5. Going Forth

5.

GOING FORTH

The morning of January 14, 1892, a very shaken Amy wrote to her mother:

My precious Mother,

Have you given your child unreservedly to the Lord for whatever He wills?…Oh, may He strengthen you to say “Yes” to Him if He asks something which costs.

Darling Mother, for a long time as you know the thought of those dying in the dark—fifty thousand of them every day, while we at home live in the midst of blazing light—has been very present with me, and the longing to go to them, and tell them of Jesus, has been strong upon me. Everything, everything, seemed to be saying “Go,” through all sounds the cry seemed to rise, “Come over and help us.” Every bit of pleasure or work which has come to me, has had underlying it the thought of these people who have never, never heard of Jesus….

But home claims seemed to say “Stay,” and I thought it was His Will; it was, perhaps, until yesterday. I can’t explain it, but lately the need seems to have come closer, and I wrote down a few days ago, just to have it in black and white, why I am not going.

But…yesterday…I went to my room and just asked the Lord what it all meant, what did He wish me to do, and, Mother, as clearly as I ever heard you speak, I heard Him say “GO YE.”¹

So there it was.

How the devil had planted good reasons for her not to obey! But Amy was struck by the snowy fields outside the windows. There was one worthy long ago who had fought the lion on a snowy day. Benaiah, one of three mighty men of King David, had “slew a lion in the midst of a pit in time of snow”! And that was what Amy had done: slew the devil—that “roaring lion” in the words of Saint Peter—in time of snow!

Several days later Amy received her mother’s answer:

Darling, when He asks you now to go away from within my reach, can I say nay? No, no, Amy; He is yours—you are His—to take you where He pleases and to use you as He pleases. I can trust you to Him, and I do.…²

Amy’s sisters were confused. How could Amy go so far away? But Mrs. Bell, a Quaker friend of Mrs. Carmichael’s who had so often understood Amy better than anyone else, clapped her hands in approval. It was Mrs. Bell who had silenced people when they badgered Amy about eating so little, saying, “The Lord takes care of such people.” Some people around the Broughton Grange bluntly called her a selfish ingrate. But the D.O.M., Robert Wilson, the one person other than her mother who should have been hurt most by Amy’s departure, wrote to Mrs. Carmichael:

AMY’S SISTERS WERE CONFUSED. HOW COULD AMY GO SO FAR AWAY?

It hardly seems a case for anything but bowing the head in thankful acquiescence, when the Lord speaks thus decidedly to one so dear.…She has been and is more than I can tell you to me, but not too sweet or too loving to present to Him Who gave Himself for us.…³

By the same post Amy admitted to her mother she didn’t really know where she was going forth. Ceylon? China? Africa? Robert Wilson began to make discreet inquiries to various mission societies. It was hardly a surprise that China came into focus. After all, Hudson Taylor was a personal friend of Robert Wilson’s. And Amy had actually met the great missionary to China. By May 1892, the D.O.M. had arranged for Amy to meet the Robert Stewarts in Bedford. The Stewarts were on leave from their mission in China. Ironically, the Stewarts were not missionaries of Taylor’s China Inland Mission Society but of the Church of England’s Church Missionary Society. Amy would represent a distaff society called the Zenana Mission Society. Again Amy was thrilled by the history of her surroundings; John Bunyan had written The Pilgrim’s Progress in Bedford. Everything seemed most congenial with the Stewarts. They would return to their mission in the seacoast province of Fukien in the autumn. Amy would be a welcome addition.

But July brought a disappointing letter to Amy back in Broughton Grange. “Oh, no. The Stewarts are not going directly to China. They are being detoured to Australia.…”

Suddenly Amy was the topic of discussion at the annual Keswick meeting. For several years they had saved funds to sponsor a missionary. Now Robert Wilson, who happened to be the chairman of the mission committee, pushed hard to make that first missionary none other than Amy Carmichael. Amy wrote in the flyleaf of her Bible: “Keswick, Tuesday, July 26, 1892: Day the Mission Committee met,”⁴ then the telling passage from Psalm 47: “He shall choose our inheritance for us.”

