The Missionary: ‘I was sent, so speak’ (2) (part 2 of 2)

‘Lord, I come’

What kind of person is someone going to the mission field? Terms stated for one to come are, to be sure, to be called of God, to believe Acts 1:8, and to live only for souls to bring them to Christ in order that his Name will be glorified. Once out, the devil’s favourite device is to get the missionaries engrossed in other things.

Anything but soul-winning, he says. Anything but aggressive fight. And unless the Hand of the Lord is strong upon us we shall give in, and swim with the stream. […] If He calls, then fear not, obey.2038 ‘God needs those who are ready to lay down their very lives to lead others into true soldiership and a true following of the Crucified.’2039 Once Amy was writing about what a child had said to her:

Last night I thought I was going to Heaven, and I was so glad to go. But I was suddenly sorry. I thought all the angels would look at me, and there would be tears in their eyes, because I had loved our Lord Jesus so long, and I had not brought one to Him.

Then Amy continued:

So long. […] Would the angels look at us ‘with tears’ if we went Home to-night? […] What is it that keeps so many so many from coming? Is it fear that ties the feet? Need there be any fear in a coming unto Jesus? ‘Lord, if it be Thou bid me to come unto Thee on the water’. And He said, Come …., and he walked on the water to go to Jesus.2040 Amy urges that, when there is something that holds us back to go to the mission field, then the Lord will ‘find us there where He means us to be’.2041

2035. In Trotter, Parables of the Cross (London: Marshall, Morgan & Scott and Algiers Mission Band, 1947), 17.

2036. God’s Missionary, 58.

2037. In the margin of Matthew 10:28, ‘And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul’ (in Stevens & de Witt Burton, A Harmony of the Gospels).

2038. From the Fight, 61–62.

2039. Candles in the Dark, 11.

2040. Overweights of Joy, 296.

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Oh, let us be in earnest! Life is not a play. There are playful moments in it but taken as a whole it is an awful thing – this one brief life. Do not let us play away such an opportunity. Master, if it be Thou, bid me to come unto Thee upon the water….. Lord, I come.2042 Amy had not been prepared in any formal way for mission work, neither in Japan nor in India. Are not all God’s men ordinary men made extraordinary by the matter he has given them? She moved in the ‘faithmissions’ circles, where formal training was not considered necessary, it being naively assumed that as long as the missionary’s habits of prayer, Bible reading and noticing the experiences of the day were in good order, first-hand experience would supply the rest. Nothing, however, is guaranteed, and the bill for the actual damage may be unacceptably high. For the outgoing 19th century the discussion whether a women could serve in the mission lay several decades in the past. Already in 1824 the China pioneer Robert Morrison had written:

The missionary community should consist of persons of both sexes, possessing different qualifications and places and duties in it. To assist the pagan females to understand the doctrines of the Gospel, Christian females are essential. […] Pious young women to acquire the pagan language and teach girls and grown women would be very useful.2043 Wisely, Amy began with the study of Tamil,2044 and this study saved her from being merely an enthusiast and made her into a missionary. Learning Tamil is like ‘rolling the great stone uphill’.2045 It requires tough mental discipline to gain a working knowledge of the world’s second most difficult language. Amy had to learn the 246 characters with their pronunciation, which include 18 consonants and 216 consonant-vowel combinations. The first examination was always a hurdle to surmount before being able to talk with the women and to acquire practical knowledge of the vernacular. Her experience was that at the very moment she could not find the exact words. Were it not the words, then ‘caste comes at once and make a distance between us and those to whom we would fain be as sisters’.2046 One of the snares of a young missionary is the temptation to put other things first than to tackle the inevitably difficult task of regular language study. In not mastering the language many a missionary has suffered his whole career from this great handicap of insufficient knowledge.

