32. Damascus Blades
Chapter 32
Damascus Blades
Books not only about military heroes but about mountaineers (for example, Whymper of the Matterhorn, Somervell of Everest), explorers (Edward Wilson of the Antarctic), and great educators (Arnold of Rugby) strengthened Amy Carmichael’s determination always to aim high in the training of the children committed to her care.
“Give them not only noble teaching but noble teachers,” wrote Dorothea Beale of Cheltenham. Amy felt that the world had far too many run-of-the-mill Christians, cool, respectable, satisfied with the usual, the mediocre. Why bother to lay down one’s life to multiply the number of those? Damascus blades, forged in extremes of heat and cold, were what India needed. For that she was quite prepared to pay the price. The training at Dohnavur—spiritual, intellectual, and physical—must be, as it were, the fire and the ice.
“It is worth anything to be able for the more delicate, difficult things of life and warfare,’’ she wrote to an English recruit who was tempted to impatience at the long period of preparation needed before going to India. “So, darling, we shall think of these two or three years as given to forging the blade for what only a blade of that temper can do.”
After Walker’s death an Englishwoman who had been teaching in India for fifteen years offered her services and was gladly welcomed as God’s provision for the family. Agnes Naish was one of those sterling spinsters, thoroughly dedicated, earnest, and possessing all the right academic qualifications. Though one co-worker called her “a hoot! three thousand years behind the times!” Amy saw her as a born educator, and—infinitely more important—one who had “the mighty Ordination of the Pierced Hands.” What else would ever keep a foreigner serving where there was no glamour, no excitement, no recognition? Amy, whose general education had been largely informal and her special training only for evangelism, was relieved to be able to turn over to Agnes a job for which she thought herself to be far from, fitted.
The decision had been made years before never to receive government funds. “We would not gain spiritually,” Amy said, and “we did not want to run our little streamlet into the main stream and thus absorb its color.” There were far more children now than Agnes could handle, and they were desperate for teachers. Where to look for Damascus blades? England was the only answer, Amy believed, for “English influence is required for India as it is now.”
“Hopelessly impractical” was the charge laid against them, and not for the first time. They ignored the “dust of words,” went on looking to the Unseen Leader for guidance, and did the best they could with what they had. Sometimes new workers who had come to do other kinds of work, even medical work, were pressed into service in the schoolrooms, for all agreed before they reached Dohnavur to help, regardless of their special training, wherever help was required.
Amy was a trailbreaker. Although in the early days of rescuing the babies she had no one to turn to for advice “for no one had walked this way before,” she wrote in later years that none of her ways were new. Nevertheless they were new to many of her friends—and, we may add, enemies. Certainly no one had formed a family for this particular kind of child along these particular lines. Prevalent opinion to the contrary, she did on occasion ask advice—of those she trusted. The advice was listened to, at least. It was not always followed. Sometimes when it was followed she found herself in a tangle, and wondered why she had not gone directly to the One who had shown her the pattern in the first place. “I was troubled, and sorry of heart, for is there any need for those who walk with God to err in vision and stumble in judgment?”
God promises wisdom. Why not take Him at His word? With the Sisters of the Common Life she combed the Book of Acts for principles of guidance. They found that it came through circumstances, through careful thought, through the general feeling which followed prayer and fasting, by an impelling sense of duty, or a word from the Lord. This “word” might be something remembered at the crucial moment, or a direct command. Such commands, in the days of the apostles, came when the Holy Spirit spoke or when an angel appeared. Amy admitted that she had never been vouchsafed an angel visit, but all other methods of guidance she knew well. If there was neither inward assurance nor the visible opening of circumstances, a token was asked for and not refused.
As they went on facing the impossible time after time, she insisted that there must be “a word that cannot be mistaken.” What she deemed unmistakable, fellow-workers sometimes deemed mistakable. That word which “doth in a way known to Himself twine and bind the heart which way He pleaseth” came at times to her but not to them. Taking an illustration from radio broadcasting, fascinating and new to her at that time, she wondered if the receivers were tuned to the proper wavelength. If not, no message could be received. She quoted Westcott’s note on John 12:28, 29, “The apprehension of the divine voice depends upon man’s capacity for hearing.”
Then there were the “shewings” (she loved to preserve even the archaic spellings of the Authorized Version), things revealed in special ways, particularly when there was a very hard fight ahead. As for a 4’call,’’ this was a matter of waiting at the Lord’s feet for quiet assurance. “A call is just that. Then” (she was writing of a new recruit) “let her prepare her heart for temptations. . . . She will be instantly up against all sorts of attack and this will increase after she takes the next step.”
