6. Jewels of Victory: (1899, India)
We are appointed unto afflictions.
1 Thessalonians 3:3, italics added
Onward Christian soldiers,
Sitting on the mats;
Nice and warm and cozy
Like little pussycats.
Onward Christian soldiers,
Oh, how brave are we,
Don’t we do our fighting
Very comfortably?
Amy Carmichael,
from God’s Madcap
6
Jewels of Victory
1899, India
In the same village Pearleyes escaped—Perungulam—was a Christian day school that Hindu parents permitted their children to attend without fear of conversion. After all, they were learning to read and write and other useful things, and no one of their caste had ever been converted. Well, yes, sixty years before, two had confessed Christ as Savior. Nothing to worry about, really.
But the schoolmaster’s wife gave a Bible to a sixteen-year-old girl, and she believed, secretly. She was of the goldsmith caste, whose members sit beside small fires melting the precious metal in a pot or curved roof tile until it is refined. The gold is purified when the goldsmith can see his face clearly reflected in the shining gold.
The girl’s older brother still anointed her forehead with Siva’s sacred ashes, but he caught her one day washing them off. She told him she read the Bible and loved the Lord Jesus Christ very much. He told the family.
The family, malevolent and close-knit, built a blazing bonfire in the courtyard and heaped on the wood until it was hot enough to roast an ox. “Look long at that fire. If you ever mention Him again, you and your Bible will be thrown into the fire.” Words rapier-keen. And he meant them. Her father, a man with a kingly, leonine bearing, thought the matter was closed.
The girl remembered a young friend, poisoned by arsenic because she spoke of becoming a Christian. A young widow who showed a slight interest in things Christian had vanished, and her body was later found under a wooden floor.
Another girl who publically confessed Christ in her strong caste was seized by some men, stripped, and strung up by her feet in an alley. After that, she was never seen again.
The girl woke very early toward morning as she lay beside her mother, almost sure a hand had touched her.
“Go,” a voice seemed to say. She had not been outside her home in three years, but she felt she must be free to follow the Lord Jesus. Her silver anklets never even tinkled as she stepped carefully over her sleeping mother, the snoring father, the aunt and brothers. If she were caught she could be sure of beating, drugging, even murder.
She hurried down the Street of Goldsmiths and waded the stream to Pannaivilai, where Amy and the Walkers lived. How did she find the mission house through twisting narrow alleys and lanes, hidden behind a grove of palm trees?
The house was very open, with many doors and windows that didn’t even close properly. A layer of dew freshened everything that morning, and deep shadows still lay against the sides of house and trees. The sky turned to gentian. The girl, later named Jewel of Victory, ran up on to the porch, clapped her hands by way of announcing her presence, and cried, “Refuge! Refuge!”
Amy took her in, listened to her story, and determined to save her. Then followed noise and confusion as all the relatives and friends descended upon the mission house like a swarm of locusts to claim the girl.
The Walkers gave their upstairs bedroom to Amy and Jewel of Victory, sleeping the rest of the time on the porch. Jewel of Victory endured long, heart-rending interviews with first her mother, then other family members, and the chief men of the village, until she was near the breaking point.
“How can you betray the one who bore you, gave you suck, carried you next to her heart! Ah, my own child, my own-of-owns, my precious child, I will die of grief! You are killing me, your mother!”
The revenue inspector was called. The chief of police was summoned. Jewel of Victory repeated over and over: “The Lord is my Light and my Salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the Strength of my life, of whom shall I be afraid?”
Day and night, men of the goldsmith caste stationed themselves under her window to seize her. Walker Iyer nailed the shutters closed. The men came two and three at a time, until forty men surrounded the house, waiting. All day long through the blinding sun-glare they waited. Just before the brilliant, brief sunset three of them rushed at the door but were stopped dead by an invisible Power.
They tried magic. They buried charms in the yard, to the East, to the West, to the North, to the South, to draw her wayward heart home, to pull her to them as a magnet pulls. Magic dust was thrown up against her window so she would breathe in a speck of it. They tried poison, but God kept her from that fate.
After many days they withdrew and gave her rest. They burned down the mission school and the teacher’s house, and the door was shut forever to any further witness in Perungulam.
South India’s Tamil poet, Krishna Pillai, was invited to the new convert’s baptism on Easter Sunday 1899, and he chose for her the name Jewel of Victory.
“Karia Kartar—the Doer of Things—has accomplished this,” he said.
For her own protection Jewel of Victory was sent to live in a converts’ home in Palamcottah. She later married a fine Christian man.
Other new Christians did not have as easy a time of it. One girl took a stand for Christ, and her ordeal lasted ten years. Her case was taken to court by the family. Day after day, week after sweltering week dragged on, when the heat was visible in long, knee-deep waves along the dust-caked streets. She was of age. She had a right to choose. She testified this over and over.
