The beginning of the Dohnavur Fellowship (part 2 of 3)

The time appointed

Little by little, Amy began to see in operation a surrendered life. In the precious years she had to learn God’s dealings with her life. He made her understand that he needed her life for the fulfilment of his purpose, and now she was entering into a further step of response to that vocation. The street work in Belfast and Manchester, the mission work in Japan and Ceylon, had been an interlude, sometimes a difficult period of constraint, in which she bowed her will to the demands of uncongenial conditions. The impetuous girl from Millisle, now fully at peace with God, looked steadfastly ahead. Her vocation was tested and tried. She knew now what to do and what it cost, ready to go anywhere, dare anything and face any hardship lying ahead, with the one and only attraction, the Cross.

899. Ploughed Under, 145.
900. The Continuation of a Story, 37.
901. As one of her brothers once said about her. In Amy Carmichael of Dohnavur, 22.

902. In the introduction of M. Warburton Booth, Take This Child (London: Marshall, Morgan & Scott, 1926), 2–3. Mary Warburton Booth was the founder of the Gorakphur Nurseries Fellowship in Uttar Pradesh, north India. About this nursery Amy wrote: ‘The Gorakphur Nursery is one of the greatest joys our Father has given to Dohnavur’ (in the introduction of Warburton Booth, Take This Child, 2).

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On 16 June 1900, Rev. Thomas Walker with his itinerating band of men and Amy with the women arrived in Dohnavur,⁹⁰³ where they settled in a decrepit missionary compound next to the village and Amy used the bungalow (Figure 12), built in 1839, as her home.⁹⁰⁴ So Amy’s last move had been made to a village some 15 miles south of Tinnevelly. In the 18th century, a great wave of conversion to Christianity, Catholic and non-Catholic, swept Tinnevelly. Whole villages were converted, and new villages founded, composed solely of new converts. Christians became a power to reckon with, and from the Muslim and Hindu side came a lot of opposition, intimidation, violence and destruction of prayer houses. This gave rise to the establishment of ‘villages of rescue’, modelled after the cities of refuge set up by Joshua in the promised land. In 1802 there was a new mass conversion in the Tinnevelly district. This was seen by non-Christians as an act of disloyalty to the EIC’s Raj. In India, Tinnevelly was one of the most important centres of old and wealthy Brahman power, and by any means they tried to prevent the growth of the Christian communities. Dohnavur was one of the ‘villages of rescue’. Rev. Rhenius had established Dohnavur in 1827.⁹⁰⁵

Often during her itinerary work she had visited and stayed in Dohnavur for a while. At that time, a CMS missionary, Mr Storr from Australia, held in Dohnavur classes of divinity, but overstrained by the work he left the place and would not return. Walker was asked to hold the classes in Dohnavur. ‘Dohnavur, then, in our eyes was simply a centre for evangelistic work, nothing more. It was a bare place. There was not a flower anywhere’, and when Amy arrived there it was just ‘an open compound in jungle-land’.⁹⁰⁶ To reach the Dohnavur area, a two-day journey by ox-cart was necessary. It was not easy to reach the compound, which was situated far away from the main roads. Amy was sure that the Lord himself showed her this place, a ‘place of songs’.⁹⁰⁷ She cried to the Lord, ‘Lord, what wilt Thou have me do?’ She continued:

There in that secret place, that which had seemed impossible to do was done, the group of girls and young women already in being, was fashioned into a fellowship simple but recognized as the very core of the spirit of the work at Dohnavur. And a new quickening was granted to us all, a new love.

This humble work she took as ‘royal service’; there was:

[N ]o distinction of rank, all were one. […] Sometimes we think our God must have been looking for something very small when He chose us to do this work for Him in India. But such a life asks for a clear cut separation from the things that are not of the Father. The two lives will not mix.⁹⁰⁸

