died. The relatives denounced the woman as the cause of her
husband's death, took her only son from her, and entreated her to return to
her father's gods before they should all be annihilated. They gave her " two
weeks to fast and mourn for her husband, then finding her mind as firmly
fixed on Christ as before, they sent her to Burniah."

This happened recently. It is told without any effort to appeal to the

sympathies of anyone, simply as a fact; a witness, every line of it, to the
power of Caste as a Doer. But there is something in the tale, told so terribly
quietly, that makes one's heart burn with indignation at the unrelenting
cruelty which would hound a poor woman down, and send her, bereft of all
she loved, into exile, such as a foreign land would be to one who knew only
her own little village. And when you remember the Caste was " low," which
they took such infinite pains to guard, you can judge, perhaps, what the hate
would be, the concentration of scorn and hate, if the Caste were higher or
high.

But look at Caste in another way, in its power in the commonplace phases
of life. For example, take a kitchen and cooking, and see how Caste rules
there. For cooking is not vulgar work, or infra dig. in any sense, in India;
v~

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all Caste women in good orthodox Hindu families either do their own or
superintend the doing of it by younger members of the same family or
servants of the same Caste. " We Europeans cannot understand the extent to
which culinary operations may be associated with religion. The kitchen in
every Indian household is a kind of sanc tuary or holy ground. . . . The mere
glance of a man of inferior Caste makes the greatest delicacies uneatable,
and if such a glance happens to fall on the family supplies during the
cooking operations, when the ceremonial purity of the water used is a
matter of almost life and death to every member of the household, the
whole repast has to be thrown away as if poisoned. The family is for that
day dinnerless. Food thus contaminated would, if eaten, communicate a
taint to the souls as well as bodies of the eaters, a taint which could only be
removed by long and painful expiation." Thus far Sir Monier Williams
(quoted as a greater authority than any mere missionary !). Think of the
defilement which would be contracted if a member of the household who
had broken Caste in baptism took any part in the cooking. It would never be
allowed. Such a woman could take no share in the family life. Her presence,
her shadow, above all her touch, would be simply pollution. Therefore, and
for many other reasons, her life at home is impossible, and the Hindu,
without arguing about it, regards it as impossible. It does not enter into the
scheme of life as laid down by the rules of his Caste. He never, if he is
orthodox, contemplates it for a moment as a thing to be even desired.

Cooking and kitchen work may seem small (though it would not be easy for
even the greatest to live without

reference to it), so let us look out on the world of trade, and see Caste again
as a Doer there. If a merchant becomes a Christian, no one will buy his
goods; if he is a weaver, no one will buy his cloth; if he is a dyer, no one
will buy his thread; if he is a jeweller, no one will employ him. If it is
remembered that every particular occupation in life represents a particular
Caste, it will be easily understood how matters are complicated where
converts from the great Trades Unions are concerned. Hence the need of
Industrial Missions, and the fact that they exist.

A man wants to become a Christian, say, from the blacksmith or carpenter

Caste. As a Christian he loses his trade, and he has been trained to no other.
His forefathers worked in iron or wood, and he cannot attempt to learn
other work. Let the Christians employ him, you say. Some do ; but the
question involves other questions far too involved for discussion here. And
even if we discussed it, we should probably end where we began—facing a
practical problem which no one can hope to solve while Caste is what it is.

Just now this system is in full operation in the case of a lad of the
brassworker Caste. He is a thoughtful boy, and he has come to the
conclusion that Christianity is the true religion; he would like to be a
Christian; if the conditions were a little easier he would be enrolled as an
inquirer to-morrow. But here is the difficulty. His father is not strong, his
mother and little sisters and brothers are his care ; if he were a Christian he
could not support them; no one would sell him brass, no one would buy the
vessels he makes. He knows only his

inherited trade. He can make fine water-pots, lamps, vases, and vessels of
all sorts, nothing else. He is too old to learn any other trade; but supposing
such an arrangement could be made, who would support the family in the
meantime ? Perhaps we might do it; we certainly could not let them starve ;
but it would not do to tell him so, or to hold out hopes of earthly help, till
we know beyond a doubt that he is true. This is what is holding him back.
He reads over and over again, " He that loveth father or mother more than
Me is not worthy of Me," and then he looks at his father and mother and the
little children; and he reads the verse again, and he looks at them again. It is
too hard.

It is easy enough to tell him that God would take care of them if he obeys.
We do tell him so, but can we wonder at the boy for hesitating to take a step
which will, so far as he can see, take house and food and all they need from
his mother and those little children ?

These are some of the things which make work in India what is simply
called difficult. We do not want to exaggerate. We know all lands have their
difficulties, but when being a Christian means all this, over and above what
it means elsewhere, then the bonds which bind souls are visibly
strengthened, and the work can never be described as other than very
difficult.

Or take the power of Caste in another direction—its callous cruelty. I give

one illustration from last year's life.

I was visiting in the house where the old lady lives upon whom the afflatus
fell. The first time we went there we saw a little lad of three or four, who
seemed to be suffering with his eyes. He lay in a swinging bag

hung from the roof, and cried piteously all the time we were there. Now,
two months afterwards, there he lay crying still, only his cries were so
weary he had hardly strength to cry.

They lifted him out. I should not have known the child—the pretty face
drawn and full of pain, the little hands pressed over the burning eyes. Only
one who has had it knows the agony of ophthalmia. They told me he had
not slept, " not even the measure of a rape-seed," for three months. Night
and day he cried and cried ; " but he does not make much noise now," they
added. He couldn't, poor little lad !

I begged them to take him to the hospital, twenty-five miles away, but they
said to go to a hospital was against their Caste. The child lay moaning so
pitifully it wrung my heart, and I pleaded and pleaded with them to let me
take him if they would not. Even if his sight could not be saved, something
could be done to ease the pain, I knew. But no, he might die away from
home, and that would disgrace their Caste.

" Then he is to suffer till he is blind or dead ?" and I felt half wild with the
cold cruelty of it.

" What can we do ?" they asked; " can we destroy our Caste ?"

Oh, I did blaze out for a moment! I really could not help it. And then I knelt
down among them all, just broken with the pity of it, and prayed with all
my heart and soul that the Good Shepherd would come and gather the lamb
in His arms!

I wonder if you can bear to read it ? I can hardly bear to write it. But you
have not seen the little wasted

hands pressed over the eyes, and then falling helplessly, too tired to hold up
any longer; and you have not heard those weak little wails—and to think it
need not have

been!

But we could do nothing. We were leaving the place next day, and even if
we could have helped him, they would not have let us. They had their own
doctor, they said; the case was in his hands. As we came away they ex
plained that one of the boy's distant relatives had died two years ago, and
that this was what prevented any of them leaving the house, as some
obscure Caste rule would be broken if they did; otherwise, perhaps they
might have been able to take him somewhere for change of treatment. So
there that child must lie in his pain, one more little living sacrifice on the
altar of Caste.

The last thing I heard them say as we left the house was, " Cry softly, or
we'll put more medicine in ! " And the last thing I saw was the tightening of
the little hands over the poor shut eyes, as he tried to stifle his sobs and "
cry softly." This told one what the " medicine " meant to him. One of the
things they had put in was raw pepper mixed with alum.

Is not Caste a cruel thing ? Those women were not heartless, but they would
rather see that baby die in torture by inches, than dim with one breath the
lustre of their brazen escutcheon of Caste!

This is one glimpse of one phase of a power which is only a name at home.
It is its weakest phase; for the hold of Caste upon the body is as nothing to
the hold it has upon the mind and soul. It yields to the touch of pain
sometimes, as our medical missionaries know; but it
tightens again too often when the need for relief is past. It is unspeakably
strong, unmercifully cruel, and yet it would seem as though the very blood
of the people ran red with it. It is in them, part of their very being.

This, then, is Caste viewed as a Doer. It does strange things, hard things,
things most cruel. It is, all who fight it are agreed, the strongest foe to the
Gospel of Christ on the Hindu fields of South India,

" I determined not to laugh !" That was what she said when she saw it, and
she was fairly satisfied with the result of her efforts. The jewels are gold,
the seeley a rich red. A woman of this type makes a fine picture,—the
strong intelligent face, the j>erfect arms and hands, the glisten
ing gold on the clear brown, and the graceful dress harmonising so perfectly
with the colour of eyes and hair. The one deformity is the ear, cut so as to
hold the jewels, which are so heavy that one wonders the stretched lobes do
not break.

CHAPTER XII Petra

"This work in India . . is one of the most crucial tests the Church of Christ
has ever been put to. The people you think to measure your forces against
are such as the giant races of Canaan are nothing to." Bishop French, India
and Arabia,

IT was very hot, and we were tired, and the friendly voice calling " Come in
! come in ! Oh, come and rest!" was a welcome sound, and we went in.

She was a dear old friend of mine, the only real friend I have in that ancient
Hindu town. Her house is always open to us, the upper room always empty
—or said to be so—when we are needing a rest. But she is a Hindu of the
Hindus, and though so enlightened that for love's sake she touches us freely,
taking our hands in hers, and even kissing us, after we go there is a general
puri fication ; every scrap of clothing worn while we were in the house is
carefully washed before sunset.

She insisted now upon feeding us, called for plantains and sugar, broke up
the plantains, dabbed the pulp in the sugar, and commanded us to eat. Then
she sat down satisfied, and was photographed.

This town, a little ancient Hindu town, is two hours journey from Dohnavur.
There are thirty-eight stone temples and shrines in and around it, and five
hundred

altars. No one has counted the number of idols; there are two hundred under
a single tree near one of the smaller shrines. Each of the larger temples has
its attendant temple-women; there are two hundred recognised Ser vants of
the gods, and two hundred annual festivals.

Wonderful sums are being worked just now concerning the progress of
Christianity in India. A favourite sum is stated thus: the number of
Christians has increased during the last decade at a certain ratio. Given the
continuance of this uniform rate of increase, it will follow that within a
computable period India will be a Christian land. One flaw in this method
of calculation is that it takes for granted that Brahmans, high-caste Hindus,
and Moham medans will be Christianised at the same rate of progress as
prevails at present among the depressed classes.

There are sums less frequently stated. Here in the heart of this Hindu town
they come with force; one such sum worked out carefully shows that,
according to the present rate of advance, it will be more than twenty
thousand years before the Hindu towns of this district are even nominally
Christian. Another still more startling gives us this result: according to the
laws which govern statistics, thirteen hundred thousand years must pass
before the Brahmans in this one South Indian district are Christianised. And
if the sum is worked so as to cover all India, the result is quite as staggering
to faith based on statistics.

Praise God, this is not His arithmetic! It is a purely human invention. We

believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life; we believe in God,
even God Who calleth the things that are not as though they

were: therefore these sums prove nothing. But if such sums are worked at
all, they ought to be worked on both sides, and not only on the side which
yields the most encouraging results.

Two of us spent a morning in the Brahman street. In these old Hindu towns
the Brahman street is built round the temple, and in large towns this street is
a thoroughfare, and we are allowed in. The women stood in the shadow of
the cool little dark verandahs, and we stood out in the sun and tried to make
friends with them. Then some Mission College boys saw us and felt
ashamed that we should stand in that blazing heat, and they offered us a
verandah ; but the women instantly cleared off, and the men came, and the
boys besought us under their breath to say nothing about our religion.

We spoke for a few minutes, throwing our whole soul into the chance. We
felt that our words were as feathers floating against rocks; but we
witnessed, and they listened till, as one of them remarked, it was time to go
for their noontide bathe, and we knew they wished us to go. We went then,
and found a wall at the head of the Brahman street, and we stood in its
shadow and tried again. Crowds of men and lads gathered about us, but our
College boys stood by our side and helped to quiet them. "Now you see,"
they said to us, as they walked with us down the outer street, " how quite
impossible for us is Christianity."

It is good sometimes to take time to take in the might of the foe we fight.
That evening two of us had a quiet few minutes under the temple walls.
Those great walls, reaching so high above us, stretching so far

beyond us, seemed a type of the wall Satan has built round these souls.

We could touch this visible wall, press against it, feel its solid strength. Kun
hard against it, and you would be hurt, you might fall back bleeding; it
would not have yielded one inch.

And the other invisible wall ? Oh, we can touch it too! Spirit-touch is a real
thing. And so is spirit-pain. But the wall, it still stands strong.

It was moonlight. We had walked all round the great temple square, down
the silent Brahman streets, and we had stood in the pillared hall, and looked
across to the open door, and seen the light on the shrine.

Now we were out in God's clean light, looking up at the mass of the tower,
as it rose pitch-black against the sky. And we felt how small we were.

Then the influences of the place began to take hold of us. It was not only
masonry; it was mystery. " The Sovereigns of this present Darkness " were
there.

How futile all of earth seemed then, against those tremendous forces and
powers. What toy-swords seemed all weapons of the flesh. Praise God for
the Holy Ghost !

While we were sitting there a Brahman came to see what we were doing,
and we told him some of our thoughts. He asked us then if we would care to
hear his. We told him, gladly. He pointed up to the temple tower. " That is
my first step to God." We listened, and he unfolded, thought by thought,
that strange old Vedic philosophy, which holds that God, being omni
present, reveals Himself in various ways, in visible forms in incarnations, or
in spirit. The visible-form method

of revelation is the lowest; it is only, as it were, the first of a series of steps

which lead up to the highest, intelligent adoration of and absorption into the
One Supreme Spirit. " We are only little children yet. We take this small
first step, it crumbles beneath us as we rise to the next, and so step by step
we rise from the visible to the invisible, from matter to spirit—to God.
But," he added courteously, " as my faith is good for me, so, doubtless, you
find yours for you."

Next morning we went down to the river and had talks with the people who
passed on their way to the town. It was all so pretty in the early morning
light. Men were washing their bullocks, and children were scampering in
and out of the water. Farther down stream the women were bathing their
babies and polish ing their brass water-vessels. Trees met overhead, but the
light broke through in places and made yellow patches on the water. Out in
one of those reaches of yellow a girl stood bending to fill her vessel; she
wore the common crimson of the South, but the light struck it, and struck
the shining brass as she swung it up under her arm, and made her into a
picture as she stood in her clinging wet red things against the brown and
green of water and wood. Everywhere we looked there was something
beautiful to look at, and all about us was the sound of voices and laughter,
and the musical splashing of water; then, as we enjoyed it all, we saw this:

Under an ancient tree fifteen men were walking slowly round and round,
following the course of the sun. Under the tree there were numbers of idols,
and

piles of oleander and jessamin wreaths, brought fresh that morning. The
men were elderly, fine-looking men; they were wholly engrossed in what
they were doing. It was no foolish farce to them; it was reality.

There is something in the sight of this ordinary, evident dethronement of

our God which stirs one to one's inmost soul. We could not look at it.
Again and again we have gone to that town, but to-day those men go round
that tree, and to-day that town is a fort unwon.

Petra, I have called it; the word stands for many a town walled in as that
one is. In Keith's Evidence of Prophecy there is a map of Petra, the old
strong city of Edom, and in studying it a light fell upon David's question
concerning it, and his own triumphant answer, " Who will lead me into the
strong city ? Who will bring me into Edom? Wilt not Thou, 0 God?" for the
map shows the mountains all round except at the East, where they break
into a single narrow passage, the one way in. There was only one way in,
but there was that one way in!

Here is a town walled up to heaven by walls of Caste and bigotry, but there
must be one way in. Here is a soul walled all round by utter indifference
and pride, but there must be one way in.

" Who will lead me into the strong city ? Who will bring me into Edom ?
Wilt not Thou, O God ? "

CHAPTER XIII Death by Disuse

" There is a strong tendency to look upon the Atonement of Christ as

possessing some quality by virtue of which God can excuse and overlook
sin in the Christian, a readiness to look upon sinning as the inevitable
accompaniment of human nature 'until death do us part,' and to look upon
Christianity as a substitute for rather than a cause of personal holiness of
life."

Reu. /. W. Charlton, India.

"From many things I have heard I fancy many at home think of the mission
as a sort of little heaven upon earth, but when one looks under the surface
there is much to sadden one. . . . Oh, friends, much prayer is needed! Many
of the agents know apparently nothing about conversion.

" You may not like my writing so plainly, but sometimes it seems as if only
the bright side were given, and one feels that if God's praying people at
home understood things more as they really are ... more prayer for an
outpouring of the Holy Spirit on our agents and converts would ascend to
God. . . . We do long to see all our pastors and agents really converted men,
men of prayer and faith, who, knowing that they them selves are saved,
long with a great longing to see the heathen round them brought out of
darkness into His light, and the Christians who form their congregations,
earnest converted men and women." A. J. Carr, India.

"Fifty added to the Church sounds fine at home, but if only five of them are
genuine what will it profit in the Great Day ? "

Dauid Liuingstone t Africa.

" Oh for the Fire to set the whole alight, and melt us all into one mighty
Holy-Ghost Church 1" Minnie Apperson, China.

THE lamps were being lighted, the drums beaten, the cymbals struck, and
the horns blown for evening pujah in all the larger temples and shrines of
the

" Strong City," when we turned out of it, and, crossing the

stream that divides the two places, went to the Christian hamlet, which by
contrast at that moment seemed like a little corner of the garden of the Lord.
Behind was the heathenish clash and clang of every possible discord, and
here the steady ringing of the bell for evening service ; behind was all that
ever was meant by the " mystery of iniquity," and here the purity and peace
of Christianity This is how it struck me at first ; and even now, after a spell
of work in the heart of heathendom, Christendom, or the bit of it lying
alongside, is beautiful by contrast. There you have naked death, death
unadorned, the corpse exhibited ; here, if there is a corpse, at least it is
decently dressed. And yet that evening it was forced upon me that death is
death wherever found and however carefully covered.

The first of the Christians to welcome us was a bright-looking widow—this

is her photograph. We soon made friends. She told us she had been " born in
the Way " ; her grandfather joined it, and none of the family had gone back,
so she was sure that all was right. We were not so sure, and we tried to find
out if she knew the difference between joining the Way and coming to
Christ. This was only a poor little country hamlet, but everywhere we have
travelled, among educated and uneducated alike, we have found much
confusion of thought upon this subject.

" God knows my heart," she said, " God hears my prayers. If I see a bad
dream in the night, I pray to God, and putting a Bible under my head, I
sleep in perfect peace." Could anything be more conclusive ?

There were numbers of other proofs forthcoming : If your grandfather gave

six lamps to the church, value

"I do feel so shy !" she was just on the point of saying to me, by way of
appeal to be released, when the camera clicked and she was caught.
Widows do not wear
jewels, as a rule, among the Hindus of the higher Castes, but Christians do
as they like. She is a village woman of fairly good position.

three and a half rupees each (the lamps are hanging to-day, and bear witness
to the fact) ; if your father never failed to pay his yearly dues, besides
regular Sunday collec tions (his name is in the church report, and how much
he gave is printed); if you freely help the poor, and give them paddy on
Christmas Day (quite a sackful of it); if you never offer to demons (no, not
when your children are sick, and the other faithless Christians advise you);
if you never tie on the cylinder (a charm frequently though covertly worn
by purely nominal Christians); and finally, if you have been baptised and
confirmed, and " without a break join the Night-supper," surely no one can
reasonably doubt that you are a Christian of a very proper sort ? As to
questions about change of heart, and chronic indulgence in sins, such as
lying—who in this wicked world lives without lying ? And when it pleases
God to do it He will change your heart.

We took the evening meeting for the villagers, who meanwhile had gathered
and were listening with approval. Privacy, as we understand it, is a thing
unknown in India. " That is right," they remarked cheerfully; " give her
plenty of good advice!" And we all trooped into the prayer-room.

Once in there, everyone put on a sort of church expression, and each one
took his or her accustomed seat in decorous silence. The little school-
children sat in rows in front on the mats with arms demurely folded, and
sparkling eyes fixed solemnly; the grown-up people sat on their mats on
either side behind, and we sat on ours facing them. We began with a chorus,
which the children picked up quickly and shouted lustily, the

grown-ups joining in with more reserve; and then we got to work.

Blessing spoke. She had once been a nominal Christian, and she knew
exactly where these people were, and how they looked at things. Her heart
was greatly moved as she spoke, and the tears were in her eyes, for she
knew none of these friends had the joy of conscious salvation, and she told
me afterwards she had thirst and hunger for them. But they listened
unimpressed. Then we had prayer and a quiet time; sometimes the Spirit
works most in quiet, and we rose expectantly; but there was no sign of life.
After the meeting was over they gathered round us again. They are always
so loving and friendly in these little villages; but they could not understand
what it was that troubled us. Were they not all Christians ?

Shortly afterwards they came, as their kindly custom is, to bring us fruit and
wreaths of flowers on New Year's Day. I missed my first friend of that
evening, and asked for her. " That widow you talked to ? " said the old
catechist, " three days ago fever seized her, and "— He broke off and
looked up. Then I longed to hear how she had died, but no one could tell me
anything. Oh, the curtain of silence that covers the passing of souls !

We went soon afterwards to the village, sure that at last the people would be
stirred ; for she had been a leader among the women, and her call, even in
this land of sudden calls, had been very sudden. But we did not find it had
affected anyone. They all referred to her in the chastened tone adopted upon
such occasions, and, sighing, reminded each other that God was merciful,
and she had always been, up to the measure of her ability, a very good
woman.

We felt as if we were standing with each one of those people separately, in

the one little standing space we were sure of, before that curtain, and we
spoke with them as you speak with those whom you know you may never
see again on this side of it. But they looked at us, and wondered what was
the matter with us. Were they not Christians ? Did they not believe in God ?
Did they not pray regularly night and morning for forgiveness, protection,
and blessing ? So they could not understand.

Was it that the power to understand had been withered up within them ?
Was the soul God gave them dead—" sentenced to death by disuse " ? Dead
they are in apathy and ignorance and putrefying customs, and the false
security that comes from adherence to the Christian creed without vital
connection with Christ. These poor Christians are dead.

" Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you that God should
raise the dead ?" Lord, it is not a thing incredible. Thou hast done it before.
Oh, do it again. Do it soon !
I have told you how much we need your help for the work among the
heathen; but often we feel we need it almost as much for the work among
the Christians. Over and over again it is told, but still it is hardly
understood, that the Christians need to be converted ; that the vast majority
are not converted; that statistics may mislead, and do not stand for Eternity
work; that many a pastor, catechist, teacher, has a name to live, but is dead;
that the Church is very dead as a whole—thank God for every exception.
We do not say this thoughtlessly; the words are a grief to write. We humble
ourselves that

it is so, and take to ourselves the blame. It is true that the corpse of the dead
Church is dressed, just as it is at home, only here it is even more dressed ;
and because the spirit of the land is intensely religious, its grave-clothes are
vestments. But dressed death is still death.

This will come as a shock to those who have read stories of this or that
native Christian, and generalising from these stories, picture the Church as a
company of saints. God has His saints in India, 1 men and women hidden
away in quiet places out of sight, and some few out in the front ; but the cry
of our hearts is for more. So we tell you the truth about things as they are,
though we know it will not be acceptable, for the best is the thing that is
best liked at home ; so the best is most frequently written.

This may seem to cross out what was said before, about the darker side of
the truth being often told. It does not cross it out : read through the
magazines and reports, and you will find truth-revealing sentences, which
show facts to those who have eyes to see ; but though this is so, all will
admit that the sanguine view, as it is called, is by far the most in evidence,
for the sanguine man is by far the most popular writer, and so is more
pressed to write. " People will read what is buoyant and bright; the more of
that sort we have the better," wrote a Mission secretary out in the field not
long ago, to a missionary who did not feel free to write in quite that way.
Those who, to quote another secretary, " are afraid of writing at all, for fear
of telling lies "—excuse the energetic language; I am quoting, not inventing
—natur ally write much less, and so the best gets known.

1 See Appendix, p. 303.

This is nobody's fault exactly. The home authorities print for the most part
what is sent to them. They even call attention sometimes to the less cheerful
view of things; and if, yielding occasionally to the pressure which is
brought to bear upon them by a public which loves to hear what it likes,
they take the sting out of some strong paragraph by adding an editorial "
Neverthe less," is it very astonishing ?

Do you think we are writing like this because we are discouraged ? No, we
are not discouraged, except when sometimes we fear lest you should grow
weary in prayer before the answer comes. This India is God's India. This
work is His. Oh, join with us then, as we join with all our dear Indian
brothers and sisters who are alive in the Lord, in waiting upon Him in that
intensest form of waiting which waits on till the answer comes ; join with
us as we pray to the mighty God of revivals, " 0 Lord, revive Thy work!
Eevive Thy work in the midst of the years! In the midst of the years make
known!"

CHAPTER XIV What Happened

" Some years ago England was stirred through and through by revelations
which were made as to the 'Bitter Cry* of wronged womanhood. In India
the bitter cry is far more bitter, but it is stifled and smothered by the cruel
gag of Caste. Orthodox Hindus would rather see their girls betrayed,
tortured, murdered, than suffer them to break through the trammels of
Caste." Rev. T. Wai her, India.

THERE is another ancient town near Dolmavur, and in that town another
temple, and round the temple the usual Brahman square. In one of the
streets of this square we saw the girl whose face looks out at you. It struck
us as a typical face, not beautiful as many are, but characteristic in the latent
power of eyes and brow, a face full of possibilities.

We were rarely able to get anything we specially wanted, but we got this. I
look at it now, and wonder how it will develop as the soul behind it shapes
and grows. That child is enfolded in influences which ward off the touch of
the grace of life.
We saw numbers of women that day, but only at the dis tance of a street
breadth ; they would not come nearer, for the town is still a Petra to us, we
are waiting to be led in.

But if we were able to get in enough to take a photo graph, surely we were "
in " enough to preach the Gospel ?

Here is one who might be a queen. What she may be is very different. She
is a Brah man girl; all her people are Hindus. She

has never even felt a desire, or seen any one in her town who felt a desire,
to "fall into the pit of Christianity,"

Why not stop and there speak of more important matters ? What was to
hinder then ?
Only this: in that town they have heard of converts coming out, and
breaking Caste in baptism, and they have made a law that we (with whom
they know some of these converts are) .shall never bellowed to apeak to any
of their jwomen,^ That hindered us there. But even supposing we had been
free to speak, as we trust we shall be soon, and supposing she had wanted to
hear, the barriers which lie between such a child and confession of Christ
are so many and so great that when, as now, one wants to tell you about
them, one hardly knows how to do it. Words seem like little feeble shadows
of some grim rock, like little feeble shadows of the grasses growing on it,
rather than of it, in its solidity; or, to revert to the old thought, all one can
say is just pointing to the Dust as evidence of the Actual.

" What is to hinder high - caste women from being baptised, and living as
Christians in their own homes ?" The question was asked by an
Englishman, a winter visitor, who, being interested in Missions, was
gathering impressions. We told him no high-caste woman would be allowed
to live as an open Christian in her own home; and we told him of some
who, only because they were suspected of inclining towards Christianity,
had been caused to disappear. "What do you suppose happened to them ?"
he asked, and we told him.

We were talking in the pleasant drawing-room of an Indian Hotel. Our

friend smiled, and assured us we must be mistaken. We were under the
English Govern ment ; such things could not be possible. We looked round
the quiet room, with its air of English comfort

and English safety; we looked at the quiet faces, faces that had never looked
at fear, and we hardly wondered that they could not understand.

Then in a moment, even as they talked, we were far away in another room,
looking at other faces, faces un quiet, very full of fear. We knew that all
round us, for streets and streets, there were only the foes of our Lord; we
knew that a cry that was raised for help would be drowned long before it
could escape through those many streets to the great English house outside.
There were policemen, you say. But policemen in India are not as at home.
Policemen can be bribed.
And now we are looking in again. There is a very dark inner room, no
window, one small door ; the walls are solid, so is the door. If you cried in
there, who would hear ?

And now we are listening—someone is speaking; " Once there was one; she
cared for your God. She was buried into the wall in there, and that was the
end of her." . .

But we are back in the drawing-room, hearing them tell us these things
could never be. ... Three years passed, and a girl came for refuge to us. She
loved her people well; she would never have come to us had they let her
live as a Christian at home. But no, " Eather than that she shall burn," they
said. We were doubtful about her age, and we feared we should have to give
her up if the case came on in the courts. And if we had to give her up ? We
looked at the gentle, trustful face, and we could not bear the thought; and
yet, according to our friends, the Government made all safe.

About that time a paper came to the house; names, dates means of
identification, all were given. This was the story

in brief. A young Brahman girl in another South Indian town wanted to be a

Christian, and confessed Christ at home. She earnestly wished to be
baptised, but she was too young then, and waited, learning steadily and
continuing faithful, though everything was done that could be done to turn
her from her purpose. She was betrothed against her will to her cousin, and
forbidden to have anything to do with the Christians. " She was never
allowed to go out alone, and was practically a prisoner."

For three years that child held on, witnessing steadfastly at home, and
letting it be clearly known that she was and would be a Christian. A Hindu
ceremony of importance in the family was held in her grandfather's house,
and she refused to go. This brought things to a crisis. Her people appointed
a council of five to investigate the matter. " She maintained a glorious
witness before them all," says the missionary ; " declared boldly that she
was a Christian, and intended to join us ; and when challenged about the
Bible, she held it out, and read it to the assembled people."
For a time it seemed as if she had won the day, but fresh attempts were
made upon her constancy by certain religious bigots of the town. They
offered her jewels—that failed ; tried to get her to turn Mussulman, that
being less dis graceful than to be a Christian; and last and worst, tried to
stain that white soul black—but, thank God! still they failed.

At last the waiting time was over; she was of age to be baptised, and she
wrote to tell her missionary friend about it. He sent her books to read, and
promised to let her know within two days what he could arrange to do. "
Her letter was dated from her grandfather's house/' the

missionary writes, " to which she said she had been sent, and put in a room
alone. On the following day, hearing a rumour of her death, I went to N.'s
house, and there found her body, outside the door. I caused it to be seized
by the police, and the post-mortem has revealed the fact that the poor child
was poisoned by arsenic. Bribes have been freely used and atrocious lies
have been told, and the net result of all the police inquiries, so far, is that no
charge can be brought against anyone."

Last year we met one of the missionaries from this Mission, on the hills,
and we asked him if anyone had been convicted. He said no one had been
convicted, " the Caste had seen to that."

Here, then, is a statement of facts, divested of all emotion or sensationalism.

A child is shut up in a room alone, and poisoned; when she is dead, her
body is thrown outside the door. It was found. There have been bodies
which have not been found ; but we are under the British Government—
nothing can have happened to them f

The British Government does much, but it cannot do everything. It is

notorious in India that false witnesses can be bought at so much a head,
according to the nature of witness required. Bribery and corruption are not
mere names here, but facts, most difficult for any straightfor ward official to
trace and track and deal with. We know, and everyone knows, that the
White Man's Govern ment, though strong enough to win and rule this
million-peopled Empire, is weak as a white child when it stands outside the
door of an Indian house, and wants to know what has gone on inside, or
proposes to regulate what shall go on. It cannot do it. The thought is vain.
" Why not have her put under surveillance ?" asked a friend, a military man,
about a certain girl who wanted to be a Christian; as if such surveillance
were practicable, or ever could be, under such conditions as obtain in high -
caste Hindu and Mohammedan circles, except in places directly under the
eye of Government. We know there are houses where, at an hour's notice,
any kind and any strength of poison can be prepared and administered :
quick poison to kill within a few minutes; slow poisons that undermine the
constitution, and do their work so safely that no one can find it out; brain
poisons, worse than either, and perhaps more commonly used, as they are as
effective and much less dangerous. But we could not prove what we know,
and knowledge without proof is, legally speaking, valueless.