In later years, her grasp of the vernacular was said to have been of the highest order. There is no record of her ever having shown any further interest in classical Tamil; however, she mastered the language to be able to converse with the people, and we even have indications that she knew something of the classic literature. In one of her books, From the Fight, the headings of all the chapters have fragments of Tamil poets of more than a thousand years ago, with sometimes the remark, ‘free translation’.2047 In quoting2048 one of her colleagues:

Nothing has taken such a lasting hold of the mind of the Tamil people as the terse writings of their Moral Poets. And it is impossible to understand their thought and character without some knowledge of their stanzas.

2042. Overweights of Joy, 300.

2043. In Broomhall, Robert Morrison, 156.

2044. KCMMB, report of the Ladies Committee, March 1898, ‘The Ladies Committee thankfully report that the examination of […] and of Miss Wilson Carmichael have been successfully passed’.

2045. D. Thrower, No Looking Back (London: Grace Publications Trust, 1986), 27.

2046. Overweights of Joy, 38: ‘Oh for words to tell it as it deserves to be told. How we longed to stay with these women, to become Fort women to them, and tell them all about the love of Jesus over and over, till we could be sure they understood.’

2047. From the Fight, 6, 17, 28, 39, 51.

She agrees with the necessity of having insight into language knowledge. Her interest was with the people, and all she tried was to be able to communicate with them without many hindrances. ‘To be native all round is the goal of my ambition.’2049 She strongly emphasised the necessity of knowing the language and, not really an academic language scholar herself, she had a good working knowledge of Tamil and knew the little nuances referring to the different words to describe something.2050 About the Tamil people she says:

Their thoughts run on lines quite unfamiliar to Westerns, and the missionary, if she would be equipped for her work, must know something at least of the world of thought expressed in poem and proverb and proverbial allusion, which to the women she wants to win is a very part of themselves. […] But this knowledge is not acquired in a year, or in five. One writes humbly, Not as though I had already attained.2051 In her language study Thomas Walker coached her. In him, she not only found a good Tamil teacher, but also a spiritual leader. Knowing the country and its people was important to Amy:

The East is the home of spiritualism and hypnotism. The secrets connected with mental suggestion and subconsciousness are open secrets here. However, this wonderful old land, with its wonderful old ways, lies all round us, most of us live in it without knowing much about it. It hides itself from us. Even its language has its hidden talk, an ingenious combination of vocals and consonants worked into the colloquial. India is a cabinet of drawers, and secret drawers. We only know enough to know that we do not know.2052 She was far from lifting up the successes of missionaries and did not like missionary biographies in which a new worker trumpets almost at once that his work is very blessed. To master a difficult tongue is not child’s play. She could feel her way into the struggles of Thomas Walker2053 to master the language. Often missionaries go out with rosy ideas and on the mission field they show him a Sunday service, where it seems everything is like this. But he will – quoting Thomas Walker:

[C]arry away coloured ideas of missionary work. He ought to take a second tour, to see what is left undone. That would give the other side. […] But is it quite a mistake to think that the Christian Church has made a very great impression on heathendom yet. […] Satan still reigns in our midst.2054

The very cream of life

One day, while writing, Amy saw two pictures.2055 One was of an English fireside in a country house. Curled up in a roomy armchair by the fire was a girl with a kitten asleep on her lap. She was reading a missionary book. Did she see herself in the sitting room in Broughton Grange?2056 The other picture was this: a white carved cupola in the centre of a piece of water enclosed by white walls. People are sitting on the walls and pressing close about them in their thousands. Amy saw herself among all these people,

2049. From Sunrise Land, 118.

2050. So in The Widow of the Jewels, 18.

2051. From the Fight, 52.

2052. Overweights of Joy, 233.

2053. Cf. This One Thing, p. 18 etc.

2054. This One Thing, 21–22.

2055. Lotus Buds, 336.

2056. We know of a picture, taken in 1892, where Amy is in the garden of Broughton Grange with a kitten on her lap. Picture in Amy Carmichael of Dohnavur, 52.