903. Walker of Tinnevelly, 273.

904. The bungalow was renovated in 1946.

905. Rev. Charles Theophilus Ewart Rhenius (1790–1838) was a German-born first CMS missionary for India. With various compulsive options before him, he chose to be a missionary in an alien land after his formal seminary studies in Berlin. His compassion for the people of other religions made him befriend many Jains and Hindus, who whole-heartedly came forward to support his social service. During his period of stay in Palayamkottai, they usurped a mass movement among the people belonging to the Nadar caste, which earned him the name Apostle of Tinnevelly. His determination to give a proper translation of the Bible in the Tamil language propelled him to do a new translation, which he completed only up to the New Testament. He was a pioneer in writing a grammar book for Tamil, only to be later overshadowed by the work of Bishop Robert Caldwell. Still, I would consider Rhenius’s grammar more practical. His book is handy for anyone who is desirous of learning Tamil. Rev. Rhenius’s uncompromising attitude towards the Christian lifestyle and worship earned him hostilities from many quarters and, as a result, the same organisation that handpicked him to work in India terminated his service. Later, to earn a pension from CMS (the widow of Rev. Rhenius and his son were also employees of the CMS), he had to obey the CMS and, as a result, the chances of recording the justification for his standoff became very remote. Anglican historians who wrote books on Indian Christianity do not give due recognition to the missionary work of Rev. Rhenius (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._T._E._Rhenius).

906. Amma’s Book, 49, and Ponnamal, 31.
907. Walker of Tinnevelly, 273.
908. From the Forest, 72 and 73.

Source: © J. (Hans) Kommers.

FIGURE 12: Amy’s bungalow in Dohnavur.

Carefully she sought her Father’s will. In September 1900 she read Matthew 18:5, ‘Whoever receives one such child in My name receives Me’. In the margin we read her words: ‘Read, Sep. 29.1900 when waiting for guidance about little … [here follows a name in Tamil]’.⁹⁰⁹ Amy tells:

We were in Pannaivilai, on the eastern side of the district, when our first child came. We had been working for a year round Dohnavur on the west, and had just returned to our headquarters, when she escaped from the temple house and was brought to us. If we had been a few hours later, she would have been taken back to the temple house by the Christian woman who found her wandering about looking for me in the village. As we had arrived, she brought her to us. Wasn’t that a blessed happening? […] After a year or so we returned to Dohnavur, only intending to stay there for a short time, for we were itinerating all over the district, and never stayed long anywhere. But in 1904 the temple children’s work began, and Dohnavur became our real home.⁹¹⁰ Now, the village of Dohnavur is a place with a bustling population, Hindu temples and the like, but in Amy’s time it was a more secluded place.

Amy was often asked to write down the story of how the DF started, what it was that held the group of Indian and European women and men together and what the connection still was with the CEZMS,

909. In Amy’s Bible (1895), in the margin of Matthew 18:5.

910. Cf. A.D., Until The Shadows Flee Away, 208.

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with Keswick and with the Anglican Church. In 1932 Gold Cord⁹¹¹ came from the press. For her Indian friends Amy gave in 1947 a short explanation how the Fellowship had started and what the aim of the Fellowship was when she wrote The Starry Cluster:⁹¹²

The Starry Cluster began to be in 1897. This name was given by the Tamil people to the little company of Indian workers who, with as sister from England, worked together in the villages of South India. […] So the Starry Cluster was not a thing planned by man. It was called by the Lord. It was not a thought of man. It was a thought of God. And those who composed it had only one thing to do when they were called: ‘When he called them they said, Here we be’.⁹¹³ Early in the morning Amy with the other ladies went to the rivers and the wells where they talked with the women about the things eternal. In the afternoons:

[W ]e were at that time spending our time in the Presence of the Lord, reading His Book, and seeking His light upon our path Gradually it was as if in a new way the Sovereignty of our Lord Jesus Christ shone forth. His last wish became our law, customs which had bound some of us fell off like withered leaves from a tree when the sap springs up and flows through its branches. What will people say? eased to be a question that mattered. And we learned to be deaf to the praise and the blame of men. […] And we came to understand that our place was in the fifth rank of God’s army. We saw our calling ‘to be not on the lines of anything which the world sets up as important’. […] We were things which are of no account whatever, that no flesh should glory in His Presence. […] For some years the work appointed was that we should travel from place to place and witness to all who would listen. […] It was very wonderful and beautiful to see the heavenly Sunrise break suddenly on a soul that had been in the dark all its life.⁹¹⁴ It was not always easy for the band members to reach the high-class Brahman women, who from their side did not show any interest in the Gospel. The work thrilled Amy in the very core of her heart, and she longed to ‘enter’ into the hearts of the people. The members of the band were not promised money or other benefits. Never did Amy sugar-coat this work to attract more helpers; Christianity would cost the people something. For nearly seven years, Amy travelled around with the Starry Cluster, often sowing in tears and weeping, making known the Gospel to all who were willing to hear. At about that time, July 1899, Mr Wilson asked Amy to come back, but for her there was no drawing back. Mr Wilson understood and rested in the will of God.

