2. The Hope of Holiness
Chapter 2
The Hope of Holiness
When Amy was twelve she was sent away to Marlborough House, a Wesleyan Methodist boarding school in Harrogate, Yorkshire. Naturally she was homesick. Is there, for anyone who has grown up in a secure and loving home, anything to compare with the first experience of complete separation from that home? It is pure misery from which there seems to be no possibility of escape, for it is the parents themselves who have decided that this is “best.” The child feels that nothing could be worse; yet he trusts his parents. It seems that the “earth is removed and the mountains are carried into the midst of the sea.” Amy’s upbringing forbade her to make much of anything appointed, nevertheless she needed solace of some sort. She found it—in a white lily that stood in a pot in the bow window, in a box of chrysanthemums sent by her mother from the little greenhouse at home, and in a saucer of moss on the dinner table which reminded her of one of her father’s stories: Mungo Park, an explorer, was comforted by seeing moss and feeling that the One who made it would care for him.
The taboos and restrictions of Methodism would seem intolerable in the twentieth century, even to the dedicated. To Amy they were perhaps not more stringent than the Presbyterianism she was used to. She did not find schoolwork nearly so pleasant as it had been at home, and only one teacher, the botany master, knew how to make lessons “shine.” Certainly there were no complaint boxes at Marlborough House, nor were students in those days required to evaluate the performance of each of their teachers. Looking back years later, Amy judged that the faults lay mostly with herself—“many things happened which should not have happened, because I had not learned to set to, and work at things which seemed to me dull and not useful. This was a great pity. I have often been very sorry about it.” Unfortunately for us she saw to it that no record of the story was left which she did not believe would edify the children in India, except for a single incident. The wild Irish girl was “quite naughty” that time, but felt that the end surely would justify the means. It was the year of the comet, 1882. Amy went, on behalf of the girls in her dormitory, to request permission of the principal to stay up to see the comet. “Certainly not,” was the verdict.
Missing the celestial show was simply not to be borne, so Amy tied threads to the toes of each of the girls, promising to keep awake and give them a yank as soon as the rest of the house was asleep. At the signal, they all crept to the attic, holding their breath when a step creaked, and found themselves face-to-face with the principal and teachers. “We had time to see it beautifully before anyone had recovered sufficiently from the shock of our arrival to order us back to bed. That was a woeful night for me, I was sure I would be expelled and that would break my parents’ hearts. Happily that did not come to pass. There was a rather solemn hour next morning, for the matter of threads tied round toes showed such purposeful audacity that it could not be passed over. It was taken for granted that I was the ringleader, but in the end I was forgiven.”
It was near the end of her three years at Marlborough House that Amy experienced “the one watered moment in an arid three years.” The Children’s Special Service Mission held meetings in Harrogate at which one Edwin Arrowsmith spoke. She had no recollection of his talk, but remembered singing the lovely children’s hymn by Anna B. Warner, “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so.” In those quiet minutes she understood what she had not understood before—there was something else to be done. All her life she had known of Jesus’ love. Her mother had often told her of it, sung to her about it, and Amy had, as it were, nestled in Jesus’ arms as she had nestled in her mother’s. She realized now, at the age of fifteen or so, that she had not “opened the door” to Him. “In His great mercy the Good Shepherd answered the prayers of my mother and father and many other loving ones, and drew me, even me, into His fold.”
It seems that competition with American flour necessitated a move to Belfast where the Carmichael brothers built a new mill. Amy’s family found a house in College Gardens, and soon afterwards because of financial difficulties she and her brothers were withdrawn from the boarding schools. Amy’s lessons were in subjects deemed suitable for young ladies—music, singing, and painting. She was thoroughly discouraged with the last, in which she had especially wanted to do well. She held up alongside a real sunset an oil sketch of a sunset. “The contrast was so tremendous I resolved to spend no more time on that.” Her father took her to London, where she was filled with wonder at the great sights of the Tower, Westminster Abbey, Windsor Castle, St. Paul’s, the British and Kensington Museums. They went to hear the famous singers, and one day, seated in the gallery of the House of Commons and peering down through the lattice, they saw the great William Gladstone.
When Amy was nearly eighteen she saw her father talking gravely to her mother by the dining room window. The matter was money, something not discussed in front of the children, so it was not until later that Amy learned the truth. David Carmichael had lent some thousands of pounds to a friend who needed to make a new start in life. When the time came for repayment, the money was not forthcoming. Not long after this blow, Carmichael contracted double pneumonia. He died on April 12, 1885, fifty-four years old. Amy recalled that the last thing she had read to him was from Milton’s Samson Agonistes:
All is best, though oft we doubt
What the unsearchable dispose
Of Highest Wisdom brings about,
And ever best found in the close.