And yet we know these things, we have heard " a cry of tears," we have
heard " a cry of blood "—

" Tears and blood have a cry that pierces heaven

Through all its hallelujah swells of mirth;

God hears their cry, and though He tarry, yet

He doth not forget."

CHAPTER XV " Simply Murdered"

" ' Agonia'— that word so often on St. Paul's lips, what did it mean ? Did it
not just mean the thousand wearinesses and deeper, the strivings, the
travailings, the bitter disappoint ments, the ' deaths oft ' of a missionary's
life ? "

Reu. Robert Stewart, China.

are worse things than martyrdom. There are some who are " simply
murdered." There is one who belongs to a Caste which more than any other
is considered tolerant and safe. Men converts from this Caste can live at
home, and if a husband and wife believe, they may continue living in their
own house, among the heathen. And yet this is what happened to a girl
because it was known that she wanted to be a Christian.
First persecution. Treasure, as her name may be translated, had learnt as a
child in the little mission school, and when we went to her village she
responded, and took her stand. She refused to take part in a Hindu
ceremony. She was beaten, at first slightly, then severely. This failed, so
they sent her out of our reach to a heathen village miles away. This also
failed, and she was brought home, and for some months went steadily on,
reading and learning when she could, and all the time brightly witnessing.
She was a joy to us

She was very anxious to come out and be baptised, but her age was the
difficulty. When a convert comes, the first thing to be done is to let the
police authorities know. They send a constable, who takes down the
convert's deposition, which is then forwarded to head quarters. One of the
first questions concerns age. In some cases a medical certificate is
demanded, and the girl's fate turns on that; if we can get one for over
sixteen we are safe from prosecution in the Criminal Courts, but eighteen is
the safest age, as the Civil Courts, if the case were to proceed, would force
us to give her up if she were under eighteen. The difficulty of proving the
age, unless the girl is evidently well over it, is very serious. The medical
certificate usually takes off a year from what we have every reason to
believe is the true age.

One other proof remains—the horoscope. This is a Hindu document written

on a palm leaf at the birth of the child; but it is always carefully kept by the
head of the family, and so, as a rule, unobtainable. When a case comes on in
Court a false horoscope may be pro duced by the relatives; this was done in
a recent case tried in our Courts, so we cannot count upon that. In this girl's
case we got the Government registers searched for birth-records of her
village, but all such registers we found had been destroyed; none were kept
of births sixteen years back. So, though she believed herself to be, and we
believed her to be, and the Christians who had known her all her life were
sure she was, " about sixteen," we knew it could not be proved. She was a
very slight girl, delicate and small for her age. This

was against her, and there were other reasons against her coming just then.
She had to wait.
I shall never forget the day I had to tell her so She could not understand it.
She knew that all the higher Castes had threatened to combine, and back up
her father in a lawsuit, if she became a Christian ; but she thought it would
be quite enough if she stood up before the judge, and said she knew she was
of age, and she wanted to come to us. " I will not be afraid of the people,"
she pleaded, "I will stand up straight before them all, and speak without any
fear!"

I remember how the tears filled her eyes as I ex plained things; it was so
hard for her to understand that we had no power whatever to protect her. It
would be worse for her if she came and had to be given up. She was fully
sensible of this, but "Would God let them take me away ? Would He not
take care of me ?" she asked.

I suppose it is right to obey the laws. They are, on the whole, righteous
laws, made in the defence of these very girls. It would never do if anyone
could decoy away a mere child from her parents or natural guardians. But
the unrighteous thing, as it seems to us, is that the whole burden of proof
lies upon us, and that in these country villages no facilities such as
Government registers of birth are to be had, by which we could hope legally
to prove a point about which we are morally sure. We feel that as the burden
of proof rests upon us, surely facilities should be obtainable by which we
could find out a girl's age before she comes, so that we might know whether
or not we might legally protect her.

Still more strongly we feel it is strange justice which^ decrees that though a
child of twelve may be legally to underta^A thp rp.HpnnajJ7J1if-.ies of
wife-

hood, six years more must pass before she may be legally heldjjfift t.n obpy
hnr fionsffimnft, Free ! She is never legally free ! A widow may be legally
free ; a wife in India, never ! Hardly a single Caste wife in all this Empire
would be found in the little band of open Chris tians to-day, if the
missionary concerned had not risked more than can be told here, and put
God's law before man's. But oh, the number who have been turned back !

One stops, forces the words down — they come too hot and fast. There are
reasons. As I write, a young wife dear to us is lying bruised and
unconscious on the floor of the inner room of a Hindu house. Her husband,
encouraged by her own mother, set himself to make her conform to a
certain Caste custom. It was idolatrous. She refused. He beat her then, blow
upon blow, till she fell senseless. They brought her round and began again.
There is no satisfactory redress. She is his wife. She is not free to be a
Christian. He knows it. Her relations know it. She knows it, poor child.

0 God, forgive us if we are too hot, too sore at heart, for easy pleasantness !
And, God, raise up in India Christian statesmen who will inquire into this
matter, and refuse to be blindfolded and deceived. His laws and ours clash
somewhere ; the question is, where ?

To return to Treasure, we left her waiting to come. A Christian teacher lived

next door, and Treasure used to slip in sometimes, as the two courtyards
adjoined. We had put up a text on the wall for her : " Fear not :

for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name; thou art Mine."
This was her special text, and she looked at it now; and then she grew
braver, and promised to be patient and try to win her mother, who was
bitterly opposed.

But oh, how I remember the wistfulness of her face as I went out; and one's
very heart can feel again the stab of pain, like a knife cutting deep, as I left
her— to her fate.

You have seen a tree standing stark and bare, a bleak black thing, on a
sunny day against a sky of blue. You have looked at it, fascinated by the
silent horror of it, a distorted cinder, not a tree, and someone tells you it was
struck in the last great thunderstorm.

Next time we saw Treasure she was like that. What happened between, so
far as it is known, was this. They tried to persuade her, they tried to coerce
her; she witnessed to Jesus, and never faltered, though once they dragged
her out of the house by her hair, and holding her down against the wall,
struck her hard with a leather strap. One of the Christians saw it, and heard
the poor tortured child cry out, " I do not fear ! I do not fear! It will only
send nie to Jesus!"
Then they tried threats. " We will take you out to the lake at night, and cut
you in little pieces, and throw you into it." She fully believed them, but
even so, we hear she did not flinch.

Then they did their worst to her.

It was a Sunday morning. The Saturday evening before she had managed to
sec the teacher. She told her hurriedly how one had come, " a bridegroom"
she

called him, a student from a Mission College; he was telling her all sorts of
things—that Christianity was an exploded religion; and how a great and
learned woman (Mrs. Besant) had exposed the missionaries and their ways,
so that no thinking people had any excuse for being deceived by them.

Then she added earnestly, " It is the devil. Do pray for me. They want me to
marry him secretly! Oh, I must go to the Missie Ammal!" And if we had
only known, we would have risked anything, any breach of the law of the
land, to save her from a breach of the law of heaven! For all this talk,
between an Indian girl of good repute and her prospective husband, is
utterly foreign to what is considered right in Old India. It in itself meant
danger. But we knew nothing, and next day, all that Sunday, she was shut
up, and no one knows what happened to her. On Monday she was seen
again ; but changed, so utterly changed !

We heard nothing of this till the following Wednesday. The Christians were
honestly concerned, but the Tamil is ever casual, and they saw no reason for
distressing us with bad news sooner than could be helped.

As soon as we heard, I sent two of the Sisters who knew her best, to try and
see her if possible. They managed to see her for two or three minutes, but
found her hopelessly hard. Every bit of care was gone. She laughed in a
queer, strained way, they said. It was no use my trying to see her. But I
determined to see her. I cannot go over it all again, it is like tearing the skin
off a wound; so the letter written at the time may tell the rest of it.

" On Saturday I went. I went straight to the teacher's 9

house, and sent off the bandy at once, and by God's special arrangement got
in unnoticed. For hours we sat in the little inner room, waiting; we could
hear her voice in the courtyard outside—a hard, changed voice. The teacher
tried to get her in, but no, she would not come. Oh, how we held on to God!
I could not bear to go till I had seen her.

" At last we had to go. The cart came back for us, thus proclaiming where
we were, and the last human chance was gone. And then, just then, like one
walking in a dream, Treasure wandered in and stood, startled.

" She did not know we were there. We were kneeling with our backs to the
door. I turned and saw her.

" I cannot write about the next five minutes; I thought I realised something
of what Satan could do in this land, but I knew nothing about it. Oh, when
will Jesus come and end it all ?

" Just once it seemed as if the spell were broken. My arms were round her,
though she had shrunk away at first, and tried to push me from her; she was
quiet now, and seemed to understand a little how one cared. She knelt down
with me, and covered her eyes as if in prayer, while I poured out my soul
for her, and then we were all very still, and the Lord seemed very near. But
she rose, unmoved, and looked at us. We were all quite broken down, and
she smiled in a strange, hard, foolish way—that was all.

" The cause no one knows. There are only two possible explanations. One is
poison. There is some sort of mind-bewildering medicine which it is known
is given in such cases. This is the view held by the Christians

on the spot. One of them says her cousin was dealt with in this way. He was
keen to be a Christian, and was shut up for a day, and came out—dead.
Dead, she means, to all which before had been life to him.

" The other, and worse, is sin. Has she been forced into some sin which to
one so enlightened as she is must mean an awful darkness, the hiding of
God's face ?
" I cannot tell you how bright this dear child was. Up till that Saturday
evening her faith never wavered; she was a living sign to all the town that
the Lord is God. The heathen are triumphant now."

I have told you plainly what has happened. God's Truth needs no painting. I
leave it with you. Do you believe it is perfectly true ? Then what are you
going to do?

CHAPTER XVI Wanted, Volunteers

"We have a great and imposing War Office, but a very small army. . . .
While vast continents are shrouded in almost utter darkness, and hundreds
of millions suffer the horrors of heathenism or of Islam, the burden of proof
lies upon you to show that the circumstances in which God has placed you
were meant by Him to keep you out of the foreign mission field." Ion Keith
Falconer, Arabia.

IN one of the addresses delivered at the International Student Missionary

Conference, London, in January 1900, a South Indian missionary spoke of
the Brahman race as " the brain of India." " Their num bers are
comparatively small—between ten and fifteen millions—but though
numerically few—only five per cent, of the Hindu population—they hold
all that population in the hollow of their hand. They occupy every position
of influence in the land. They are the statesmen and politicians, the judges,
magistrates, Government officials, and clerks of every grade. If there is any
position conferring influence over their fellow-men, it will be held by a
Brahman. More over, they are a sacred Caste, admitted by the people to be
gods upon earth—a rank supposed to have been attained by worth
maintained through many trans migrations."

Among the Petras of this district is a little old-

A typical Brahman face. It is keener than the photo shows, and has the
cynical expression so many Brahman faces have. Such a man is hard to win.

fashioned country town, held in strength by the Brahmans, No convert has

ever come from that town, and the town boasts that none ever shall. None
of the houses are open yet to teaching, or even visiting, but we are making
friends, and hope for an entrance soon. We spent a morning out in the street;
they had no objection to that, and as the free young Brahmans gathered
round us, or stood for a moment against a wall to be " caught," it was
difficult, even for us who knew it, to realise how bound they were. " Bound,
who should conquer ; slaves, who should be kings." Bound, body and soul,
in a bondage perfectly incomprehensible to the English mind.

Afterwards, when we saw the photographs, we recalled one and another

who, while they were young students like these, dared to desire to escape
from their bondage; but back they were dragged, and the chains were
riveted faster than ever, and every link was tested again, and hammered
down hard.
We wanted to be sure of our facts about each of them, that these facts may
further answer that smile which assures us things are not as we imagine; so
the Iyer wrote to a brother missionary who had known these lads well, and
asked him to tell what happened to each of them. This morning the answer
to that letter came, and was handed to me with " I hardly like to give it to
you, but it tells the truth about what goes on." These boys were students in
our C.M.S. College.

The first one mentioned in the letter is a young Brahman who confessed
Christ in baptism, and bravely withstood the tremendous opposition raised
by his friends,

who came in crowds for many weeks, and tried by every argument to
persuade him to return to Hinduism; but he preached Christ to them. They
brought his young wife, and she tore her hair and wailed, and besought him
not to condemn her to the shame of a widow's life. This was the hardest of
all to withstand; he turned to the missionary and said, " Oh my father, take
her away ! She is tearing out my heart!"

Then came the baptism day of another Brahman student, his friend, who
previous to this had been seized by his relatives, shut up and starved, and
then fed with poisoned food; but the poison was not strong enough to kill,
and he had escaped, and was now safe and ready for baptism.

It was remembered afterwards how the friend of the newly baptised stood
and rejoiced, and praised God. Then, the baptism over, fearing no danger in
open day, he went to the tank to bathe. He was never seen again.

What happened exactly no one knows. It is thought that men hired to watch
him seized their opportunity, and carried him off. What they did then has
never been told. Contradictory reports about the boy have reached the
missionaries. One, that he is still holding on, another that he is now a priest
in one of the great Saivite temples of South India. Which is true, God
knows.

But we are under the English Government. Could nothing be done ? One of
his near relatives is the present Judge of the High Court of one of our Indian
cities. And among the crowd of Brahmans who came
-

A typical Brahman student. The marks on the forehead are made of bright
red, yellow, and white paste,

and repi^esents the footprint of the god Vishnu. These Brahmans are
Vaishnavites.

during those weeks, there were influential men, graduates of colleges,

members of the legal profession—a favourite profession in India. And yet
this thing was done.

There was another; the means used to get hold of him cannot be written
here. That is the difficulty which fronts us when we try to tell the truth as it
really is. It simply cannot be told. The Dust may be shown—or a little of it;
the whole of the Actual, never.

There were others near the Kingdom, but it is the same story over again.
They were all spirited away from the college; the missionary writes, " it
makes one's heart side to think of them, and the hellish means invented to
turn them from Christ." These are not the words of sentimental imagination.
They are the words of a man who gives evidence as a witness. But even a
witness may feel.
He tells us of one, a bright, happy fellow, he says he was, whose friends
made no objection to his returning home after his baptism, and he returned,
thinking he would be able to live as a Christian with his wife. They drugged
his food, then what they did has to be covered with silence again. . . . They
did their worst. . . . When he awoke from that nightmare of sin, he sought
out his missionary friend. Some of the Hindus even, " ashamed of the vile
means used" to entice him and destroy him, would have wished him to be
received again as a Christian, but his spirit was broken. He said he could
not disgrace the cause of Christ by coming back; he would go away where
he would not be known. He left his wife, and went. He has never been
heard of since.

Our comrade tells of another, and again, in telling it, we have to leave it half
untold. This one was eager to confess Christ in baptism; he was a student at
college then, and very keen. His father knew of his son's desire, and he did
what few Hindu fathers would do, he turned his home into a hell, in order to
ruin his boy. The infernal plot succeeded. God only knows how far the soul
is responsible when the mind is dazed and then inflamed by those fearful
drugs. But we do know that the soul He meant should rise and shine, sinks,
weighted down by the unspeakable shame of some awful memory
darkened, as by some dark dye that has stained it through and through.

I think of others as I write: one was a boy we knew well, a splendid, earnest
lad, keen to witness for Christ. He told us one evening how he had been
delivered from those who were plotting his destruction. For several months
after his decision to be a Christian, he lived at home and tried to win his
people ; but they were incensed against him for even thinking of breaking
Caste, and would not listen to him. Still he waited, and witnessed to them,
not fearing anything. Then one day, suddenly some men rushed into the
room where he was sitting, seized and bound and gagged him. They forced
some thing into his mouth as he lay on the floor at their mercy; he feared it
was a drug, but it was only some disgusting stuff which, to a Hindu, meant
unutterable defilement. Then they left him bound alone, and at night he
managed to escape. A few months after he told us this, we heard he had
been seized again, and this time " drugged and done for."
In South India baptism does not prevent the Caste from using every
possible means to get the convert back; once back, certain ceremonies are
performed, after which he is regarded as purified, and reinstated in his
Caste. The policy of the whole Caste confederation is this: get him back
unbaptised if you can, but anyhow get him lack. Two Brahman lads
belonging to different parts of this district decided for Christ, went through
all that is involved in open confession, and were baptised. One of the two
was sent North for safety; his people traced him, followed him, turned up
unexpectedly at a wayside station in Central India, and forced him back to
his home in the South. Once there, they took their own measures to keep
him. The other lad was sent to Madras. The Brahmans found out where he
was, broke into the house at night, overpowered the boy's protectors, and
carried him off. They too did what seemed good to them there, and they too
succeeded. No one outside could interfere. The Caste guards its own
concerns.

" 0 Lord Jesus Christ!" wrote one, a Hindu still, " who knowest us to be
placed in such danger that it is as if we were within some magical circle
drawn round us, and Satan standing with his wand without, keeping us in
terror, break the spell of Satan, and set us free to serve Thee !"

All this may be easy reading to those who are far away from the place
where it happened. Distance has a way of softening too distinct an outline;
but it is not easy to write, it comes so close to us. Why write it, then ? We
write it because it seems to us it should be more fully known, so that men
and women who know our

God, and the secret of how to lay hold upon Him, should lay hold, and hold
on for the winning of the Castes for Christ.

Surely the very hardness of an enterprise, the very fact that it is what a
soldier would call a forlorn hope, is in itself a call and a claim stronger than
any put forth by something easier. The soldier does not give in because the
hope is "forlorn." It is a hope, be it ever so desperate. He volunteers for it,
and win or not, he fights.

There is that in this enterprise which may mark it out as " forlorn." For ages
the race has broken one of nature's laws with blind persistency, and the
result is a certain lack of moral fibre, grit, " tone." No separate individual is
responsible for this, harsh judgments are entirely out of place; but the fact
remains that it is so, and it must be taken into account in dealing with the
Brahmans and several of the upper Castes of India. Side by side with this
element of weakness there is, in ap parent contradiction, that stubborn
element of strength known as the Caste spirit. This spirit is seen in all I
have shown you of what happens when a convert comes. It is as if all the
million wills of the million Caste men and women were condensed into one
single Will, a con centration of essence of Will not comparable with any
thing known at home.

Look at this face—it is a photographed fact. Does it not show you an

absence of that " something " which nerves to endurance, stimulates to dare
? Then listen to this:— A Christian man lies dead. The way to the cemetery
lies through the Brahman street, in the chief town of this
Another Brahman, much duller than the last. This and the two preceding
photographs are perfect as a study

of three types of Brahmanhood as we have it in Southern India—keen,

thoughtful, dull.

District; there is no other way. The Brahman street is a thoroughfare, it

cannot be closed to traffic, but the Brahmans refuse point blank to allow
that dead rnan to be carried through. The Bishop expostulates. No; he was a
Christian, he shall not be carried through. Time is passing. In the Tropics
the dead must be buried quickly. The Bishop appeals to the Collector
(Kepresenta-tive of Government here). The Collector gives an order. The
Brahmans refuse to obey. He orders out a company of soldiers. The
Brahmans mass on the housetops and stone the soldiers. The order is given
to fire. Then, and not till then, the Christians may carry out their dead; and
later on the Brahmans carry out theirs. This happened some years ago, and
outwardly times have changed since then in that particular town. But the
spirit that it shows is in possession to this day, and as small things show
great, so this street scene shows the presence of that " something " which
intensifies the diffi culty of winning the Castes for Christ. Each unit is weak
in itself, but in combination, strong.

"A forlorn hope" we have called the attempt to do what we are told to do.
The word is a misnomer; with our Captain as our Leader no hope is ever "
forlorn "! But our Leader calls for men, men like the brave of old who
jeopardised their lives unto the death in the high places of the field, in the
day that they came to the help of the Lord, to the help of the Lord against
the mighty. A jeopardised life may be lost.

Christ our Captain is calling for volunteers; here are the terms: " Whosoever
shall lose his life for My sake and the Gospel's the same shall find it." The
teachers'

life may seem "lost" who lives for his college boys; the student's life may
seem "lost" who spends hour after hour through the long hot days in quiet
talks in the house. Be it so, for it may mean that. But the life lost for His
Name's sake, the same shall be found again.

CHAPTER XVII If it is so very important . , . ?

"Let us for a moment imagine what would have happened on the Galilean
hillside, when our Lord fed the five thousand, if the Apostles had acted as
some act now. The twelve would be going backwards, helping the first rank
over and over again, and leaving the back rows unsupplied. Let us suppose
one of them, say Andrew, venturing to say to his brother Simon Peter, '
Ought we all to be feeding the front row ? Ought we not to divide, and
some of us go to the back rows ?' Then suppose Peter replying, 'Oh no;
don't you see these front people are so hungry ? They have not had half
enough yet; besides, they are nearest to us, so we are more responsible for
them.' Then, if Andrew resumes his appeal, suppose Peter going on to say, *
Very well; you are quite right. You go and feed all those back rows; but I
can't spare anyone else. I and the other ten of us have more than we can do
here.'

"Once more, suppose Andrew persuades Philip to go with him; then,

perhaps, Matthew will cry out and say, * Why, they're all going to those
farther rows I Is no one to be left to these needy people in front ?'

"Let me ask the members of Congress, Do you recognise these sentences at

all ? "

Eugene Stock, at Shrewsbury Church Congress.

~|~T was only a common thing. A girl, very ill, and in JL terrible pain, who
turned to us for help. We could do nothing for her. Her people resorted to
heathen rites. They prepared her to meet the fierce god they thought was
waiting to snatch her away.

We went again and again, but she suffered so that one could not say much,
it did not seem any use. The last time we went, the crisis had passed: she
would live,

they told us with joy. They were eager to listen to us now. " Tell us all about
your Way!" clamoured the women, speaking together, and very loud. " Tell
us the news from beginning to end!" But, alas! they could take in very little.
One whole new Truth was too much for them. " Never mind," they consoled
us, " come every day, and then what you say will take hold of our hearts."
And I had to tell them we were leaving that evening, and could not come "
every day."

The girl turned her patient face towards us. She had smiled at the Name of
Jesus, and it seemed as if down in the depths of her weakness she had
listened when we spoke before, and tried to understand. Now she looked
puzzled and troubled, and the women all asked, " Why ?"

There, in that crowded, hot little room, a sense of the unequal distribution
of the Bread of Life came over us. The front rows of the Five Thousand are
getting the loaves and the fishes over and over again, till it seems as though
they have to be bribed and besought to accept them, while the back rows are
almost forgotten. Is it that we are so busy with the front rows, which we can
see, that we have no time for the lack rows out of sight ? But is it fair ? Is it
what Jesus our Master intended ? Can it be really called fair ?

The women looked very reproachful. Then one of them said, looking up at
me, " You say this is very important. If it is so very important, why did you
not come before ? You say you will come back again if you can, but how
can we be sure that nothing will happen to stop you ? We are, some of us,
very old; we may die
Is not the contrast good? The old woman so intelligent, the baby so inane.
She made a picture sitting there, in her crimson edged seeley, with her dark
old face showing up

against the darker wall. She is one of the many we have missed by coming
so slowly and so late. "How can I change now?" she says.

before you come back. This going away is not good." And again and again
she repeated, "If it is so very important, why did you not come before ? "

Don't think that the question meant more than it did. It was only a human
expression of wonder; it was not a real desire after God. But the force of the
question was stronger far than the poor old questioner knew; it appealed to
our very hearts.

The people saw we were greatly moved, and they pressed closer round us to
comfort us, and one dear old grandmother put her arms round me, and
stroked my face with her wrinkled old hand, and said, " Don't be troubled;
we will worship your God. We will worship Him just as we worship our
own. Now, will you go away glad ?"

The dear old woman was really in earnest, she wanted so much to comfort
us. But her voice seemed to mingle with voices from the homeland; and
another—we heard another—the Voice I had heard on the precipice-edge—
the v^'ce of our brothers', our sisters' blood calling unto God from the
ground.

Friends, are these women real to you ? Look at this photo of one of them.
Surely it was not just a happy chance which brought out the detail so
perfectly. Look at the thoughtful, fine old face. Can you look at it and say, "
Yes, I am on my way to the Light, and you are on your way to the Dark. At
least, this is what I profess to believe. And I am sorry for you, but this is all
I can do for you; I can be very sorry for you. I know that this will not show
you the way from the Dark, where you are, to the Light, where I am. To
show you the way I must go to you, or, perhaps, send you one

144 IF IT IS SO VERY IMPORTANT . . . ?

whom I want for myself, or do without something I wish to have; and this,
of course, is impossible. It might be done if I loved God enough— but I kve
myself letter than God or you"

You would not say such a thing, I know, but " Whoso hath this world's
good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his compassion from
him, how dwelleth the love of God in him ?"

A Brahman widow, the only Brahman woman who would let us take her
photo. Brahman women wear their seeleys fastened in a peculiar way, and
never cut their ears. Brahman widows are always shaven, and wear
no jewels. This one is a muscular character! strong and resolute, an ordinary
looking woJ man, but there must be an under-the-surfacfli life which does
not show. A widow's fate is described in one word here, "accursed."

CHAPTER XVIII The Call Intensified

"Sometimes the men and boys will not go away and let us talk to the
women; in such cases I find silent prayer the best refuge. In other places the
people welcome you, but will listen to anything but the Doctrine of Jesus
Christ; and this is harder to bear than anything else I know."

Anna Gore/on, China.

" Let the people that are at home not care only to hear about successes ; we
must train them that they take an interest in the struggle."

Rev. A. Schreiber, Sumatra and India.

"It is a fight making its demands upon physical, mental, and spiritual
powers, and there are many adversaries. The dead weight of heathenism,
the little appreciation of one's object and purpose, and the actual, vigorous
opposition of the powers of darkness, make it a real fight, and only men of
grit, of courage, devotion, and infinite patience and perse verance, will win.

"Have I painted a discouraging picture? Am I frightening good men who

might have volunteered and done well? I think not. I think the right sort of
men, those who ought to volun teer, will be attracted rather than repelled by
the difficulties."

Rev. J. Lampard, India.

WE got this photograph that day in December which we spent in the

friendly Brahman street, " There is not another woman in the town who
would stand for you like that!" said the men, as she came forward, and,
without a thought of posing, stood against the wall for a moment, and
looked at the camera straight. Most of the women were afraid even to
glance 10
*3 J=

0) i>

in have to be taught and trained and mothered, and much time has to be
spent in waiting upon God for more; so that, looking back, we seem to have
done very little for the thousands about us, and now we must return to the
eastern side of the district, for some of the boy converts are there at school,
and there may be fruit to gather in after last year's sowing.

But I look up from my writing and see a stretch of mountain range thirty
miles long, and this range stretches unbroken for a thousand miles to the
North. I know how little is being done on the plains below, and I wonder
when God's people will awake, and understand that there is yet very much
land to be possessed, and arise and possess it. Look down this mountain
strip with rne; there are towns where work is being done, but it needs
supervision, and the missionaries are too few to do it thoroughly. There are
towns and numbers of villages where nothing is even attempted, except that
once in two years, if possible, the Men's Itinerant Band comes round; but
that does not reach the women well, and even if it did, how much would
you know of Jesus if you only heard a parable or a miracle or a few facts
from His life or a few points of His doctrine once in two years ? I do not
want to write touching appeals, or to draw one worker from anywhere else,
—it would be a joy to know that God used these letters to help to send
someone to China, or anywhere where He has need of His workers, —but I
cannot help wondering, as I look round this bit of the field, how it is that the
workers are still so few.

We have found the people in the towns and villages willing to let us do
what we call " verandah work " when

they will not let us into their houses. Verandah work, like open-air
preaching, is unsatisfactory as regards the women, but it is better than
nothing.

We spent an afternoon in the street this photo shows. It is a thoroughfare,

and so we were not forbidden; but even so, we always ask permission
before we walk down it. Such an ordinary, commonplace street it looks to
you; there is no architectural grandeur to awe the beholder, and impress him
with the majesty of Brahman-hood ; and yet that street, and every street like
it, is a very Petra to us, for it is walled round by walls higher and stronger
than the temple walls round which it is built; walls built, as it seems, of
some crystal rock, im perceptible till you come up to it, and even then not
visible, only recognisable as something you cannot get through.
Our first day there was encouraging. We began at the far end of the street,
and after some persuasion the men agreed to move to one side, and let us
have the other for any women who would come. Nothing par ticular
happened, but we count a day good if we get a single good chance to speak
in quietness to the women.

Next time we went it was not so good. They had heard in the meantime all
about us, and that we had girls from the higher Castes with us, and this was
terrible in their eyes. For the Brahman, from his lofty position of absolute
supremacy, holds in very small account the souls of those he calls low-
caste; but if any from the middle distance (he would not describe them as
near himself, only dangerously nearer than the others) " fall into the pit of
the Christian religion," he thinks it is

time to begin to take care that the Power which took such effect on them
should not have a chance to perform upon him, and, above all, upon his
womankind. So that day we were politely informed that no one had time to
listen, and, when some women wanted to come, a muscular widow chased
them off. We looked longingly back at those dear Brahman women, but
appeal was useless, so we went.

In one of the other Castes, the Caste represented by this row of men, we
found more friendliness; they let us sit on one end of the narrow verandah
fronts, and quite a number of women clustered about on the other. They
were greatly afraid of defilement there, and would not come too close. And
they had the strangest ideas about us. They were sure we had a powder
which, if they inhaled it, would compel them to be Christians. They had
heard that we went round " calling children," that is, beckoning them, and
drawing them to follow after us, and that we were paid so much a head for
converts. It takes a whole afternoon sometimes simply to disabuse their
minds of such misconceptions.

I heard this commercial aspect of things explained by one who apparently

knew. A kindly old Brahman woman had allowed us to sit on her doorstep
out of the sun, and bit by bit we had worked our way to the end of the
verandah, which was a little more shaded, where a girl was sitting alone
who seemed to want to hear. The old woman sat down behind us, and then
an old man came up, and the two began to talk. Said the old woman to the
old man, " She is trying to make us join her Way." (I had carefully abstained
from any such

expression.) The old man agreed that such was my probable object. " What
will she get if we join ? Do you know ?" " Oh yes; do I not know ! For one
of us a thousand rupees, and for a Vellalar five hundred. She even gets
something for a low-caste child, but she gets a whole thousand for one of
us!"

They were both very interested in this conversation, and so indeed was I,
and I thought I would further enlighten them, when the old woman got up in
a hurry and hobbled into the house. After that, whenever we passed, she
used to shake her head at us, and say, " Ghee, chee!" No persuasions could
ever induce her to let us sit on her doorstep again. We were clearly after that
thousand rupees, and she would have none of us.

In the same village there was a little Brahman child who often tried to speak
to us, but never was allowed. One day she risked capture and its
consequences, and ran across the narrow stream which divides the Brahman
street from the village, and spoke to one of our Band in a hurried little
whisper. " Oh, I do want to hear about Jesus !" And she told how she had
learnt at school in her own town, and then she had been sent to her mother-
in-law's house in this jungle village, " that one," pointing to a house where
they never had smiles for us; but her mother-in-law objected to the
preaching, and had threat ened to throw her down the well if she listened to
us. Just then a hard voice called her, and she flew. Next time we went to that
village she was shut up somewhere inside.