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distributing Gospels. That was for her real missionary life. ‘How far out of its selfish track does it move the life into ways of sacrifice? […] Did not Calvary cost?’:

Away with the cold, calculating love that talks to itself about cost! God give us a pure passion of love that knows nothing of hesitation and grudging, and measuring, nothing of compromise! […] Is there not provision for the impossible’? […] To be filled with the Spirit means readiness for Him to take us out of our present sphere and put us anywhere away from our own choice into His choice for us.

Here, Amy quoted words spoken from a quiet women’s meeting at the recently held Keswick Convention.2057 It overwhelmed her while writing these things. She longed for Christ to be exalted in India and the Lord to be worshipped in the beauty of holiness. It was her passion, ‘just one thing I do!’2058 Missionary work is ‘not the emotion of the moment, but the passion of a lifetime’.2059 A question which always arises for a missionary before going ‘in this cross bearing life’2060 is: ‘Am I in God’s plan and path?’ Amy argued to be sure that God himself sent them to that particular field and at that particular time. ‘Believe me, the foreign field is already full enough of prophets that have run, and He did not send them.’2061 After she had been active in mission work for a year, Amy was overwhelmed by the idea of being worthy to be called a missionary. Therefore, she was less anxious about success than about being faithful, and she committed her way to the Lord alone.2062 During her whole life, she had felt safe in the firm belief in the guiding providence of God and any hindrances in God’s work might be found in us!2063 On 13 June 1894 she wrote home:

Oh is it not a magnificent thing to be privileged thus in any small measure, to spread the glorious tidings of our Blessed Lord! Praise Him, ye missionaries! Ours is the very cream of life – and yours too, dear home ones, who give and help give for surely God’s good measure, pressed down and shaken together and running over, must be yours. Mission work was to be done, looking for, and earnestly desiring the Coming, all hastening that Bridal Day. She was often down-hearted by the idea that at home so many Christians were living ‘with cold reserve’. The following lines are so appropriate concerning the missionary community in Bangalore, where one day the well-known song ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ was put rather differently by her:

Onward Christian soldiers,
Sitting on the mats!
Nice and warm and cosy
Like little pussycats.
Onward, Christian soldiers,
Oh, how brave are we!
Don’t we do our fighting
Very comfortably?

2057. Lotus Buds, 335–336.

2058. Lotus Buds, 339.

2059. The Widow of the Jewels, 91.

2060. Overweights of Joy, 58.

2061. Overweights of Joy, 58.

2062. Cf. the prayer of James Stewart on Friday 12 July 1861 on his way to Africa: ‘O God, give Thou the wisdom – the guidance I need. Thou hast led so far, lead me the rest of the way, and let such work be done as shall be to the praise of Thy name and Thy grace, and such as shall make known also Thy purposes of grace and mercy to men on earth’ (in Wells, Stewart of Lovedale, 39).

2063. Overweights of Joy, Chapter XVIII, 132–145.

In a letter from a young lady who was considering life as a missionary, Amy was asked, ‘What is a missionary life like?’ Amy wrote back, simply, ‘Missionary life is simply a chance to die’. ‘We must suffer; but He suffered and will comfort’:

A missionary on fire to see souls saved does see souls saved. But it is no less true that often the call is to enter deep into the fellowship of His sufferings.2064 ‘Who am I to do this work? Am I qualified?’ Amy learned the great lesson by knowing, by experiencing and by suffering the two words: I the poor sinner and thou my Lord, eternal, merciful Saviour. What Christ had given her, that was worthy of love. To say it in another way: you can only do mission work when you can give thanks. Giving thanks is the weakness of a child and for modern men in this 21st century it does not seem decent to be weak and to thank, let alone to thank the Lord. Amy knew her Lord and she did her work in India in the way others before her had done mission work. She nourished herself next to her Bible with the writings of many before her, who had just focused everything upon Christ’s love. The work in India overwhelmed her, but she never lost that constraining love of Christ which led her to put the eternal welfare of the people she met and the children first, always, everywhere, on him.

