2. Always a Soldier
Always a Soldier
LIFE IS A JOURNEY; it is a climb; it is also and always a war. The soldier of the Lord of Hosts is always a soldier. He dare not drivel down to any other kind of life.
WE CAN’T BE ENTANGLED in the affairs of this life if we are to be real soldiers. By its affairs I mean its chatter and its ways of thinking and deciding questions, its whole aspect and trend.
WHAT DO WE KNOW of travail? Of tears that scald before they fall? Of heartbreak? Of being scorned? God forgive us our love of ease. God forgive us that so often we turn our faces from a life that is even remotely like his. Forgive us that we all but worship comfort, the delight of the presence of loved ones, possessions, treasure on earth.
IN EVERY SPIRITUAL WORK for God there is need for one, several, or many (according to the size of the work) to be continually on the alert to detect the approach of the enemy of souls….
The watcher learns many things as he is taught to watch. He learns never to be tired of loving, never to be shocked or startled out of his peace in Christ, never to be astonished by anything the devil does, never for one moment to forget that though he may be baffled, his Captain is not and never can be.
I HAVE NOTICED that often the first thing attacked is peace. (I suppose in earthly war the sentinel is likely to be the first to be put out of action if possible, and peace is our sentinel.) When our peace is shattered, vital prayer ceases, and the love which was to burn and not be put out – the love that finds sheer joy in sacrifice – fails utterly. So let us guard our peace. In disturbed times we can learn that circumstances have no power whatever over peace: “When he giveth quietness, who then (what then) can make trouble?” (Job 34:29).
IT IS THE LITTLE THINGS of life, the minute, unimportant-looking things, that are most likely to shatter our peace, because they are so small that we are very likely to fight them ourselves instead of looking up at once to our strong God.
DON’T BE SURPRISED if there is attack on your work, on you who are called to do it, on your innermost nature…. It must be so. The great thing is not to be surprised, not to count it strange – for that plays into the hand of the enemy.
Is it possible that anyone should set himself to exalt our beloved Lord and not become instantly a target for many arrows? The very fact that your work depends utterly on him and can’t be done for a moment without him calls for a very close walk and a constant communion of spirit. This alone is enough to account for anything the enemy can do.
ALL THE GREAT STAINING TEMPTATIONS – to selfishness, ambition, and other strong sins that violently affront the soul – appear first in the region of the mind, and can be fought and conquered there. We have been given the power to close the door of the mind. We can lose this power through disuse or increase it by use, by the daily discipline of the inner man in things which seem small, and by reliance upon the word of the spirit of truth. “It is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:13). It is as though he said, “Learn to live in your will, not in your feelings. Will to banish that evil thing, that thought, that imagination, and I will then will in you to perform that which you most desire. Show that hateful visitor the door and I will shut and bar it upon him; he will never reach as far as the citadel of your being; your spirit shall not be defiled.”
Speaking with the utmost simplicity, I would say this means, “Do not fight the thing in detail: turn from it. Do not look at it at all, or at yourself, but only at your Lord.” Satan was vanquished by Christ on the cross; he need never conquer us…. Sing; “singing to yourselves” is a word of divine wisdom (Eph. 5:19). Read; drive your thoughts into a new channel till they run there of themselves. Work; go and help lame dogs over stiles. Resolutely do something for someone else; and as you do this in dependence on him who is the rightful Master of your house, the unwelcome visitor will vanish. The attempt of the evil one to destroy you will react upon himself, perhaps by weakening his grip on another soul, perhaps by furnishing you with the key to the confidence of one who needs your help – for all the deeper experiences of sorrow and comfort, temptation and victory, sooner or later turn to keys. You will not only conquer, you will be more than conqueror through him who loved you (Rom. 8:37).
IT IS THE ETERNAL in books that makes them our friends and teachers – the paragraphs, the verses, that grip memory and ring down the years like bells, or call like bugles, or sound like trumpets; words of vision that open to us undying things and fix our eyes on them. We are not here, they tell us, for trivial purposes…. We are not here to be overcome, but to rise unvanquished after every knock-out blow, and laugh the laugh of faith, not fear.