Often as one passes one sees shy faces looking out from behind the little
pillars which support the verandahs, and

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III

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11
one longs to get nearer. But it does not do to make any advance unless one
is sure of one's ground. It only results in a sudden startled scurrying into the
house, and you cannot follow them there. To try to do so would be more
than rude—it would be considered pollution.

Only yesterday we were trying to get to the women who live in the great
house of the village behind the bungalow. This photo shows you the door
we stood facing for ten minutes or more, first waiting, and then pleading
with the old mother-in-law to let us in to the little dark room in which you
may see a woman's form hiding behind the door.

But we could not go to them, and they could not come to us. There were
only two narrow rooms between, but the second of the two had brass water-
vessels in it. If we had gone in, those vessels and the water in them would
have been defiled. The women were not allowed to come out, the mother-
in-law saw well to that; never was one more vigilant. She stood like a great
fat hen at the door, with her white widow's skirts outspread like wings, and
guarded her chickens effectually. " Go ! go by the way you have come ! "
was all she had to say to us.

The friendly old man of the house was out. A friendly young man came in
with some rice, and began to measure it. He invited us to sit down, which
we did, and he measured the rice in little iron tumblers, counting aloud as
he did so in a sing-song chant. He was pleased that we should watch him,
and it was interesting to watch, for he did it exactly as the verse describes,
pressing the rice down, shaking the iron measure, heaping up the rice till it
was running over, and yet counting this abundant

tumblerful only as one; then he handed the basketful of rice to a child who
stood waiting, and asked what he could do for us. We told him how much
we wanted to see the women of the house, but he did not relish the idea of
tackling the vigorous old mother-in-law, so we gave up the attempt, and
went out. As we passed the wall at the back which encloses the women's
quarters, we saw a girl look over the wall as if she wanted to speak to us,
but she was instantly pulled back by that tyrannical dame, and a dog came
jumping over, barking most furiously, which set a dozen more yelping all
about us, and so escorted we retired.
This house is in the Village of the Merchant, not five minutes from our gate,
but the women in it are far enough from any chance of hearing. The men let
us in that day to take the photograph, and we hoped thereby to make
friends; but though there are six families living there (for the house is large;
the photo graph only shows one end of the verandah which runs down its
whole length), we have never been once allowed to speak to one of the
women; the mother-in-law of all the six takes care we never get the chance.
One of the children, a dear little girl, follows us outside sometimes, but she
is only seven, and not very cour ageous ; so, though she evidently picks up
some of the choruses we sing, she is afraid of being seen listening, and
never gets much at a time.

These are some of the practical difficulties in the way of reaching the
women. There are others. Suppose you do get in, or, what is more probable
in pioneer work, suppose you get a verandah, even then it is not plain

sailing by any means. For, first of all, it is dangerously hot. The sun beats
down on the street or courtyard to within a foot or two of the stone ledge
you are sitting upon, and strikes up. Eeflected glare means fever, so you try
to edge a little farther out of it without disturbing anyone's feelings,
explaining minutely why you are doing it, lest they should think your
design is to covertly touch them; and then, their confidence won so far, you
begin perhaps with the wordless book, or a lyric set to an Indian tune, or a
picture of some parable—never of our Lord—or, oftener still, we find the
best way is to open our Bibles, for they all respect a Sacred Book, and read
something from it which we know they will understand. We generally find
one or two women about the verandahs, and two or three more come within
a few minutes, and seeing this, two or three more. But getting them and
keeping them are two different things. It is not easy to hold people to hear
what they have no special desire to hear. But we are helped; we are not
alone. It is always a strength to remember that.

Once fairly launched, interruptions begin. You are in the middle of a

miracle, perhaps, and by this time a dozen women have gathered, and
rejoice your heart by listening well, when a man from the opposite side of
the street saunters over and asks may he put a question, or asks it forthwith.
He has heard that our Book says, that if you have faith you can lift a
mountain into the sea. Now, there is a mountain, and he points to the pillar
out on the plain, standing straight up for five thousand feet, a column of
solid rock. There is sea on the other side, he says; cast it in, and we will

believe! And the women laugh. But one more intelli gent turns to you, "
Does your Book really say that ?" she asks, " then why can't you do it, and
let us see ?" And the man strikes in with another remark, and a woman at
the edge moves off, and you wish the man would go.

Perhaps he does, or perhaps you are able to detach him from the visible, and
get him and those women too to listen to some bit of witnessing to the
Power that moves the invisible, and you are in its very heart when another
objection is started: "You say there is only one true God, but we have heard
that you worship three ! " or, " Can your God keep you from sin ? " And
you try, God helping you, to answer so as to avoid discussion, and perhaps
to your joy succeed, and some are listening intently again, when a woman
interrupts with a question about your relations which you answered before,
but she came late, and wants to hear it all over again. You satisfy her as far
as you can, and then, feeling how fast the precious minutes are passing, you
try, oh so earnestly, to buy them up and fill them with eternity work, when
suddenly the whole community con centrates itself upon your Tamil sister.
Who is she? You had waived the question at the outset, knowing what
would sequel it, but they renew the charge. If she is a " born Christian,"
they exclaim, and draw away for fear of defilement—"Low-caste, low-
caste!" and the word runs round contemptuously. If she is a con vert, they
ask questions about her relations (they have probably been guessing among
themselves about her Caste for the last ten minutes); if she does not answer

them, they let their imagination run riot; if she does, they break out in
indignation, " Left your own mother! Broken your Caste!" and they call her
by names not sweet to the ear, and perhaps rise up in a body, and refuse to
have anything more to do with such a disgraceful person.

Or perhaps you are trying to persuade some of them to learn to read,

knowing that, if you can succeed, there will be so much more chance of
teaching them, but they assure you it is not the custom for women in that
village to read, which unhappily is true; or it may be you are telling them,
as you tell those you may never see again, of the Love that is loving them,
and in the middle of the telling a baby howls, and all the attention goes off
upon it; or somebody wants to go into the house, and a way has to be made
for her, with much gathering together and confusion; or a dog comes
yelping round the corner, with a stone at its heels, and a pack of small boys
in full chase after it; or the men call out it is time to be going; or the women
suggest it is time to be cooking; or someone says or does something
upsetting, and the group breaks up in a moment, and each unit makes for its
separate hole, and stands in it, looking out; and you look up at those dark
little doorways, and feel you would give anything they could ask, if only
they would let you in, and let you sit down beside them in one of those
rooms, and tell them the end of the story they interrupted; but they will not
do that. Oh, it makes one sorrowful to be so near to anyone, and yet so very
far, as one sometimes is from these womeii. You look at them, as they stand
in their

doorways, within reach, but out of reach, as out of reach as if they were
thousands of miles away. .

Just as I wrote those words a Brahman woman came to the door and looked
in. Then she walked in and sat down, but did not speak. Can you think how
one's heart bounds even at such a little thing as that ? Brahman women do
not come to see us every day. She pulled out a book of palm-leaf slips, and
we read it. It told how she was one of a family of seven, all born deaf and
dumb; how hand in hand they had set off to walk to Benares to drown
themselves in the Ganges; how a Sepoy had stopped them and taken them
to an English Collector; how he had provided for the seven for a year, then
let them go; how they had scattered and wandered about, visiting various
holy places, supported by the virtuous wherever they went; and how the
bearer would be glad to receive whatever we would give her. . . . She has
gone, a poor deaf and dumb and wholly heathen woman; we could not
persuade her to stay and rest. She is married, she told us by signs; her
husband is deaf and dumb, and she has one blind child. She sat on the floor
beside us for a few minutes and asked questions—the usual ones, about me,
all by signs; but nothing we could sign could in any way make her
understand anything about our God. And yet she seems to know something
at least about her own. She pointed to her mouth, and then up, and then
down and round, to show the winding of a river, and signed clearly enough
how she went from holy river to holy river, and worshipped by each, and
she pointed up and clasped her hands. There we were, just as 1

had been writing, so near to her, yet so far from her.

But the greatest difficulty of all in reaching the women is that they have no
desire to be reached. Sometimes, as on that afternoon when the child came
and wanted to hear, we find one who has desire, but the greater number
have none; and except in the more advanced towns and villages, where they
are allowed to learn with a Bible-woman, they have hardly a chance to hear
enough to make them want to hear more.

Then, as if to make the case doubly hard (and this law applies to every
woman, of whatever Caste), she is, in the eyes of the law, the property of
her husband; and though a Christian cannot by law compel his Hindu wife
to live with him, a Hindu husband can compel his Christian wife to live
with him; so that no married woman is ever legally free to be a Christian,
for if the husband demanded her back, she could not be protected, but
would have to be given up to a life which no English woman could bear to
contemplate. She may say she is a Christian; he cares nought for what she
says. God help the woman thus forced back!

But, believing a higher Power will step in than the power of this most unjust
law, we would risk any penalty and receive such a wife should she come.
Only, in dealing with the difficulties and barriers which lie between an
Indian woman and life as a free Christian, it is useless to shut one's eyes to
this last and least comprehensible of all difficulties, " an English law,
imported into India, and enforced with imprisonment," an obsolete English
law!

Wo have no Brahman women converts in our Tamil

Mission. We hear of a few in Travancore; we know of more in the North,

where the Brahmans are more numerous and less exclusive; but there is not
a single lond fide Brahman convert woman or child in the whole of this
District. There was one, a very old woman; but she died two years ago. We
may comfort ourselves with the thought that surely some of those who have
heard have become secret believers. But will a true believer remain secret
always? We may trust that many a dear little child died young, loving Jesus,
and went to Him. But what about those who have not died young? I know
that a brighter view may be taken, and if the sadder has been emphasised in
these letters, it is only because we feel you know less about it.

For more has been written about the successes than about the failures, and it
seems to us that it is more im portant that you should know about the
reverses than about the successes of the war. We shall have all eternity to
celebrate the victories, but we have only the few hours before sunset in
which to win them. We are not winning them as we should, because the fact
of the reverses is so little realised, and the needed rein forcements are not
forthcoming, as they would be if the position were thoroughly understood.
Reinforce ments of men and women are needed, but, far above all,
reinforcements of prayer. And so we have tried to tell you the truth—the
uninteresting, unromantic truth —about the heathen as we find them, the
work as it is. More workers are needed. No words can tell how much they
are needed, how much they are wanted here. But we will never try to allure
anyone to think of coming

by painting coloured pictures, when the facts are in black and white. What
if black and white will never attract like colours ? We care not for it; our
business is to tell the truth. The work is not a pretty thing, to be looked at
and admired. It is a fight. And battle fields are not beautiful.

But if one is truly called of God, all the difficulties and discouragements
only intensify the Call. If things were easier there would be less need. The
greater the need, the clearer the Call rings through one, the deeper the
conviction grows: it was God's Call. And as one obeys it, there is the joy of
obedience, quite apart from the joy of success. There is joy in being with
Jesus in a place where His friends are few; and sometimes, when one would
least expect it, coming home tired out and disheartened after a day in an
opposing or indifferent town, suddenly—how, you can hardly tell—such a
wave of the joy of Jesus flows over you and through you, that you are
stilled with the sense of utter joy. Then, when you see Him winning souls,
or hear of your comrades' victories, oh! all that is within you sings, " I have
more than an overweight of joy !"

CHAPTER XIX "Attracted by the Influence"

"It seems to have been a mistake to imagine that the Divine Majesty on high
was too exalted to take any notice of our mean affairs. The great minds
among us are remarkable for the attention they bestow upon minutiae . . . ' a
sparrow can not fall to the ground without your Father.'"

David Livingstone, Africa,

"E have now left Dohnavur, on the West, and re turned to our old battlefield
on the East. The evening after our arrival one of those special things
happened, though only a little thing some will say—a little child was
brought.

There is a temple in the Hindu village near us. We have often tried to reach
the temple women, poor slaves of the Brahmans. We have often seen the
little girls, some of them bought as infants from their mothers, and trained
to the terrible life. In one of the Mission _day schools there is a child who
was sold hy hf>7 ," Christian " mother to these Servants of the gods; but
though this is known it cannot be proved, and thp. child has no wish to
leave the life, and she cannot be taken by force.

Sometimes we see the little girls playing in the court yards of the houses
near the temple, gracious little maidens, winsome in their ways, almost
always more refined in manner than ordinary children, and often
»

This is not Pearl eyes. Pearl-eyes is tinier, and has more sparkle ; but the
Caste is the same, and -AS we have not got Pearl-eyes, we put tnis small
girl here.

beautiful. One longs to, help the litt.lfs thingR,JbiiiL_£0 band of ours can
stretcjijjvexJ&eja^^ lift^ven one child _Qut

Among the little temple girls in the Great Lake Village was a tiny girl called
Pearl-eyes, of whom we knew no thing ; but God must have some purpose
for her, for He sent His Angel to the house one afternoon, and the Angel
found little Pearl-eyes, and he took her by the hand and led her out, across
the stream, and through the wood, to a Christian woman's house in our
village. Next morning she brought her to us. This is what really happened, I
think; there is no other way to account for it. No one remembers such a
thing happening here before.

I was sitting reading in the verandah when I saw them come. The woman
was looking surprised. She did not know about the Angel, I expect, and she
could not understand it at all. The little child was chattering away, lifting up
a bright little face as she talked. When she saw me she ran straight up to
me, and climbed on my knee without the least fear, and told me all about
herself at once. I took her to the Iyer, and he sent for the Pastor, who sent a
messenger to the Village of the Lake, to say the child was here, and to
inquire into the truth of her story.

" My name is Pearl-eyes," the child began, " and I want to stay here always.
I have come to stay." And she told us how her mother had sold her when
she was a baby to the Servants of the gods. She was not happy with them.
They did not love her. Nobody loved her. She wanted to live with us.

But why had she run away now ? She hardly seemed ji

162 "ATTRACTED BY THE INFLUENCE"

to know, and looked puzzled at our questions. The only thing she was sure
about was that she had "run and come," and that she " wanted to stay." Then
the Ammal came in, and she went through exactly the same story with her.

We felt, if this proved to be fact, that we could surely keep her; the
Government would be on our side in such a matter. Only the great difficulty
might be to prove it.

Meanwhile we gave her a doll, and her little heart was at rest. She did not
seem to have a fear. With the prettiest, most confiding little gesture, she sat
down at our feet and began to play with it.

We watched her wonderingly. She was perfectly at home with us. She ran
out, gathered leaves and flowers, and came back with them. These were
carefully arranged in rows on the floor. Then another expedition, and in
again with three pebbles for hearthstones, a shell for a cooking pot, bits of
straw for firewood, a stick for a match, and sand for rice.

She went through all the minutiae of Tamil cookery with the greatest
seriousness. Then we, together with her doll, were invited to partake. The
little thing walked straight into our hearts, and we felt we would risk
anything to keep her.

Our messenger returned. The story was true. The women from whose house
she had come were certainly temple women. But would they admit it to us,
and, above all, would they admit they had obtained her illegally ? — a fact
easy to deny. Almost upon this they came; and to the Iyer's question, " Who
are you ? " one said, " We are Servants of the gods ! " I heard an instructive

aside, " Why did you tell them ? " " Oh, never mind," said the one who had
answered," they don't understand ! " But we had understood, and we were
thankful for the first point gained.

They stood and stared and called the child, but she would not go, and we
would not force her. Then they went away, and we were left for an hour in
that curious quiet which comes before a storm. Our poor little girl was
frightened. " Oh, if they come again, hide me ! " she begged. One saw it
was almost too much for her, high-spirited child though she is.

The next was worse. A great crowd gathered on the verandah, and an evil-
faced woman, who seemed to have some sort of power over Pearl-eyes,
fiercely demanded her back. When we refused to make her go, the evil-
faced woman, whose very glance sent a tremble through the little one,
declared that Pearl-eyes must say out loud that she would not go with her, "
Out loud so that all should hear." But the poor little thing was dumb with
fear. She just stood and looked, and shivered. We could not persuade her to
say a word.

Star was hovering near. She had been through it all herself before, and her
face was anxious, and our hearts were, I know. It is impossible to describe
such a half-hour's life to you; it has to be lived through to be understood.
The clamour and excitement, and the feel ing of how much hangs on the
word of a child who does not properly understand what she is accepting or
refusing. The tension is terrible.

I dared not go near her lest they should think I was bewitching her. Any
movement on my part towards her

164 "ATTRACTED BY THE INFLUENCE"

would have been the signal for a rush on theirs; but I signed to Star to take
her away for a moment. The bewilderment on the poor little face was
frightening me. One more look up at that woman, one more pull at the
strained cord, and to their question, " Will you come ?" she might as likely
say yes as no.

Star carried her off. Once out of reach of those eyes, the words came fast
enough. Star told me she clung to her and sobbed, " Oh, if I say no, she will
catch me and punish me dreadfully afterwards ! She will! I know she will!"
And she showed cuts in the soft brown skin where she had been punished
before; but Star soothed her and brought her back, and she stood—such a
little girl— before them all. " I won't! I won't ! " she cried, and she turned
and ran back with Star. And the crowd went off, and I was glad to see the
last of that fearful face, with its evil, cruel eyes.

But they said they would write to the mother, who had given her to them.
We noted this—the second point we should have to prove if they lodged a
suit against us—and any day the mother may come and complicate matters
by working on the child's affections. Also, we have heard of a plot to decoy
her away, should we be for a moment off guard ; so we are very much on
the watch, and we never let her out of our sight.

By this time— it is five days since she came —it seems impossible to think
of having ever been without her. Apart from her story, which would touch
anyone, there is her little personality, which is very interesting. She plays all
day long with her precious dolls, talking to them, telling them everything
we tell her. Yesterday it

was a Bible story, to-day a new chorus. She insisted on her best-beloved
infant coming to church with her, and it had to have its collection too.
Everything is most realistic.

Tamil children usually hang their dolls up by their limbs to a nail in the
wall, or stow them away on a shelf, but this mite has imagination and much
sympathy.

In thinking over it, as, bit by bit, her little story came to light, we have been
struck by the touches that tell how God cares. The time of her coming told
of care. Some months earlier, the temple woman who kept her had burnt her
little fingers across, as a punish ment for some childish fault, and Pearl-eyes
ran away. She knew what she wanted—her mother; she knew that her
mother lived in a town twenty miles to the East. It was a long way for a
little girl to walk, " but some kind people found me on the road, and they
were going to the same town, and they let me go with them, so I was not
afraid, only I was very tired when we got there. It took three days to walk. I
did not know where my mother lived in the town, and it was a very big
town, but I described my mother to the people in the streets, and at last I
found my mother." For just a little while there was something of the
mother-love, "my mother cried." But the temple woman had traced her and
followed her, and the mother gave her up.

Then comes a blank in the story; she only remembers she was lonely, and
she " felt a mother-want about the world," and wandered wearily—

"As restless as a nest-deserted bird Grown chill through something being

away, though what It knows not."

166 "ATTRACTED BY THE INFLUENCE"

Then comes a bit of life distinct in every detail, and told with terribly
unchildish horror. She heard them whisper together about her; they did not
know that she understood. She was to be " married to the god," " tied to a
stone." Terrified, she flew to the temple, slipped past the Brahmans, crossed
the court, stood before the god in the dim half-darkness of the shrine,
clasped her hands,—she showed us how,—prayed to it, pleaded, " Let me
die ! Oh, let me die !" Barely seven years old, and she prayed, " Oh, let me
die ! "
She tried to run away again; if she had come to our village then, she could
not have been saved. We were in Dohnavur, and there was no one here who
could have protected her against the temple people. So God kept her from
coining then.

About that time, one afternoon one of our Tamil Sisters, whom we had left
behind to hold the fort, passed through the Great Lake Village, and the
temple women called the child, and said, " See ! It is she ! The child-
stealing Ammal! Kun ! " It was only said to frighten her, but it did a
different work. One day, the day after we returned, the thought suddenly
came to her, " I will go and look for that child-stealing Ammal"; and she
wandered away in the twilight and came to our village, and stood alone in
front of the church, and no one knew.

There one of our Christian women, Servant of Jesus by name, found her
some time afterwards, a very small and desolate mite, with tumbled hair
and troubled eyes, for she could not find the one she sought, that child-
stealing Ammal she wanted so much, and she was

frightened, all alone in the gathering dark by this big, big church ; and very
big it must have looked to so tiny a thing as she.

Servant of Jesus thought at first of taking the little one back to her home,
but mercifully it was late (another touch of the hand of God), and so instead
she took her straight to her own little house, which satisfied Pearl-eyes
perfectly. But she would not touch the curry and rice the kind woman
offered her. She drew herself up to her full small height and said, with the
greatest dignity, " Am I not a Vellala child ? May you ask me to break my
Caste ?"

So Servant of Jesus gave her some sugar, that being ceremonially safe, and
Pearl-eyes ate it hungrily, and then went off to sleep.

Next morning, again the woman's first thought was to take her to her own
people. But the child was so in sistent that she wanted the child-catching
Animal, that Servant of Jesus, thinking I was the Annual she meant (for this
is one of my various names), brought her to me, as I have said, and oh, I am
glad she did!
Nothing escapes those clear brown eyes. That morning, in the midst of the
confusion, one of the temple women called out that the child was a wicked
thief. This is an ordinary charge. They think it will compel submission. "
We will make out a case, and send the police to drag you off to gaol!" they
yell; and sometimes there is risk of serious trouble, for a case can be made
out cheaply in India. But this did not promise to be serious, so we inquired
the stolen sum. It came to fourpence half penny, which we paid for the sake
of peace, though she

168 "ATTRACTED BY THE INFLUENCE"

told them where the money was, and we found out later that she had told
the truth.

I never thought she would remember it—the excite ments of the day
crowded it out of my mind—but weeks afterwards, when I was teaching her
the text, "Not redeemed with corruptible things, as silver and gold," and
explaining how much Jesus had paid for us, she interrupted me with the
remark, " Oh yes, I under stand ! I know how much you paid for me—
fourpence halfpenny!"

And now to turn from small-seeming things to large. Ragland, Tamil

missionary, is writing to a friend in 1847. He is trying to express
astronomically the value of a soul He asks, " How does the astronomer
correct the know ledge of the stars which simple vision brings him ? First,
having discovered that the little dot of light is thousands of miles distant,
and having discerned by the telescope that it subtends at the eye a sensible
angle, and having measured that angle, a simple calculation shows him the
size of the object to be greater perhaps than that of the huge ball which he
calls his earth." Then, " Take the soul of one of the poorest, lowest Pariahs
of India, and form it by imagination into, or suppose it represented by, a
sphere. Place this at the extremity of a line which is to represent time.
Extend this line and move off your sphere, farther and farther ad infinitum,
and what has become of your sphere ? Why, there it is, just as before. ... It is
still what it was, and this even after thousands of years. In short, the disc
appears undiminished, though viewed from an almost infinite distance. Oh,
what an angle of the mind ought that poor soul to subtend I "
The letter goes on to suggest another parallel between things astronomical
and things spiritual. He supposes an objector admits the size as proved, but
demurs as to the importance of these heavenly bodies. " They are, per haps,
only unsubstantial froth, mere puffs of air, vapoury nothings." But the
astronomer knows their mass and weight, as well as their size : " Long
observation has taught him that planets in the neighbourhood of one given
heavenly body have been turned out of their course, how, and by what, he is
at first quite at a loss to tell but he has guessed and reasoned, has found
cause for suspecting the planet. He watches, observes, and com pares ; and
after a long sifting of evidence, he brings it in guilty of the disturbance. If it
be so, it must have a power to disturb, a power to attract; and if so, it is not
a mere shell, much less a mere vapour. It has mass and it has weight, and he
calculates and determines from the disturbances what that weight is. Just so
with the Pariah's soul. Oh, what a disturbance has it created! What a
celestial body has it drawn out from its celestial sphere! Not a star, not the
whole visible heavens, not the heaven of heavens itself, but Him Who fills
heaven and earth, by Whom all things were created. Him did that Pariah's
soul attract from heaven even to earth to save it. Oh that we would thence
learn, and learning, lay to heart the weight and the value of that one soul."

And just as the majesty of the glory of the Lord is shown forth nowhere
more majestically than in the chapter which tells us how He feeds His flock
like a shepherd, and gathers the lambs with His arm, and carries them in His
bosom, so nowhere, I think, do we

170 " ATTRACTED BY THE INFLUENCE"

see the glory of our God more than in chapters of life which show Him
bending down from the circle of the earth, yea rather, coming down all the
way to help it, " attracted by the influence " of the need of a little child.

CHAPTER XX The Elf

" You remember what I said once, that you could not, perhaps, put a whole
crown on the head of Jesus—that is, bring a whole country to be His—but
you might put one little jewel in His crown." Bishop French, India and
Arabia.
T)EARL-EYES, otherwise the Elf, because it exactly J- describes her, was
very good for the first few weeks, after which we began to know her. She is
not a convert in any sense of the term. She is just a very wilful, truthful,
exasperating, fascinating little Oriental.

When she is, as she expresses it, " moved to sin," nobody of her own colour
can manage her. " You are only me grown up," is her attitude towards them
all. She is always ready to repent, but, as Pearl sorrowfully says, " before
her tears are dry, she goes and sins again," and then, quite unabashed, she
will trot up to you as if nothing had happened and expect to be lavishly
petted.

I never saw anyone except the Elf look interesting when naughty. She does
look interesting. She is a rather light brown, and any emotion makes the
brown lighter; her long lashes droop over her eyes in the most pathetic
manner, and when she looks up

appealingly she might be an innocent martyr about to die for her faith.

We have two other small girls with us; the Imp

but her name is a libel, she reformed some months ago—and Tangles, who
ties herself into knots whenever she makes a remark. These three have
many an argu ment (for Indian children delight in discussion), and
sometimes the things that are brought to me would shock the orthodox. This
is the last, brought yesterday:

" Obedience is not so important as love. Orpah was very obedient. Her
mother-in-law said, 'Go, return,' and she did as she was told. But Kuth was
not obedient at all. Four times her mother-in-law said, ' Go/ and yet she
would not go. But God blessed Kuth much more than Orpah, because she
loved her mother-in-law. So obedience is not so important as love." Only
the day before I had been labouring to explain the absolute neces sity for
the cultivation of the grace of obedience ; but now it was proved a
secondary matter, for Kuth was certainly disobedient, but good and greatly
blessed.
The Elf's chief delinquencies at present, however, spring from a rooted
aversion to her share in the family house work (ten minutes' rubbing up of
brass water-vessels); an appetite for slate pencils—she would nibble them
by the inch if we would let her—" they are so nice to eat," she says; and,
most fruitful of all in sad consequences, a love of being first.

As regards sin No. 1,1 hope it will soon be a thing of the past, for she has
just made a valuable discovery: " Satan doesn't come very close to me if I
sing all the time I'm rubbing the brasses. He runs away when he

hears me sing, so I sing very loud, and that keeps him away. Satan doesn't
like hymns." And I quite agree, and strongly advise her to persevere.

Sin No. 2 is likely to pass, as she hates the nasty medicine we give her to
correct her depraved proclivities ; but No. 3 is more serious. It opens the
door, or, as she once expressed it, it " calls so many other sins to come," —
quarrelling, pride, and several varieties of temper, come at the " call" of this
sin No. 3.

She is a born leader in her very small way, and she has not learned yet, that
before we can lead we must be willing to be led. " I will choose the game,"
she remarks " and all of you must do as I tell you/' Sometimes they do, for
her directions, though decisive, are given with a certain grace that wins
obedience ; but sometimes they do not, and then the Elf is offended, and
walks off.

But she is the life of the game, and they chase her and propitiate her; and
she generally condescends to return, for solitary dignity is dull. If any of the
seniors happen to see it, it is checked as much as possible, but oftener we
hear of it in that very informing prayer, which is to her quite the event of the
evening; for she takes to the outward forms of religion with great avidity,
and the evening prayer especially is a deep delight to her. She counts up all
her numerous shortcomings carefully and perfectly truthfully, as they
appear to her, and with equal accuracy her blessings large and small. She
sometimes includes her good deeds in the list, lest, I suppose, they should
be forgotten in the record of the day. All the self-righteousness latent in
human nature comes out, or used to, in her earlier days, in the evening
revelations*
Here is a specimen, taken at random from the first month's sheaf. She and
the Imp had come to my room for their devotions, preternaturally pious,
both of them, though quite unregenerate. It was the Elf's turn to begin. She
settled herself circumspectly, sighed deeply, and then began.

First came the day's sins, counted on the fingers of the right hand, beginning
with the fourth finger. " Once," and down went the little finger on the palm,
" I was cross with L." (L. being the Imp, nine and a half to the Elf's seven
and a half, but most submissive as a rule) " I was cross because she did not
do as I told her. That was wrong of me ; but it was wrong of her too, so it
was only half a sin. Twice," and the third finger was folded down, " when I
did not do my work well. That was quite all my fault. Three times," and
down went the middle finger, "when I caught a quarrel with those naughty
little children; they were stupid little children, and they would not play my
game, so I spoiled unity. But they came running after me, and they said, '
Please forgive us,' so I forgave them. That was very good of me, and I also
forgave L.; so that is three bad things and two good things to-day."

I stopped her, and expatiated on the sin of pride, but her mind was full of
the business in hand.

" Then there were four blessings—no, five; but I can't remember the fifth.
The Ammal gave me a box for my doll, and you gave me some sweets; and
I found some nice rags in your waste-paper basket"—grubbing in rag-bags
and waste-paper baskets is one of the joys of life; rags are so useful when
you have a large family of dolls

who are always wearing out their clothes—" and I have some cakes in my
own box now. Those are four blessings. But I forget the fifth."

I advised her to leave it, and begin, for the Imp was patiently waiting her
turn. She, good child, suggested the missing fifth must be the soap—the
Ammal had given each of them a piece the size of a walnut. Yes, that was it
apparently, for the Elf, contented, began—

" 0 loving Lord Jesus! I have done three wrong things to-day " (then
followed the details and prayer for forgiveness). " Lord, give L. grace to do
what I want her to do; and when she does not do it, Lord, give me grace to
be patient with her. I thank Thee for causing me to forgive those little
children who would not play the game I liked. Oh make them good, and
make me also good; and next time we play together give me grace to play
patiently with them. And oh, forgive all the bad things I have done to-day;
and I thank Thee very much for all the good things I have done, for I did
them by Thy grace." Praise for mercies followed in order: the card board
box, the lump of sugar-candy, the spoils from the waste-paper basket, those
sticky honey-cakes—which, to my disquietude, I then understood were
secreted in her seeley box—and that precious bit of soap. Then—and this is
never omitted—a fervently expressed desire for safe preservation for herself
and her friends from " the bites of snakes and scorpions, and all other
noxious creatures, through the darkness of the night, and when I wake may
I find myself at Thy holy feet. Amen."

No matter how sleepy she is, these last phrases, which are quite of her own
devising, are always included in the

tail-end of her prayer. She would not feel at all safe on her mat, spread on
the ground out of doors in hot weather, unless she had so fortified herself
from all attacks of the reptile world. And when, one day, we discovered a
nest of some few dozen scorpions within six yards of her mat, not one of
which had ever disturbed her or any of her " friends," we really did feel that
funny little prayer had power in it after all.

