28. Across the Will of Nature
Chapter 28
Across the Will of Nature
Matthew Arnold’s tribute to his father in Rugby Chapel was for Amy “one of the lights I steer by.”
If in the paths of the world
Stones might have wounded thy feet,
Toil and dejection have tried
Thy spirit, of that we saw nothing.
To us thou wast still
Cheerful and helpful and firm. . . .
Languor is not in your heart,
Weakness is not in your word,
Weariness not on your brow.
We are allowed to see a good many of the stones that wounded Amy’s feet, but we hardly hear her say “Ouch!” The power of her passions breathes in every word she writes, but because her aim was always to tell only that part of the truth which in her view mattered, that is, would edify and strengthen, she often sidestepped a description of what today’s reader would find most fascinating. Walker’s death was without question a stunning blow. Even if it had not come in succession with so many other blows, she would have reeled under it. If she succumbed to as much as a few moments of self-pity, she did not permit herself the luxury of wallowing in it. She knew where to turn to regain a firm footing: first to her God, and then to the thought of others—Mrs. Walker, for example, whose loss, Amy told herself, was infinitely greater than her own. The lesson of the weaned child was learned far more quickly than it might have been because she set about at once writing Walker’s biography, a task which would transform her own loss by giving to the world the story of a hidden life.
Although at their first meeting she was impressed with the jetblack hair, the earnest eyes, the wisdom and learning and, most of all, the utter absence of narrow -mindedness, she had decided that she did not like him. He seemed to take with less than proper seriousness her desire to burn out rather than rust out. Could he possibly understand such a motive? Later she knew how perfectly he understood. He understood as no one else in India could understand.
And Amy loved him. To read the biography is to know that she loved him. Her love had never been half-hearted for anyone. She was all that a sister could be for her own brothers and sisters, devoted to each. But Walker was what she had not had at home, an older brother, and far more. She was brilliant, personable, charming—more so, it is said, than his wife. The scenario could have been explosive if all three had not been soldiers under orders. Walker loved his wife. Amy loved and respected her, worked closely with her, although it was not easy for her to live with a couple so obviously in love.
By the time World War I began Amy had finished writing the biography, Walker of Tinnevelly. She held it back from publication until 1916, feeling that people would not want to read anything other than war news.
With the war came increased anxiety for the children. The thought of their future had always been of paramount concern. “What are you going to do with them all in the future?” people had repeatedly asked, sometimes with a tone which implied she had not given the matter a thought. ‘She lives in a Utopia,” said one. “I pity her, I pity her with all my heart when I think of all that is before her when her children grow up!”
“Neither of these sanguine sympathizers nor one out of a hundred questioners has any idea of how their doubts appeal to the anxious part of us, for—-
Far in the future Lieth a fear,
Across the Will of Nature
Like a long, low mist of grey,
Gathering to fall in a dreary rain,
Thus doth thy heart within thee complain;
And even now thou art afraid, for round thy dwelling
The flying winds are ever telling
Of the fear that lieth grey,
Like a gloom of brooding mist upon the way.
But the Lord is always kind,
Be not blind,
Be not blind
To the shining of His face,
To the comforts of His grace.
Hath He ever failed thee yet?
Never, never: wherefor fret? . . .”1
There was not only the question about what the children were to do when they grew up but also the question of how their thousands of needs (there were nine nurseries now) were to be met in the process. The temptation to fear became very strong in the early years, “a gloom of brooding mist upon the way,” and Amy was “allowed to taste of the cup which would be poured out for me if the money did not come.” She recalled Allan Gardiner, missionary to South America, who was allowed to starve to death. As usual, her hyperactive imagination went to work on that one. “Suppose the children die and we all (of course) die with them, and the Christian world cries shame on the one responsible, what will it matter, after all? The children will be in heaven, and is that not better than the temple?” She took her questions as usual to the faithful Master who pointed her to the story of the feeding of the five thousand.
“And, as I believed, the promise was given to me then that there should be baskets over and above our daily supplies, and that, just as those men and women and their children were free to use the pieces of the loaves over from that great meal if they needed them before they reached home, so we should be free to use ours, should need arise before we too reached Home, we and our children.”
More money than was needed then began to come in, so that by the time the British pound fell and the price of rice rose during the war (sending the cost of bringing a child from the nearest station to fifteen times its former cost), the “baskets” were ready. “Standing on sure ground we can affirm just this: we have never lacked any good thing; and during the years of War, people in the towns and villages began to say, ‘God is there,’ for they could not account for what they saw except by saying that.”
Life in Dohnavur was very like that of a cloister in many ways, and it is hard to see how it could have been otherwise, at least in those early days. The work which had to be done was all-consuming, there were few to do it and no time for extraneous activity. But Amy’s sympathies were broad, her reading wide, and during the war she wrote “always with a sense of the sorrow in the homes to which this letter goes. What flaming fires of sorrow you are walking through these months! God comfort you all.”