In 1901 while Amy was itinerating with Thomas Walker and his wife, guidance came to return to the eastern side of the district for a while. Amy tells the story of what happened on 06 March 1901: ‘our first temple child was given to us’:

We prayed for clear direction as to the day when we should journey via Palamcottah to Pannaivilai where we had worked before, and believing that guidance was given, early in March we set forth as usual by bullock cart at night, spent a day at Palamcottah, and arrived next morning is Pannaivilai, to find something that was to lead to an undreamed-off turn of the road. The day after our arrival, so exact was the direction we received, a child of seven escaped from a temple house in the village of Perungkulam [Great Lake] and was brought to us. […] And though the

911. Amy’s friends wanted to know how it began ‘and they asked for something that would link up the stories already written: the beads should be strung on some sort of cord, they said. (That is why some of the Dohnavur books are mentioned in their years.) Others asked for another kind of cord. “What holds you together?” they asked; and we answered, “A gold cord”’ (in foreword of Gold Cord, III).

912. The Starry Cluster is the Indian name of the Dohnavur Fellowship. The booklet written under the name The Starry Cluster is not published officially. It was written for the Indian public to answer the many questions people had asked about the existence of the Fellowship. A copy of the booklet is in the Dohnavur library.

913. The Starry Cluster, 1. The thought is from an old book, read by Walker of Tinnevelly: ‘The stars shined in their watches and were glad: when He called them.’

914. The Beginning of a Story, 3; The Starry Cluster, 2 and 3.

Gospel work in the villages continued for some years longer, gradually it became impossible to travel, for ‘children tie the mother’s feet,’ and the feet of all who give themselves to help them. […] From this so small beginning grew that which is known as the Dohnavur Fellowship. A kindly Bishop gave it a lovely name – The beloved Community. Our Indian friends continue to call it by the shining name they gave it fifty years ago [this was written in 1947].⁹¹⁵ Several times in her itinerating work, Amy came across children who she knew belonged to the temple. She tried hard to save them, but always in vain. Was it for her to set up rescue work for them? It would mean her work in India would take another direction. These questions puzzled her:

In the Autumn of 1903, when my comrades, Mr and Mrs Walker had to go to England, I was much alone with the Lord Jesus. It was then that the burden of the little Temple children pressed so heavily that I could not bear it any longer- ‘Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do’? I asked, and the answer came quite clearly: ‘Search for the little lost lambs with Me’. And so the work began.⁹¹⁶ Her research into what really happened in the temples with the temple girls continued and often she was confronted with horrible things. An entry in her private notebook goes as follows:

Heard that the child had been married (to the god), had lived for a year, then died in such agony that the one who was responsible fled from the house with his hands over his ears to shut the sound of her screams.⁹¹⁷ Once in Joyous City (Kalakadu), Amy with the Starry Cluster came to a large rectangular pool surrounded by stone walls in which beautiful lotus lilies grew. The flowers, the local people told them, belonged to the temple and could not be gathered to make a nice bundle for home decoration. In a flash Amy saw the picture of the little buds lifting their innocent faces to the light. They were sacred, but to whom? It came in her mind ‘All souls are Mine’ and then Amy saw the temple children as ‘lotus buds gathered by a hand that had no right to them, and crushed underfoot’, and there she consecrated herself again to gather some of those flowers and offer them to their true owner.

It was very difficult to start the work – few were interested in the temple children – but Amy had some Indian friends who cared as she did and soon a pastor who had saved a baby brought the child to her. Once a baby was in the hands of the temple women it was nearly out of reach to be saved. Children were given when the mother had made a vow; sometimes the gift was hereditary, sometimes a child was given in order to escape from some entanglement or a poor widow was unable to marry her child suitably or a baby was very ‘fair to look upon’ and well worth adoption.⁹¹⁸ Selling children was illegal, but laws were hardly operative. Many of these evils happened in darkness and in secret. The Indians were not prepared to give up an old custom. Women who were urged not to give their young daughters to the temple could answer: it is necessary ‘to continue the succession’.⁹¹⁹ Ponnamal had given up the idea of saving those children in peril, but could not dismiss the thought of the terrible fate for these temple children:

Thoughts about them were rising round me like a sea of waters that rose above my head. I could not push those thoughts away; I saw the perishing children, I heard them call.

What to do? She did not know, only she knew ‘she had to try again’.⁹²⁰

915. The Starry Cluster, 3 and 4.

916. The Beginning of a Story, 3.

917. In Amy Carmichael of Dohnavur, 128. Amy had read Mayo’s Mother India and she knew the appalling death rate of young girls who were married to the gods and then obliged to have sexual intercourse while their very young bodies were not mature enough. Many girls died because of the mutilation of their sexual organs and the internal wounds (see Mayo, Mother India, chapter IV and V and Appendix I, 365–366).