One day she was dragged off the crowded steps of the courthouse, drugged, and married by force to a heathen. The final time she appeared in court, she was a married woman and not free to make any choices at all. Her eyes were glazed and expressionless, her spirit snuffed out. And this covered a period of ten years.
Amy was told she hadn’t a chance in a million if cases regarding child custody went to court. Unfair decisions were made beforehand—bribes to the judge; witnesses who, for a few annas, would swear they saw the temple woman give birth to the child. Public opinion was always against her. The very laws of the land were against her, for what was planned constituted kidnapping.
The excitement over Jewel of Victory had barely died down when another girl from the goldsmith’s caste, in the very same way, escaped to Amy.
Made bold by such escapes, still another girl came to Amy, who hid her in the tower of the village church. In the morning the people of the girl’s village guessed where she was and stormed the church. Walker Iyer allowed only two women to see the girl. The women promised if they heard from the girl’s own lips that she wanted to stay, they would be satisfied.
“I fear my aunt,” the girl whispered to Amy in a voice shaky with fear. “She has power.”
The girl told the women of her desire to stay and learn more of the Jesus way. The aunt moved close and rubbed the girl’s arm. That was all. But something unexplainable had happened.
“I come, aunt,” the girl murmured and followed the woman. Amy never saw her again.
“Never count a convert safe until he or she is safe in heaven,” was a word for those days.
Once a little girl of ten, not a temple child but in moral danger, sent a message to Amy: “If I can escape to you, can you protect me from my people?”
This was a child who had heard the story of Jesus’ love and had witnessed to her family.
“You will see who is stronger,” they replied. “Your God or ours. Do you think your Lord Jesus can deliver you from our hands or prevent us from doing as we choose with you?”
Weakened by thirty hours without food but remembering one of the Bible stories, she said, “I am Daniel, and you are the lions.”
Amy was forced to send a message in reply, “You must not try to come to us. We cannot protect you, but Jesus is with you and will not fail you.”
That night the child’s family shut her up in a small room with a demon-possessed woman. Next day they hinted even worse would happen.
Amy speaks of that time: “We had to stand on the shore of a dark and boundless sea and watch that little white life, swept off by a great black wave, drift further and further out, until something from underneath caught it and sucked it down.” They did not see her again.
One day Amy had a visit from little Goddess of Holy Town, chaperoned by an old woman. She was a slim, graceful girl in soft, silk sari, a long plait of hair down her back, a face like a flower. Her smile was far away. Amy had known her since she was a baby and failed to prevent her dedication to the temple. Amy pleaded with her to forsake her life, as she was old enough to choose and could come to Dohnavur if she wished and if she dared to face the storm that would follow.
She cooly said, “I cannot. I am engaged to dance before the idol through the whole night.”
Her smile was sadder than tears.
Once a small child training for the temple leaned on Amy’s knee and said, “But am I not learning to be as you are—a servant to God?”
Mungie was a lovable child of six. Amy talked to the grandmother in the home and pleaded for her, but the grandmother’s heart was hard as the stone of the temple tower and as black as the moonless night. As Amy rose to go, the woman turned to a friend and said, “Though she heap gold on the floor as high as Mungie’s neck, I would never let her go to those degraded Christians.”
The passing of years means little in the East where even the poorest has plenty of time, but twelve years of prayer and waiting for a child’s return were just that to Amy—twelve years. Silent years.
Amy first saw Tranquility, a gentle little girl matching her name, who stood on the edge of a small group of villagers listening to gospel preaching. The story of the love of the Lord Jesus Christ was new, and she opened her heart to Him and confessed Him before all the village.
Nothing her parents could do—not threats, switchings, or supperless bedtimes—could dampen her faith. She talked continually of joining Amy in Dohnavur, until her weary parents gave in. A very happy Tranquility moved to Dohnavur and learned more of the God of love through songs, Bible lessons, and many talks with Amy.
After her father’s death she asked to visit her old home and try to lead her mother to Christ. On a sunshiny day, so clear the distant mountains seemed to lean over them, Tranquility’s aunt and two brothers drove up in a bandy.
“I will be back in a week!” the child called gaily, waving her hand.
“Yes, one week,” said the brother, but there was a false note in his voice.
“One week.” The auntie smiled courteously.
One week became six months, and Amy was bogged down in the neverending routine of the nursery and “miscellaneous oddments.” Tranquility was given up to the ministrations of a magician who made charms and potions from the bodies of firstborn babies. Tranquility was given a potion. She turned dazed and docile and obeyed as if in a trance.
After receiving no letter or message, Amy determined to find her. She and Pearl traveled by bandy, then in a broken-down, gasping bus to the jungle village where Tranquility lived. Hot, tired, and dirty, Amy and Pearl found Tranquility, but the child did not respond to them and could barely speak.