You cannot interrupt in the middle of those rather confusing confessions,

she is far too much engaged to be disturbed, but when the communication is
fairly over, and she cuddles on your knee for the kissing and caressing she
so much appreciates, you have a chance of explaining things a little.

She listened seriously that evening, I remember, then, slipping down off my
knee, she added as a sort of post script, very reverently, " 0 Lord Jesus, I
prayed it wrong. I was naughtier than L., much naughtier. But indeed Thou
wilt remember that she was naughty first. . . . Oh, that's not it! It was not L.,
it was me ! And I was impatient with those little children. But . . . but they
caused impatience within me." Then getting hopelessly mixed up between
self-condemnation and self-justification, she gave it up, adding, however, "
Next time we play together, give them more grace to play patiently with
me," which was so far satisfactory, as at first she had scouted the idea that
there could be any need of patience on the other side.

Sometimes she brings me perplexities not new to most of us. " This
morning I prayed with great desire, ' Lord, keep me to-day from being
naughty at all/ and I was

naughty an hour afterwards; I looked at the clock and saw. How was it I
was naughty when I wanted to be good ? The naughtiness jumped up inside
me, so"— (illustrating its supposed action within), "and it came running
out. So what is the use of praying ? "

Once the difficulty was rather opposite.

" Can you be good without God's grace ? "

I told her I certainly could not.

" Well, I can !" she answered delightedly. " I want to pray now."

" Now ? It is eight o'clock now. Haven't you had prayer long ago ?" (We all
get up at six o'clock.)

" No. That's just what I meant. I skipped my prayer this morning, and so of
course I got no grace; but I have been helping the elder Sisters. Wasn't that
right ? "

" Yes, quite right."

" And yet I hadn't got any grace! But I suppose," she added reflectively, "it
was the grace over from yesterday that did it."

As a rule she is not distinguished for very deep penitence, but at one time
she had what she called " a true sense of sin" which fluctuated rather, but
was always hailed, when it appeared in force, as a sign of better things.
After a day of mixed goodness and bad ness the Elf prayed most devoutly, "
I thank Thee for giving me a sense of sin to-day. 0 God, keep me from
being at all naughty to-morrow. But if I am naughty, Lord, give me a true
sense of sin!"
Professor Drummond speaks of our whole life as a long-drawn breath of
mystery, between the two great wonders—the first awakening and the last
sleep. I often

12

think of that as I listen to the little children talking to each other and to us.
They are always wondering about something. One day it was, " Do fishes
love Jesus ?" followed by " What is a soul ? " The conclusion was, " It's the
thing we love Jesus with." When they first come to us they invariably think
that mountains grow like trees: " Stones are young mountains, aren't they ?
and hills are middle-aged mountains." Later on, every printed thing on a
wall is a text. We were in a railway station, on our way to the hills: " Look!
oh, what numbers and numbers of texts ! But what queer pictures to have on
texts!" One was specially perplexing; it was a well-known advertisement,
and the picture showed a monkey smoking a cigar. What could that
depraved animal have to do with a text ? When we got to the hills the first
amazement was the sight of the fashionable ladies wearing veils. "Don't
they like to look at God's beautiful world ? Do they like it better spotty ?"

Tangles has another name; it is the " Ugly Duck ling," and it is extremely
descriptive ; but Ugly Duckling or not, she is of an inquiring turn of mind,
and one Saturday afternoon, after standing under a tree for fully five
minutes lost in thought, she came to me with a question: " What are the
birds saying to each other ?" I looked at the Ugly Duckling, and she twisted
herself into a note of interrogation, in the ridiculous way she has, but her
face was full of anxiety for enlightenment about the language of the
sparrows. " There," she said, pointing vigorously to the astonished birds,
which in stantly flew away, " that little sparrow and this one are
We value this photo exceedingly, it was so hard to get. We were in a big
heathen village when we saw this Ugly Duckling, in fact she was one of the
most tiresome of the "rabbits" mentioned in Chapter I. She saw us, and
darted off and climbed a wall and made faces at us in a truly delightful
manner. We thought we would take her, and tried. As well try to pick up
quicksilver ; she

would not be caught. The deed was finally done when she had not the least
idea of it, and the camera gave a triumphant click as it snapped her
unawares. "What do they want her for?" inquired a grown-up by stander,
who had observed our little game. "Look at her hair," said another, "they
never saw hair like that in England, that's what they want her for !"
making quite different noises. What are they saying ? I do want to know so
much !"

As I imagined the birds in question had just been having supper, I told her
what I thought they were probably saying. Next day, in the sermon, there
was something about the praise all creation offers to God, and I saw Tangles
knotting her hands together and going into the queerest contortions in
appreciation of the one bit of the sermon she could understand.

The Imp's questions were various. " What is that ? " —pointing to a busy-
bee clock—" is it an English kind of insect ? Don't its legs get tired going
round ? Oh ! is it dead now ? " (when it stopped). " Who made Satan ? "
was an early one. "Why doesn't God kill him im mediately, and stamp on
him ?" One day I was trying to find and touch her heart by telling her how
very sorry Jesus is when we are naughty. She seemed subdued, then
—"Amma, where was the Queen's spirit after she died and before they
buried her, and what did they give it to eat ? "

"Did you see Lot's wife?" was a question which tickled the Bishop when,
on his last visitation, he gave himself up to an hour's catechising upon his
tour in the Holy Land. They were disappointed that he had to confess he
had not. "Oh, I suppose the salt has melted," was the Elf's comment upon
this.

Tangles is distinctly inclined to peace. The Elf, I grieve to say, is not.

Yesterday she announced a quarrel: " I feel cross ! " Tangles objected to
quarrel. "I do feel cross!" and the Elf apparently showed corroborative
symptoms. Then Tangles looked at her

straight: " I'm not going to quarrel. The devil has arrived in the middle of
the afternoon to interrupt our unity, and I won't let him!" which so touched
the Elf that she embraced her on the spot; and then, in detailing it all in her
prayer in the evening, this in corrigible little sinner added, with real
emotion, " Lord, I am not good. I spoiled unity with L." (the Imp), " and
Thou didst feel obliged to remove her to a boarding-school. Now do help
me not to spoil unity with P." (who is Tangles), "lest Thou shouldst feel
obliged to remove her also to a boarding-school,"—a view of the Imp's
promotion which had not struck me before.
Tangles and she belong to the same Caste, and Tangles has the character of
that Caste as fully developed as the Elf, and can hold her own effectually.
Also she is a little older and taller, and being the Elf's " elder sister," is,
therefore, entitled to a certain measure of respect. All those small things
tend to the discipline of the Elf, who is very small for her age, and who
would have preferred a junior, of a meek and mild disposition, and whose
constant prayer is this: " 0 Lord, bring another little girl out of the lion's
mouth, but, 0 Lord, please let her be a very little girl \" Shortly after this
prayer began, a very little girl was brought; but she was a vulgar infant, and
greatly tried the Elf, and she was, for various reasons, promptly returned to
her parents. After this episode the prayer varied somewhat: " Lord, let her
be a suitabk child, and give me grace to love her from my heart when she
comes."

The conversation of these young creatures is often

very illuminating, and always most miscellaneous. The Elf's mind

especially is a sort of small curiosity shop, and displays many assortments.
The Elf, Tangles, and little Delight (Delight is a youthful Christian) are
curled up on the warm red sand with their three little heads close together.
The Elf is telling a story. I listen, and hear a marvellous muddle of the
Uganda Boys and Cyril of North Africa. " He was only six years old, and he
stood up and said, ' What you are going to do, do quickly! I am not afraid. I
am going to the Golden City!' And they showed him the sword and the fire,
and he said, ' Do it quickly!' and they chopped off his arm, and said,' Will
you deny Jesus ?' and he said, ' No !' and they chopped off his other arm,"—
and so on through all the various limbs in most vivid detail,—" and then
they threw him on the fire, and burnt him till he was ashes; and he sang
praises to Jesus!"

The Elf leans to the tragic. Tangles' mother had a difference of opinion with
a friend. The friend snatched at her opponent's ear jewels, and tore the ear.
Life with a torn ear was intolerable, so Tangles' mother walked three times
round the well, repeated three times, " My blood be on your head !" and
sprang in. She rose three times, each time said the same words, and then
sank. All this Tangles confided to the Elf, who concocted a game based
upon the incident—which, however, we ruthlessly squashed. They are
tossing pebbles now, according to rules of their own, and talking vigorously.
" The Ammal told me all the people in England are white, and I asked her
what they did without servants, and she said they had white servants, white
servants ! I"

and the note of exclamation is intense. The others are equally astonished.
White people as servants ! The two ideas clash. They have never seen a
white servant. In all their extensive acquaintance with white people they
have only seen missionaries (who are truly their servants, though they
hardly realise it yet), and occasionally Government officials, whose
mastership is very much in evidence. So they are puzzled. They get out of
the difficulty, however. " At the beginning of the beginning of England,
black people must have gone to be the white people's servants, and they
gradually grew white." Yes, that's it apparently ; they faded.

The conversation springs higher. " Do you know what lightning is ? I'll tell
you. I watched it one whole evening, and I think it's just a little bit of
heaven's light coming through and going back again." This sounds
probable, and great interest is aroused. They are dis cussing the sheet
lightning which plays about the sky in the evening before rain. " Of course
it isn't much of heaven's light, only a little tiny bit getting out and running
down here to show us what it is like inside. One night I shut my eyes, and it
ran in and out, in and out, oh so fast! Even if I shut my eyes I saw it running
inside my eyes."

" Did you get caned in school to-day ?"

" No, not exactly caned," and an explanation follows. " I was standing
beside a very naughty little girl, and the teacher meant to cane her, but the
cane fell on me by mistake. I wanted to cry, because it hurt, but I thought it
would be silly to cry when it hurt me quite by mistake. So I didn't cry one
tear!"

The Elf hit upon a capital expedient for escaping castigation (which is never
very severe). " I found this cane myself. It was lying on the ground in the
compound, and I am going to take it to the teacher." Chorus of "Why?"
"Because," and the Elf looked elfish, "if I give it to him with my own
hands, how will he cane my hands with it ? His heart will not be hard
enough to cane me with the cane I gave him!" and the little scamp looks
round for applause. Chorus of admiring " Oh!"

Then they begin again, the Elf as usual chief informant. " I know something
!" Chorus, " What ? " "A beautiful doll is waiting for me in a box, and I'm
going to have it at Ki-rismas ! " " What sort of a doll ? " is the eager
inquiry. " I don't know exactly, but God sent it, of course, so I think it must
be something like an angel." Chorus, delightedly, " Ah ! " " Yes, if it came
from God, then of course it came from heaven, and heaven is the place all
the angels come from, and they are white and shining, so I think it will be
white and shining like an angel." The doll in question is a negress with a
woolly head and a scarlet-striped pinafore. It had not struck me as angelic.
It is an experiment in dolls. Will it " take " ? Ki-rismas came at last, and the
heavenly doll with it, but it did not "take." Grievous were the tears and
sobs, and the bitterest wail of all was, " I thought God would have sent me a
nicer doll!" We changed it for a " nicer doll," for the poor Elf was not
wicked, only broken hearted, and Star, who is supposed to be much too old
for dolls, begged for the despised black beauty; because, as the Elf
maliciously remarked as she hugged her white

dolly contentedly, " That black thing has a curly head, just like Star's !"

The habit of praying about everything is characteristic of the Elf, and more
than once her uninstructed little soul has grieved over the strange way our
prayers are some times answered. One day she came rushing in full of
excitement. " Oh, may I go and be examined ? The Government Missie
Ammal is going to examine our school! Please let me go!" The Government
Missie Ammal, a great celebrity who only comes round once a year, was
staying with us, and I asked her if the child might have the joy of being
examined even though she had not had nearly her year at school. She
agreed, for the sake of the little one's delight—for an Indian child likes
nothing better than a fuss of any kind—to let her come into the examination
room, and take her examina tion informally. We knew she was sure of a
pass. An hour or two afterwards a scout came flying over to tell us the
awful news. The Elf had failed, utterly failed, and she was so ashamed she
wouldn't come back, " wouldn't come back any more." I went for her, and
found her a little heap of sobs and tears, outside the schoolroom. I gathered
her up in my arms and carried her home, and tried to comfort her, but she
was crushed. " I asked God so earnestly to let me pass, and I didn't pass!
And I thought He had listened, but now I know He didn't listen at all!"

I was puzzled too, though for a different reason. I knew she should easily
have passed, and I could only conclude her wild excitement had made her
nervous, for with many tears she told me, " I did not know one answer ! not
even

one !" And again she came back to the first and sorest, "Oh, I did think God
was listening, and He wasn't listening at all! "

At last I got her quieted, and explained, by means of a rupee and an anna,
how sometimes God gives us some thing better than we ask for ; we ask for
an anna, and He gives us a rupee. A rupee holds sixteen annas. She grew
interested: " Then my passing that examination was the anna. But what is
the rupee ?" Now the Elf, as you may have observed, is not weighted with
over much humility, so I told her I thought the rupee must be humility. She
considered a while, then sliding off my knee, she knelt down and said, with
the utmost gravity and purpose, " 0 God! I did not want that kind of answer,
but I do want it now. Give me the rupee of humility!" Then springing up
with eyes dancing with mischief, " Next time I fall into pride you will say, '
Oh, where is that rupee ?''

When the school examinations were over, and the Missie Ammal came
back to rest, I asked her about the Elf. " She really did very badly, seemed
to know nothing of her subjects; should not have gone in, poor mite!" It
suddenly struck me to ask what class she had gone into. "The first," said the
Missie Ammal. " But she is in the infants'!" Then we understood. The Elf
had only been at school for a few months, and had just finished the infant
standard book, and had been moved into the first a day or two before, as the
teacher felt she was well able to clear the first course in the next six months
and take her examination in the following year, two years' work in one. But
it was not intended

she should go in for the Government examination, which requires a certain

time to be spent in preparation; so when, in the confusion of the
arrangement of the classes, she stood with her little class-fellows of two
days only, the mistake was not noticed. No wonder the poor Elf failed! We
never told her the reason, not desiring to raise fresh questions upon the
mysterious ways of Providence in her busy little brain ; and to this day,
when she is betrayed into pride, she shakes her head solemnly at herself,
and remembers the rupee.

She has lately been staying with the Missie Animals, " my very particular
friends," as she calls them, at the C.E.Z. House, Palamcottah. She returned
to us full of matter, and charged with a new idea. " I am no more going to
spend my pocket money upon vanities. I am going to save it all up, and buy
a Gee-lit Bible." This gilt-edged treasure is a fruitful source of
conversation. It will take about six years at the rate of one farthing a week
to save enough to buy exactly the kind she desires. " I don't want a common
Bible. It must be gee-lit, with shining gee-lit all down the leaves on the
outside, and the name on the back all gee-lit too. That's the kind of Bible I
want!" Just as I wrote that, she trotted in and poured three half-annas in
small change upon the table. " That's all I've got, and it's six weeks' savings.
Six years is a long, long time !" She confided to me that she found " the
flesh wanted to persuade " her to spend these three half-annas on cakes. "It
is the flesh, isn't it, that feeling you get inside, that says ' sweets and cakes !
sweets and cakes !' in a very loud voice ? I listened to it for a little, and then
I wanted those sweets

and cakes! So I said to myself, If I buy them they will all be gone in an
hour, but if I buy that Gee-lit Bible it will last for years and years. So I
would not listen any more to my flesh." Then a sudden thought struck her,
and she added impressively, "But when you give me sweets and cakes, that
is different; the feeling that likes them is not ' flesh ' then. It is only ' flesh '
when I'm tempted to spend my Gee-lit Bible money on them." This was a
point I was intended thoroughly to under stand. Sweets and cakes were not
to be confused with "flesh" except where a Gee-lit Bible was concerned.
She seemed relieved when I agreed with her that such things might perhaps
sometimes be innocently enjoyed, and with a sudden and rather startling
change of subject inquired, " Do they never have holidays in hell ?"
CHAPTER XXI Deified Devilry

Next to the sacrificers, they (the temple women) are the most important
persons about the temple. That a temple intended as a place of worship, and
attended by hundreds of simple-hearted men and women, should be so
polluted, and that in the name of religion, is almost beyond belief; and that
Indian boys should grow up to manhood, accustomed to see immor ality
shielded in these temples with a divine cloak, makes our hearts grow sick
and faint." Mrs. Fuller, India.

EXCUSE the title of this chapter. I can write no other. Sometimes the broad
smooth levels of life are crossed by a black-edged jagged crack, rent, as it
seems, by an outburst of the fiery force below. We find ourselves suddenly
close upon it ; it opens right at our very feet.

Two girls came to see us to-day ; sisters, but tuned to different keys. One
was ordinary enough, a bright girl with plenty of jewels and a merry,
contented face. The other was finer grained; you looked at her as you would
look at the covers of a book, wondering what was inside. Both were married
; neither had children. This was the only sorrow the younger had ever had,
and it did not seem to weigh heavily.

The elder looked as if she had forgotten how to smile. Sometimes, when the
other laughed, her eyes would light for a moment, but the shadow in them

deepened almost before the light had come; great soft brown eyes, full of
the dumb look that animals have when they are suffering.

I knew her story, and understood. She was betrothed as a baby of four to a
lad considerably older; a lovable boy, they say he was, generous and frank.
The two of course belonged to the same Caste, the Vellalar, and were
thoroughly well brought up.
In South India no ceremony of importance is con sidered complete without
the presence of " the Servants of the gods." These are girls and women
belonging to the temple (that is, belonging to the priests of the temple),
who, as they are never married, " except to the god who never dies," can
never become widows. Hence the auspiciousness of their presence at
betrothals, marriages, feasts of all sorts, and even funerals.

But this set of Vellalars had as a clan risen above the popular superstition,
and the demoralising presence of these women was not allowed to profane
either the betrothal or marriage of any child of the family. So the boy and
girl grew up as unsullied as Hindus ever are. They knew of what happened
in other homes, but their clan was a large one, and they found their society
in it, and did not come across others much.

Shortly before his marriage the boy went to worship in the great temple
near the sea. He had heard of its sanctity all his life, and as a little lad had
often gone with his parents on pilgrimage there, but now he went to
worship. He took his offering and went. He went again and again. All that
he saw there was religion, all that he did was religious. Could there be harm
in it ?

DEIFIED DEVILRY

He was married; his little bride went with him trust fully. She knew more of
him than most Indian brides know of their husbands. She had heard he was
loving, and she thought he would be kind to her.

A year or two passed, and the child's face had a look in it which even the
careless saw, but she never spoke about anything to give them the clue to it.
She went to stay in her father's house for a few weeks, and they saw the
change, but she would not speak even to them.

Then things got worse. The girl grew thin, and the neighbours talked, and
the father heard and understood ; and, to save a scandal, he took them away
from the town where they lived, and made every effort to give them another
start in a place where they were not known. But the coils of that snake of
deified sin had twisted round the boy, body and soul; he could not escape
from it.
They moved again to another town; it followed him there, for a temple was
there, and a temple means that.

Then the devil of cruelty seized upon him; he would drink, a disgraceful
thing in his Caste, and then hold his little wife down on the floor, and stuff a
bit of cloth into her mouth, and beat her, and kick her, and trample upon her,
and tear the jewels out of her ears. The neighbours saw it, and told.

Then he refused to bring money to her, and she slowly starved, quite silent
still, till at last hunger broke down her resolute will, and she begged the
neighbours for rice. And he did more, but it cannot be told. How often one
stops in writing home-letters. The whole truth can never be told.

She is only a girl yet, in years at least; in suffering, oh, how old she is! Not
half is known, for she never speaks; loyal and true to him through it all. We
only know what the neighbours know, and what her silent dark eyes tell,
and the little thin face and hands.

She was very weary and ill to-day, but she would not own. it, brave little
soul! I could see that neuralgia was racking her head, and every limb
trembled when she stood up; but what made it so pathetic to me was the
silence with which she bore it all. I have only seen her once before, and
now she is going far away with her husband to another town, and I may not
see her again. She was too tired to listen much, and she knows so little, not
nearly enough to rest her soul upon. She cannot read, so it is useless to write
to her. She is going away quite out of our reach; thank God, not out of His.

We watched them drive off in the bullock cart, a servant walking behind.
The little pale face of the elder girl looked out at the open end of the cart;
she salaamed as they drove away. Such a sweet face in its silent strength, so
wondrously gentle, yet so strong, strong to endure.

Do you wonder I call this sort of thing a look deep down into hell ? Do you
wonder we burn as we think of such things going on in the Name of God ?
For they think of their god as God. In His Name the temples are built and
endowed, and provided with " Servants " to do devil's work. Yes, sin is
deified here.
And the shame of shames is that some Englishmen patronise and in
measure support the iniquity. They attend entertainments at which these
girls are present to

sing and dance, and see nothing disgraceful in so doing. As lately as 1893,
when the Indian Social Keformers of this Presidency petitioned two notable
Englishmen to discountenance " this pernicious practice " (the institution of
Slaves of the gods) " by declining to attend any enter tainment at which
they are invited to be present," these two distinguished men, representatives
of our Queen, refused to take action in the matter. Surely this is a strange
misuse of our position as rulers of India. 1

There are so many needs everywhere that I hardly like to speak of our own,
but we do need someone to work among these temple women and girls.
There is practically nothing being done for them; because it is impossible
for any of us to work among them and others at the same time. The nearest
Home to which we could send such a one is four hundred miles away.
Someone is needed, old enough to have had experience of this kind of
work, and yet young enough to learn the language.

Many of these Slaves of the gods were bought, or in some other way
obtained, when they were little innocent girls, and they cannot be held
responsible for the terrible life to which they are doomed by the law of the
Hindu religion. Many of them have hardened past any desire to be other
than they are; but sometimes we see the face of a girl who looks as if she
might have desire, if only she had a chance to know there is something
better for her.

Can it be that, out of the many at home, God has one,

1 For details, see Tlu Wrongs of Indian Womanhood, by Mrs. Fuller.

or better, two, who can come with Him to this South Indian District to do
what must always be awful work, along the course of that crack ? If she
comes, or if they come, let them come in the power of the Holy Ghost,
baptised with the love that endures!

This, then, is one look into Hinduism, this ghastly whitened sepulchre,
within which are dead men's bones.

CHAPTER XXII Behind the Door

"When any person is known to be considering: the new Religion, all his
relations and acquaintances rise en masse; so that to get a new convert is
like pulling out the eye-tooth of a Hue tiger" Adoniram Judson, Burmah.

EVERY missionary who has despaired of hitting upon an illustration vivid

enough to show you what the work is really like among Mohammedans and
Caste Hindus will appreciate this simile. After our return from Dohnavur
we found that the long-closed villages of this eastern countryside had
opened again, and the people were willing to allow us to teach the girls and
women. For two months this lasted, and then three boys, belonging to three
different Castes, became known as inquirers. Instantly the news spread
through all the villages. It was in vain we told them we (women-workers)
had never once even seen the boys, had in no way influenced them; the
people held to it that, personally responsible or not, the Book we taught to
the girls was the same those boys had read (an un deniable fact); that its
poison entered through the eyes, ascended to the brain, descended to the
heart, and then drew the reader out of his Caste and his religion; and that
therefore we could not be tolerated in the
streets or in the houses any more, and so we were turned out.

In one village where many of the relations of one of these three lads live,
the tiger growled considerably. One furious old dame called us
"jC^d^snatchers^and Powder-mongers," and white snakes of the cobra
species, and a particular genus of lizard, which when stamped upon merely
wriggles, and cannot be persuaded to die (this applied to our persistence in
evil), and a great many other things. The women stood out in the street in
defiant groups and would not let us near enough to explain. The men sat on
the verandah fronts and smiled, blandly superior to the childish nonsense
the women talked, but they did not interfere.
Villages like this—and Old India is made up of such villages—are far
removed from the influence of the few enlightened centres which exist.
Madras is only a name to them, distant four hundred miles or so, a place
where Caste notions are very lax and people are mixed up and jumjilexl-
togettier in a most unbecoming way.

(Education, ,or " Learning/' as they call it, they consider an excellent thing
for boys who want to come to the front and earn money and grow rich. But
for girls, what po^sible_ use^js^,itJ Can they pass examinations and get into
Government employ ? If you answered this question you would only
disgust them. Then there is a latent feeling common enough in these old
Caste families, that it is rather infra, dig. for their women to know too
much. It may be all very well for those who have no pretensions to
greatness, they may need a ladder by which to climb up the social scale, but
we who are

already at the top, what do we want with it ? " Have not our daughters got
their Caste ?" This feeling is pass ing away in the towns, but the villages
hold out longer.

In that particular village we had some dear little girls who were getting very
keen, and it was so hard to move out, and leave the field to the devil as
undisputed victor thereon, and I sent one of our workers to try again. She is
a plucky little soul, but even she had to beat a retreat. They will have none
of us.

We went on that day to a village where they had listened splendidly only a
week before. They had no time, it was the busy season. Then to a town,
farther on, but it was quite impracticable. So we went to our friend the dear
old Evangelist there, the blind old man. He and his wife are lights in that
dark town. It is so refreshing to spend half an hour with two genuine good
old Christians after a tug of war with the heathen; they have no idea they
are helping you, but they are, and you return home ever so much the
happier for the sight of them.

As we came home we were almost mobbed. In the old days mobs there
were of common occurrence. It is a rough market town, and the people,
after the first converts came, used to hoot us through the streets, and throw
handfuls of sand at us, and shower ashes on our ham In theory I like this
very much, but in practice not at all. The yellings of the crowd, men chiefly,
are not polite; the yelpings of the dogs, set on by sympathetic spectators;
the sickening blaze of the sun and the reflected glare from the houses; the
blinding dust in your eyes, and the queer feel of ashes down

your neck; above all, the sense that this sort of thing does no manner of
good—for it is not persecution (nothing so heroic), and it will not end in
martyrdom (no such honours come our way)—all this row, and all these
feelings, one on the top of the other, combine to make mobbing less
interesting than might be expected. You hold on, and look up for patience
and good nature and such like common graces, and you pray that you may
not be down with fever to-morrow—for fever has a way of stopping work
—and you get out of it all, as quickly as you can, without showing undue
hurry. And then, though little they know it, you go and get a fresh baptism
of love for them all.

But how delighted one would be to go through such unromantic trifles

every hour of every day, if only at the end one could get into the hearts and
the homes of the people. As it is, just now, our grief is that we cannot. We
know of several who want us, and we are shut out from them.

One is a young wife, who saw us one day by the waterside, and asked us to
come and teach her. For doing this she was publicly beaten that evening in
the open street, by a man, before men; so, for fear of what they would do to
her, we dare not go near the house. Another is a widow who has spent all
her fortune in building a rest-house for the Brahmans, and who has not
found Best. She listened once, too earnestly; she has not been allowed to
listen again. Oh, how that tiger bites !

Next door to her is a child we have prayed for for three years. She was a
loving, clinging child when I knew her then, little Gold, with the earnest
eyes. That

last day I saw her, she put her hands into mine, caring nothing for
defilement; " Are we not one Caste ?" she said. I did not know it was the
last time I should see her; that the next time when I spoke to her I should
only see her shadow in the dark; and one wishes now one had known—how
much one would have said! But the house was open then, and all the houses
were. Then the first girl convert, after bravely witnessing at home, took her
stand as a Christian. Her Caste people burned down the little Mission
school—a boys' school—and chalked up their sentiments on the charred
walls. They burned down the Bible-woman's house and a school sixteen
miles away; and the countryside closed, every town and village in it, as if
the whole were a single door, with the devil on the other side of it.

But some of the girls behind the door managed to send us messages. Gold
was one of these. She wanted so much to see us again, she begged us to
come and try. We tried ; we met the mother outside, and asked her to let us
come. She is a hard old woman, with eyes like bits of black ice, set deep in
her head. She froze us, and refused.

Afterwards we heard what the child's punishment was. They took her down
to the water, and led her in. She stood trembling, waist deep, not knowing
what they meant to do. Then they held her head under the water till she
made some sign to show she would give in. They released her then, rubbed
ashes on her brow, sign of recantation, and they led her back sobbing—poor
little girl. She is not made of martyr stuff; she was only miserable. For some
months we saw nothing of her.

We used to go to the next house and persuade the people to let us sing to
them. We sang for Gold; but we never knew if she heard.

One evening, as two of us came home late from work, a woman passed us
and said hurriedly to me, " Come, come quickly, and alone. It is Gold who
calls you! Come!" I followed her to the house. " I am Gold's married sister,"
she explained. " Sit down outside in the verandah near the door and wait till
the child comes out." Then she went in, and I sat still and waited.

Those minutes were like heart-beats. What was happen ing inside ? But
apparently the mother was away, for soon the door opened softly, and a
shadow flitted out, and I knew it must be Gold. She dropped on her knees
on the little narrow verandah on the other side of the door and crept along to
its farther end, and then I could only distinguish a dark shape in the dark.
For perhaps five minutes no one came except the sister, who stood at the
door and watched. And for those five minutes one was free to speak as
freely as one could speak to a shape which one could barely see, and which
showed no sign, and spoke no word. Five whole minutes! How one valued
every moment of them! Then a man came and sat down on the verandah.
He must have been a relative, for he did not mean to go. I wished he would.
It was impossible to talk past him to her, without letting him know she was
there; so one had to talk to him, but for her, and even this could not last
long. Dusk here soon is dark; we had to go. As we went, we looked back
and saw him still keeping his unconscious guard over the child in her
hiding-place.

There are no secrets in India. It was known that we had been there, and that
stern old mother punished her child; but how, we never knew.

If any blame us for going at all, let it be remembered that one of Christ's
little ones was thirsty, and she held out her hand for a cup of cold water. We
could not have left that hand empty, I think.

After that we heard nothing for a year; then an old man whom we had
helped, and who hoped we intended to help him more, came one evening to
tell us he meant to set Gold free. It was all to be secretly done, and it was to
be done that night. We told him we could have nothing to do with his plan,
and we explained to him why. " But," he objected, " what folly is this ? I
thought you Christians helped poor girls, and this one certainly wants to
come. She is of age. This is the time. If you wait you will never get her at
all." We knew this was more than probable; to refuse his help was like
turning the key and locking her body and soul into prison—an awful
thought to me, as I remembered Treasure. But there was nothing else to be
done; and afterwards, when we heard who he was, and what his real
intentions were, we were thankful we had done it. He looked at us curiously
as he went, as if our view of things struck him as strange; and he begged us
never to breathe a word of what he had said. We never did, but it somehow
oozed out, and soon after that he sickened and very suddenly died. His body
was burnt within two hours. Post-mortems are rare in India.

Another year passed in silence as to Gold. How often we went down the
street and looked across at her home,
with its door almost always shut, and that icy-eyed mother on guard. We
used to see her going about, never far from the house. When we saw her we
salaamed; then she would glare at us grimly, and turn her back on us. Once
the whole family went to a festival; but the girl of course was bundled in
and out of a covered cart, and seen by no one, not even the next-door
neighbours. There was talk of a marriage for her. Most girls of her Caste are
married much younger; but to our relief this fell through, and once one of us
saw her for a moment, and she still seemed to care to hear, though she was
far too cowed by this time to show it.