India is, according to Amy, a country where the secular does not appeal. The everyday work done in Dohnavur taught her a new and difficult lesson, ‘the sacredness of the commonplace’:

Day by day we learn to rub out a little more of the clear chalked line that someone has ruled on life’s blackboard: the Secular and the Spiritual may not be divided now. […] The enlightening of a dark soul or the lightening of a kitchen fire, it matters not which it is, if only we are obedient to the heavenly vision, and work with a pure intention to the glory of our God.2065 Even of her it can be said: ‘also this one was with Jesus of Nazareth’. Life and work spent totally for the Lord. The prophet Ezekiel emphasised this, when he wrote that God said this to the people of his day, ‘The nations will know that I am the Lord […] when I show myself holy through you before their eyes’ (Ezk 20:41–42). The life of the believer is the most effective factor in all gospel witness. Looking back on nearly six decades of mission work, the experience and activities of those years stirred her heart to thank God for them all. ‘Lord […] all that we have accomplished you have done for us’ (Is 26:12). A missionary has ‘to be found faithful’. ‘Praise God, it does not say “successful”. In obedience go! and the heart’s desire has to keep up with God and His plans’, and that means availability, adaptability. ‘The besetting thing of Evangelistic work is slackness.’2066

Often the difficulty in a climate where nature is reluctant to read or to pray is to maintain and to remain in communion with God. A lethargy in the cultivation of personal communion with God, in times of being ‘down’, the missionary should do well to see to his own foundations. ‘Love is our great object, love to Christ, producing love for perishing souls’.2067

Mission method

Dohnavur was a mission project on its own. Amy wanted that and wanted to keep it like that. She avoided the contact with other mission organisations. To candidates willing to serve in Dohnavur Amy

2064. Overweights of Joy, 185.

2065. Lotus Buds, 139–140.

2067. Thomas Walker in This One Thing, 23.

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carefully explained what the Fellowship really was and the way they operated day to day. She told the candidates: workers here in Dohnavur should have a lot of empathy:

The spring of the heart to heart that we call affinity, the knitting no hand can ever afterward unravel – these experiences have been granted to us all through our work together, and we thank God for it.2068 Not all mothers bear children. Although not physically, Amy ‘bore’ hundreds of children for the Lord. She loved children and children loved her. How to tell them about Jesus?:

And this was [once in Japan] what I said to Him, won’t you say it too? ‘Lord Jesus, please help me to follow so closely to Thee, that wherever I go even the little children may feel Jesus is coming, Jesus is coming’.2069 She and her fellow workers often went around evangelising in the villages which surrounded Dohnavur. This work she called ‘pilgrim work’, and often she went on foot or by bullock cart; on 22 May 1922, they prayed for a car, ‘so that we could reach the towns all round about’.2070 Wherever she possibly could, she tried to get into the houses and talk to the women alone ‘This is by far the best way to get at them; here, as elsewhere, it is soul to soul dealing which tells.’2071 She wholly distrusted mass movements, but focused on ‘individual conversions to Christ’.2072

People need the great salvation so much, and knew of so little. But what frustrated her was that people in the West were not interested at all in what was really going on in the mission field. It should not be too complicated for them. They were easily in for nice stories, stories of success, but when reality was exposed, many of the so-called interested withdrew:

In some places it seems as if this same ‘interest’ were treated as a sort of decorative afterthought to the otherwise quite complete church life. An absence of news (good news) from the front, and there is a perceptible cooling off; an honest story of defeat is told, and disencouraging results. And yet we all profess to be soldiers, with a soldier’s courage in tackling the difficult. To the onlooker, at least, it must sometimes seem that we are not very burning earnest about our soldiership. And if we call ourselves soldiers, and sing, and pray, and talk on these lines, and yet are not burning earnest, is it not possible that the thing we all agree to dislike is resident among us.2073 Amy fully depended on the Holy Ghost. ‘When the Holy Spirit has done the work of preparing the heart, very little pressing is needed.’ She was afraid of offering strange fire  –‘substituting human persuasion for Holy Ghost Power’. ‘May He keep us from such deadly dangerous sin!’2074