TRUE CONVERSION does not mean peace, but a sword, and that sword can cut to the quick (Matt. 10:34). Only those who have gone through this severance with a loving, sensitive Indian brother or sister can even begin to imagine what confession in baptism costs. There is nothing in literature that shows it except our Lord’s own words. It passes man’s. So there is nothing careless in the joy of these baptism days, and yet joy triumphs. Again and again we have seen the Lord of Life victorious in the place where his foe is most strongly entrenched, and the wide waters under the mountains, and the little shining ford have seen – can we doubt it? – companies of angels rejoicing with him and with us, as we stood, sometimes in a rich flood of sunset color when his glory covered the heavens and the earth was full of his praise.
SUDDENLY THERE WAS a tumultuous rush of every produceable sound; tom-tom, conch shell, cymbal, flute, stringed instruments, and bells burst into chorus together. The idol was going to be carried out from his innermost shrine behind the lights; and as the great doors moved slowly, the excitement became intense, the thrill of it quivered through all the hall and sent a tremor through the crowd out to the street. But we passed out and away, and turned into a quiet courtyard known to us and talked to the women there.
There were three, one the grandmother of the house, one her daughter, and another a friend. The grandmother and her daughter were temple women. The eldest grandchild had been dedicated only a few months before. There were three more children: one Mungie, a lovable child of six, one a pretty three-year-old with a mop of beautiful curls, the youngest a baby just then asleep in its hammock; a little foot dangled out of the hammock, which was hung from a rafter in the verandah roof. We had come to talk to the grandmother and mother about the dear little six-year-old child, and hoped to find their heart.
But we seemed to talk to stone, hard as the stone of the temple tower that rose above the roofs, black against the purity of the moonlit sky. It was a bitter half hour. Some hours are like stabs to remember, or like the pitiless pressing down of an iron on living flesh. At last we could bear it no longer, and rose to go. As we left we heard the grandmother turn to her daughter’s friend and say: “Though she heap gold on the floor as high as Mungie’s neck, I would never let her go to those degraded Christians!”
Once again it was festival in the white light of the full moon, and once again we went to the same old Hindu town; for moonlight nights are times of opportunity, and the cool of evening brings strength for more than can be attempted in the heat of the day. And this time an adoptive mother spoke words that ate like acid into steel as we listened.
Her adopted child is a slip of a girl, slim and light, with the ways of a shy thing of the woods. She made me think of a harebell growing all by itself in a rocky place, with stubbly grass about and a wide sky overhead. She was small and very sweet, and she slid onto my knee and whispered her lessons in my ear in the softest of little voices. She had gone to school for nearly a year, and liked to tell me all she knew.
“Do you go to school now?” I asked her.
She hung her head and did not answer.
“Don’t you go?” I repeated.
She just breathed “No,” and the little head dropped lower.
“Why not?” I whispered as softly.
The child hesitated. Some dim apprehension that the reason would not seem good to me troubled her, perhaps, for she would not answer. “Tell the Ammal, silly child!” said her foster mother, who was standing near. “Tell her you are learning to dance and sing and get ready for the gods!”
“I am learning to dance and sing and get ready for the gods,” repeated the child obediently, lifting large, clear eyes to my face for a moment as if to read what was written there.
A group of men stood near us. I turned to them. “Is it right to give this little child to a life like that?” I asked them then.
They smiled a tolerant, kindly smile. “Certainly no one would call it right, but it is our custom,” and they passed on….
We had come to the town an hour or two earlier, and had seen, walking through the throng round the temple, two bright young girls in white. No girls of their age, except temple girls, would have been out at that hour of the evening, and we followed them home. They stopped when they reached the house where little Mungie lived, and then, turning, saw us and salaamed. One of the two was Mungie’s elder sister. Little Mungie ran out to meet her sister, and, seeing us, eagerly asked for a book. So we stood in the open moonlight, and the little one tried to spell out the words of a text to show us she had not forgotten all she had learned, even though she, too, had been taken from school, and had to learn pages of poetry and the temple dances and songs.