Then we heard a rumour that a girl from the Lake Village had been seen by
some of our Christians in a wood near a village five miles distant. These
Christians are very out-and-out and keen about converts, and they managed
to discover that the girl in the wood had some thought of being a Christian,
and that her being there had some connection with this, so they told us at
once. The description fitted Gold. But we could not account for a girl of her
Caste being seen in a wood; she was always kept in seclusion. At last we
found out the truth. She had shown some sign of a lingering love for Christ,
and her mother had taken her to a famous Brahman ascetic who lived in that
wood; and there together, mother and daughter stayed in a hut near the
hermit's hut, and for three days he had devoted himself to confuse and
confound her, and finally he succeeded, and reported her convinced.

We heard all this, and sorrowed, and wondered how it was done. We never
heard all, but we heard one

delusion they practised upon her, appealing as they so often do to the

Oriental imagination, which finds such solid satisfaction in the supernatural.
Nothing is so convincing as a vision or a dream; so a vision appeared before
her, an incarnation, they told her, of Siva, in the form of Christ. Siva and
Christ, then, were one, as they had so often assured her, one identity under
two names. Hinduism is crammed with incarnations; this presented no
difficulty. Like the old monk, the bewildered child looked for the print of
the nails and the spear. Yes, they were there, marked in hands and foot and
side. It must be hard to distrust one's own mother. Gold still trusted hers. "
Listen !" said the mother, and the vision spoke. " If the speech of the
Christians is true, I will return within twenty-four days; if the speech of the
Hindus is true, I will not return." Then hour by hour for those twenty-four
days they wove their webs about her, webs of wonderful sophistry which
have entangled keener brains than hers. She was entangled. The twenty-four
days did their work. She yielded her will on the twenty-fifth. So the mother
and the Brahman won.

These letters are written, as you know, with a definite purpose. We try to
show you what goes on behind the door, the very door of the photograph,
type of all the doors, that seeing behind you may understand how fiercely
the tiger bites.
This is the tangible brass-bossed door out side of which we so often stand
on the stone step and knock, and hear voices from within call, "Everyone is
out." The hand-marks are the hand-prints of the Power that keeps the door
shut. Once a year, every door and the lintel of every window, and
sometimes

the walls, are marked like this. That even ing, just before dark, the god
comes round, they say, and looks for his mark on the door, and, seeing it,
blesses all in the house. If there is no mark he'leaves a curse. This is the
devil's South Indian parody on the Passover,

CHAPTER XXIII "Pan, Pan is Dead"

" If there is one thing that refreshes my soul above all others, it is that I
shall behold the Redeemer gloriously triumphant at the winding up of all
things." Henry Martyn, N. India.

«T)ARTLY founded upon a well-known tradition,

JL mentioned by Plutarch, according to which, at

the hour of the Saviour's Agony, a cry of, ' Great

Pan is dead,' swept across the waves in the hearing of

certain mariners, and the oracles ceased." So reads the

head-note to one of Elizabeth Barrett Browning's poems.

We look up a classical dictionary, and find the legend

there. " This was readily believed by the Emperor, and

the astrologers were consulted, but they were unable to

explain the meaning of so supernatural a voice."

Pan, and with him all the false gods of the old world, die in the day of the
death of our Saviour,—this accord ing to the poem—
"Gods, we vainly do adjure you,—

Ye return nor voice nor signl Not a votary could secure you

Even a grave for your Divine; Not a grave, to show thereby, Here these grey
old gods do lie. Pan, Pan is dead."

And yet—is he dead ? quite dead ?

Night, moonless and hot. Our camp is pitched on the west bank of the river;
we are asleep. Suddenly there is what sounds like an explosion just outside.
Then another and another,—such a bursting bang,—then a s-s-swish, and I
am out of bed, standing out on the sand; and for a moment I am sure the
kitchen tent is on fire. Then it dawns on me, in the slow way things dawn in
the middle of the night: it is only fireworks being let off by the festival
people—only fireworks!

But I stand and look, and in the darkness everything seems much bigger
than it is and much more awful. There is the gleaming of water, lit by the
fires of the crowd on the eastern bank of the river. There are torches waving
uncertainly in and out of the vast black mass—black even in the black of
night—where the people are. There is the sudden burst and s-s-swish of the
rockets as they rush up into the night, and fall in showers of colours on the
black mass and the water; and there is the hoarse roar of many voices,
mingled with the bleat of many goats. I stand and look, and know what is
going on. They are killing those goats— thirty thousand of them—killing
them now.

Is Pan dead ? . . .

Morning, blazing sun, relentless sun, showing up all that is going on. We
are crossing the river-bed in our cart. " Don't look ! " says my comrade, and
I look the other way. Then we separate. She goes among the crowds in the
river bed, where the sun is hottest and the air most polluted and the scenes
on every side most sickening, and I go up the bank among the people. We
have each a Tamil Sister with us, and farther down the
stream another little group of three is at work. In all seven, to tens of
thousands. But we hope more will come later on.

We have arranged to meet at the cart at about ten o'clock. The bandy-man is
directed to work his way up to a big banyan tree near the temple. He
struggles up through a tangle of carts, and finds a slanting stand ing-ground
on the edge of the shade of the tree.

All the way up the bank they are killing and skinning their goats. You look
to the right, and put your hands over your eyes. You look to the left, and do
it again. You look straight in front, and see an extended skinned victim hung
from the branch of a tree. Every hanging rootlet of the great banyan tree is
hung with horrors— all dead, most mercifully, but horrible still.

We had thought the killing over, or we should hardly have ventured to

come; but these who are busy are late arrivals. One tells oneself over and
over again that a headless creature cannot possibly feel, but it looks as if it
felt ... it goes on moving. We look away, and we go on, trying to get out of
it,—but thirty thousand goats! It takes a long time to get out of it.

We see groups of little children watching the process delightedly. There is

no intentional cruelty, for the god will not accept the sacrifice unless the
head is severed by a single stroke—a great relief to me. But it is most
disgusting and demoralising. And to think that these children are being
taught to connect it with religion!

With me is one who used to enjoy it all. She tells me how she twisted the
fowls' heads off with her own hands. I look at the fine little brown hands,
such loving

little hands, and I can hardly believe it. " You— you do such a thing!" I say.
And she says, " Yes ; when the day came round to sacrifice to our family
divinity, my little brother held the goat's head while my father struck it off,
and I twisted the chickens' heads. It was my pleasure! "

We go up along the bank; still those crowds, and those goats killed or being
killed. We cannot get away from them.
At last we reach a tree partly unoccupied, but it is leafless, alas ! On one
side of it a family party is cheer fully feeding behind a shelter of mats. A
little lower down some Pariahs are haggling over less polite portions of the
goat's economy. They wrap up the stringy things in leaves and tuck them
into a fold of their seeleys. At our feet a small boy plays with the head. We
sit down in the band of shade cast by the trunk of the tree, and, grateful for
so much shelter, invite the passers-by to listen while we sing. Some listen.
An old hag who is chaperoning a bright young wife draws the girl towards
us, and sits down. She has never heard a word of our Doctrine before, and
neither has the girl. Then some boys come, full of mischief and fun, and
threaten an upset. So we pick out the rowdiest of them and suggest he
should keep order, which he does with great alacrity, swinging a switch
most vigorously at anyone likely to interfere with the welfare of the
meeting.

My little companion speaks to them, as only one who was once where they
are ever can. I listen to her, and long for the flow at her command. " Do you
not do

this and this ?" she says, naming the very things they do; " and don't you
say so and so ?" They stare, and then, " Oh, she was once one of us ! What
is her Caste ? When did she come ? Where are her father and mother ?
What is her village ? Is she not married ? Why is she not ? And where are
her jewels ?" Above all, every one asks it at once, " What is her Caste ?"
And they guess it, and probably guess right.

You can have no idea, unless you have worked among them, how difficult it
is to get a heathen woman to listen with full attention for ten consecutive
minutes. They are easily distracted, and to-day there are so many things to
distract them, they don't listen very well. They are tired, too, they say; the
wild, rough night has done its work. Yesterday it was different; we got good
listeners.

Being women, and alone in such a crowd of idolaters, we do not attempt an

open-air meeting, but just sit quietly where we can, and talk to any we can
persuade to sit down beside us. Hindus are safer far than Mohammedans;
they are very seldom rude; but to-day we know enough of what is going on
to make us keep clear of all men, if we can. They would not say any thing
much to us, but they might say a good deal to each other which is better left
unsaid.

By the time we have gathered, and held, and then had to let go, three or four
of such little groups, it is breakfast time, and we want our breakfast badly.
So we press through the crowd, diving under mat sheds and among
unspeakable messes, heaps of skins on either side, and one hardly knows
what under every foot of innocent-look ing sand ; for the people bury the
debris lightly, throwing

a handful of sand on the worst, and the sun does the rest of the sanitation. It
is rather horrible.

At last we reach the cart, tilted sideways on the bank, and get through our
breakfast somehow, and rest for a few blissful minutes, in most
uncomfortable positions, before plunging again into that sea of sun and
sand and animals, human and otherwise; and then we part, arrang ing to
meet when we cannot go on any more.

Is Pan dead ? . . .

Noon, and hotter, far hotter, than ever. Oh, how the people throng and push,
and kill and eat, and bury re mains ! How can they enjoy it so ? What can
be the pleasure in it ?

We find our way back to that ribbon of shade. It is a narrower ribbon now,
because the sun, riding overhead, throws the shadow of a single bough,
instead of the broader trunk. But such as it is, we are glad of it, and again
we gather little groups, and talk to them, and sing.

Some beautiful girls pass us close, the only girls to be seen anywhere. Only
little children and wives come here; no good unmarried girls. One of the
group is dressed in white, but most are in vivid purples and crimsons. The
girl in white has a weary look, the work of the night again. But most of the
sisterhood are in doors ; in the evening we shall see more of them, scattered
among the people, doing their terrible master's work. These pass us without
speaking, and mingle in the crowd.
After an hour in the band of shade, we slowly climb the bank again, and
find ourselves among the potters,

hundreds and hundreds of them. Every family buys a pot, and perhaps two
or three of different sizes; so the potters drive a brisk trade to-day, and have
no leisure to listen to us.

It is getting very much hotter now, for the burning sand and the thousands
of fires radiate heat-waves up through the air, heated already stiningly. We
think of our comrades down in the river bed, reeking with odours of killing
and cooking, a combination of abominations un-imagined by me before.

We look down upon a collection of cart tops. The palm-woven mat covers
are massed in brown patches all over the sand, and the moving crowds are
between. We do not see the others. Have they found it as difficult as we find
it, we wonder, to get any disengaged enough to want to listen ? At last we
reach the long stone aisle leading to the temple. On either side there are
lines of booths, open to the air but shaded from the sun, and we persuade a
friendly stall-keeper to let us creep into her shelter. She is cooking cakes on
the ground. She lets us into an empty corner, facing the passing crowds, and
one or two, and then two or three, and so on till we have quite a group, stop
as they pass, and squat down in the shade and listen for a little. Then an old
lady, with a keen old face, buys a Gospel portion at half price, and folds it
carefully in a corner of her seeley. Two or three others buy Gospels, and all
of them want tracts. The shop-woman gets a bit restive at this rivalry of
wares. We spend our farthings, proceeds of our sales, on her cakes, and she
is mollified. But some new attraction in the gallery leading to the temple
disperses our little audience, M

to collect it round itself. The old woman explains that the Gospel she has
bought is for her grandson, a scholar, she tells us, aged five, and moves off
to see the new show, and we move off with her.

There, in the first stall, between the double row of pillars, a man is standing
on a form, whirling a sort of crackling rattle high above his head. In the
next, another is yelling to call attention to his clocks. There they are, ranged
tier upon tier, regular " English " busy-bee clocks, ticking away, as a small
child remarks, as if they were alive. Then come sweet-stalls, clothes-stalls,
lamp-stalls, fruit-stalls, book-stalls, stalls of pottery, and brass vessels, and
jewellery, and basket work, and cutlery, and bangles in wheelbarrow loads,
and medicines, and mats, and money boxes, and anything and everything of
every description obtainable here. In each stall is a stall-keeper. Occasion
ally one, like the clock-stall man, exerts himself to sell his goods; more
often he lazes in true Oriental fashion, and sells or not as fortune decides for
him, equally satis fied with either decree. How Indian shopkeepers live at
all is always a puzzle to me. They hardly ever seem to do anything but
moon.

On and on, in disorderly but perfectly good-natured streams, the people are
passing up to the temple, or coming down from worship there. All who
come down have their foreheads smeared with white ashes. Even here there
are goats; they are being pulled, poor reluctant beasts, right to the steps of
the shrine, there to be dedi cated to the god within. Then they will be
dragged, still reluctant, round the temple walls outside, then de capitated.

I watch a baby tug a goat by a rope tied round its neck. The goat has horns,
and I expect every moment to see the baby gored. But it never seems to
enter into the goat's head to do anything so aggressive. It tugs, however, and
the baby tugs, till a grown-up comes to the baby's assistance, and all three
struggle up to the shrine.

We are standing now in an empty stall, just a little out of the crush. Next
door is an assortment of small Tamil booklets in marvellous colours, orange
and green predominating. There is an empty barrel rolled into the corner,
and we sit down on it, and begin to read from our Book. This causes a
diversion in the flow of the stream, and we get another chance.

But it grows hotter and hotter, and we get so thirsty, and long for a drink of
cocoanut water. It is always safe to drink that. No cocoanuts are available,
though, and we have no money. Then a man selling native butter milk
comes working his way in and out of the press, and we become conscious
that of all things in the world the thing we yearn for most is a drink of
butter-milk. The man stops in front of our stall, pours out a cupful of that
precious liquid, and seeing the thirst in our eyes, I suppose, beseeches us to
drink. We explain our penni less plight. " Buy our books, and we'll buy your
butter milk," but he does not want our books. Then we wish we had not
squandered our farthings on those impossible cakes. The butter-milk man
proposes he should trust us for the money; he is sure to come across us
again. He is a kind-hearted man; but debt is a sin; it is not likely we shall
see him again. The butter-milk man considers.

He is poor, but we are thirsty. To give drink to the thirsty is an act of merit.
Acts of merit come in useful, both in this world and the next. He pours out a
cupful of butter-milk (he had poured the first one back when we showed our
empty hands). We hesitate; he is poor, but we are so very thirsty. The next
stall-keeper reads our hearts, throws a halfpenny to the butter-milk man. "
There ! " he says, " drink to the limit of your capacity ! " and we drink. It is
a comical feeling, to be beholden to a seller of small Tamil literature of
questionable descrip tion ; but we really are past drawing nice distinctions.
Never was butter-milk so good; we get through three brass tumbler-fuls
between us, and feel life worth living again. We give the good bookseller
plenty of books to cover his halfpenny, and to gratify us he accepts them;
but as he does not really require them, doubtless the merit he has acquired is
counted as undiminished, and we part most excellent friends.

And now the crowd streaming up to the temple gets denser every moment.
Every conceivable phase of devotion is represented here, every conceivable
type of worshipper too. Some are reverent, some are rampant, some are
earnest, some are careless, awestruck, excited, but more usually perfectly
frivolous; on and on they stream.

I leave my Tamil Sister safely with two others at the cart. But the comrade
whom I am to meet again at that same cart some time to-day has not turned
up. So I go off alone for another try, drawn by the sight of that stream, and I
let myself drift along with it, and am caught in it and carried up—up, till I
am within the

temple wall, one of a stream of men and women stream ing up to the shrine.
We reach it at last. It is dark; I can just see an iron grating set in darkness,
with a light somewhere behind, and there, standing on the very steps of
Satan's seat, there is a single minute's chance to witness for Christ. The
people are all on their faces in the dust and the crush, and for that single
minute they listen, amazed at hearing any such voice in here; but it would
not do to stay, and, before they have time to make up their minds what to
make of it, I am caught in another stream flowing round to the right, and
find myself in a quieter place, a sort of eddy on the outer edge of the
whirlpool, where the worship is less intense, and very many women are
sitting gossiping.

There, sitting on the ground beside one of the smaller shrines which cluster
round the greater, I have such a chance as I never expected to get; for the
women and children are so astonished to see a white face in here that they
throw all restraint to the winds, and crowd round me, asking questions
about how I got in. For Indian temples are sacred to Indians; no alien may
pass within the walls to the centre of the tihrine; moreover, we never go to
the temples to see the parts that are open to view, because we know the
stumbling-block such sight-seeing is to the Hindus. All this the women
know, for everything a missionary does or does not do is ob served by these
observant people, and commented on in private. Now, as they gather round
me, I tell them why I have come (how I got in I cannot explain, unless it
was, as the women declared, that, being in a seeley, one

was not conspicuous), and they take rue into confidence, and tell ine the
truth about themselves, which is the last thing they usually tell, and strikes
me as strange; and they listen splendidly, and would listen as long as I
would stay. But it is not wise to stay too long, and I get into the stream
again, which all this time has been pour ing round the inner block of the
temple, and am carried round with it as it pours back and out.

And as I pass out, still in that stream, I notice that the temple area is
crowded with all kinds of merchandise, stalls of all sorts, just as outside.
Vendors of everything, from mud pots up to jewels, are roaming over the
place crying their wares, as if they had been in a market; and right in the
middle of them the worship goes on at the different shrines and before the
different idols. There it is, market and temple, as in the days of our Lord;
neither seems to interfere with the other. No one seems to see anything
incongruous in the sight of a man prostrated before a stone set at the back of
a heap of glass bangles. And when someone drops suddenly, and sometimes
reverently, in front of a stall of coils of oily cakes, no one sees anything
extraordinary in it; they know there is a god somewhere on the other side of
the cakes.
On and out, through the aisle with its hundred pillars, all stone—stone
paving, pillars, roof; on and out, into the glare and the sight of the goats
again. But one hardly sees them now, for between them and one's eyes seem
to come the things one saw inside—those men and women, hundreds of
them, worshipping that which is not God.

Is Pan dead ? . . .

Pan is dead! Oh, Pan is dead! For, clearer than the sight of that idolatrous
crowd, I saw this —I had seen it inside those temple walls:—a pile of old,
dead gods. They were bundled away in a corner, behind the central shrine—
stone gods, mere headless stumps; wooden gods with limbs lopped off; clay
gods, mere lumps of mud; mutilated and neglected, worn-out old gods. Oh,
the worship once offered to those broken, battered things! No one worships
them now! For full five minutes I had sat and looked at them—

" Gods bereaved, gods belated,

With your purples rent asunder! Gods discrowned and desecrated,

Disinherited of thunder ! "

There were withered wreaths lying at the feet of some of the idols near;
there were fresh wreaths round the necks of others. There were no wreaths
in this corner of dead gods. I looked, and looked, and looked again. Oh,
there was prophecy in it!

And as I came out among the living people, the sight of that graveyard of
dead gods was ever with me, and the triumph-song God's prophetess sang,
sang itself through and through me—Pan is dead! Quite dead !

"'Twas the hour when One in Sion Hung for love's sake on a cross; When
His brow was chill with dying,

And His soul was faint with loss; When His priestly blood dropped
downward, And His kingly eyes looked throne ward— Then, Pan was dead.

"By the love He stood alone in,

His sole Godhead rose complete, And the false gods fell down moaning,

Each from off his golden seat; All the false gods with a cry Rendered up
their deity— Pan, Pan was dead."

CHAPTER XXIV " Married to the God "

"One thing 1 one notices very much as a 'freshman'—that is, the

unconscious influence which Christianity has over a nation. Go to the most
depraved wretch you can find in Eng land, and he has probably got a
conscience, if only one can get at it. But here the result of heathenism
seems to be to destroy men's consciences. They never feel sin as such."

Rev. E. S. Carr, India.

"I have heard people say they enjoyed hearing about missions. I often
wonder if they would enjoy watching a shipwreck." Mrs. Robert Stewart,
China.

T EAVE this chapter if you want " something interest-JLJ ing to read ";
hold your finger in the flame of a candle if you want to know what it is like
to write it. If you do this, then you will know something of the burning at
heart every missionary goes through who has to see the sort of thing I have
to write about. Such things do not make interesting reading. Fire is an
uncompromising thing, its characteristic is that it burns; and one writes with
a hot heart sometimes. There are things like flames of fire. But perhaps one
cares too much; it is only about a little girl.

I was coming home from work a few evenings ago when I met two men and
a child. They were Caste men in flowing white scarves—dignified,
educated men. But the child ? She glanced up at me, smiled, and

salaamed. Then I remembered her; I had seen her before in her own home.
These men belonged to her village. What were they doing with her ?

Then a sudden fear shot through me, and I looked at the men, and they
laughed. " We are taking her to the temple there," and they pointed across
through the trees, " to marry her to the god."
It all passed in a moment. One of them caught her

hand, and they went on. I stood looking after them

just looking. The child turned once and waved her little hand to me. Then
the trees came between.

The men's faces haunted me all night. I slept, and saw them in my dreams; I
woke, and saw them in the dark. And that little girl—oh, poor little girl!—
always I saw her, one hand in theirs, and the other waving to me!

And now it is over, the diabolical farce is over, and she is " tied/' as their
idiom has it, "lied to thp.pf-.nnp.." Oh, she is tied indeed, tied with ropes
Satan twisted in his cruellest hour in hell!

We had to drive through the village a night or two later, and it was all
ablaze. There was a crowd, and it broke to let our bullock carts pass, then it
closed round two palanquins.

There were many men there, and girls. In the palanquins were two idols,
god and goddess, out on view. It was their wedding night. We saw it all as
we passed: the gorgeous decorations, gaudy tinsels, flowers fading in the
heat and glare; saw, long after we had passed, the gleaming of the coloured
lights, as they moved among the trees; heard for a mile and more along the
road the

sound of that heathen revelry; and every thud of the tom-tom was a thud
upon one's heart. Our little girl was there, as one " married " to that god.

I had seen her only once before. She belonged to an interesting high-caste
village, one of those so lately closed; and because there they have a story
about the magic powder which, say what we will, they imagine I dust upon
children's faces, I had not gone often lest it should shut the doors. But that
last time I went, this child came up to me, and, with all the confidingness of
a child, asked me to take her home with me. " Do let me come !" she said.

There were eyes upon me in a moment and heads shaken knowingly, and
there were whispers at once among the women. The magic dust had been at
work ! I had " drawn" the little girl's heart to myself. Who could doubt it
now? And one mother gathered her child in her arms and disappeared into
the house. So I had to answer carefully, so that everyone could hear. Of
course I knew they would not give her to me, and I thought no more of it.

I was talking to her grandmother then, a very remark able old lady. She
could repeat page after page from their beloved classics, and rather than let
me sing Christian stanzas to her and explain them, she preferred to sing
Hindu stanzas to me and explain them. " Con sider the age of our great
Eeligion, consider its litera ture — millions of stanzas! What can you have
to compare with it? These ignorant people about us do not appreciate
things. They know nothing of the classics ; as for the language, the depths
of Tamil are beyond

them—is it not a shoreless sea ?" And so she held the conversation.

It was just at this point the child reappeared, and, standing by the verandah
upon which we were sitting, her little head on a level with our feet, she
joined in the stanza her grandmother was chanting, and, to my
astonishment, continued through the next and the next, while I listened
wondering. Then jumping up and down, first on one foot, then on the other,
with her little face full of delight at my evident surprise, she told me she
was learning much poetry now; and then, with the merriest little laugh, she
ran off again to play.

And this was the child. All that brightness, all that intelligence, " married to
a god."

Now I understood the question she had asked me. She was an orphan, as we
afterwards heard, living in charge of an old aunt, who had some connection
with the temple. She must have heard her future being discussed, and not
understanding it, and being frightened, had wondered if she might come to
us. But they had taken their own way of reconciling her to it; a few sweets,
a cake or two, and a promise of more, a vision of the g<.Vy time the magic
word marriage conjures up, and the child was content to go with them, to be
led to the temple— and left there.
But her people were so thoroughly refined and nice, so educated too,—
could it be, can it be, possibly true ? Yes, it is true ; this is Hinduism—not
in theory of course, but in practice. Think of it; it is done to-day.

A moment ago I looked up from my writing and saw the little Elf running
towards me, charmed to find me all

This is vile enough to look at, but nothing the pillar lest we should defile
him. Lock

to the reality. If the outer form is this, at the shadowy shapes behind ; they
might

what must the soul within it be? Yet this be spirits of darkness. It is he, and
such

is a "holy Brahman;" and if we sat down as he, who have power over little
temple

on that stone verandah he would shuffle past flowers.

alone, and quite at leisure for her. And now I watch her as she runs, dancing
gleefully down the path, turning again—for she knows I am watching—to
throw kisses to me. And I think of her and her childish ways, naughty ways
so often, too, but in their very naughtiness only childish and small, and I
shiver as I think of her, and a thousand thousand as small as she, being
trained to be devil's toys. They brought one here a few days ago to act as
decoy to get the Elf back. She was a beautiful child of five. Think of the
shame of it!
We are told to modify things, not to write too vividly, never to harrow
sensitive hearts. Friends, we cannot modify truth, we cannot write half
vividly enough; and as for harrowing hearts, oh that we could do it! That we
could tear them up, that they might pour out like water! that we could see
hands lifted up towards God for the life of these young children ! Oh, to
care, and oh for power to make others care, not less but far, far more! care
till our eyes do fail with tears for the de struction of the daughters of our
people!

This photo is from death in life; a carcass, moving, breathing, sinning—

such a one sits by that child to-day.

I saw him once. There is a monastery near the temple. He is " the holiest
man in it"; the people worship him. The day I saw him they had wreathed
him with fresh-cut flowers; white flowers crowned that hideous head, hung
round his neck and down his breast; a servant in front carried flowers. Was
there ever such desecration ? That vileness crowned with flowers!

I knew something about the man. His life is simply unthinkable. Talk of
beasts in human shape! It is

"MARRIED TO THE GOD"

slandering the good animals to compare bad men to beasts. Safer far a
tiger's den than that man's monastery

But he is a temple saint, wise in the wisdom of his creed; earthly, sensual,
devilish. Look at him till you feel as if you had seen him. Let the photo do
its work. It is loathsome—yes, but true.

Now, put a flower in his hand—a human flower this

time. Now put beside him, if you can, a little girl

your own little girl—and leave her there— yes, leave Jier there in his hand.

CHAPTER XXV Skirting the Abyss

"The first thing for us all is to see and feel the great need, and to create a
sentiment among Christian people on this subject. One of the characteristics
of this great system is its secrecy—its subtlety. So few know of the evils of
child-marriagCgjit is so hidden away in the secluded lives

"tod prison homes of the people* And thn«A nf na who pntey beyond tnese
veils, and go jdownJntQ^ these homes, are SQ^

«aot to feel that it is a case of the inevitable, and nothing can be done." Mrs.
Lee, India.

I HAVE been to the Great Lake Village to-day trying again to find out
something about our little girl. I went to the Hindu school near the temple.
The schoolmaster is a friend of ours, one of the honourable men of the
village from which they took that flower-He was drilling the little Brahman
boys as they stood in a row chanting the poem they were learning off by
heart; but he made them stop when he saw us coming, and called us in.

I asked him about the child. It was true. She was in the temple, "married to
the stone." Yes, it was true they had taken her there that day.

I asked if the family were poor; but he said, " Do not for a moment think
that poverty was the cause. Cer tainly not. Our village is not poor!" And he
looked quite offended at the thought. I knew the village was

rich enough, but had thought perhaps that particular family might be poor,
and so tempted to sell the little one; but he exclaimed with great warmth,
Certainly not The child was a relative of his own; there was no ques tion of
poverty!

We had left the school, and were talking out in the street facing the temple
house. I looked at it, he looked at it. " From hence a passage broad, smooth,
easy, inoffen sive, down to hell"; he knew it well. " Yes, she is a relative of
my own," he continued, and explained minutely the degree of relationship.
"Her grandmother, whom you doubtless remember, is not like the ignorant
women of these parts. She has learning." And again he re peated, as if
desirous of thoroughly convincing me as to the satisfactory nature of the
transaction, " Certainly she was not sold. She is a relative of my own."
A relative of his own ! And he could teach his school outside those walls,
and know what was going on inside, and never raise a finger to stop it,
educated Hindu though he is. I could not understand it.

He seemed quite concerned at my concern, but ex plained that for

generations one of that particular house hold had always been devoted to
the gods. The practice could not be defended; it was the custom. That was
all. " Our custom."

A stone's-throw from his door is another child who is living a strangely

unnatural life, which strikes no one as unnatural because it is " our custom."
She is quite a little girl, and as playful as a kitten. Her soft round arms and
little dimpled hands looked fit for no harder work than play, but she was
pounding rice

when I saw her, and looked tired, and as if she wanted her mother.

While I was with her a very old man hobbled in. He was crippled, and
leaned full weight with both hands on his stick. He seemed asthmatic too,
and coughed and panted woefully. A withered, decrepit old ghoul. The child
stood up when he came in and touched her neck where the marriage symbol
lay. Then I knew he was her husband.

" What,

No blush at the avowal—you dared to buy A girl of age beseems your

grand-daughter, like ox or ass ? Are flesh and Uood ware? are heart and
soul a chattel?"

Yes! like chattels they are sold to the highest bidder. In that auction Caste
comes first, then wealth and posi tion. And the chattel is bought, the bit of
breathing flesh and blood is converted into property; and the living,
throbbing heart of the child may be trampled and stamped down under foot
in the mire and the mud of that market-place, for all anyone cares.

It is not long since a young wife came for refuge to our house. Three times
she had tried to kill herself; at last she fled to us. Her husband came. " Get
up, slave," he said, as she crouched on the floor. She would not stir or
speak. Then he got her own people to come, and then it was as if a pent-up
torrent was bursting out of an over full heart. " You gave me to him. You
gave me to him." The words came over and over again; she reminded them
in a passion of reproach how, knowing what his character was, they had
handed her over to him. But we could hardly follow her, the words poured

forth with such fierce emotion, as with streaming eyes, and hands that
showed everything in gestures, she be sought them not to force her back.
They promised, and believing them, she returned with them. The other day
when I passed the house someone said, "Beautiful is there. He keeps her
locked up in the back room now." So they had broken their word to her, and
given her back, body and soul, to the power of a man whose cruelty is so
well known that even the heathen call him a " demon." What must he be to
his wife ?

And if that poor wife, nerved by the misery of her life, dared all, and
appealed to the Government, the law would do as her people did —force
her back again to him, to fulfil a contract she never made. Is it not a shame
? Oh, when will the day come when this merchandise in children's souls
shall cease ? We know that many hus bands are kind, and many wives
perfectly content, but sometimes we see those who are not, and there is no
redress.

Another of our children sold by auction in the Village of the Lake is one
who used to be such a pretty little thing, with a tangle of curls, and
mischievous, merry brown eyes. But that was five years ago. Then a fiend
in a man's shape saw her, and offered inducements to her parents which
ended in his marrying her. She was nine years old.