“Will you come back with us?” Amy asked.
Tranquility turned away without answering. She might have been cellared deep in the earth, such was her aloofness.
The two women held a meeting in that wild jungle village in the evening, but they were clearly unwelcome. No words of love or kindness touched the hard hearts. They slept on a porch opening out into a street filled with yapping, fighting dogs and homeless, quarreling people.
As the women slept, Tranquility’s relatives gathered in the child’s room, each carrying an iron-tipped spear. They surrounded her.
“Do not go with the foreign woman,” one said. “If you go we will attack them on the road at a lonely spot.”
The next morning Amy again asked Tranquility to return with her, but the child only gazed in silent despair, not a shred of hope in her eyes.
Soon after, she was married to a pagan, to bind her forever to her family. Two little baby girls brightened her life, so beautiful that everyone who saw them called them “children of heaven.”
They went to that place at ages two and three, but not before Tranquility had taught them to lisp the name of Jesus. As the three-year-old died, she looked up, smiled, and held out her hands. Tranquility thought, “Surely the child has seen Him and His angels, she is that joyful.” And Tranquility was content that the Lord of Love should have her babies. “They could not grow up good in this hell.”
Tranquility was not much more than a child when she married, certainly was a child spiritually, yet she endured those twelve years, never seeing another Christian after Amy’s visit. She did have a small Bible, because to the unlearned relatives it appeared to be an English lesson book. So the written Word and the living Word nourished Tranquility’s mind and spirit for twelve lonely years.
At the end of that time, a hunger and thirst for Dohnavur and the Christians there welled up in her heart, and she prayed day and night, asking that someone be sent to her. The very day she began to pray, Arulai and Frances Beathe, a coworker, felt strongly led to plan a tour of those nearby villages.
Tranquility had begun to tell her people God would send her help, that He would fulfill a dream she dreamed of returning to Dohnavur. A few weeks later a bandy rattled into town, and Tranquility rushed to it joyfully, crying, “See, my God has sent them!”
The amazed people had nothing to say, and Tranquility, wild and ragged and neglected, snatched up her small son, climbed into the bandy weeping “eye-water of bliss.” She was found—safe—free—after twelve lost years.
Did Amy remember then the first time it dawned upon her that “He does the keeping—He keeps from falling?” Not only able to keep an Irish girl steeped in Christianity, living in a Christian land, surrounded by loving believers, and having all the advantages of Christian civilization; but able to keep a new, young Christian with a background of gross spiritual darkness, living in an environment she called “a hell,” surrounded by all that was evil, not knowing of a single other believer.
Another child believer, Mimosa, heard of God once, then was kept by Him for twenty-four years, not knowing a verse of Scripture, never meeting a Christian or going to church, until she arrived safely at Dohnavur. Satan’s victories are not victories; they are only temporary hindrances to the purpose of the Victorious One.
Deareyes, like Tranquility, was not in danger of being given to the temple. She was eight years old when her family allowed her to live at Dohnavur, and within a few years she was a trusted helper in the nursery. That year Amy was obliged to go to Madras for three days. “There are times when it is not easy to be four hundred miles away.”
The girl’s uncle was a magician, and he sent her a small tin box with a note telling her to rub her hand over the box. Not understanding the ways of the occult and the power of Satan, she obeyed. She fell into a trance. The uncle came to Dohnavur (where it was not unusual to see cobras) disguised as a snake charmer. Deareyes never remembered what happened, except that when she awoke she was in her sister’s home in one of the border towns far from Dohnavur. A Hindu marriage had been planned for her.
Her brother threatened her with a knife. “You will marry this man, or I will kill you. And afterward, I will kill myself, for I have no desire to be hanged.”
Deareyes wept and refused, finally saying, “If you find me a Christian I will marry.”
A “Christian” was found, but he was only a pretend Christian, and so began a married life that could be described in the words of Jonah: “The waters compassed me about even to the soul; the depth closed me round about, the weeds were wrapped about my head. I went down to the bottom.”
All that time she had no help from any human being. She was closely guarded. Only God’s presence in her heart kept her from giving up. She could not get a message to Amy, and Amy heard nothing of her.
After her husband died, she determined to escape to Dohnavur with her little boy. One of the relatives agreed to take her to visit the magician uncle who lived near Dohnavur. At first he watched her carefully, then relaxed his guard, and she ran out of the house and reached Amy. After fifteen years and six months.
“Victories that are easy are cheap. Those only are worth having which come as the result of hard fighting,” said H. W. Beecher, and the “hard fighting” part was Amy’s very life.
Is it ever safe—or true—to write “in vain” over any work for God?
Amy found it comforting to remember that even earthly jewels are almost indestructible. Somewhere in the world are the jewels that Aaron wore when he went into the Holy Place. All are safe somewhere.
For Amy, “lost” meant “not yet found.”