The girls were jeweled and crowned with flowers, and they looked like flowers themselves; flowers in moonlight have a mystery about them not perceived in common day, but the mystery here was something wholly sorrowful. Everything about the children – they were hardly more than children – showed care and refinement of taste. There was no violent clash of color; the only vivid color note was the rich red of a silk underskirt that showed where the clinging folds of the white gold-embroidered sari were draped a little at the side. The effect was very dainty, and the girls’ manners were modest and gentle. No one who did not know what the pretty dress meant that night would have dreamed it was but the mesh of a net made of white and gold.
But with all their pleasant manners it was evident the two girls looked upon us with a distinct aloofness. They glanced at us much as a brilliant bird of the air might be supposed to regard poultry, fowls of the cooped-up yard. Then they melted into the shadow of an archway behind the moonlit space, and we went on to another street and came upon little Sellamal, the harebell child; and, sitting down on the verandah which opens off the street, we heard her lessons as we have told, and got into conversation with her adoptive mother.
We found her interested in listening to what we had to say about dedicating children to the service of the gods. She was extremely intelligent, and spoke Tamil such as one reads in books set for examination. It was easy to talk with her, for she saw the point of everything at once, and did not need to have truth broken up small and crumbled down and illustrated in half a dozen different ways before it could be understood. But the half-amused smile on the clever face told us how she regarded all we were saying. What was life and death earnestness to us was a game of words to her; a play the more to be enjoyed because, drawn by the sight of two Missie Ammals sitting together on the verandah, quite a little crowd had gathered and were listening appreciatively.
“That is your way of looking at it; now listen to my way. Each land in all the world has its own customs and religion. Each has that which is best for it. Change, and you invite confusion and much unpleasantness. Also by changing you express your ignorance and pride. Why should the child presume to greater wisdom than its father? And now listen to me! I will show you the matter from our side!” (“Yes, venerable mother, continue!” interposed the crowd encouragingly.) “You seem to feel it a sad thing that little Sellamal should be trained as we are training her. You seem to feel it wrong, and almost, perhaps, disgrace. But if you could see my eldest daughter the center of a thousand Brahmans and high-caste Hindus! If you could see every eye in that ring fixed upon her, upon her alone! If you could see the absorption – hardly do they dare to breathe lest they should miss a point of her beauty! Ah, you would know, could you see it all, upon whose side the glory lies and upon whose the shame! Compare that moment of exaltation with the groveling life of your Christians! Low-minded, flesh-devouring Christians, discerning not the difference between clean and unclean! Bah! And you would have my little Sellamal leave all this for that!”
“But afterward? What comes afterward?”
“What know I? What care I? That is a matter for the gods.”
The child Sellamal listened to this, glancing from face to face with wistful, wondering eyes; and as I looked down upon her she looked up at me, and I looked deep into those eyes – such innocent eyes. Then something seemed to move the child, and she held up her face for a kiss.
This is only one temple town. There are many such in the South. These things are not easy to look at for long. We turn away with burning eyes, and only for the children’s sake could we ever look again….
A medical missionary, a woman of wide experience, was talking to a younger woman about the temple children. She had lived for some time, unknowingly, next door to a temple house in an Indian city. Night after night she said she was wakened by the cries of children – frightened cries, indignant cries, sometimes sharp cries as of pain. She inquired in the morning, but was always told the children had been punished for some naughtiness. “They were only being beaten.” She was not satisfied, and tried to find out more through the police. But she feared the police were bribed to tell nothing, for she found out nothing through them. Later, by means of her medical work, she came full upon the truth.
THE THING WE FIGHT is not India or Indian, in essence or development. It is something alien to the old life of the people. It is not allowed in the Védas (ancient sacred books). It is like a parasite which has settled upon the bough of some noble forest tree – on it, but not of it. The parasite has gripped the bough with strong and interlacing roots; but it is not the bough.
We think of the real India as we see it in the thinker – the seeker after the unknown God, with his wistful eyes. “The Lord beholding him loved him,” and we cannot help loving as we look. And there is the Indian woman hidden away from the noise of crowds, patient in her motherhood, loyal to the light she has. We see the spirit of the old land there; and it wins us and holds us, and makes it a joy to be here to live for India.