One year afterwards she was sent to her husband's home. His motives in
marrying her were wholly evil, but the child knew something of right and
wrong, and she resisted him. Then he dragged her into an inner room, and
he held her down, and smothered her

shrieks, and pressed a plantain into her mouth. It was poisoned. She knew
it, and did not swallow it all. But what she was forced to take made her ill,
and she lay for days so dizzy and sick that when her husband kicked her as
she lay she did not care. At last she escaped, and ran to her mother's house.
But the law was on her owner's side; what could she prove of all this, poor
child ? And she had to go back to him. After that he succeeded in his devil's
work, and to-day that child is dead to all sense of sin.

Oh, there are worse things far than seeing a little child die! It is worse to see
it change. To see the innocence pass from the eyes, and the childishness
grow into wicked ness, and to know, without being able to stop it, just what
is going on.

I am thinking of one such now. She was four years old when I first began to
visit in her grandmother's house. She is six now—only six—but her
demoralisation is almost complete. It is as if you saw a hand pull a rosebud
off its stem, crumple and crush it, rub the pink loveliness into pulp, drop it
then—and you pick it up. But it is not a rosebud now. Oh, these things, the
knowledge of them, is as a fire shut up in one's bones! shut up, for one
cannot let it all out—it must stay in and burn.

Those who know nothing of the facts will be sure to criticise. " It is not an
unknown thing for persons to act as critics, even though supremely ignorant
of the sub ject criticised." But those who know the truth of these things well
know that we have understated it, carefully

toned it down perforce, because it cannot be written in full. It could neither

be published nor read.

It cannot be written or published or read, but oh, it has to be lived! And

what you may not even hear, must be endured by little girls. There are
child-wives in India to-day, of twelve, ten, nine, and even eight years old. "
Oh, you mean betrothed ! Another instance of missionary exaggeration !"
We mean married.

"But of course the law interferes!" Perhaps you have heard of the law which
makes wifehood illegal under twelve. With reference to this law the Hon.
Manomoham Ghose of the High Court of Calcutta writes :

« If the Government thinks that the country is not

yet prepared for such legislation " (by which he means drastic legislation) "
as I suggest, I can only express my regret that by introducing the present
Bill it has in definitely postponed the introduction of a substantial measure
of reform, which is urgently called for."

There are men and women in India to whom many a day is a nightmare, and
this fair land an Inferno, because of what they know of the wrong that is
going on. For that is the dreadful part of it. It is not like the burning alive of
the widows, it is not a horror passed. It is going on steadily day and night.
Sunlight, moonlight, and dark ness pass, the one changing into the other;
but all the time they are passing, this Wrong holds the hours with firm and
strong hands, and uses them for its purpose — the murder of little girls.
Meanwhile, what can be done by you and by me to hasten the day of its
ending? Those who know can tell what they know, or so much as will bear
the telling; and those who do not know can

believe it is true, and if they have influence anywhere, use it; and all can
care and pray ! Praying alone is not enough, but oh for more real praying !
We are playing at praying, and caring, and coming; playing at doing— if
doing costs—playing at everything but play. We are earnest enough about
that. God open our eyes and convict us of our insincerity ! burn out the
superficial in us, make us intensely in earnest! And may God quicken our
sympathy, and touch our heart, and nerve our arm for what will prove a
desperate fight against " leagued fiends " in bad men's shapes, who do the
devil's work to-day, branding on little innocent souls the very brand of hell.

I have told of one—that little child who is now as evil-minded as a little

child can be; she is only one of so many. Let a medical missionary speak.

" A few days ago we had a little child-wife here as a patient. She was ten or
eleven, I think, just a scrap of a creature, playing with a doll, and yet
degraded un-mentionably in mind. . . . But oh, to think of the hundreds of
little girls! ... It makes me feel literally sick. We do what we can. . . . But
what can we do ? What a drop in the ocean it is !"

Where the dotted lines come, there was written what cannot be printed. But
it had to be lived through, every bit of it, by a " scrap of a creature of ten or
eleven."
Another—these are from a friend who, even in writing a private letter,
cannot say one-tenth of the thing she really means.

" A few days ago the little mother (a child of thirteen) was crying bitterly in
the ward. ' Why are you crying ?'

' Because he says I am too old for him now; he will get another wife, he
says.' ' He ' was her husband, ' quite a lad/ who had come to the hospital to
see her."

The end of that story which cannot be told is being lived through this very
day by that little wife of thirteen. And remember that thirteen in India
means barely eleven at home.

" She was fourteen years old," they said, " but such a tiny thing, she looked
about nine years old in size and development. . . . The little mother was so
hurt, she can never be well again all her life. The husband then married
again ... as the child was ruined in health . . ." And, as before, the dots must
cover all the long-drawn-out misery of that little child who " looked about
nine."

" There is an old, old man living near here, with a little wife of ten or
eleven. . . . Our present cook's little girl, nine years old, has lately been
married to a man who already has had two wives." In each of these cases, as
in each I have mentioned, marriage means marriage, not just betrothal, as so
many fondly imagine. Only to-day I heard of one who died in what the
nurse who attended her described as "simple agony." She had been married
a week before. She was barely twelve years old.

We do not say this is universal. There are many exceptions; but we do say
the workings of this custom should be exposed and not suppressed.
Question our facts; we can prove them. To-day as I write it, to-day as you
read it, hundreds and thousands of little wives are going through what we
have described. But " described " is not the word to use—indicated, I
should say, with the

faintest wash of sepia where the thing meant is pitch black.

Think of it, then—do not try to escape from the thought—English women
know too little, care too little —too little by far. Think of it. Stop and think
of it. If it is " trying " to think of it, and you would prefer to turn the page
over, and get to something nicer to read, what must it be to live through it ?
What must it be to those little girls, so little, so pitifully little, and unequal
to it all ? What must it be to these childish things to live on through it day
by day, with, in some cases, nothing to hope for till kindly death comes and
opens the door, the one dread door of escape they know, and the tortured
little body dies ? And someone says, "The girl is dead, take the corpse out
to the burning-ground." Then they take it up, gently perhaps. But oh, the
relief of remembering it! It does not matter now. Nothing matters any more.
Little dead wives cannot feel.

• ••«•»•

I wonder whether it touches you ? I know I cannot tell it well. But oh, one
lives through it all with them! —I have stopped writing again and again,
and felt I could not go on.

Mother, happy mother ! When you tuck up your little girl in her cot, and
feel her arms cling round your neck and her kisses on your cheek, will you
think of these other little girls ? Will you try to conceive what you would
feel if your little girl were here ?

Oh, you clasp her tight, so tight in your arms! The thought is a scorpion's
sting in your soul. You would

kill her, smother her dead in your arms, before you would give her to—
that.

Turn the light down, and come away. Thank God she is safe in her little cot,
she will wake up to-morrow safe. Now think for a moment steadily of those
who are somebody's little girls, just as dear to them and sweet, needing as
much the tenderest care as this your own little girl.

Think of them. Try to think of them as if they were your very own. They are
just like your own, in so many ways—only their future is different.
Oh, dear mothers, do you care ? Do you care very much, I ask ?

We passed the temple on our way home from the Village of the Lake. The
great gate was open, and the Brahmans and their friends were lounging in
and out, or sitting in the porch talking and laughing together. They were
talking about us as we passed. They were quite aware of our object in
coming, and were pleased that we had failed.

Government officials, English-speaking graduates, edu cated Hindus like

our old friend the schoolmaster, all would admit in private that to take a
child to the temple and " marry her " there was wrong. But very few have
much desire to right the shameful wrong.

There are thousands of recognised Slaves of the gods in this Presidency.

Under other names they exist all over India. There are thousands of little
child-wives; fewer here than elsewhere, we know, but many every where. I
do not for a moment suggest that all child-

wives are cruelly handled, any more than I would have it thought that all
little girls are available for the service of the gods. Nor would I have it
supposed that we see down this hell-crack every day. We may live for years
in the country and know very little about it. The medical workers—God
help them!—are those who are most frequently forced to look down, and I,
not being a medical, know infinitely less of its depths than they. But this I
do know, and do mean, and I mean it with an intensity I know not how to
express, that this custom of infant marriage and child marriage, whether to
gods or men, is an infamous custom; that it holds possibilities of wrong,
such unutterable wrong, that descriptive words con cerning it can only "
skirt the abyss" and that in the name of all that is just and all that is merciful
it should be swept out of the land without a day's delay.

We look to our Indian brothers. India is so immense that a voice crying in

the North is hardly heard in the South. Thank God for the one or two voices
crying in the wilderness. But many voices are needed, not only one or two.
Let the many voices cry! Every man with a heart and a voice to cry, should
cry. Then all the cries crying over the land will force the deaf ears to hear,
and force the dull brains to think and the hands of the law to act, and
something at last will be done.
But " crying " is not nearly enough. We look to you, brothers of India, to do.
Get convictions upon this subject which will compel you to do. Many can
talk and many can write, and more will do both, as the years pass, but the
crux is contained in the doing.

God alone can strengthen you for it. He who set His face as a flint, can
make you steadfast and brave enough to set your faces as flints, till the
bands of wickedness are loosed, and the heavy burdens are un done, and
every yoke is broken, and the oppressed go free.

It will cost. It is bound to cost. Every battle of the warrior is with confused
noise and garments rolled in blood. It is only sham battles that cost
something less than blood. Everything worth anything costs Uood. "
Keproach hath broken My heart." A broken heart bleeds. Is it the reproach
of the battle you fear ? This fear will conquer you until you hear the voice
of your God saying, " Fear ye not the reproach of men, neither be afraid of
their revilings. . . . Who art thou that thou shouldest be afraid of a man that
shall die, and the son of man that shall be made as grass, and forgettest the
Lord thy Maker ?"

This book is meant for our comrades at home, but it may come back to
India, and so we have spoken straight from our hearts to our Indian brothers
here. Oh, brothers, rise, and in God's Name fight; in His power fight till you
win, for these, your own land's little girls, who never can fight for
themselves!

And now we look to you at home. Will all who pity the little wives pray for
the men of India ? Pray for those who are honestly striving to rid the land of
this shameful curse. Pray that they may be nerved for the fight by the power
of God's right arm. Pray for all the irresolute. " A sound of battle is in the
land, , . . the Lord hath opened His armoury." " Cursed be

he that keepeth back his sword from blood." Pray for resolution and the
courage of conviction. It is needed.

And to this end pray that the Spirit of Life may come upon our Mission
Colleges, and mightily energise the Missionary Educational Movement, that
Hindu students may be won to out-and-out allegiance to Christ while they
are students, before they become entangled in the social mesh of Hinduism.
And pray, we earnestly plead with you, that the Christian students may meet
God at college, and come out strong to fight this fiend which trades in "
slaves and souls of men "—and in the souls of little girls.

CHAPTER XXVI From a Hindu Point of View

" The Lord preserve us from innovations foreign to the true principles of the
Protestant Church, and foreign to the prin ciples of the C.M.S. Pictures,
crosses, and banners, with processions, would do great harm. The
Mohammedan natives would say, 'Wah! you worship idols as the Hindus
do, and have taziyas (processions) as well as the Mohammedans 1' And our
Christians would mourn over such things."

Rev. C. B. Leupolt, India.

I AM sitting in the north-west corner of the verandah of a little mission

bungalow, on the outskirts of a town sixteen miles south of our Eastern
head quarters. This is the town where they set fire to the schoolroom when
Victory came. So far does Caste feeling fly. As you sit in the corner of this
verandah you see a little temple fitted between two white washed pillars,
roughly built and rudely decorated, but in this early morning light it looks
like a picture set in a frame. It is just outside the compound, so near that
you see it in all its detail of colour; the sun striking across it touches the
colours and makes them beautiful.

There is the usual striped wall, red and white; the red is a fine terra-cotta,
the colour of the sand. The central block, the shrine itself, has inlays of
green, red, and blue; there is more terra-cotta in the roof, some

yellow too, and white. Beyond on either side there are houses, and beyond
the houses, trees and sky.

It is all very pretty and peaceful. Smoke is curling up in the still air from
some early lighted fire out of doors; there are voices of people going and
coming, softened by distance. There is the musical jingle of bullock bells
here in the compound and out on the road, and there is the twitter of birds.
In front of that temple there are three altars, and in front of the altars a
pillar. I can see it from where I am sitting now, rough grey stone. Upon it,
there is what I thought at first was a sun-dial, and I wondered what it was
doing there. Then I saw it had not a dial plate; only a strong cross-bar of
wood, and the index finger, so to speak, was longer than one would expect,
a sharp wooden spike. As I was wondering what it was a passer-by
explained it. It is not a sun dial, it is an impaling instrument. On that spike
they used to impale alive goats and kids and fowls as offer ings to the god
Siva and his two wives, the deities to whose honour the three altars stand
before the little shrine. The pillar on which stands this infernal spike has
three circles scored into it, sign of the three divinities.

" The impaling has stopped," say the people, greatly amused at one's horror
and distress, for at first I thought perhaps they still did it. " Now we do not
impale alive ; the Government has stopped it." Thank God for that! But oh,
let all lovers of God's creatures pray for and hasten the coming of our Lord
Jesus Christ! Govern ment may step in and stop the public clubbing to death
of buffaloes, and the impaling of goats and fowls in

238 FROM A HINDU POINT OF VIEW

sacrifice, but it cannot stop the private cruelty, and the still wider-spread
indifference on the part of those who are not themselves cruel; only the
coming of Christ the Compassionate can do that.

There was the sound of voices just then, as I wrote, many voices, coming
nearer, shrill women's voices, cutting through one's thoughts, and I went out
to see what was going on.

On the other side of the road, opposite our gate, there is a huge old double
tree, the sacred fig tree of India, intertwined with another—a religious
symbol to this symbol-loving people. Underneath is a stone platform, and
on it the hideous elephant-god. On the same side is a little house. A group
of women were gathered under the shade near the house, evidently waiting
for something or someone. They were delighted to talk.

We spent half an hour under the tree, and they listened; but we were
interrupted by some well-dressed Government officials with their coats,
sashes, and badges, and one not strictly Governmental got up in a
marvellous fashion, and they joined the group and monopolised the
conversation. I waited, hoping they would soon go away, and I listened to
what they were saying.

" Yes ! she actually appeared ! She was a goddess." (" A goddess ! Oh ! "
from the women.) " She came for ward, moving without walking, and she
stood as a tree stands, and she stretched out her arms and blessed the
people, and vanished."

A woman pointed to me. " Like her ? Was she like her ?"

" Like her!" and the Government official was a little contemptuous. " Did I
not say she was a goddess ? Is this Missie Ammal a goddess ? Is she not a
mere woman like yourselves, only white ?"

"She also came from the bungalow," objected the woman rather feebly,
feeling public opinion against her.

" You oyster!" said the official politely, " because a Missie Ammal comes
from the bungalow, does it prove that the goddess was a Missie Ammal ?"
The other women agreed with him, and snubbed the ignoramus, who retired
from the controversy.

The story was repeated with variations, such a mixture of the probable with
the improbable, not to say impossible, that one got tangled up in it before he
had got half through.

Just then an ancient Christian appeared on the scene and quavered in, in the
middle of the marvel, with words to the effect that our God was the true
God, and they ought to have faith in Him. It was not exactly a propos of
anything they were discussing, but he seemed to think it the right thing to
say, and they accepted it as a customary remark, and went on with their
conversation. I asked the old worthy if he knew anything about the story,
and at first he denied it indignantly as savouring too much of idolatry to be
connected with the bungalow, but finally admitted that once in the dim past
he had heard that an Ammal in the bungalow, who was ill and disturbed by
the tom-toms at night, got up and went out and tried to speak to the people.
And the men, listening now to the old man, threw in a word which
illumined the whole, " It was a great festival." I remembered that impaling
stake, and understood it all. And in a

240 FROM A HINDU POINT OF VIEW

flash I saw it —the poor live beast—and heard its cries. They would wring
her heart as she heard them in the pauses of the tom-tom. She was ill, but
she got up and struggled out, and tried to stop it, I am sure—tried, and
failed.

Seven thousand miles away these things may seem trivial. Here, with that
grey stone pillar full in view, they are real.

I came back to the present. The women were still there, and more people
were gathering. Something was going to happen. Then a sudden burst of
tom-toms, and a banging and clanging of all manner of noise-producers,
and then a bullock coach drove up, a great gilded thing. It stopped in front
of the little house; someone got out ; the people shouted, " Guru ! Great
Guru ! Lord Guru !" with wild enthusiasm.

The Guru was not poor. He had two carts laden with luggage—one item, a
green parrot in a cage. Close to the cage a small boy was thundering away
on a tom tom, but it did not disturb the parrot. The people seemed to think
this display of wealth demanded an apology. " It is not his, it belongs to his
followers; he, being what he is, requires none of these things/' they said.

I had to go then, and we started soon afterwards on our day's round, and I
do not know what happened next; but I had never had the chance of a talk
with a celebrity of this description, and in the evening, on my homeward
way, I stopped before the little house and asked if I might see him, the
famous Guru of one of the greatest of South Indian Castes.

The Government officials of the morning were there, but the officialism
was gone. No coats and sashes and badges now, only the simple national
dress, a scarf of white muslin. The one who in the morning had been an
illustration of the possible effect of the mixture of East and West, stood in a
dignity he had not then, a fine manly form.
The door was open, and they were sentry, for their Guru was resting, they
said. " Then he is very human, just like yourselves ?" But the strong,
sensible faces looked almost frightened at the words. " Hush," they
answered all in a breath, " no such thoughts may be even thought here. He
is not just like us." And as if to divert us from the expression of such
sentiments, they moved a little from the door, and said, " You may look, if
you do not speak," and knowing such looks are not often allowed, I looked
with interest, and saw all there was to see.

The Guru was in the far corner resting; a rich purple silk, with gold
interwoven in borders and bands, was flung over his ascetic's dress. At the
far end, too, was a sort of altar, covered with red cloth, and on it were
numerous brass candlesticks and vessels, and on a little shelf above, a row
of little divinities, some brass ornaments, and flowers.

To the left of this altar there was a high-backed chair covered by a deer
skin; there were pictures of gods and goddesses round the room, especially
near the altar, and there were the usual censers, rosaries, and musical in
struments, and there was the parrot.

The Government official pointed in, and said, with an 16

242 FROM A HINDU POINT OF VIEW

air of pride in the whole, and a certainty of sympathy too, " There, you see
how closely it resembles your churches; there is not so much difference
between you and us after all!"

Not so much difference! There is a very great differ ence, I told him; and I
asked him where he had seen a Christian church like this. He mentioned
two. One was a Koman Catholic chapel, the other an English church.

What could I say ? They bear our name; how could he understand the
divisions that rend us asunder ?— Romanists, Eitualists, and Protestants—
are we not all called Christians ?

I looked again, and I could not help being struck with the resemblance. The
altar with its brasses and flowers and candlesticks, and the little shelf above;
the pictures on the walls; the chair, so like a Bishop's chair of state; the
whole air of the place heavy with incense, was redolent of Rome.

He went on to explain, while I stood there ashamed. " Look, have you not
got that ?" and he pointed to the altar-like erection, with the red cloth and
the flowers.

" We have nothing of the sort in our church. Come and see; we have only a
table," I said; but he laughed and declared he had seen it in other churches,
and it was just like ours, " only yours has a cross above it, and ours has
images ; but you bow to your cross, so it must re present a divinity," and,
without waiting for any reply, he pointed next to the pictures.

"They are very like yours, I think," he said, "only yours show your God on
a cross, stretched out and dying

—so "— And he stretched out his arms, and drooped his head, and said
something which cannot be translated ; and I could not look or listen, but
broke in earnestly:

" Indeed, we have no such pictures—at least we here have not; but even if
some show such a picture, do they ever call it a picture of God ? They only
say it is a picture of "— But he interrupted impatiently:

" Do not I know what they say ? " And then, with a touch of scorn at what
he thought was an empty excuse on my part, he added, " We also say the
same " (which is true; no intelligent Hindu admits that he worships idols or
pictures ; he worships what these things represent). " Your people show
your symbols," he continued, in the tone of one who is sure of his ground, "
exactly as we show ours. I have seen your God on a great sheet at night; it
was shown by means of a magic lamp; and sometimes you make it of wood
or brass, as we make ours of stone. The name may change and the manner
of making, but the thing's essence is the same."

" The Mohammedans do not show their God's symbol; but we do, and so do
the Christians. Therefore between us and the Christians there is more in
common than between the Mohammedans and us." This was another
Hindu's contribution to the argument.
The chair now served as a text. " When your Bishop comes round your
churches, does he not sit in a chair like that, himself apart from the people ?
And in like manner our Guru sits. There is much similarity. Also do not
your Christians stand"—and he imitated the peculiarly deferential attitude
adopted on such occasions by some—" just in the fashion that we stand ?
And do

244 FROM A HINDU POINT OF VIEW

not your people feel themselves blessed by the presence of the Great ? Oh,
there is much similarity !"

I explained that all this, though foolish, was not in tended for more than
respect, and our Bishops did not desire it; at which he smiled. Then he went
on to expatiate upon what he had seen in some of our churches (probably
while on duty as Government servant): the display, as it seemed to him, so
like this; the pomp, as he thought it, so fine, like this; the bowing and pros
trating, and even on the part of those who did not do these things, the
evident participation in the whole grand show. And the other men, who
apparently had looked in through the open windows and doors, agreed with
him.

He is not the first who has been stumbled in the same way; and I
remembered, as he talked, what a Mohammedan woman said to a friend of
mine about one of our English churches, seen through her husband's eyes. "
You have idols in your church," she said, " to which you bow in worship."
She referred to the things on or above the Communion table. My friend
explained the things were not idols. " Then why do your people bow to
them ? " Was there nothing in the question ?

Often we wonder whether the rapid but insidious increase of ritual in India
is understood at home. In England it is bad enough, but in a heathen and
Moham medan land it is, if possible, worse; and the worst is, the spirit of it,
or the spirit of tolerance toward it, which is on the increase even in
missionary circles. Some of our Tamil people attend the English service in
these " advanced " churches after their own service is over, and thus
become familiarised with and gradually acclimatised
to an ecclesiastical atmosphere foreign to them as members of a Protestant
Society.

I remember spending a Sunday afternoon with a worthy pastor and his wife,
stationed in the place where the church is in which the "idols are
worshipped" according to the Mohammedans. When the bell rang for
evening service he began to shuffle rather as if he wanted me to go. But he
was too polite to say so, and the reason never struck me till his son came in
with an English Bible and Prayer-Book. The old man put up his hand to his
mouth in the apologetic manner of the Tamils. " We do not notice the
foolish parts of the service. We like to hear the English. For the sake of the
English we go."

" He did not turn to the East, but he did not keep quite straight ; he just half
turned." This from a pastor's wife, about one whom she had been observing
during an ordination ceremony in the English cathedral. " He just half
turned! 1 It describes the nebulous attitude of mind of many a one to-day.
India has not our historical background. It has no Foxe's Book of Martyrs
yet. Perhaps that is why its people are so indifferent upon points which
seem of importance to us. They have not had to fight for their freedom, in
the sense at least our forefathers fought; there is no Puritan blood in their
veins; and so they are willing to follow the lead of almost anyone, provided
that lead is given steadily and persistently; which surely should make those
in authority careful as to those in whose hands that lead is placed.

But the natural instinct of the converted idolater is dead against complexity
in worship, and for simplicity.

246 FROM A HINDU POINT OF VIEW

He does not want something as like his own old religion as possible, but as
different as possible from it ; and so we have good building material ready
to hand, and a founda tion ready laid. " But let every man take heed how he
buildeth thereupon."

I hope this does not sound unkind. We give those who hold different views
full credit for sincerity, and a right to their own opinions; but convictions
are con victions, and, without judging others who differ, these are ours, and
we want those at home who are with us in these things to unite to help to
stem the tide that has already risen in India far higher than perhaps they
know. Brave men are needed, men with a fuller development of spiritual
vertebrae than is common in these easy-going days, and we need such men
in our Native Church. God create them; they are not the product of
theological colleges. And may God save His Missions in India from
wasting His time, and money, and men, on the cultivation of what may
evolve into something of no more use to creation than a new genus of jelly-
fish.

The Government official and his friends were still talking among
themselves : "Do we not know what the Christians do ? Have we not ears ?
Have we not eyes ? They do it in their way, we do it in ours. The thing itself
is really the same. Yes, their religion is just like ours."

They could not see the vital difference between even the most vitiated
forms of Christianity and their own Hinduism; there were so many
resemblances, and these filled their mental vision at the moment. One could
hardly wonder they could not.

They turned to me again, and with all the vigour of language at my

command I told them that neither we nor those with us ever went to any
church where we had reason to think there would be an exhibition of
ecclesiastical paraphernalia. We did not believe it was in accordance with
the simplicity of the Gospel; and I told them how simple the Truth really
was, but they would not believe me. Those sights they had seen had struck
them much as they struck the convert who described the Confirmation
service thus: " We went up and knelt down before a stick" (the Bishop's
pastoral staff). They had observed the immense attention paid to all these
sacred trifles, and naturally they appeared to them as essential to the whole;
part of it, nearly all of it, in fact; and even where the service was in the
vernacular, their attention had been entirely diverted from the thing heard
by the things seen.

Then I thought of the description of a primitive Christianity service as given

in 1 Corinthians. There the idea evidently was that if an outsider came in, or
looked in, as Hindus and Mohammedans so often look in here, he should
understand what was going on; and being convicted of his sin and need,
should be " con vinced "; " and so, falling down on his face, he will worship
God, and report that God is in you of a truth." Compare the effect produced
upon the minds of these Hindu men by what they saw of our services, with
the effect intended to be produced by the Holy Ghost. Can we say we have
improved upon His pattern ?

Oh for a return to the simplicity and power of the

248 FROM A HINDU POINT OF VIEW

Gospel of Christ ! Then we should not roll stumbling-blocks like these in

our Indian brother's way. Oh for a return to the days of the beginning of the
Acts of the Apostles, to obscurity, and poverty, and suffering, and shame,
and the utter absence of all earthly glory, and the winning of souls of a
different make to the type thought sufficiently spiritual now ! Oh for more
of the signs of Apostleship— scars, and the cross— the real cross— the
reproach of Christ the Crucified,—no mitre here, but there the crowii !

CHAPTER XXVII Though ye know Him not

" I have known cases of young ministers dissuaded from fac ing the
missionary call by those who posed as friends of Foreign Missions, and yet
presumed to argue: 'Your spiritual power and intellectual attainments are
needed by the Church at home ; they would be wasted in the Foreign Field.'
* Spiritual power wasted' in a land like India! Where is it so sorely needed
as in a continent where Satan has constructed his strongest fortresses and
displayed the choicest masterpieces of his skill ? ' Intellectual ability
wasted' among a people whose scholars smile inwardly at the ignorance of
the average Western! Brothers, if God is calling you, be not deterred by
flimsy subter fuges such as these. You will need the power of God the Holy
Ghost to make you an efficient missionary. You will find your reputation for
scholarship put to the severest test in India. Here is ample scope alike for
men of approved spiritual power and for intellectual giants. And so I repeat,
// Clod is calling you, buckle on your sword, come to the fight, and win
your spurs among the cultured sons of India."

Rev. T. Walker, India.

THE sensation you experience is curious when you rise from the study of
Sir Monier Williams' Brah-manism and Hinduism and go out to your work,
and meet in that work someone who seems to be quoting that same book,
not in paragraphs only, but in pages. He is talking Tamil, and the book is
written in English; that is all the difference. He was standing by the wayside
when I saw him: we got into con versation.

250 THOUGH YE KNOW HIM NOT

At first he reminded me of a sea anemone, with all its tentacles drawn

inside, but gradually one by one they came. out, and I saw what he really
was; and I think the great Christian scholar, who laboured so hard to
understand and translate into words the intricacies and mysteries of Indian
thought, would have felt a little repaid had he known how his work would
help in the practical business of a missionary's life. Part of our business is to
meet the mind with which we are dealing half-way with quick
comprehension. It is in this Sir Monier Williams helps.

When once this man felt himself understood, his whole attitude changed. At
first, expecting, I suppose, that he was being mistaken for " an ignorant
heathen " and worshipper of stocks and stones, he hardly took the trouble to
do more than answer, as he thought, a fool according to his folly. The
tentacles were all in then.

But that passed soon, and he pointed to the shed be hind him, where two or
three life-size idol horses stood and said how childish he knew it was,
foolish and vain. But then, what else could be done ? Idols are not ob jects
of worship, and never were intended so to be; their only use is to help the
uninitiated to worship Something. If nothing were shown them, they would
worship nothing ; and a non-worshipping human being is an animal, not a
man.

He went on to answer the objections to this means of quickening intelligent

worship by explaining how, in higher and purer ways, the thinkers of
Hinduism had tried to make the unthinking think. " Look at our

temples," he said. " There is a central shrine, with only one light in it. The
darkness of the shrine symbolises the darkness of the world, of life and
death and being. For life is a darkness, a whirlpool of dark waters. We stand
on its edge, but we do not under stand it. It is dark, but- light there must be;
one great light. So we show this certainty by the symbol of the one light in
the shrine, in the very heart of our temples."

This led on to quotations from his own books, question ing the validity of
such lights, which he finished the moment one began them, and this again
led to our Lord's words,—how strong they sounded, and how direct—" 1
am the Light of the World" But he could not accept them in their simplicity,
and here it was that the book I had been reading came in so helpfully. He
spoke rapidly and eagerly, and such a mixture of Sanscrit and Tamil that if I
had not had the clue I am not sure I could have followed him, and to have
misunderstood him then might have driven all the tentacles in, and made it
harder for the next one whom the Spirit may send to win his confidence.

He told me that, after much study of many religions, he held the eternal
existence of one, Brahma. The human spirit, he said, is not really distinct
from the Divine Spirit, but identical with it; the apparent distinction arises
from our illusory view of things : there is absolutely no distinction in spirit.
Mind is distinct, he admitted, and body is distinct, but spirit is identical; so
that, " in a definitely defined sense, I am God, God is I. The so-called two
are one, in all essentials of being." And he

252 THOUGH YE KNOW HIM NOT

touched himself and said, " I am Brahma. I myself, my real I, am God."

It sounds terribly irreverent, but he did not for a moment mean it so. Go
back to Gen. ii. 7, and try to define the meaning of the words, " the breath
of life," and you will, if you think enough, find yourself in a position to
understand how the Hindu, without revelation, ends as he does in delusion.

But, intertwined with this central fibre of his faith, there were strands of a
strange philosophy; he held strongly the doctrine of Illusion, by which the
one im personal Spirit, " in the illusion which overspreads it, is to the
external world what yarn is to cloth, what milk is to curds, what clay is to a
jar, but only in that illusion," that is, " he is not the actual material cause of
the world, as clay of a jar, but the illusory material cause, as a rope might be
of a snake "; and the spirit of man " is that Spirit, personalised and limited
by the power of illusion; and the life of every living spirit is nothing but an
infinitesimal arc of the one endless circle of infinite existence."

Of course there are answers to this sort of reasoning which are perfectly
convincing to the Western, but they fail to appeal to the Eastern mind. You
suggest a practical test as to the reality or otherwise of this " Illusion "—
touch something, run a pin into yourself, do anything to prove to yourself
your own actuality, and he has his answer ready. Though theoretically he
holds that there is one, and only one, Spirit, he " virtually believes in three
conditions of being—the real, the practical, and the illusory; for while he
affirms

that the one Spirit, Brahma, alone has a real exist ence, he allows a practical
separate existence to human spirits, to the world, and to the personal God or
gods, as well as an illusory existence. Hence every object is to be dealt with
practically, as if it were really what it appears to be."