If going to boarding school did not seem to Amy a major crisis—lots of girls went to boarding school—surely the death of her father must have. Yet in her story, written for the children, there is only the laconic statement, “on an April Sunday morning while the church bells were ringing, our dear father died,” followed by the lines of poetry which she said had been with her ever since. Not a word about what this sorrow meant to anyone in the family, least of all to herself. Not a hint that she was devastated, nor even tempted for a moment to doubt that all was best. It is, in fact, difficult to find anywhere in the writings of Amy Carmichael anything akin to the poet’s admission, “oft we doubt.” If any doubts rose in her mind—at the moment, perhaps, of watching her father’s coffin lowered into the ground—she would not in any case have put them on paper. Did she speak to her mother of what it had meant to her, or seek reassurance that her mother had no doubts? We are not told. Mrs. Carmichael needed a stronghold. That much we know. It was faith, not doubt, that moved her out of herself, out of self-pity and despair. She found what she needed in the words of Nahum 1:7, “The Lord is good, a strong hold in the day of trouble; and he knoweth them that trust in him.” Years later, Amy discovered in the margin of her mother’s Bible, next to that promise, a tiny notation: “Found true all along the line ever since.” The strength of her example was not lost on Amy.
Being of an acutely sensitive nature, Amy must have felt deeply the loss of her father. The happy, peaceful, predictable routine of her home life was profoundly shaken. If she had been born a hundred years later, she would very likely have been encouraged to be angry, told she had a right to express her anger and her sorrow and her bewilderment and her rage, and generally to disintegrate. These were not the expectations of her friends and family. Nothing could have been further from her expectations of herself. Instead, she threw herself into serving others. She became like a second mother to her brothers and sisters.
“The time when she impinged on my life was during about five years after our father died,” wrote her sister Ethel. “She lived an amazingly full life in those years, taking classes in painting and other subjects, teaching Eva and me during a period when we were not well enough to go to school, and starting various ‘good works.’ . . . If anybody asked me what were the strongest impressions Amy made on me in her youth, I think I would say—her enthusiasms.”
The preoccupations of seventeen-year-old girls—their looks, their clothes, their social life—do not change very much from generation to generation. But in every generation there seem to be a few who make other choices. Amy was one of the few.
The decisive moment which determined the direction of her life came on a dull Sunday morning in Belfast as the family was returning from church. They saw what they had never seen before in Presbyterian Belfast—an old woman lugging a heavy bundle. Amy and her brothers turned around, took the bundle, and helped her along by the arms. “This meant facing all the respectable people who were, like ourselves, on their way home. It was a horrid moment. We were only two boys and a girl, and not at all exalted Christians. We hated doing it. Crimson all over (at least we felt crimson, soul and body of us) we plodded on, a wet wind blowing us about, and blowing, too, the rags of that poor old woman, till she seemed like a bundle of feathers and we unhappily mixed up with them.”
There was an ornate Victorian fountain in the street, and just as they passed it, “this mighty phrase was suddenly flashed as it were through the grey drizzle: ‘Gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble—every man’s work shall be made manifest; for the day shall declare it, because it shall be declared by fire; and the fire shall try every man’s work of what sort it is. If any man’s work abide—’”1
Amy turned to see who had spoken. There was nothing but the fountain, the muddy street, the people with their politely surprised faces. The children plodded on with the bundle of feathers, but something had happened to the girl which changed forever life’s values. That afternoon she shut herself in her room. It was time to settle some immensely important things, and things of that sort Amy Carmichael settled alone with God.
She began about this time to gather the children of the neighborhood to her home for meetings. Henry Montgomery of the Belfast City Mission used to take her through the city streets on Saturday nights. She saw something of “the other half,” and began teaching a group of boys in a night school, always ending with what she called a “good-night service,” probably her chance to give them something from the Bible, perhaps a gospel song, and prayer. She started a program called the Morning Watch to encourage boys and girls to spend a regular time each day in Bible reading and prayer. She gave them pledge cards, blue with a gilt edge, which they could sign. When they met on Saturday mornings, each would tell what had helped him during the week, or confess failure to get up in time. It can’t have been too dull an hour, because two of her brothers joined. Another member recalled that it was always a happy time and everybody loved Amy.
She initiated a weekly prayer meeting for schoolgirls in their own homes, then moved it to Victoria College when some of the staff and students joined them. She worked at the YWCA, and had a class at Rosemary Street Presbyterian Church for “shawlies,” mill girls who, too poor to buy hats, covered their heads with shawls. This was something of a shocker to the proper church members. Not only were they unaccustomed to the presence of such “common” folk, but the idea of Mrs. Carmichael’s permitting her daughter to venture into the slums to fetch them was deplorable.
Not one to refuse even unnecessary risks, Amy was more than ready to take risks for the sake of others. She had certainly been sheltered, and she knew it. The shawlies were not sheltered. What sort of life did they lead? she wondered. Her brother Ernest, working for the railways, knew things she didn’t know. She pressed him for information as to the sort of conversation the shawlies must hear. He wasn’t sure she ought to know, but Amy would not be put off. He told her a few things. She intensified her prayers that the girls would grow up pure and good.
This zealous work with young people went on for more than a year. Amy poured herself into it, but felt that she was not really building as she had determined to build, in gold, silver, and precious stones. Something told her all this activity might amount to nothing more than a heap of wood, hay, and stubble unless she began living a holy life, a life that would help others. She was full of misgivings. The list of her activities must surely have seemed an impressive one to those who looked on, but to the girl herself they were nothing. They were empty. Nobody was truly being helped as she believed they should be. What had she missed? How could she live the life she longed for? How to be holy? Was there any hope of it for her?
1. I Corinthians 3:12-14.