Robert Wilson’s motion carried.

Present at the meeting was Hudson Taylor. So Amy was not surprised to find herself traveling in September to the China Inland Mission offices in London. The D.O.M. escorted her. Their hostess was Henrietta Soltau, who took charge of all women candidates for missionary work. To honor Robert Wilson, Amy signed the papers “Amy Wilson Carmichael.” After the D.O.M. left for Broughton Grange, Henrietta helped Amy settle into her room at one of their residences on Pyrland Road.

Suddenly Amy blurted, “Some people are saying that if I leave Robert Wilson, he will pine away and die. Under such dire circumstances, should I go?”

“Yes, even under such circumstances you should go.” And Henrietta hugged Amy.

Geraldine Guinness, a thirty-year-old woman, also befriended Amy. Geraldine was well known in missionary circles. Her father and mother ran the East London Institute for Home and Foreign Missions, mercifully known as “Harley House.” Geraldine was on leave from China, where she had labored since 1888. She was very bright and, like Amy, gifted at writing. It was rumored she would eventually marry Hudson Taylor’s son, Howard. Amy and Geraldine had heart-to-heart conversations. Amy confessed her worry over leaving Robert Wilson. Geraldine had secret worries, too.

“Never weaken,” whispered Geraldine once, and slipped a bit of folded paper into Amy’s hand.

Back in her room, Amy read a message on the outside of the folded paper, “Love and deepest sympathy, my dear Amy, and many thanks for your precious helpful words yesterday.”⁵ Amy unfolded the paper. It read:

Can ye?

(MARK 10:38)

Can ye drink of the cup that I drink of? and be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?

Can God?

(PSALM 78:19; MARK 10:27)

Ye shall indeed…For with God all things are possible.

Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me…Father, glorify thy name. For this cause came I unto this hour. (John 12:27–28)⁶

What a godly friend Amy had in Geraldine. And what was Geraldine’s worry? Amy, “the deep well,” never revealed it. But how at peace Amy now felt with her own future.

But then her peace was shattered.

“The doctor has not approved you for China,” Henrietta Soltau told her.

“But how can that be?”

“My dear, we can’t all be as strong as an ox.”

WOULD AMY PREPARE TO LEAVE AND THEN RETURN SHEEPISHLY TO HER LOVED ONES AGAIN AND AGAIN?

Amy felt the world had fallen on her. Was her “going forth” destined to be like that of the great missionary pioneer, William Carey? Carey had been on his ship, waiting for the crew to draw anchor and cast off for India. Instead, he and his son were cast off the ship. Then he went through weeks of agony, sheepishly shrugging his bewilderment, wondering if he would ever go to India. Oh, the pain and shame for Christ. Would Amy prepare to leave and then return sheepishly to her loved ones again and again?

Back at Broughton Grange the D.O.M. was ecstatic. “God has given me back my Isaac!”

Yet Amy was restless in the extreme. This setback simply would not do. She would never rest until she went forth. God had commanded her. When Robert Wilson saw her continued resolve, he swallowed his joy and began to help her make contacts again. On January 13, 1893, precisely one year from her commission to go forth, she was struck by the thought that her destination was Japan. So the D.O.M. wrote Reverend Barclay Buxton, who ran a mission on the west coast of Japan. Buxton was a missionary for the Church Missionary Society. However, he had in his organization missionaries of other less substantial societies, one of which was called the Japanese Evangelistic Band. When Wilson heard through Hudson Taylor that three missionary women of the China Inland Mission were sailing for Shanghai, Amy jumped at the opportunity to have travel companions. She was going to wait for Buxton’s reply, not in Broughton Grange but in Shanghai!

No one could dissuade her.