The true India is sensitive and very gentle. There is a wisdom in its ways, none the less wise because it is not the wisdom of the West. This spirit which traffics in children is callous and fierce as a ravening beast; and its wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish…. And this spirit, alien to the land, has settled upon it, and made itself at home in it, and so become a part of it that nothing but the touch of God will ever get it out. We want that touch of God: “Touch the mountains, and they shall smoke.” That is why we write.
For we write for those who believe in prayer – not in the emasculated modern sense, but in the old Hebrew sense, deep as the other is shallow. We believe there is some connection between knowing and caring and praying, and what happens afterward. Otherwise we should leave the darkness to cover the things that belong to the dark. We should be forever dumb about them, if it were not that we know an evil covered up is not an evil conquered. So we do the thing from which we shrink with strong recoil; we stand on the edge of the pit, and look down and tell what we have seen, urged by the longing within us.
WE HAVE KNOWN of some little ones who, influenced by outside teaching, tried to escape the life they began to feel was wrong, but in each case they were overborne, for on the side of the oppressors there was power. I was in a temple house lately and noticed the doors – the massive iron-bossed doors are a feature of all well-built Hindu houses of the South. How could a little child shut up in such a room with its door shut, if need be, to the outside inquisitive world – how could she resist the strength that would force the garland round her neck? She might tear it off if she dared, but the little golden symbol had been hidden under the flowers, and the priest had blessed it; the deed was done – she was married to the god. And only those who have seen the effect of a few weeks of such a life upon a child, who has struggled in vain against it, can understand how cowed she may become, how completely every particle of courage and independence of spirit may be caused to disappear; and how what we had known as a bright, sparkling child, full of the fearless, confiding ways of a child, may become distrustful and constrained, quite incapable of taking a stand on her own account or of responding to any effort we might be able to make from outside. It is as if the child’s spirit were broken, and those who know what she has gone through cannot wonder if it is.
“YOU ARE FIGHTING SATAN at a point upon which he is very sensitive; he will not leave you long in peace,” wrote an experienced friend. On Palm Sunday, 1907, our first little band of young girls, fruit of this special work, confessed Christ in baptism, and we stood by the shining reach of water, and tasted of a joy so pure and thrilling that nothing of earth may be likened to it. A fortnight later we were ordered to the hills, and then the trouble came.
ANOTHER YEAR LIES BETWEEN the last chapter and this. For we can only write in odd corners of time, and sometimes time does not seem to have any odd corners. Quiet is even rarer. Just now I am sharing a room with seven very young people – the middle-aged babies we call them – and the only possible quiet is when they all elect to go to sleep together, a happiness not granted every day. The year that has passed since Indraneela left us has held some rainy days. But perhaps the little seed of the temple children’s work must be watered much before it will spring and grow.
Perhaps, if we only knew it, all sheaves have such rain at the root. But today, as I look up from the writing to the dear little seven so kindly all asleep, and then through the western window with its glorious mountain view to the other nursery where the older little ones are settling down to their midday rice and curry, and when I stop to remember just where each might have been today if things had been otherwise, then I feel no watering could be too costly, if only in the end there may be the joy of sheaves.
The joy of sheaves – we have had it already; and when the time comes to tell the South Indian temple children’s story in full, if God will, we will share it with you. The story is a story by itself. Before it can be told there must be much laborious digging in places out of sight. So we do not attempt more now than these few simple nursery chapters, written for the comfort of those, known and unknown, who are praying that something may be done. And there is larger comfort to offer: India is so great a word that in writing we confine ourselves on purpose to the South, but we rejoice to remember that elsewhere there are those whose eyes are open to look for these little children, and to work for them and save them. Soon we trust our dream will be fulfilled, and each province where the need is found to exist will have its own nursery, and its own band of volunteer Indian searchers.
For, in the South at least, the actual work of discovering the children must be done by the Indian workers. Most emphatically, no one else can do it.
LET US MAKE UP OUR MINDS to it and have done with wishing that things were easier. They are not, and they will not be. (So long as we fight Satan, he will fight us; if he does not, it will be because we are not worth fighting.)