This is only the end of a long and very confusing argument, which I expect
I did not half understand, and he concluded it by quoting a stanza, thus
translated by Dr. Pope, from an ancient Tamil classic—

" 0 Being hard to reach,

0 Splendour infinite, unknown, in sooth

1 know not what to do !"

" He is far away from me," he said, " a distant God to reach," and when I
quoted from St. Augustine, " To Him who is everywhere, men come not by
travelling, but by loving," and showed him the words, which in Tamil are
splendidly negative, " He is NOT far from every one of us," he eluded the
comfort and went back to the old question, " What is Truth ? How can one
prove what is Truth ?"

There is an Indian story of a queen who " proved the truth by tasting the
food." The story tells how her husband, who dearly loved her, and whom
she dearly loved, lost his kingdom, wandered away with his queen into the
forest, left her there as she slept, hoping she would fare better without him,
and followed her long afterwards to her father's court, deformed, disguised,
a servant among servants, a cook. Then her maidens came to her, told her of
the wonderful cooking, magical in manner, marvellous in flavour and in
fragrance. They are

254 THOUGH YE KNOW HIM NOT

sure it is the long-lost king come back to her, and they bid her believe and
rejoice. But the queen fears it may not be true. She must prove it, she must
taste the food. They bring her some. She tastes, and knows. And the story
ends in joy. " Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good." " If any man will do
His Will, he shall know."

We got closer in thought after this. For the Oriental, a story is an

illuminating thing. " I have sought for the way of truth," he said, " and
sought for the way of light and life. Behind me, as I look, there is darkness.
Be fore me there is only the Unknown." And then, with an earnestness I
cannot describe, he said, " I worship Him I know not, the Unknown God"
"Whom, therefore, ye worship, though ye know Him not, Him declare I
unto you." One could only press home God's own answer to his words.

One other verse held him in its power before 1 went: " I am the Way, the
Truth, and the Life." With those two verses I left him.

It was evening, and he stood in the shadow, looking into it. There was a
tangle of undergrowth, and a heavy grove of palms. It was all dark as you
looked in. Be hind was the shrine of the demon steeds, the god and his wife
who ride out at night to chase evil spirits away. Near by was an old tree,
also in shade, with an idol under it. It was all in shadow, and full of
shadowy nothings, all dark.

But just outside, when I went, there was light; the soft light of the after-
glow, which comes soon after the sun has set, as a sign that there is a sun
somewhere, and shining. And I thought of his very last words to me,

but I cannot describe the earnestness of them, " / worship the Unknown
God"
Friends, who worship a God whom you know, whose joy in life is to know
Him, will you remember and pray for that one, who to-day is seeking, I
think in truth, to find the Unknown God ?

CHAPTER XXVIII How Long?

" I shivered as if standing in the neighbourhood of hell."

Henry Martyn, India.

I HAVE come home from vainly trying to help another child. She had heard
of the children's Saviour, and I think she would have come to Him, but they
suffered her not. She was, when I first saw her, sweet and innocent, with
eyes full of light, great glancing, dancing eyes, which grew wistful for a
moment sometimes, and then filled with a laugh again. She told me her
mother lived very near, and asked me to come and see her; so I went.

The mother startled me. Such a face, or such a want of a face. One was
looking at what had once been a face, but was now a strange spoiled thing,
with strange hard eyes, so unlike the child's. There was no other feature
fully shaped; it was one dreadful blank. She listened that day, with almost
eagerness. She understood so quickly, too, one felt she must have heard
before. But she told us nothing about herself, and we only knew that there
was something very wrong. Her surroundings told us that.

Before we went again we heard who she was; a relative of one of our most
honoured pastors, himself a convert years ago. Then a great longing
possessed us to try to save her from a life for which she had not been
trained, and especially we longed to save her little girl, and we went to try.
This time the mother wel comed us, and told us how our words had brought
back things she had heard when she was young. " But now it is all different,
for I am different," and she told us her story. ..." So I took poison, but it
acted not as I intended. It only destroyed my face" and she touched the poor
remnant with her hand, and went on with her terrible tale. There were
people listening outside, and she spoke in a hoarse whisper. We could
hardly believe she meant what she said, as she told of the fate proposed for
her child. And oh, how we besought her then and there to give up the life,
and let us help her, and that dear little one. She seemed moved. Something
awoke within her and strove. Tears filled those hard eyes and rolled down
her cheeks as we pleaded with her, in the name of all that was motherly, not
to doom her little innocent girl, not to push her with her own hands down to
hell. At last she yielded, promised that if in one week's time we would come
again she would give her up to us, and as for herself, she would think of it,
and per haps she also would give up the life; she hated it, she said.

There was another girl there, a fair, quiet girl of fifteen. She was ill and very
suffering, and we tried for her too; but there seemed no hope. "Take the
little one; you are not too late for her," the mother said, and

we went with the promise, " One more week and she is yours."

The week passed, and every day we prayed for that little one. Then when
the time came, we went. Hope and fear alternated within us. One felt sick
with dread lest anything had happened to break the mother's word, and yet
one hoped. The house door was open. The people in the street smiled as we
stopped our bandy, got out, and went in. I remembered their smiles
afterwards, and understood. The mother was there: in a corner, crouching in
pain, was the girl; on the floor asleep, drugged, lay the child with her little
arms stretched out. The mother's eyes were hard.

It was no use. Outside in the street the people sat on their verandahs and
laughed. "Offer twenty thousand rupees, and see if her mother will give her
to you !" shouted one. Inside we sat beside that mother, not knowing what
to say.

The child stirred in her sleep, and turned. " Will you go ?" said the mother
very roughly in her ear. She opened listless, senseless eyes. She had no wish
to go. " She wanted to come last week," we said. The mother hardened, and
pushed the child, and rolled her over with her foot. " She will not go now"
she said.

Oh, it did seem pitiful ! One of those pitiful, pitiful things which never
grow less pitiful because they are common everywhere. That little girl, and
this!
We took the mother's hands in ours, and pleaded once again. And then
words failed us. They sometimes do. There are things that stifle words.

At last they asked us to go. The girl in the corner

would not speak—could not, perhaps—she only moaned; we passed her and
went out. The mother followed us, half sorry for us,—there is something of
the woman left in her,—half sullen, with a lowering sullenness. " You will
never see her again," she said, and she named the town, one of the Sodoms
of this Province, to which the child was soon to be sent; and then, just a
little ashamed of her broken promise, she added, " I would have let her go,
but he would not, no, never ; and she does not belong to me now, so what
could I do ?" We did not ask her who " he" was. We knew. Nor did we ask
the price he had paid. We knew; fifty rupees, about three pounds, was the
price paid down for a younger child bought for the same purpose not long
ago. This one's price might be a little higher. That is all.

We stood by the bullock cart ready to get in. The people were watching.
The mother had gone back into the house. Then a great wave of longing for
that child swept over us again. We turned and looked at the little form as it
lay on the floor, dead, as it seemed, to all outward things. Oh that it had
been dead! And we pleaded once more with all our heart, and once more
failed.

We drove away. We could see them crowding to look after us, and we shut
our eyes to shut out the sight of their smiles. The bullock bells jingled too
gladly, it seemed, and we shut our ears to shut out the sound. And then we
shut ourselves in with God, who knew all about it, and cared, How long, 0
God, how long ?

And now we have heard that she has gone, and we

know, from watching what happened before, just what will happen now.
How day by day they will sear that child's soul with red-hot irons, till it
does not feel or care any more. And a child's seared soul is an awful thing.

Forgive us for words which may hurt and shock; we are telling the day's
life-story. Hurt or not, shocked or not, should you not know the truth ? How
can you pray as you ought if you only know fragments of truth ? Truth is a
loaf; you may cut it up nicely, like thin bread and butter, with all the crusts
carefully trimmed. No one objects to it then. Or you can cut it as it comes,
crust and all.

Think of that child to-night as you gather your children about you, and look
in their innocent faces and their clear, frank eyes. Our very last news of her
was that she had been in some way influenced to spread a lie about the
place, first sign of the searing begun. I think of her as I saw her that first
day, bright as a bird; and then of her as I saw her last, drugged on the floor;
I think of her as she must be now, bright again, but with a different
brightness—not the little girl I knew— never to be quite that little girl
again.

Oh, comrades, do you wonder that we care ? Do you wonder that we plead
with you to care ? Do you wonder that we have no words sometimes, and
fall back into silence, or break out into words wrung from one more gifted
with expression, who knew what it was to feel!

With such words, then, we close ; looking back once more at that child on
the floor, with the hands stretched

out and the heavy eyes shut—and we know what it was they saw when they
opened from that sleep—

" My God! can such things be ? Hast Thou not said that whatsoe'er is done
Unto Thy weakest and Thy humblest one, Is even done to Thee?

Hoarse, horrible; and strong, Rises to heaven that agonising cry, Filling the
arches of the hollow sky,

HOW LONG, 0 GOD, HOW LONG ? '

CHAPTER XXIX What do we count them worth?

" If we are simply to pray to the extent of a simple and pleasant and
enjoyable exercise, and know nothing of watching in prayer, and of
weariness in prayer, we shall not draw down the blessing that we may. We
shall not sustain our mission aries who are overwhelmed with the appalling
darkness of heathenism. . . . We must serve God even to the point of
suffering, and each one ask himself, In what degree, in what point am I
extending, by personal suffering, by personal self-denial, to the point of
pain, the kingdom of Christ ? ... It is ever true that what costs little is worth
little."

Reu. J. Hudson Taylor, China.

SHE picked up her water-vessel, and stood surveying us somewhat

curiously. The ways of Picture-catching Missie Animals were beyond her.
Afterwards she sat down comfortably and talked. That was a year ago.

Then in the evening she and all her neighbours gathered in the market
square for the open-air meeting. Sinning of Life spoke for the first time. " I
was a Hindu a year ago. I worshipped the gods you worship. Did they hear
me when I prayed ? No ! They are dead gods. God is the living God ! Come
to the living God ! " One after the other the boys all witnessed that evening.
Their clear boyish voices rang out round the ring. And some listened, and
some laughed.
She picked up her water-vessel, and stood surveying us somewhat
curiously.

Behind us there was a little demon temple. It had a verandah barred down
with heavy bars. Within these bars you could see the form of an idol. Beside
us there was a shrine. Someone had put our lanterns on the top of this
pyramid shrine. Before us there was the mass of dark faces. Behind us,
then, black walls, black bars, a black shape; before us the black meeting,
black losing itself in black. Around us light, light shining into the black.
That was as it was a year ago. Now we are back at Dohnavur, and almost
the first place we went to was this village, where we had taken the light and
set it up in the heart of the dark. An earnest young school master had been
sent to keep that light burning there, and we went expectantly. Had the light
spread ? We went straight to our old friend's house. She was as friendly as
ever in her queer, rough, country way, but her heart had not been set alight.
" Tell me what is the good of your Way ? Will it fill the cavity within me ? "
and she struck herself a resounding smack in the region where food is
supposed to go. " Will it stock my paddy-pots, or nourish my bulls, or cause
my palms to bear good juice ? If it will not do all these good things, what is
the use of it ?"

" If it is so important, why did you not come before ? " The dear old woman
who asked that lived here, and we searched through the labyrinthic
courtyards to find her, but failed. The girl who listened in her pain is well
now, but she says the desire she had has cooled. We found two or three who
seem lighting up; may God's wind blow the flame to a blaze! But we came
back feeling that we must learn more of the power of prayer

264 WHAT DO WE COUNT THEM WORTH?

ourselves if these cold souls are to catch fire. We remembered how, when
we were children, we caught the sunlight, and focussed it, and set bits of
paper on fire; and we longed that our prayers might be a lens to focus the
Love-light of our God, and set their souls on fire.

Just one little bit of encouragement may be told by way of cheer. Blessing
went off one day to see if the Village of the Warrior were more friendlily
inclined, and Golden went to the Petra where they vowed they would never
let us in. Before Blessing entered the village she knelt down under a banyan
tree, and, remembering Abraham's servant, prayed for a sign to strengthen
her faith that God would work in the place. While she prayed a child came
and looked at her ; then seeing her pray, she said, " Has that Missie Ammal
sent you who came here more than a year ago ? " Blessing said " Yes." Then
the child repeated the chorus we had taught the children that first day. "
None of us forget," she said ; and told Blessing how the parents had agreed
to allow us to teach if ever we should return. The village had been opened.
He goeth before.

Golden's experience was equally strengthening to our faith. In the very

street where they held a public demonstration to cleanse the road defiled by
our " low-caste " presence, twenty houses have opened, where she is a
welcome visitor. But all this is only for Love's sake, they say. They do not
yet want Christ; so let us focus the light!

Then there is need for the fire of God to burn the cords that hold souls
down. There is one with whom the Spirit strove last year when we were
here. But a cord

of sin was twined round her soul. She has a wicked brother-in-law, and a
still more wicked sister, and together they plotted so evil a plot that, heathen
though she is, she recoiled, and indignantly refused. So they quietly
drugged her food, and did as they chose with her. And now the knot she did
not tie, and which she wholly detested at first, seems doubly knotted by her
own will. Oh, to know better how to use the burning-glass of prayer!

There may be a certain amount of sentiment, theoretic ally at least, in

breaking up new ground. The un known holds possibilities, and it allures
one on. But in retracing the track there is nothing whatever of this. The
broad daylight of bare truth shows you everything just as it is. Will you
look once more at things just as they are, though it is not an interesting
look.

A courtyard where the women have often heard. May we come in ? Oh yes,
come in ! But with us in comes an old fakeer of a specially villainous type.
His body is plastered all over with mud; he has nothing on but mud. His
hair is matted and powdered with ashes, his face is daubed with vermilion
and yellow, his wicked old eyes squint viciously, and he shows all his teeth,
crimson with betel, and snarls his various wants. The women say " Ghee !"
Then he rolls in the dust, and squirms, and wriggles, and howls; and he
pours out such unclean vials of wrath that the women, coerced, give him all
he demands, and he rolls off elsewhere.

Now may we read to the women ? No! Many salaams, but they have no
time. Last night there was a royal row between two friends in adjoining
courtyards,

266 WHAT DO WE COUNT THEM WORTH?

and family histories were laid bare, and pedigrees discovered. They are
discussing these things to-day, and having heard it all before, they have no
time to read.

Another courtyard, more refined ; here the fakeer's opposite, a dignified

ascetic, sits in silent meditation. "We know it all! You told us before!" But
the women are friendly, and we go in; and after a long and earnest talk the
white-haired grandmother touches her rosary. " This is my ladder to
heaven." The berries are fine and set in chased gold, but they are only
solidified tears, tears shed in wrath by their god, they say, which resolved
themselves into theso berries. How can tears make ladders to heaven ? She
does not know. She does not care. And a laugh runs round, but one's heart
does not laugh. Such ladders are dangerous.

Another house; here the men are kind, and freely let us in and out. The Way,
they say, is very good ; they have heard the Iyer preach. But one day there is
a stir in the house. One of the sons is very ill. He has been suffering for
some time ; now he is sud denly getting worse, and suspicions are aroused.
Then the women whisper the truth: the father and he are at daggers drawn,
and the father is slowly poisoning him— small doses of strychnine are
doing the work. The stir is not very violent, but quite sufficient to make an
excuse for not wanting to listen well. This sort of thing throws us back upon
God. Lord, teach us to pray! Teach us the real secret of fiery fervency in
prayer. We know so little of it. Lord, teach us to pray !

" Oil, Amma ! Amma ! do not pray ! Your prayers are troubling me I"

We all looked up in astonishment. We had just had our Band Prayer

Meeting, when a woman came rushing into the room, and began to exclaim
like this. She was the mother of one of our girls, of whom I told you once
before. She is still in the Terrible's den. Now the mother was all excitement,
and poured out a curious story.

" When you went away last year I prayed. I prayed and prayed, and prayed
again to my god to dispel your work. My daughter's heart was impressed
with your words. I cried to my god to wash the words out. Has he washed
them out ? Oh no! And I prayed for a bridegroom, and one came; and the
cart was ready to take her away, and a hindrance occurred; the marriage fell
through. And I wept till my eyes well - nigh dissolved. And again another
bridegroom came, and again an obstacle occurred. And yet again did a
bridegroom come, and yet again an obstacle; and I cannot get my daughter '
tied/ and the neighbours mock, and my Caste is disgraced"—and the poor
old mother cried, just sobbed in her shame and confusion of face. " Then I
went to my god again, and said, ' What more can I offer you ? Have I not
given you all I have ? And you reject my prayer !' Then in a dream my god
appeared, and he said, ' Tell the Christians not to pray. I can do nothing
against their prayers. Their prayers are hindering me! ' And so, I beseech
you, stop your prayers for fourteen days — only fourteen days — till I get
my daughter tied!"

268 WHAT DO WE COUNT THEM WORTH?

" And after she is tied ? " we asked. " Oh, then she may freely follow your
God ! I will hinder her no more ! "

Poor old mother ! All lies are allowed where such things are concerned. We
knew the proposed bride groom came from a place three hundred miles
distant, and the idea was to carry the poor girl off by force, as soon as she
was " tied." We have been praying night and day to God to hinder this. And
He is hindering ! But there is need to go on. That mother is a devotee. She
has received the afflatus. Sometimes at night it falls upon her, and she
dances the wild, wicked dance, and tries to seize the girl, who shrinks into
the farthest corner of the little house ; and she dances round her, and chants
the chant which even in daylight has power in it, but which at night appeals
unspeakably. Once the girl almost gave way, and then in her desperation,
hardly knowing the sin of it, ran to the place where poison was kept, drank
enough to kill two, straight off, then lay down on the floor to die. Better die
than do what they wanted her to do, she thought. But they found out what
she had done, and drastic means were immediately used, and the poison
only made her ill, and caused her days of violent pain. So there is need for
the hindering prayer. Lord, teach us how to pray!

Is India crammed with the horrible ? " Picturesque," they call it, who have "
done it" in a month or two, and written a book to describe it. And the most
picturesque part, they agree, is connected with the temples.
India ends off in a pointed rock ; you can stand at the very point of the rock,
with only ocean before you, and almost all Asia behind. A temple is set at
the end of

the point, as if claiming the land for its own. We took our convert boys and
girls to the Cape for the Christmas holidays, and one morning some of us
spent an hour under an old wall near the temple, which wall, being full of
hermit crabs, is very interesting. We were watching the entertaining ways of
these degenerate creatures when, through the soft sea sounds, we heard the
sound of a Brahman's voice, and looking up, saw this:

A little group of five, sitting between the rocks and the sea, giving a touch
of life to the scene, and making the picture perfect. There were two men, a
woman, a child, and the priest. They were all marked with the V-shaped
Vishnu mark. The priest twined the sacred Kusa grass round the fingers of
his right hand, and gave each a handful of grass, and they did as he had
done. Then they strewed the grass on the sand, to purify it from taint of
earth, and then they began. The priest chanted names of God, then stopped,
and drew signs on the sand. They followed him exactly. Then they bathed,
bowing to the East between each dip, and worshipping; then returned and
repeated it all. But before repeating it, they carefully painted the marks on
their foreheads, using white and red pigment, and consulting a small
English hand mirror—the one incongruous bit of West in this East, but
symbolical of the times. The child followed it all, as a child will, in its
pretty way. She was a dainty little thing in a crimson seeley and many gold
jewels. The elder woman was dressed in dark green; the colouring was a joy
to the eye, crimson and green, and the brown of the rock, against the blue of
the

270 WHAT DO WE COUNT THEM WORTH?

It was one of those exquisite mornings we often have in the Tropics, when
everything everywhere shows you God ; shines the word out like a word
illumined ; sings it out in the Universe Song; and here in this South niche of
Nature's cathedral, under the sky's transparency, these five, in the only way
they knew, acknowledged the Presence of one great God, and worshipped
Him. There was nothing revolting here, no hint of repulsive idola try. They
worshipped the Unseen. Very stately the Sanscrit sounded in which they
chanted their adoration. " King of Immensity ! King of Eternity! Boundless,
Endless, Infinite One !" It might have been the echo of some ancient
Christian hymn. It might have been, but it was not.

They are not worshipping God the Lord. They might be, but they are not.
Whose is the responsibility ? Is it partly yours and mine ? The beauty of the
scene has passed from us; the blue of the blue sky is blotted out—

" Only like souls I see the folk thereunder,

Bound who should conquer, slaves who should be kings ; Hearing their one
hope with an empty wonder, Sadly contented with a show of things.

Then with a rush the intolerable craving Shivers throughout me like a

trumpet call :

Oh to save these! To perish for their saving, Die for their life, be offered for
them all! "

The picture is made of souls—souls to be saved. " Oh to save these! To

perish for their saving!" That is what the picture says Picture! There is no
picture. In the place where it was, there is simply a pain—God's world, and
God dishonoured in it! Oh to see these

people as souls! Kefined or vulgar, beautiful or horrible, or just dull, oh to

see them " only as souls," and to yearn over them, and pray for them as
souls who must live eternally somewhere, and for whom each of us, in our
measure, is responsible to God. Do you say we are not responsible for those
particular souls ? Who said that sort of thing first ? " Where we disavow
being keeper to our brother we're his Cain." If we are not respon sible, why
do we take the responsibility of appealing to them in impassioned poetry ?

"Let every kindred, every tribe,

On tins terrestrial ball, To Him all majesty ascribe, And crown Him Lord of
all!"
What is the point of telling people to do a certain thing if we have no
concern in whether they do it or not ? The angels and the martyrs and the
saints, to whom we appealed before, have crowned Him long ago. Our sing
ing to them on the subject will make no difference either way; but when we
turn to every kindred and tribe, the case alters. How can they crown Him
Lord of all when they do not know about Him ? Why do they not know
about Him ? Because we have not told them. It is true that many whom we
have told heard " their one hope with an empty wonder" ; but, on the other
hand, it is true that the everlasting song rises fuller to-day because of those
who, out in this dark heathendom, heard, and responded, and crowned Him
King.

But singing hymns from a distance will never save souls. By God's grace,
coming and giving and praying will. Are we prepared for this ? Or would
we rather

272 WHAT DO WE COUNT THEM WORTH?

sing ? Searcher of hearts, turn Thy search-light upon us ! Are we coming,

giving, praying till it hurts ? Are we praying, yea agonising in prayer ? or is
prayer but " a pleasant exercise "—a holy relief for our feelings ?

We have sat together under the wall by the Southern sea. We have looked at
the five as they worshipped Another, and not our God. Now let this little
South window be like a little clear pane of glass, through which you may
look up far to the North, over the border countries and the mountains to
Tibet, over Tibet and away through the vastness of Central Asia, on to
China, Mongolia, Manchuria; and even then you have only seen a few of
the great dark Northern lands, which wait and wait—for you.

And this is only Asia, only a part of Asia. God looks down on all the world;
and for every one of the millions who have never crowned Him King,
Christ wore the crown of thorns. What do we count these millions worth ?
Do we count them worth the rearrangement of our day, that we may have
more time to pray ? Do we count them worth the laying down of a single
ambition, the loosening of our hold on a single child or friend ? Do we
count them worth the yielding up of anything we care for very much ? Let
us be still for a moment and think. Christ counted souls worth Calvary.
What do we count them worth ?

CHAPTER XXX Two Safe

"God has given me the hunger and thirst for souls ; will He leave me
unsatisfied ? No verily."

James Gilmour, Mongolia.

"That one soul has been brought to Christ in the midst of such hostile
influences is so entirely and marvellously the Holy Spirit's work, that I am
sometimes overjoyed to have been in any degree instrumental in effecting
the emancipation of one."

Robert Noble, India.

FT1WO of our boys are safe. They left us very suddenly J- We can hardly
realise they are gone. The younger one was our special boy, the first of the
boys to come, a very dear lad. I think of him as I saw him the last evening
we all spent together, standing out on a wave-washed rock, the wind in his
hair and his face wet with spray, rejoicing in it all. Not another boy dare go
and stand in the midst of that seething foam, but the spice of danger drew
him. He was such a thorough boy!

The call to leave his home for Christ came to him in an open-air meeting
held in his village two years ago. Then there was bitterest shame to endure.
His father and mother, aghast and distressed, did all they could to prevent
the disgrace incurred by his open confession of

Christ. He was an only son, heir to considerable 18

property, so the matter was most serious. The father loved him dearly; but
he nerved himself to flog the boy, and twice he was tied up and flogged. But
they say he never wavered; only his mother's tears he found hardest to
withstand.
Weeks passed of steadfast confession, and then it came to the place of
choice between Christ and home. He chose Christ, and early one morning
left all to follow Him. Do you think it was easy ? He was a loving boy.
Could it have been easy to stab his mother's heart ?

When the household woke that morning he was on his way to us. The father
gathered his clansmen, and they came in a crowd to the bungalow.

They sat on the floor in a circle, with the boy in their midst, and they
pleaded. I remember the throb of that moment now. A single pulse seemed
to beat in the room, so tense was the tension, until he spoke out bravely. " I
will not go back," he said.

They promised everything—a house, lands, his inherit ance to be given at

once, a wife " with a rich dowry of jewels "—all a Tamil boy most desires
they offered him. And they promised him freedom to worship God; " only
come back and save your Caste, and do not break your mother's heart and
disgrace your family."

Day after day they came, sometimes singly, sometimes in groups, but the
mother never came. They described her in heart-moving language. She
neither ate nor slept, they said, but sat with her hair undone, and wept and
wailed the death-wail for her son.

At last they gave up coming, and we were relieved,

for the long-continued strain was severe; and though he never wavered, we
knew the boy felt it. We used to hear him praying for his people, pouring
out his heart when he thought no one was near, sobbing sometimes as he
named their names. The entreaty in the tone would make our eyes wet. If
only he could have lived at home and been a Christian there ! But we knew
what had happened to others, and we dare not send him back.

Then a year or so afterward we all went to the water together, and he and
three others were baptised. The first to go down into the water was the elder
boy, Shining of Victory. Shining of Life was second. A few weeks of bright
life—those happy days by the sea—and then in the same order, and called
by the same messenger— the swift Indian messenger, cholera—they both
went down into the other water, and crossed over to the other side.

Shining of Life was well in the morning, dead in the evening. When first
the pain seized him he was startled. Then, understanding, he lay down in
peace. The heathen crowded in. They could not be kept out. They taunted
him as he lay. " This is your reward for breaking your Caste!" they said.
The agony of cholera was on him. He could not say much, but he pointed
up, " Do not trouble me; this is the way by which I am going to Jesus," and
he tried to sing a line from one of our choruses, " My Strength and my
Eedeemer, my Kefuge— Jesus!"

His parents had been sent for as soon as it was known that he was ill. They
hurried over, the poor despairing mother crying aloud imploringly to the
gods who did

not hear. He pointed up again; he was almost past speech then, but he tried
to say " Jesus " and " Come."

Then, while the heathen stood and mocked, and the mother beat her breast
and wailed, and the father, silent in his grief, just stood and looked at his
son, the boy passed quietly away. They hardly believed him dead.

Oh, we miss him so much! And our hearts ache for his people, for they
mourn as those who have no hope. But God knows why He took him ; we
know it is all right.

Every memory of him is good. When the first sharp strain was over we
found what a thorough boy he was, and in that week by the sea all the life
and fun in him came out, and he revelled in the bathing and boating, and
threw his whole heart into the holiday. We had many hopes for him; he was
so full of promise and the energy of life.

And now it is all over for both. Was it worth the pain it cost ? Such a short
time to witness, was it worth while ?

It is true it was very short. Most of the little space between their coming and
their going was filled with preparation for a future of service here. And yet
in that little time each of the two found one other boy who, perhaps, would
never have been found if the cost had been counted too great. And I think, if
you could ask them now, they would tell you Jesus' welcome made it far
more than worth while.

CHAPTER XXXI Three Objections

" May I have grace to live above every human motive; simply with God and
to God, and not swayed, especially in missionary work, by the opinions of
people not acquainted with the state of things, whose judgment may be
contrary to my own." Henry Martyn, India.

THESE letters have been put together to help our comrades at home to
realise something of the nature of the forces ranged against us, that they
may bring the Superhuman to bear upon the super human, and pray with an
intelligence and intensity impossible to uninformed faith. We have long
enough under-estimated the might of the Actual. We need more of
Abraham's type of faith, which, without being weakened, considered the
facts, and then, looking unto the promise, wavered not, but waxed strong. Ig
norant faith does not help us much. Some years ago, when the first girl-
convert came, friends wrote rejoicing that now the wall of Caste must give
way; they ex pected soon to hear it had. As if a grain of dust falling from
one of the bricks in that wall would in anywise shake the wall itself! Such
faith is kind, but there it ends. It talks of what it knows not.

Then, as to the people themselves, there are certain fallacies which die hard.
We read the other day, in a

home paper, that it was a well-known fact that " Indian women never
smile." We were surprised to hear it. We had not noticed it. Perhaps, if they
were one and all so abnormally depressed, we should find them less
unwilling to welcome the Glad Tidings. Again, we read that you can
distinguish between heathen and Christian by the wonderful light on the
Christians' faces, as com pared with " the sad expression on the faces of the
poor benighted heathen." It is true that some Christians are really
illuminated, but, as a whole, the heathen are so remarkably cheerful that the
difference is not so defined as one might think. Then, again, we read in
descriptive articles on India that the weary, hopeless longing of the people
is most touching. But we find that our chief difficulty is to get them to
believe that there is anything to long for. Rather we would describe them as
those who think they have need of nothing, knowing not that they have
need of everything. And again and again we read thrilling descriptions of
India's women standing with their hands stretched out towards God. They
may do this in visions ; in reality they do not. And it is the utter absence of
all this sort of thing which makes your help a necessity to us.

But none of you can pray in the way we want you to pray, unless the mind
is convinced that the thing concerning which such prayer is asked is wholly
just and right; and it seems to us that many of those who have followed the
Story of this War may have doubts about the right of it— the right, for
example, of converts leaving their homes for Christ's sake and His Gospel's.
All will be in sympathy with us when we try to save

little children, but perhaps some are out of sympathy when we do what
results in sorrow and misunderstanding —"not peace, but a sword." So we
purpose now to gather up into three, some of the many objections which are
often urged upon those engaged in this sort of work, because we feel that
they ought to be faced and answered if possible, lest we lose someone's
prevailing prayer.

The first set of objections may be condensed into a question as to the right
or otherwise of our " forcing our religion" upon those who do not want it.
We are reminded that the work is most discouraging, conversions are rare,
and when they occur they seem to create the greatest confusion. It is evident
enough that neither we nor our Gospel are desired; and no wonder, when
the conditions of discipleship involve so much. " We should not like
strangers to come and interfere with our religion," write the friends who
object, "and draw our children away from us; we should greatly resent it.
No wonder the Hindus do !" And one reader of the letters wrote that she
wondered how the girls who came out ever could be happy for a moment
after having done such a wrong and heartless thing as to disobey their
parents. " They richly deserve all they suffer," she wrote. " It is a perfect
shame and disgrace for a girl to desert her own people!"