In Japan, where she often had to evangelise to people who mostly heard the Gospel for the first time, Amy started where the Bible starts:

Please tell just the beginnings, only of God, not yet of Christ. […] We spoke of the Creator and Preserver, and His power and love; the father – God, who made man, watched over him, loved him all his life long.2075

2068. Lotus Buds, 218.

2069. From Sunrise Land, 99.

2070. In the margin of Luke 10:1–14 in Stevens & De Witt Burton, Harmony Of The Gospels.

2071. From the Fight, 20.

2072. From the Fight, 26.

2073. Overweights of Joy, 52–53.

‘But “witness unto Me” must mean more, so we tried to explain the great Love-plan, and told of the dear and present Saviour, Who loved us and gave Himself for us.’2076 The preaching of the Cross was essential for Amy. Everything that could soften the message, she kept far from her. The worst for her was:

[T]he spirit of tolerance, which is on the increase even in missionary circles. […] India has not our historical background. […] They have not had the fight for their freedom, in the sense at least our forefathers fought; there is no Puritan blood in their veins; and so they are willing to follow the lead of almost anyone.2077 Therefore, Amy liked the way the Revs Ragland and Walker worked: straightforward and not compromising. The Lord himself will prepare such workers. Very outspoken Amy wrote:

God create them; they are not the product of theological colleges. And may God save His Missions in India from wasting His time, and money, and men, on the cultivation of what may evolve into something of no more use to creation than a new genus of jelly fish.2078 A church service had to be simple. Ecclesiastical paraphernalia:

[I]s not in accordance with the simplicity of the Gospel. […] Oh for a return to the simplicity and power of the Gospel of Christ! […] Oh for a return to the days of the beginning of the Acts of the Apostles, to obscurity, and poverty, and suffering, and shame and the utter absence of all earthly glory, and the winning of souls of a different make to the type thought sufficiently spiritual now! Oh for more of the signs of Apostleship – scars, and the cross – the real cross – the reproach of Christ the Crucified,- no mitre here, but there a crown.2079 All the work done in Dohnavur had an evangelistic character, fully consecrated by first being separated. At the Keswick Convention in 1895, she had heard A.C. Fox saying: ‘Friends, let me speak simply and plainly, you cannot live in the world and serve God. If you want to be consecrated, you must be separated’.2080 She was always waiting to see the evidence of the fruits of the Spirit. In reading about Donald Fraser, a Scottish Presbyterian, and missionary in Africa when someone said ‘I fear the Evangel which denationalises’, she wrote in the margin: ‘Why making a Presbyterian Church in Africa? The gospel would transform the society and the people themselves are able to organise their own church’.2081

Prayer: ‘Something Understood’

For this child prayed; and the Lord has given me my petition which I asked Him. Therefore also I have lent him to the Lord; as long as he lives he shall be lent to the Lord. And he worshipped the Lord there. These words in 1 Samuel 1:27–28 meant a lot in Amy’s life. She too had been ‘lent to the Lord’. In her Bible, we see in the margin of this text some crucial dates concerning her decision to go to the mission field, and all the moves she made in the last decade of the 19th century – from Broughton Grange to Dohnavur. We read, ‘“Therefore”. Broughton Grange. Jan.13.1892, March 3. 1893, Oct. 11.

2076. From Sunrise Land, 93.

2077. Things As They Are, 244, 245.

2078. Things As They Are, 246.

2079. Things As They Are, 247, 248.

2080. C.A. Fox, ‘Except a corn of wheat falls into the earth and dies’, address delivered at the 1895 Keswick Convention, p. 277 (in Stevenson, Keswick’s Authentic Voice, 274–280).

2081. In the margin of page 92 of A.R. Fraser, Donald Fraser of Livingstonia (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1934). In the Dohnavur library.

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Source: © J. (Hans) Kommers.

FIGURE 35: Amy’s private prayer room in the bungalow.