As one worker commented, “Amma went from crisis to crisis. She saw things as crises—but we had them, God knows, frightful ones!” Once a village lunatic got loose, came into the compound, entered the guest room where a lady was sleeping, lifted her mosquito net, gazed at her, and then sat down in her chair. She remained calm and the man left, but returned. Amy armed herself with a flashlight and a cane, “hoping he would prove amenable to the light and not require further incentive to disappear.” She did not have to apply either, as the servants appeared and escorted him home. It was all in a night’s work, however. “We have a tame lunatic always on hand who chops our wood and has scraps from the kitchen, but this was a new and not at all a pleasant sort to have about.”
There were occasions when the mother was able, with a select group of her children and co-workers, to leave the cloistered life of Dohnavur. Often they made forays in the moonlight out to the plain, which necessitated passing through the village. Once they paused in front of the temple where the men were gathered and Amy spoke to them. “They were as attentive as the women, for they don’t hear ‘preaching’ every day and always enjoy a novelty.” Then little Chellalu, one of the more mischievous children, asked in a stage whisper if she too might speak. She “opened fire on those men, pelting them with facts as to their folly in worshipping somebody who did not love them and had not made them.” Her hearers stood amazed. Chellalu explained later to Amy: “When you were speaking, a voice inside me said very loud, yes, very loud, ‘Chellalu! Tell those men about God!’ and my heart said pickapickapick!”
At Madras Beach.
Then there was a grand tour to Madras. Amy took fourteen children, five helpers, one servant, and one sittie on the train to the big city. They traveled third-class as always. Why? “Because there isn’t any fourth-class!” On the way they saw for the first time a railway station, telegraph wires, signaling systems, the palace and temple of Madurai, bazaars, motorcars, and then in Madras itself, a motorcycle with a sidecar in which they rode, museums, a foundry, a printing press, a cotton factory and—this was a first for Amy, too—a movie. A friend arranged for a “good set” of pictures to be shown instead of the “usual doubtful vulgarities.” The children thought the pictures alive, and were most astonished at the speed with which the soldiers in the war pictures walked. Amy, tired of the customary Oriental saunter, exhorted the girls to follow the soldiers’ brisk example.
A clergyman took them to Madras Beach and, dressed in black suit, clerical collar, and sun helmet, strode into the surf to take pictures of the girls, fully clothed in their white saris which were knotted up around the knees, wading. One of the rare photos of Amma shows her sitting in a beached boat, wearing her sari and helmet, surrounded by satin-haired girls with thick braids, her white hand resting on a black one.
It was during this trip that the issue of furloughs for foreign workers came up. Frances Beath was the sittie accompanying Amy. Her parents, who were in Madras then, wanted Frances to go home to Australia with them. Frances demurred. It was not the time. The parents and many friends thought this quite wrong, a decision not made in freedom but under duress—at least the duress of Amy’s powerful example. She had never taken a furlough. The mother’s feet, according to the Tamil proverb, were tied. Old Mr. Beath pleaded with her to release his daughter. There was no question of releasing her. The young woman was technically quite free to go, but Amy refused to persuade her.
“Supposing you knew the Lord Jesus was to return soon,” said Amy. “What would you do?”
“Why, tell her to stay, of course!” said the man without hesitation. In a flash, he saw what he had said. He laughed. They gave their consent. The issue arose again and again in subsequent years when fellow-workers, feeling “a bit skeletonic,” as one of them put it, raised the question of a furlough or even just a weekend off. All were given to understand from the first that the nature of the work made regular furlough plans impossible. If the doctors insisted on what Amy called “exile” for health reasons, it was granted. Otherwise she simply laid before them the principle that governed her own life: Ask not how little but how much can love give? She would allow them to choose the harder road, as she had written just after the Frances Beath experience.
If we would walk with an ungrieved Lord we must never let the fear of being thought “hard” or, far more subtle temptation, the fear of pain for a younger one whom we love, cause us to influence that one to choose the natural rather than the spiritual. If once a soul has entered the path where the Spirit, not the flesh, is guide, God does not lightly pass over such a lapse. Men may praise it; God condemns it; and those who know their Father know the bitterness of the hiding of His face.
She quoted again, as often in her writings, Tersteegen’s poem:
Across the will of Nature
Leads on the path of God;
Not where the flesh delighteth
The feet of Jesus trod.
O bliss to leave behind us
The fetters of the slave,
To leave ourselves behind us,
The graveclothes and the grave.
We follow in His footsteps;
What if our feet be torn?
Where He has marked the pathway
All hail the briar and thorn!
Scarce seen, scarce heard, unreckoned,
Despised, defamed, unknown,
Or heard but by our singing,
On, children, ever on!
1. Toward Jerusalem, p. 8.