On March 3, 1893, Amy sailed aboard the middling steamer SS Valetta. She did not have funds to travel the luxurious Peninsula & Oriental line, even in second class. She was drained. First, she had endured a tearful farewell in Manchester with mother and brothers and sisters. Then she had withstood an elaborate but emotional farewell in London with Hudson Taylor and other officials. Then at the port of Tilbury she had weathered another heartbreaking parting with Robert Wilson. To her dismay, as the ship cast off, Robert Wilson was able to stroll along the dock for half a mile, all the while reciting Scriptures that tore at her heart. They exchanged soul-wrenching hymns until Amy’s throat was raw from tension. She was sensitive anyway. She could scarcely bear to see a butterfly falter. A lame sparrow buckled her knees.

“Never again do I want to suffer such an emotional gauntlet,” she declared to herself.

She felt broken. But not too broken to record the date in her flyleaf and the phrase “He Goeth Before,” alluding to John 10:4: “And when he putteth forth his own sheep, he goeth before them, and the sheep follow him: for they know his voice.” She was compelled to make herself useful. She offered her services to the captain. He humored her by asking for a fresh Bible verse every day. She cheerfully obliged. But soon Amy was part of a Bible class with the other missionaries and a few passengers. One passenger she actually seemed to pull to Christ. Surely one soul was worth a thousand such trips, although she remembered not to credit the conversion to her one “hammer blow.”

In the Mediterranean Sea, the ship was battered by a vicious storm. It seemed almost a test from God. She remembered reading John Wesley’s journal entries about the storm he encountered at the age of thirty-two in the Atlantic. Fear petrified him, while German Moravians aboard ship with Wesley were in total peace. It was then he knew his faith in God was a sham. He had to rejuvenate his faith later. And what of Amy, age twenty-five? Some of her fellow passengers were trembling in terror.

“Yet I feel no fear whatever,” she said in wonder.

She was at total peace! The freedom from fear made it seem a very fruitful voyage. Besides, there were few things Amy liked better than the companionship of other devout Christians. She marveled at that one-hundred-mile wonder, the Suez Canal. And who could not notice the peculiar transformation of the British passengers? At Port Said they all purchased sun helmets or “topees,” the inexperienced travelers buying old-fashioned oversized pith helmets, the experienced travelers buying more fashionable head wear. No self-respecting Briton would be without a head covering in the tropics. Passengers laughed uproariously at the gully-gully man who came aboard to entertain them with magic tricks. But they were laughing at him, for Port Said seemed to mark the beginning of complete disdain for all dark skin.

THE FREEDOM FROM FEAR MADE IT SEEM A VERY FRUITFUL VOYAGE.

In April, the SS Valetta sailed into the Indian Ocean toward Ceylon. Nearly all voyages to the Far East stopped at this British colony.

“Land ho!” yelled one of the crewmen.

The distant horizon sprouted a dark bluish halo, which gradually transformed into a cap of green that grew into a lush landscape. They anchored in the harbor at Colombo, the capital city of the island of Ceylon. The English, who ruled that part of the world, talked as if there was no difference between Ceylon and its giant neighbor, India. But Amy was sure they were quite distinct. The people of Ceylon were predominantly Buddhists. The Indians were Hindus and to a lesser degree Muslims.

“At last the exotic East!” yelped one of the passengers as they disembarked.

Tall, swaying palms flagged the sky everywhere above a city that seemed a great garden. The air was hot and humid and heavy. The pungent odors of spices and sweat flooded Amy’s nose. Shouting merchants, dinging bells, buzzing flies, and hammering shoemakers assaulted her ears. Movement was everywhere: people, pastries, sacks of grain. And such a kaleidoscope of colors: dark skins, ivory teeth, glittering jewelry, enameled boxes, combs, silks, brocades, merchants wrapped in various bright colors. Many of the men were half-naked with only their waists covered. The missionaries were whisked off in rickshaws pulled by men in harness, like draft animals. They rode to a mission where they were served breakfast.