1895. August. 1899. Given to Give’. Just before she travelled to Japan, during a YWCA mission in Dundee, 07 February 1893, she wrote ‘I am but a little child’, but safe in Christ’s arms:

My helplessness – I am but a little child. My strength, THE PRINCE. My comfort that lay before. He uses me at all. He will take me in His arms. And He will hold me there all the time, so I will trust and not be afraid. Oct. 1896.2082 We believe there is some connection between knowing and caring and praying, and what happens afterwards. Otherwise, we should leave the darkness to cover the things that belong to the dark. […] 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 that the Christians of England should pray. […] The story of the children is the story of answered prayer. If any of us were tempted to doubt whether, after all, prayer is a genuine transaction, and answers to prayer no figment of the imagination – but something as real as the tangible things about us –we have only to look at some of our children. It would require more faith to believe that what we call the Answer came by chance or by the action of some unintelligible combination of controlling influences, that to accept the statement in its simplicity – God heard: God answered.2083

2082. In Amy’s Bible (1895), in the margin of 1 Samuel 1:27–28 and in 1 Kings 3:7.

2083. Lotus Buds, 90 and 91.

In 1870, in a little village along the north Irish coast, a little girl knelt beside her bed to pray. She was only three years old, but her mother had taught her that God answers prayer. Encouraged by such a truth, she prayed that night that God would make her ‘brown eyes blue’, like the others in the family. Sure as she was, that God would answer, she laid down and slept. In the morning, she woke and rushed to the mirror, only to discover that God had not answered her prayer, for looking back at her were those same brown eyes. In Amy on her knees, we see on a more personal level and it is as if she had first-hand communion with God. She had all the children on her heart and in the first years she knew all their names and brought them, often at night when she could not sleep, to her heavenly Father and interceded for them. Prayer had been Amy’s ‘core business’ from early youth until the end of her life.

Years later, Amy, would find herself in India seeking to penetrate a difficult culture and a terrible secret. Often she would disguise herself, wearing the dress of the day, rubbing coffee powder onto her skin to darken it and mixing with ordinary folk in the markets and the temple. It was on seeing her daring plan and unusual tactics that one of her friends commented: ‘It is a very fortunate thing that your eyes are brown and not blue. You would never pass for an Indian woman then!’ God never makes mistakes. Elliot gave a vivid account of Amy’s understanding of prayer:2084

It happened at Hirosi. This was a large Buddhist village where only eight or nine Christians shone ‘like stars in the night’. Amy planned to visit the village, but wanted to prepare herself by praying along the lines of whatever God intended to do there. If she could be sure of that, she could pray with faith. Years later, she discovered that Julian of Norwich had held the similar view of prayer: ‘I am the Ground of thy beseeching: first it is my will that thou have it: and after, I make thee to will it: and after, I make thee to beseech it and thou beseeches it. How should it then be that you should not have thy beseeching’.

Prayer always had an essential spiritual discipline for Amy. In Dohnavur, once a month, a whole day was devoted to prayer, and it was so arranged that everybody could participate, while the work with the children could still go on. All the work during that month is directed by that one day. Next to Amy’s room in the bungalow is still the prayer room where the Dohnavur workers could go in and have a quiet moment to talk with God.

She knew that she and the others in Dohnavur were surrounded by a hostile spirit-atmosphere and that they could not survive the counter attacks of the evil one, without the divine guiding and empowering that comes from intimate fellowship with God. Her letters and books express her consciousness of the weakness of her own faith and the overpowering might of the adversary and the obstacles removed. It is so easy to be distracted while praying and ‘often, when we are most in earnest to pray we are tormented by wandering thoughts, and distraction of all sorts’:

I have been reading some old books lately and find that exactly the same thing distressed others all along, the line. ‘The noise of a file,’ as one says, is enough to distract him (how much more the prod of a mosquito). Distractions in prayer appear to be among the permitted trials of life, if so there must be some way of turning them to good. […] This is a simple way open to all: Don’t fuss, don’t worry, don’t spend time wondering, why that thought came just then or that other interruption was allowed, for that is playing into the enemy’s hands. But as soon as you are conscious that you have been drawn away, peacefully come back again. ‘Return unto thy rest, O my soul’.2085

2084. In A Chance to Die, 66.

2085. Amy in a short note for the Prayer Day, 06 November 1936. By the kindness of Rev. Doug Curry, pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Liss, who gave me this prayer note, found in his private collection of Dohnavur Fellowship books.