918. See The Beginning of a Story, 5.
919. Lotus Buds, 330.
920. From the Forest, 20.

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Source: © Dohnavur Fellowship. Permission to reproduce was obtained from Jeremiah Rajanesan. Photographer unknown. FIGURE 13: Babies in Dohnavur.

Within one week, the first temple baby (Figure 13) was brought to her. She did not know that here in Dohnavur they:

[W ]ere on the edge of new things, and must soon stop our usual work […] carve a path through the jungle, where all the way along sharp thorns would be ready to stab us as we passed – a pass ending in what? New responsibilities, graver, heavier, than any we had ever undertaken. No, not ending there – ending in joy, blessed eternal over-flowings, in exhaustible wells of delight.⁹²¹ After several years, Amy had received little ones from 29 widely separated districts who were now safe in Dohnavur and many Indian Christians and missionaries were on the lookout for these children. So at last, Amy received support for her work. There was no doubt anymore that these children really existed and that something should be done for them. Even orthodox Hindus helped her.⁹²² By January 1904 she was settled in Dohnavur, where she now cared for 17 children.

In Lotus Buds we can read the moving stories of how the children came under Amy’s wing in Dohnavur. The old Tamil expression ‘children tie their mother’s feet’ became for Amy a reality. Now with the growing number of children in Dohnavur it became more and more impossible for Amy to continue the itinerary work, which forced her to be absent for several days to some weeks. For her it was a difficult choice to be a missionary or to become a full-time mother. Having given up marriage, now she would be a ‘mother’ of many children. Should she continue evangelism or was the Lord asking her to obey and care for the

921. From the Forest, 38–39.

922. The Beginning of a Story, 6–7. children? By that time, Walker had to stay in Dohnavur to teach divinity students. It became clear for Amy that she too had to stay to be there for the children. In August 1902, she wrote: ‘Oh, I am getting so hungry for another child!’ She was beginning to see that she must allow her feet to be tied ‘for the sake of Him whose feet were once nailed’.⁹²³ Now the search for children who were in peril could be intensified and on 01 March 1904, the first temple baby, 13 days old, was in Amy’s arms. Preena was to give the name and she called the baby Amethist. Gradually more babies were rescued and soon the total number was 30. Mrs Walker, back from furlough, writes, ‘Since we came here a month ago I can truthfully say [Amy] has scarcely had leisure even to eat. She is mother, doctor and nurse, day and night’.⁹²⁴

Mr Wilson died on 19 July 1905, a day Amy called ‘Fatherie’s Glory Day’. Mr Wilson, and others, had tried to break through her defences and persuade her to come home. He felt more and more helpless and dependent. In one letter he wrote, ‘I hope thou wilt not let my present condition disturb any arrangements’ and in the next, ‘Do thy diligence to come to me before winter’, words which she could not read afterwards ‘without a pang’.⁹²⁵ She did not come before winter, that winter or any winter. Evangelically correct as Amy had been since 1892, in this instance one feels that although she was not exactly hiding behind one obligation to absolve her from another, she was caught in a most painful dilemma, with suffering the result whatever her choice. It had again been in Keswick that she had devoted herself to the work of God, now to India, strong in another’s strength. Like a true determined Irish Presbyterian, she determined ‘to do or dee’. ‘The strong man and the waterfall channel their own path’, as the proverb puts it:

I could not be sure that for me to be with him would mean blessing or joy for him. If God wanted me here and I was there, how could it mean that? […] Arulai Accal was a little girl then God gives mother-love to the one who has gone through travail for a soul. How could I leave her?⁹²⁶ Amy was aware that her whole life, her decisions where to go and what to do, every part of her life was under the scrutiny of God. In every detail God’s grace was sufficient, so taking up new challenges could only be done after long prayer and any practice undertaken had to be in keeping with a holy God. In listening to the Scriptures she became a true disciple. For months Amy did not really know what was God’s will: to go to the DOM or to stay. At last this came:

The Master’s word was brought to me this morning early: ‘He that loveth son or daughter more than Me, is not worthy of Me’, ‘Bind the sacrifice with cords even unto the horn of the altar’ no drawing back. Amen, may it be so in the strength He gives. It is well to have some gift of value to present to Him who gave His all for our redemption. Praise Him.