Everyone at the mission made much of Keswick, and it seemed that many knew of the Keswick meetings. Amy was known as the “Keswick missionary.” She was so emboldened, she played the organ and led the others in one of her favorite Keswick hymns. Inspired by the words of dying Samuel Rutherford: “Glory, glory dwelleth in Immanuel’s land,” the hymn was called “The Sands of Time Are Sinking.”

The sands of time are sinking,

the dawn of heaven breaks;

the summer morn I’ve sighed for—

the fair, sweet morn awakes.

Dark, dark hath been the midnight,

but day-spring is at hand,

and glory, glory dwelleth

in Immanuel’s land.⁷

Amy next played another Keswick favorite, Frances Havergal’s “Like a River Glorious” and its promise of Isaiah’s “perfect peace.” How relaxed Amy was. Yes, a life of trusting Christ did give perfect peace. The Lieschings, correspondents with the Carmichael family, were there in Colombo, too, to express the hope Amy would join their Heneratgoda Village Mission in Ceylon.

Another missionary said earnestly, “Perhaps the Lord will send you back again soon.”

HE WAS A TROUBLED MAN, AND TO AMY’S AMAZEMENT, HER CONVERSATIONS WITH HIM RESTORED HIS FAITH AND BROUGHT HIM TO CHRIST.

Somewhat startled by their interest, which seemed eerily prophetic, she boarded the Sutlej, a ship far inferior to the Valetta. Because Amy was not going on to India, Britain’s “crown jewel,” she had to change ships. The squalor aboard the Sutlej was no worse than the conditions she had suffered in Manchester. She conquered the insufferable smallness of her compartment by sleeping on deck. In the minute cabin she hung a piece of paper on which she had written Paul’s “In every thing give thanks.” As usual Amy offered her services to the captain. He was a troubled man, and to Amy’s amazement, her conversations with him restored his faith and brought him to Christ.

“You not only live your faith,” he said, “but I see Christ in you.”

Again Amy reminded herself not to take credit for the one “hammer blow.” Still, she instructed the captain and arrived in Shanghai with her heart singing. How many people were waiting for a witness? She urged the captain not to backslide and left with the other missionaries to go to the China Inland Mission. Awaiting her there was a letter from Barclay Buxton. He was ecstatic that she was joining him and his wife. They had recently lost several workers, and in their province they had to evangelize more than one thousand villages! Mr. Buxton assured Amy that he cared nothing about denominational differences, even quoting the Keswick motto: “All one in Christ Jesus.”

The morning of April 25, 1893, on the steamer Yokohama Maru, Amy arrived in Shimonoseki, Japan. The Sea of Japan was known for its calmness, yet the steamer was caught in a storm in the Tsushima Strait and could not anchor in the harbor. Amy had to be lowered into a heaving tug to make it to shore. There a missionary from the Japanese Evangelical Band was supposed to pick her up. But all she encountered were gesticulating, chattering Japanese. What were they supposed to do with this young woman, so frail and pale? Amy could not help but laugh at the absurdity of her circumstances. Finally, an American was attracted to the frantic situation. He surmised that her contact had been waylaid by the storm and had a rickshaw take her to a local mission.

“It will all work out,” said the American.

It was at the mission that Amy had an experience reminiscent of the great David Livingstone’s when he first arrived at a mission in Africa: The various missionary societies were bickering with each other, and the missionaries squabbled among themselves. “All one in Christ” seemed a foreign concept to them. “Well, good heavens,” said one woman indignantly to Amy, “you didn’t think all missionaries love each other, did you?”

“Actually, I did,” replied Amy.

Shimonoseki was the westernmost town on the island of Honshu, by far the largest island of Japan. Shimonoseki had more than one hundred thousand people. Nearby was the giant city of Hiroshima. Much of the island was mountainous, so the inhabitants crowded along the lowlands bordering the Sea of Japan. A seemingly endless series of small towns hugged the northern coast of Honshu, which stretched for 150 miles to Matsuye. One never seemed really away from a town, and in that way Japan seemed like southern England. The people cultivated rice and vegetables to eat with the bream and mackerel they netted from the sea.