One turns from the reading of the letter, and looks at the faces of those who
have done it; and knowing how they need every bit of prayer-help one can
win for them, one feels it will be worth while trying to show those who
blame them why they do it, and how it is

they cannot do otherwise if they would be true to Christ.

This objection as to the right or wrong of the work as a whole, leads to

another relating to baptism. It is a serious thing to think of families divided
upon questions of religion; surely it would be better that a convert should
live a consistent Christian life at home, even without baptism, than that she
should break up the peace of the household by leaving her home altogether
? Or, having been baptised, should she not return home and live there as a
Christian ?

Lastly—and this comes in letters from those who, more than any, are in
sympathy with us—why not devote our energies to work of a more fruitful
character ? We are reminded of the mass-movement type of work, in which
"nations are born in a day"; and often, too, of the nominal Christians who
sorely need more enlightenment. Why not work along the line of least
resistance, where conversion to God does not of necessity mean fire and
sword, and where in a week we could win more souls than in years of this
unresultful work ?

We frankly admit that these objections and proposals are naturally

reasonable, and that what they state is perfectly true. It is true that work
among high-caste Hindus all over India (as among Moslems all over the
world) is very difficult. It is true that open confession of Christ creates
disastrous division in families. It is true there is other work to be done.

Especially we feel the force of the second objection raised. We fully

recognise that the right thing is for the convert to live among her own
people, and let her

light shine in her own home; and we deplore the terrible wrench involved in
what is known as " coming out." To a people so tenacious of custom as the
Indians are, to a nature so affectionate as the Indian nature is, this cutting
across of all home ties is a very cruel thing.
And now, only that we may not miss your prayer, we set ourselves to try to
answer you. And, first of all, let us grasp this fact: it is not fair, nor is it
wise, to compare work, and success in work, between one set of people and
another, because the conditions under which that work is carried on are
different, and the unseen forces brought to bear against it differ in character
and in power. There is sometimes more " result" written down in a single
column of a religious weekly than is to be found in the 646 pages of one of
the noblest missionary books of modern days, On the Threshold of Central
Africa. Or take two typical opposite lives, Moody's and Gilmour's. Moody
saw more soul-winning in a day than Gilmour in his twenty-one years. It
was not that the men differed. Both knew the Baptism of Power, both lived
in Christ and loved. But these are extremes in comparison; take two, both
missionaries, twin brothers in spirit, Brainerd of North America and Henry
Martyn of India. Brainerd saw many coming to Jesus; Martyn hardly one.
Each was a pioneer missionary, each was a flame of fire. " Now let me burn
out for God," wrote Henry Martyn, and he did it. But the conditions under
which each worked varied as widely spiritually as they varied climatically.
Can we compare their work, or measure it by its visible results ? Did God ?
Let us leave off comparing this with that—

we do not know enough to compare. Let us leave off weighing eternal

things and balancing souls in earthly scales. Only God's scales are
sufficiently sensitive for such delicate work as that.

We take up the objections one by one. First, " Why do you go where you
are not wanted ? "

We go because we believe our Master told us to go. He said, " all the
world," and " every creature." Our marching orders are very familiar. " Go
ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature." " All the
world" means everywhere in it, " every creature" means everyone in it.
These orders are so explicit that there is no room to question what they
mean.

All missionaries in all ages have so understood these words " all" and "
every." Nearly seven hundred years ago the first missionary to the Moslems
found no welcome, only a prison; but he never doubted he was sent to them.
" God wills it," he said, and went again. They stoned him then, and he died
—died, but never doubted he was sent.

Our Master Himself went not only to the common people, who heard Him
gladly, but to the priestly and political classes, who had no desire for the
truth. " Ye will not come to Me that ye might have life," He said, and yet He
gave them the chance to come by going to them. The words, " If any man
thirst, let him come unto Me and drink," were spoken to an audience which
was not thirsting for the Gospel.

St. Paul would willingly have spent his strength preaching the Word in
Asia, especially in Galatia, where the people loved him well; but he was
under orders, and

he went to Europe, to Philippi, where he was put in prison; to Thessalonica,

where the opposition was so strong that he had to flee away by night; to
Athens, where he was the butt of the philosophers. But God gave souls in
each of these places; only a few in com parison to the great indifferent
crowd, but he would tell you those few were worth going for. You would
not have had him miss a Lydia, a Damaris ? Above all, you would not have
had him disobey his Lord's command ?

So whether our message is welcomed or not, the fact remains we must go to

all; and the worse they are and the harder they are, the more evident is it
that, wanted or not, it is needed by them.

M. Coillard was robbed by the people he had travelled far to find. " You see
we made no mistake," he writes, " in bringing the Gospel to the Zambesi."

The second objection is, " Why break up families ly insisting on baptism as
a sine qua" non of discipleship ? "

And again we answer, Because we believe our Master tells us to. He said, "
Baptising them in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy
Ghost." What right have we, His servants, to stop short of full obedience ?
Did He not know the conditions of high-caste Hindu life in India when He
gave this command ? Was He ignorant of the breaking up of families which
obedience to it would involve ? " Suppose ye that I am come to give peace
on earth ? I tell you nay, but rather division." And then come words which
we have seen lived out literally in the case of every high-caste convert who
has come. " For from henceforth there shall be five in one house divided,
three against two,

and two against three. The father shall be divided against the son, and the
son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter
against the mother; the mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law, and the
daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law." These are truly awful verses;
no one knows better than the missionary how awful they are. There are
times when we can hardly bear the pain caused by the sight of this division.
But are we more tender than the Tender One ? Is our sympathy truer than
His ? Can we look up into His eyes and say, " It costs them too much, Lord;
it costs us too much, to fully obey Thee in this " ?

But granted the command holds, why should not the baptised convert return
home and live there ? Because he is not wanted there, as a Christian.
Exceptions to this rule are rare (we are speaking of Caste Hindus), and can
usually be explained by some extenuating cir cumstance.

The high-caste woman who said to us, " I cannot live here and break my
Caste; if I break it I must go," spoke the truth. Keeping Caste includes
within itself the observance of certain customs which by their very nature
are idolatrous. Breaking Caste means breaking through these customs; and
one who habitually disre garded and disobeyed rules, considered binding
and authoritative by all the rest of the household, would not be tolerated in
an orthodox Hindu home. It is not a question of persecution or death, or of
wanting or not wanting to be there; it is a question of not being wanted
there, unless, indeed, she will compromise. Compromise

is the one open door back into the old home, and God only knows what it
costs when the choice is made and that one door is shut.

This ever-recurring reiteration of the power and the bondage of Caste may
seem almost wearisome, but the word, and what lies behind it, is the one
great answer to a thousand questions, and so it comes again and again. In
Southern India especially, and still more so in this little fraction of it, and in
the adjoining kingdoms of Travancore and Cochin, Caste feeling is so
strong that sometimes it is said that Caste is the religion of South India. But
everywhere all over India it is, to every orthodox Hindu, part of his very
self. Get his Caste out of him ? Can you ? You would have to drain him of
his life-blood first.

It is the strength of this Caste spirit which in South India causes it to take
the form of a determination to get the convert back. Promises are given that
they may live as Christians at home. " We will send you in a bandy to
church every Sunday !"—promises given to be broken. If the convert is a
boy, he may possibly reappear. If a girl—I was going to say never ; but I
remember hearing of one who did reappear, after seventeen years
imprisonment—a wreck. Send them back, do you say ? Think of the dotted
lines in some chapters you have read; ponder the things they cover; then
send them back if you can.

The third objection divides into two halves. The first half is, " Why do you
not go to the Christians?" To which we answer, we do, and for exactly the
same reason as that which we have given twice before, because our

Master told us to do so. Our marching orders are three fold, one order
concerning each form of service touched by the three objections. The third
order touches this, " Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have
commanded you." So we go, and try to teach them the " all things "; and
some of them learn them, and go to teach others, and so the message of a
full Gospel spreads, and the Bride gets ready for the Bridegroom.

The second half of this last objection is, " Why not do easier work ? There
are so many who are more access ible, why not go to them ?" And there
does seem to be point in the suggestion that if there are open doors, it might
be better to enter into them, rather than keep on knocking at closed ones.

We do seek to enter the so-called open doors, but we never find they are so
very wide open when it is known that we bring nothing tangible with us.
Spiritual things are not considered anything by most. Still, work among
such is infinitely easier, and many, comparatively speak ing, are doing it.

The larger number here are working among the Chris tians, the next larger
number among the Masses, and the fewest always, everywhere, among the
Classes, where conversion involves such terrible conflicts with the Evil
One, that all that is human in one faints and fails as it confronts the cost of
every victory.

But real conversion anywhere costs. By conversion we mean something

more than reformation; that raises fewer storms. The kind of work,
however, which more than any other seems to fascinate friends at home is
what is known as the " mass movement," and though we have

touched upon it before, perhaps we had better explain more fully what it
really is. This movement, or rather the visible result thereof, is often dilated
upon most rapturously. I quote from a Winter Visitor : " Christian churches
counted by the thousand, their members by the million; whole districts are
Christian, entire communi ties are transformed." And we look at one
another, and ask each other, " Where ?"

But to that question certain would answer joyously, " Here !" There are
missions in India where the avowed policy is to baptise people " at the
outset, not on evidence of what is popularly called conversion. . . . We
baptise them ' unto' the baptism of the Holy Spirit, and not because we have
reason to believe that they have received the Spirit's baptism,"—we quote a
leader in the move ment, and he goes on to say, if it is insisted " that we
should wait until this change (conversion) is effected before baptising them,
we reply that in most cases we would have to wait for a long time, and often
see the poor creatures die without the change."

Of course every effort is made by revival services and camp meetings to

bring these baptised Christians to a true knowledge of Christ, and it is
considered that this policy yields more fruit than the other, which puts con
version first and baptism second. It is certainly richer in " results," for
among the depressed classes and certain of the middle Castes, among whom
alone the scheme can be carried out, there is no doubt that many are found
ready to embrace Christianity, as the phrase goes, some times genuinely
feeling it is the true religion, and desiring to understand it, sometimes for
what they can get.

It must be admitted —for we want to state the case fairly—that a mass

movement gives one a splendid chance to preach Christ, and teach His
Gospel day by day. And the power in it does lay hold of some; we have
earnest men and women working and winning others to-day, fruit of the
mass movement of many years ago.

But on the whole, we fear it, and do not encourage it here. The dead weight
of heathenism is heavy enough, but when you pile on the top of that the
incubus of a dead Christianity—for a nominal thing is dead—then you are
terribly weighted down and handicapped, as you try to go forward to break
up new ground.

So, though we sympathise with everything that tends towards life and light
in India, and rejoice with our brothers who bind sheaves, believing that
though all is not genuine corn, some is, yet we feel compelled to give
ourselves mainly to work of a character which, by its very nature, can never
be popular, and possibly never successful from a statistical point of view,
never, till the King comes, Whose Coming is our hope.

CHAPTER XXXII " Show me Thy Glory!"

" Yesterday I was called to see a patient, a young woman who had been
suffering terribly for three days. It was the saddest case I ever saw in my
life. ... I had to leave her to die. . . . The experience was such a terrible one
that, old and accustomed surgeon as I am, I have been quite upset by it ever
since. As long as I live the memory of that scene will cling to me." A
Chinese Missionary.

"If we refuse to be corns of wheat falling into the ground and dying; if we
will neither sacrifice prospects nor risk character and property and health,
nor, when we are called, relinquish home and break family ties, for Christ's
sake and His Gospel, then we shall abide alone."

Thomas Gajetan Rag/and, India.

" Not mere pity for dead souls, but a passion for the Glory of God, is what
we need to hold us on to Victory."

Miss Lilias Trotter, Africa.

WE are all familiar with the facts and figures which stand for so much more
than we realise. We can repeat glibly enough that there are nearly one
thousand five hundred million people in the world, and that of these nearly
one thousand million are heathen or Mohammedan. Perhaps we can divide
this unthinkable mass into comprehensible figures. We can tell everyone
who is interested in hearing it, that of this one thousand million, two
hundred million are Mohammedans; two hundred million more are Hindus;
four hundred and thirty million are Buddhists and

Coiifucianists; and more than one hundred and fifty million are Pagans.

But have we ever stopped and let the awfulness of these statements bear
down upon us ? Do we take in, that we are talking about immortal souls ?

We quote someone's computation that every day ninety-six thousand people

die without Christ. Have we ever for one hour sat and thought about it ?
Have we thought of it for half an hour, for a quarter of an hour, for five
unbroken minutes ? I go further, and I ask you, have you ever sat still for
one whole minute and counted by the ticking of your watch, while soul
after soul passes out alone into eternity ?
... I have done it. It is awful. At the lowest computation, sixty-six for whom
Christ died have died since I wrote "eternity."

" Oh my God ! my God ! Men are perishing, and 1 take no heed !" . . .

Sixty-six more have gone. Oh, how can one keep so calm ? Death seems
racing with the minute hand of my watch. I feel like stopping that terrible
run of the minute hand. Round and round it goes, and every time it goes
round, sixty-six people die.

I have just heard of the dying of one of the sixty-six. We knew her well. She
was a widow ; she had no pro tectors, and an unprotected widow in India
stands in a dangerous place. We knew it, and tried to persuade her to take
refuge in Jesus. She listened, almost decided, then drew back; afterwards
we found out why. You have seen the picture of a man sucked under sea by
an octopus ; it was like that. You have imagined the death-

struggle; it was like that. But it all went on under the surface of the water,
there was nothing seen above, till perhaps a bubble rose slowly and broke;
it was like that. One day, in the broad noontide, a woman suddenly fell in
the street. Someone carried her into a house, but she was dead, and those
who saw that body saw the marks of the struggle upon it. The village life
flowed on as before; only a few who knew her knew she had murdered her
body to cover the murder of her soul. We had come too late for her.

Last week I stood in a house where another of those sixty-six had passed.
Crouching on the floor, with her knees drawn up and her head on her knees,
a woman began to tell me about it. " She was my younger sister. My mother
gave us to two brothers "— and she stopped. I knew who the brothers were.
I had seen them yester day—two handsome high-caste Hindus. We had
visited their wives, little knowing. The woman said no more; she could not.
She just shuddered and hid her face in her hands. A neighbour finished the
story. Some thing went wrong with the girl. They called in the barber's wife
—the only woman's doctor known in these parts. She did her business
ignorantly. The girl died in fearful pain. Hindu women are inured to
sickening sights, but this girl's death was so terrible that the elder sister has
never recovered from the shock of seeing it. There she sits, they tell me, all
day long, crouching on the floor, mute.

All do not pass like that; some pass very quietly, there are no bands in their
death; and some are inno cent children—thank God for the comfort of that!
But

it must never be forgotten that the heathen sin against the light they have ;
their lives witness against them. They know they sin, and they fear death.
An Indian Christian doctor, practising in one of our Hindu towns, told me
that he could not speak of what he had seen and heard at the deathbeds of
some of his patients.

A girl came in a moment ago, and I told her what I was doing. Then I
showed her the diagram of the Wedge; the great black disc for heathendom,
and the narrow white slit for the converts won. She looked at it amazed.
Then she slowly traced her finger round the disc, and she pointed to the
narrow slit, and her tears came dropping down on it. " Oh, what must Jesus
feel ! " she said. " Oh, what must, Jesus feel ! " She is only a common
village girl, she has been a Christian only a year ; but it touched her to the
quick to see that great black blot.

I know there are those who care at home, but do all who care, care deeply
enough ? Do they feel as Jesus feels ? And if they do, are they giving their
own ? They are helping to send out others, perhaps ; but are they giving
their own ?

Oh, are they truly giving themselves ? There must be more giving of
ourselves if that wedge is to be widened in the disc. Some who care are
young, and life is all before them, and the question that presses now is this:
Where is that life to be spent ? Some are too old to come, but they have
those whom they might send, if only they would strip themselves for Jesus'
sake.

Mothers and fathers, have you sympathy with Jesus ? Are you willing to be
lonely for a few brief years, that
all through eternal ages He may have more over whom to rejoice, and you
with Him ? He may be coming very soon, and the little interval that
remains, holds our last chance certainly to suffer for His sake, and possibly
our last to win jewels for His crown. Oh, the unworked jewel-mines of
heathendom! Oh, the joy His own are missing if they lose this one last
chance!

Sometimes we think that if the need were more clearly seen, something
more would be done. Means would be devised; two or three like-minded
would live together, so as to save expenses, and set a child free who must
otherwise stay for the sake of one of the three. Workers abroad can live
together, sinking self and its likes and dislikes for the sake of the Cause that
stands first. But if such an innovation is impossible at home, something else
will be planned, by which more will be spared, when those who love our
God love Him well enough to put His interests first. "Worthy is the Lamb to
re ceive !" Oh, we say it, and we pray it 1 Do we act as if we meant it ?
Fathers and mothers, is He not worthy ? Givers, who have given your All,
have you not found Him worthy ?

" Bare figures overwhelmed me," said one, as he told how he had been led
to come out; " I was fairly staggered as I read that twenty-eight thousand a
day in India alone, go to their death without Christ. And I questioned, Do
we believe it ? Do we really believe it ? What narcotic has Satan injected
into our systems that this awful, woeful, tremendous fact does not startle us
out of our lethargy, our frightful neglect of human souls?"

There is a river flowing through this District. It rises in the Western Ghauts,
and flows for the greater part of the year a placid, shallow stream. But when
the monsoon rains overflow the watersheds, it fills with a sudden,
magnificent rush; you can hear it a mile away.

Out in the sandy river bed a number of high stone platforms are built, which
are used by travellers as resting-places when the river is low. Some years
ago a party of labourers, being belated, decided to sleep on one of these
platforms; for though the rainy season was due, the river was very low. But
in the night the river rose. It swept them off their hold on the stone. It
whirled them down in the dark to the sea.
Suppose that, knowing, as they did not, that the rain had begun to fall on the
hills, and the river was sure to fill, you had chanced to pass when those
labourers were settling down for the night, would you, could you, have
passed on content without an effort to tell them so ? Would you, could you
have gone to bed and slept in perfect tranquillity while those men and
women whom you had seen were out in the river bed ?

If you had, the thunder of the river would have wakened you, and for ever
your very heart would have been cold with a chill chiller than river water,
cold at the thought of those you dared to leave to drown!

You cannot see them, you say. You can. God has given eyes to the mind.
Think, and you will see. Then listen. It is God Who speaks. " If thou forbear
to deliver them that are drawn unto death, and those that are ready to be
slain; if thou sayest, ' Behold we knew

it not/ doth not He that pondereth the heart consider it, and He that keepeth
thy soul, doth not He know it ? and shall not He render to every man
according to his works ?"

Oh, by the thought of the many who are drawn unto death, and the many
that are ready to be slain, by the thought of the sorrow of Jesus Who loves
them, consider these things!

But all are not called to come! We know it. We do not forget it. But is it a
fact so forgotten at home that a missionary need press it ? What is forgotten
surely is that the field is the world.

You would not denude England ! Would England be denuded ? Would a

single seat on the Bishop's bench, or a single parish or mission hall, be left
permanently empty, if the man who fills it now moved out to the place
which no one fills—that gap on the precipice edge ?

But suppose it were left empty, would it be so dread ful after all ? Would
there not be one true Christian left to point the way to Christ ? And if the
worst came to the worst, would there not still be the Bible, and ability to
read ? Need anyone die unsaved, unless set upon self-destruction ? If only
Christians in England knew how to draw supplies direct from God, if only
those who cannot come would take up the responsibility of the unconverted
around them, why should not a parish here and there be left empty for
awhile ? Surely we should not deliberately leave so very many to starve to
death, because those who have the Bread of Life have a strong desire for
sweets. Oh, the spiritual confectionery

consumed every year in England ! God open our eyes to see if we are doing
what He meant, and what He means should continue! But some men are too
valuable to be thrown away on the mission field; they are such success ful
workers, pastors, evangelists, leaders of thought. They could not possibly
be spared. Think of the waste of burying brain in unproductive sand!
Apparently it is so, but is it really so ? Does God view it like that ? Where
should we have been to-day if He had thought Jesus too valuable to be
thrown away upon us ? Was not each hour of those thirty-three years worth
more than a lifetime of ours ?

What is God's definition of that golden word "success " ? He looks at

Eoman Catholic Europe, and Koman and heathen South America, and
Mohammedan and heathen Africa and Asia, and many a forgotten place in
many a great land. And then He looks at us, and I wonder what He thinks.
Kagland, Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, after years of
brain-burying waste, wrote that He was teaching him that " of all plans for
securing success the most certain is Christ's own, becoming a corn of
wheat, falling into the ground and dying." If coming abroad means that for
anyone, is it too much to ask ? It was what our dear Lord did.

This brings us to another plea. I find it in the verse that carves out with two
strokes the whole result of two lives. " If any man's work abide. ... If any
man's work shall be burned." The net result of one man's work is gold,
silver, precious stones; the net result of another man's work is wood, hay,
stubble. Which is worth the spending of a life ?

An earnest worker in her special line of work is looking back at it from the
place where things show truest, and she says, " God help us all! What is the
good done by any such work as mine ? ' If any man build upon this
foundation . . . wood, hay, stubble. ... If any man's work shall be burned he
shall suffer loss; but he himself shall be saved, yet so as by fire !' An
infinitude of pains and labour, and all to disappear like the stubble and the
hay."

Success—what is it worth ?

"I was flushed with praise, But pausing just a moment to draw breath, I
could not choose but murmur to myself, 4 Is this all? All that's done? and
all that's gained? If this, then, be success, 'tis dismaller Than any failure.'"

So transparent a thing is the glamour of success to clear-seeing poet-eyes,

and should it dazzle the Christian to whom nothing is of any worth but the
thing that endures? Should arguments based upon comparisons between the
apparent success of work at home as dis tinguished from work abroad
influence us in any way ? Is it not very solemn, this calm, clear setting forth
of a truth which touches each of us ? " Every man's work shall le made
manifest, for the Day shall declare it, because it shall "be revealed "by fire,
and the fire shall try every man's work of what sort it is." And as we realise
the perish-ableness of all work, however apparently successful, except the
one work done in the one way God means, oh, does it not stir us up to seek
with an intensity of purpose which will not be denied, to find out what that
one work is ? The same thought comes out in the verse

which tells us that the very things we are to do are prepared before, and we
are " created in Christ Jesus " to do them. If this is so, then will the doing of
anything else seem worth while, when we look back and see life as God
sees it ?

It may be that the things prepared are lying close at our hand at home, but it
may be they are abroad. If they are at home there will be settled peace in the
doing of them there; but if they are abroad, and we will not come and do
them ?—Oh, then our very prayers will fall as fall the withered leaves,
when the wind that stirred them falls, yea more so, for the withered leaves
have a work to do, but the prayers which are stirred up by some passing
breeze of emotion do nothing, nothing for eternity. God will not hear our
prayers for the heathen if He means us to be out among them instead of at
home praying for them, or if He means us to give up some son or daughter,
and we prefer to pray.
Lord save us from hypocrisy and sham ! " Shrivel the falsehood" from us if
we say we love Thee but obey Thee not! Are we staying at home, and
praying for missions when Thou hast said to us " Go " ? Are we holding
back something of which Thou hast said, " Loose it, and let it go" ? Lord,
are we utterly through and through true ? Lord God of truthfulness, save us
from sham ! Make us perfectly true!

I turn to you, brothers and sisters at home! Do you know that if God is
calling you, and you refuse to obey you will hardly know how to bear what
will happen afterwards ? Sooner or later you will know, yea burn through
every part of your being, with the knowledge

that you disobeyed, and lost your chance, lost it for ever. For that is the
awful part. It is rarely given to one to go back and pick up the chance he
knowingly dropped. The express of one's life has shot past the points, and
one cannot go back; the lines diverge.

" Some of us almost shudder now to think how nearly we stayed at home," a
missionary writes. " Do not, I beseech you, let this great matter drift. Do not
walk in uncertainty. Do not be turned aside. You will be eternally the poorer
if you do."

It may be you are not clear as to what is God's will for you. You are in
doubt, you are honest, but a thousand questions perplex you. Will you go to
God about it, and get the answer direct ?

If you are puzzled about things which a straight forward missionary can
explain, will you buy a copy of Do Not Say, and read it alone with God ?
Let me emphasise that word " alone." " Arise, go forth into the plain, and I
will there talk with thee." " There was a Voice . . . when they stood and had
let down their wings."

Oh, by the thought of the Day that is coming, when the fire shall try all we
are doing, and only the true shall stand, I plead for an honest facing of the
question before it is too late!

But this is not our strongest plea. We could pile them up, plea upon plea,
and not exhaust the number which press and urge one to write. We pass
them all, and go to the place where the strongest waits: God's Glory is being
given to another. This is the most solemn plea, the supreme imperative call.
"Not mere

pity for dead souls, but a passion for the Glory of God, is what we need to
hold us through to victory."

" I am the Lord, that is My Name, and My Glory will I not give to another,
neither My praise to graven images." But the men He made to glorify Him
take His Glory from Him, give it to another; that, the sin of it, the shame,
calls with a low, deep under-call through all the other calls. God's Glory is
being given to another. Do we love Him enough to care ? Or do we measure
our private cost, if these distant souls are to be won, and, finding it
considerable, cease to think or care ? " Is it nothing to you, all ye that pass
by ? Behold and see "— " They took Jesus and led Him away. And He,
bearing His cross, went forth into a place called the place of a skull . . .
where they crucified Him." ..." Herein is love." ..." God so loved the world."
. . . Have we petrified past feeling? Can we stand and measure now ? "I
know that only the Spirit, Who counted every drop that fell from the torn
brow of Christ as dearer than all the jewelled gates of Paradise, can lift the
Church out of her appreciation of the world, the world as it appeals to her
own selfish lusts, into an appreciation of the world as it appeals to the heart
of God." 0 Spirit, come and lift us into this love, inspire us by this love. Let
us look at the vision of the Glory of our God with eyes that have looked at
His love!

We would not base a single plea on anything weaker than solid fact.
Sentiment will not stand the strain of the real tug of war; but is it fact, or is
it not, that Jesus counted you and me, and the other people in the world,

actually worth dying for ? If it is true, then do we love Him well enough to
care with the whole strength of our being, that to-day, almost all over the
world, His Glory is being given to another ? If this does not move us, is it
because we do not love Him very much, or is it that we have never prayed
with honest desire, as Moses prayed, " I beseech Thee, show me Thy Glory"
? He only saw a little of it. " Behold there is a place by Me, and thou shalt
stand upon a rock: and it shall come to pass, while My Glory passeth by,
that I will put thee in a clift of the rock, and will cover thee with My hand
while I pass by." And the Glory of the Lord passed, and Moses was aware
of something of it as it passed, but "My face shall not be seen." And yet that
little was enough to mark him out as one who lived for one purpose, shone
in the light of it, burned with the fire of it—he was jealous for the Glory of
his God.

And we—"We beheld His Glory, the Glory as of the only begotten of the
Father, full of grace and truth"; and we—we have seen "the light of the
knowledge of the Glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."

" While My Glory passeth by I will . . . cover thee . . . My face shall not be
seen." " But we all with open face, reflecting, as in a mirror, the Glory of
the Lord, are changed "—Are we ? Do we ? Do we know anything at all
about it ? Have we ever apprehended this for which we are apprehended of
Christ Jesus ? Have we seen the Heavenly Vision that breaks us down, and
humbles us to hear the Voice of the Lord ask, " Who

will go for Us ?" and strengthens us to answer, " Here am I, send me," and
holds us on to obey if we hear Him saying " Go " ?

" I beseech Thee, show me Thy Glory !" Shall we pray it, meaning it now,
to the very uttermost ? The utter most may hold hard things, but, easy or
hard, there is no other way to reach the place where our lives can receive an
impetus which will make them tell for eternity. The motive power is the
love of Christ. Not our love for Him only, but His very love itself. It was the
mighty, resistless flow of that glorious love that made the first missionary
pour himself forth on the sacrifice and service. And the joy of it rings
through triumphantly, "Yea, and if I be poured forth ... I joy and rejoice with
you all!"

Yes, God's Glory is our plea, highest, strongest, most impelling and
enduring of all pleas. But oh, by the thought of the myriads who are
passing, by the thought of the Coming of the Lord, by the infinite realities
of life and death, heaven and hell, by our Saviour's cross and Passion, we
plead with all those who love Him, but who have not considered these
things yet, consider them now !
Let Him show us the vision of the Glory, and bring us to the very end of
self, let Him touch our lips with the live coal, and set us on fire to burn for
Him, yea, burn with consuming love for Him, and a purpose none can turn
us from, and a passion like a pure white flame, "a passion for the Glory of
God ! "

Oh, may this passion consume us! burn the self out

of us, burn the love into us—for God's Glory we ask it, Amen.

" Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power, and riches, and
wisdom, and strength, and honour, and glory, and blessing . . . Blessing, and
honour, and glory, and power be unto Him."

APPENDIX Some Indian Saints

rnHEKE was one—he has joined the company of Indian JL saints in glory
now—the poet of the Mission, and our friend,—one so true in all his ways
that a Hindu lad observing him with critical schoolboy eyes, saw in him, as
in a mirror, something of the holiness of God, and, won by that look,
became a Christian and a winner of souls. Some of the noblest converts of
our Mission are the direct result of that Tamil poet's life. There is another;
he is old, and all through his many years he has been known as the one-
word man, the man of changeless truth. He is a village pastor, whom all the
people love. Go into his cottage any time, any day, and you will find one
and another with him, and you will see the old man, with his loving face
and almost quite blind eyes, bending patiently to catch every word of the
story they are telling, and then you will hear him advising and comforting,
as a father would his child. For miles round that countryside the people
know him, and he is honoured by Hindus and by Christians as India
honours saints.

I remember once seeing the poet and the pastor together.

They belonged to widely different castes, but that was forgotten now. The
two old white heads were bent over the same letter—a letter telling of the
defection of a young convert each had loved as a son, and they were
weeping over him. It was the ancient East living its life before us: "0 my
son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom ! would God I had died for thee, 0
Absalom my son, my son!" But what made it a thing to remember in this
land of Caste divisions, even among Christians, was the overflowing of the
love that made those two men one.

There are others. Money, the place it holds in a man's affections, is

supposed to be a fair test of character. We could tell of a lawyer who is
losing money to-day rather than touch unrighteous gains; of a doctor who
gives to his church till he feels, and travels any distance to help the poor
who cannot pay; of a peasant who risks a certain amount of injury to his
palms rather than climb them on Sunday; and in many an old-world town
and village, dotted about on the wide red plain, we have simple, humble,
holy people, of whom the world knows nothing— pastors in lonely out-
stations, teachers, and workers, and just ordinary Christians—who do the
day's work, and shine as they do it. We think of such men and women when
we hear the critic's cry, and we wish he could know them as they are.

It is these men and women who ask us to tell it out clearly how sorely our
Indian Church needs your prayers. They have no desire to hide things. They
speak straighter than we do, and far more strongly, and they believe, as we
do, that if you know more you will pray more.

LONDON : MORGAN AND SCOTT

PLEASE DO NOT REMOVE CARDS OR SLIPS FROM THIS POCKET

UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO LIBRARY

BV Carmichael, Amy Wilson

3265 Things as they are

G35 1905
This book made available by the Internet Archive.