From that day on till the end there was no drawing back. The date of that letter was July 1899.⁹²⁷ Amy was against the system of paid missionaries. She continues in her letter:

India needs another type, at present all too rare, and we want try it to show it to her – men and women trained to a glad readiness for all manner of service, with their hearts set, not upon pay, but upon pleasing God, and able, as was St. Paul, to support themselves by service of work other than that called religious’. Such a life does not attract great crowds of willing workers. To have ‘faith in God’ those will experience ‘they that seek the Lord shall not want any good thing’. In Dohnavur they experienced it, ‘to work on these lines is no impossible ideal, as the joyful devotion of many of our Indian comrades constantly reminds us’.

923. See Elliot, A Chance to Die, 150.
924. In Elliot, A Chance to Die, 156.
925. Amy Carmichael of Dohnavur, 108; Roots, 47.
926. Amma’s Book, 47.

927. Amma’s Book, 48. Here Amy adds, ‘Dear children, do not forget, not one Sittie, nor one Annachie has been given to you without cost.’

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The girls and the boys ‘are His, and we are His, and out of us all, united in a joyous harmony, we want it to be possible for God to form something for His glory; that here among all castes, both high and low (as India counts caste), in spite of the presence of a most triumphant Hinduism, He may draw unto Himself jewels for His crown’.

The workers had a willingness to do anything joyfully, ‘so we had to start in ourselves to show the way’. In a special sense the DF compound would become home for many children, girls and boys, a ‘village of rescue’.

‘Drawn as by an angel’s hand’

We have already read about Amy’s investigation into the fate of children dedicated to the temples. Now we zoom in on the actual start of the DF.

‘The story of the beginning of the work among Temple children is very simple. On 06 March 1901, our first Temple child was given to us’; with these words Amy starts the story of what would be known as the Dohnavur Fellowship.⁹²⁸ The search for the ‘little lost lambs’ had begun:

For three years it was a vain search. We could not find the source from which the children, trained to be Temple children, were drawn. It was a bitter time. There were days when the sky turned black for me because of what I heard and knew was true.⁹²⁹ What had happened? On 06 March 1901 a 7-year-old girl called Preena entered the mission station and begged for help. She had run away from the nearby temple. Her parents had sold her for ‘service’ but she did not want to stay there. Having already attempted once before to run away to her home, some 20 miles away, she had been returned and subjected to the punishment of being tied to a stone and having her hands branded with hot irons. Amy was thus to uncover one of the ugliest hidden sores of Mother India’s body – the secret traffic of temple boys and girls:

When first, upon 07 March 1901, we heard from the lips of a little child the story of her life in a Temple house, we were startled and distressed, and penetrated with the conviction that such a story ought to be impossible in a land ruled by a Christian Power. The subject was new to us; we knew nothing of the magnitude of what may be called ‘The Secret Traffic of India’– a traffic in little children, mere infants oftentimes, for wrong purposes.⁹³⁰ ‘And so began that which was afterwards to be the Dohnavur Fellowship’.⁹³¹ And also began ‘the year which we look back upon as the year of beginning of battles’.⁹³²

Since 06 March 1901, on the sixth day of the month in the evening, the Fellowship members meet in the House of Prayer. New ones, who have been rescued are brought in and dedicated to the Lord. There is always prayer these evenings for children in danger. The names of the temple towns in southern India are mentioned, and as each name is spoken, all join in the petition: ‘Lord, save the children there’.

928. The Beginning of a Story, 3.
929. Amma’s Book, 48.
930. Lotus Buds, 249.
931. ‘Notes on Photographs’, in Ploughed Under, VI.

‘Houses closed, also the people closed upon the eager, earnest, little hearts of the children. Facts form the fuel with which missionary fervour is fired and fed.’ This statement applies fully to the work, which would be Amy’s life’s work. Amy did a deep research into what was happening behind the thick walls of the temples and she discerned at length the first streaks of dawn in the hidden darkness. Confidently she asserted that now she had brought to light what in missionary operations had been lying dormant in the minds of other missionaries and was now transformed into a year-long mission enterprise. Where she did not find a way to enter ‘unknown lands’, she made a way herself. The accursed obscene practices with children in the temples were not less than a ‘hell’s living’⁹³³ for them. And here God touched her heart, and alongside the love, and fervour and simplicity God gave her the practical ability and insight, wide knowledge, the readiness to do the things that had to be done and the invincible devotion to the work she now had undertaken; this characterised Amy Carmichael.