Christianity had been introduced to Japan as early as 1549 by the Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier. At first, the Japanese feudal warlords—the shoguns—were receptive, allowing several hundred thousand Japanese to be converted from their peculiarly lifeless mix of Buddhism and Shintoism. But the shoguns soon became alarmed at the rapid conversions. By 1612, they looked the other way as Christians were massacred. By 1624, foreigners were not permitted to remain in Japan at all.

“By the second half of the nineteenth century,” one missionary explained, “the pendulum had swung back the other way, and now Japan madly embraces Western traditions.”

Feudalism had been replaced by a powerful emperor. Education, industry, the military, politics, and every other aspect of Japanese life seemed to be in the process of being Westernized. In 1872, primary education was mandated. By 1879, the university system was started for higher education. Christianity was allowed, but the tolerance was not easy to understand. Shintoism was the state religion, which emphasized worship of the divine emperor and the racial superiority of the Japanese. Was Christianity being tolerated only until the Japanese had modernized themselves? And why was Japan so anxious to modernize?

“They see what the Europeans and Britain have done with modern weapons,” said one cynical missionary. “They see how these small Western countries have built colonial empires to enrich themselves.”

“Yes,” agreed another, “and the Japanese take Britain as their dearest model.”

The current political system, with its Western-style cabinet, a prime minister, and a privy council, was an invention of the emperor and his advisors. The new constitution, based on extensive research in Europe and America, was initiated in 1889. Any resemblance to a democracy or a republic was an illusion. The emperor and his advisors were in complete control.

“Just as Britain prospers so mightily from her ‘crown jewel,’ India,” said one of the missionaries, “so does Japan intend to prosper from a ‘crown jewel’ of her own.”

“China,” grumped someone, as if this conversation had occurred many times before.

“Oh, don’t worry Amy so,” said another. “The simple folks she will see in Matsuye know nothing of this empire building and all its intrigue.”

“Yes, you’ll have enough to do, young lady, to learn the language,” said one.

Amy had to agree. All this speculation scarcely affected an English missionary or the average Japanese. And at the moment she had to learn the language. Long ago the Chinese taught the Japanese their method of writing by characters, or ideograms. Each Chinese character represented one particular word. Eventually the Japanese began using Chinese characters as phonetic symbols, each representing one syllable.

“That sounds very logical,” said Amy in admiration.

The sounds of the Japanese language had only five vowels and nineteen consonants. Some sounds had no English equivalents. Their r was a result of flapping the tip of the tongue far forward in the mouth. Their f, produced with the lips not touching each other, was to Amy almost indistinguishable from their h. Some syllables were emphasized in Japanese by differing the pitch or tone, but the language was not a highly complex tonal language like Chinese.

“That’s good to know,” said Amy.

But the more she learned of the Japanese language, the more confounded she was by its complexity. Japanese vocabulary was very imprecise regarding the “visual.” For example, the word aoi meant either “blue,” “green,” or “pale.” On the other hand, Japanese was much more precise regarding sensations of hearing and touching. It seemed every circumstance had its own unique word.

THE MORE SHE LEARNED OF THE JAPANESE LANGUAGE, THE MORE CONFOUNDED SHE WAS BY ITS COMPLEXITY.

“The word for rain falling varies according to what kind of surface it falls on!” said one missionary in an exasperated voice.

And then came the worst of all: Japanese grammar. The usual order of words in a sentence was subject, object, and verb. Modifiers usually preceded the words they modified. Nouns had neither gender nor number. No articles or prepositions, as known in the English language, were used. The verb had no number, no person, and no tense as understood by the British. Still, the use of the verb had to indicate whether or not the action was completed.

“It sounds so difficult,” admitted Amy. “But surely, after I have a chance to practice, it will get easier.”

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