All sorts of attack. Amy was a veteran of those. And no wonder. Her aims were otherworldly. The purer that aim, the more vehement the opposition, human and spiritual, “for our fight is not against any physical enemy: It is against organizations and powers that are spiritual. We are up against the unseen power that controls this dark world, and spiritual agents from the very headquarters of evil.”1
Amy Carmichael’s aim: to lead children out of themselves and into service for others, “untarnished by earthly thoughts.”
This meant that Dohnavur workers must be of one mind about at least eight things:
following the Crucified;
loyalty towards one another;
continuing to be a family, not an institution;
being on guard against the foes of keenness and spiritual joy;
counting it an honor if they were made a spectacle to the world, to angels and men;
asking the Lord to mark His cross on natural choices;
unreserved renunciation of everything human beings generally love, and desire for what the Lord Jesus Christ loved;
willingness to be “set at nought.”
Truth, loyalty, and honor were put first. “‘Truth once given form becomes imperishable,’ but let the edges of truth be blurred, and that pure form is very difficult to recover.”
Work was always mixed with play, even for toddlers. The smallest child could learn to tidy the bungalow or help peel palmshoots. Others husked rice, picked tamarind fruit, cleaned rice vessels. Songs helped:
Jesus, Savior, dost Thou see
When 1’m doing work for Thee?
Common things, not great and grand,
Carrying stones and earth and sand?
I did common work, you know,
Many, many years ago;
And I don’t forget. I see
Everything you do for Me.
This concept made the children “particular about the backs of places.” “A little thing is a little thing, but faithfulness in little things is a very great thing.”
Amy Carmichael offered no prizes. Why should a child receive a prize for what her patient teachers had given her? “The great reward was to be trusted with harder, more responsible work.”
Nobody ever received a tip. If nothing else had ever done so, this would have put the Dohnavur Family in a class by itself. Everybody heard that they would help even those who had no money at all. People knew they could count on “not being fleeced in private.”
Amy hated things cheap and nasty. No toy, no picture book reached the hands of her children without prior scrutiny. “Remove silly objects” was one of the watchwords, so anything that might pervert or even perplex was eschewed.
Music was never an accompaniment for conversation. The children were taught to sing, play, and listen. They learned the lesson of Ecclesiasticus from the second century B.C., “Hinder not musick. Pour not out words where there is a musician, and show not forth wisdom out of time.”
Scripture and hymn memorization was an important part of the education. Amy took her cue from Arnold of Rugby: “It is a great mistake to think they should understand all they learn; for God has ordered that in youth the memory should act vigorously, independent of the understanding—whereas a man cannot usually recollect a thing unless he understands it.” On Monday mornings everyone repeated together 1 Corinthians 13, the “Love Chapter,” in Tamil and English. At least one child knew nineteen stanzas of Rutherford’s hymn, “The Sands of Time Are Sinking,” and several whole chapters of the Gospel of John and the book of the Revelation. The children had opportunity from time to time to teach Hindu children, by the Eastern method of sing-song repetition, what they had learned. There was power, they found, in “the merest thistledown of song.”
The children had their own vegetable, fruit, and flower gardens. They sold the produce for the going market price to the housekeeper, kept the coppers in their own little clay banks, and once a year these were ceremoniously smashed in the presence of all, the contents counted, and a collective decision made about whom to give it to.
Remembering the long prayer meetings of her childhood, and her devices for passing the time (counting up in the hymnbook, for example, all the things a dying soul is supposed to say at the exact moment of departure), and the “firstly, secondly, thirdly, finally, and in conclusion” of those long Irish sermons, Amy arranged to spare her children such pains. Meetings, she decided, would be short. “The space of half an hour” sufficed in heaven for “the ultimate act of adoration”—silence—which followed the opening of the seventh seal (Revelation 8:1). It would suffice here, for “the human soul should not be drawn out like a piece of elastic and held so for too long at a stretch.”
The training of a missionary should begin in the nursery; school should continue it; home should nourish it. All influences should be bent one way. That training should not be perplexed by a mixture of thoughts, but expressed in a single line of conduct, clearly recognized for what it is. In other words, till the life of a child has had time to root, it should not be exposed to various winds (confused or conflicting examples and ideals, different ways of making /’s). After it has rooted, let the winds blow as they will. Then they will only cause the roots to take a firmer grip.2
1. Ephesians 6:12 (Phillips).
2. Kohila, p. 22.