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‘What is prayer?’ was a question Amy asked herself. Of all the answers, the most satisfying answer was the vaguest of all: ‘Something Understood’.2086 Her experience of life was that when she folded her hands, God opened her hands. It was something so indefinable:

Prayer that deals with the material brings for answer something so sweet and blessed in the sense conveyed of a God very near and very really, attentive to our call that words cannot be found to tell of that great sweetness. But the prayer that pierces through the things of sense, and finds its way into that awful place, the arena where the forces of light and darkness meet and there is the clash of battle – that prayer has terrors in it. ‘There where all hopes “crumble”, there in the place of “confusions”, there shall my head be lifted up above mine enemies round about me.’ Not tomorrow, when the enemy has gone, but ‘now’. She could not explain what prayer was, for ‘not interpreted are the secrets of prayer, not mapped out the windings of this way’, but ‘something understood’. Amy knew the sayings of Mother Julian of Norwich who had said ‘prayer is the true lasting will of the soul united and fastened into the will of our Lord by the sweet inward work of the Holy Ghost’.2087

In recording the daily life and work in Dohnavur, the prayer part naturally formed the unrecorded background. ‘The Power behind the work is the interposition of God in answer to prayer.’2088 What a woman of prayer Amy was and the others around her, her fellow workers were the ‘prayer warriors’. Her whole life was lived in the spirit of prayer, ‘it is the core of our day’, and she appeared to be always in open communion with Heaven. In Roots we read:

In matters that we should be true to one another, be loyal to what is a family – only a little family in the great Household, but still a family, with family love alive in it and acting as a living bond. To those of us who have lived this life for years it is inconceivable, that one to whom this loyalty means nothing should wish to be one of us. It is not at all that we think that ours is the only way of living, but we are sure that it is the way meant for us. We have one clear crystal reason apart from the blessed happiness of this way of life. It is this; prayer is the core of our day. Take prayer out, and the day would collapse, would be pitiless, a straw blown in the wind. But how can we pray – really pray, I mean – with one against whom you have a grudge or whom you have been discussing critically with another? Try it. You will find it cannot be done.

Was this not the secret of her wonderful life, and the wonderful power she had in influencing others? She had learned to place herself every day before God as a vessel to be filled with his Holy Spirit. Amy can teach us today that one can be a strong and vigorous Christian when one holds real and continual personal intercourse with God. Many Christians attend church services and other meetings on a Sunday, but do not spend half an hour alone with God. For Amy it was a practice so essential to her spiritual life. Amy´s room or the House of Prayer has been a birthplace of many a soul. She always pleaded for earnest prayer, otherwise:

[O]ur very prayers will fall as fall the withered leaves, when the wind that stirred them falls, yea more so, for the withered leaves have a work to do, but the prayers which are stirred up by some passing breeze of emotion do nothing, nothing for eternity. […] Lord save us from hypocrisy and shame! ‘Shrivel the falsehood’ from us if we say we love Thee but obey Thee not.2089

2086. From G. Herbert, ‘Church-bells beyond the stars heard, the soul’s blood, the land of spices, something understood’. See Tables in the Wilderness, 148–149.

2087. Quotation in Huffmann Rockness, A Passion for the Impossible, 252.

2088. Lotus Buds, 305. Cf. Dr Zwemer at a conference in Zürich ‘how that the velocity and power of anything that comes down, gains in a ratio of high proportion with the height from which its drops: Even from an aeroplane, a pencil falling will take on the force of a bullet. What might not our prayer power be if it comes down from the throne of the Priest’ (Huffmann Rockness, A Passion for the Impossible, 251).

In Dohnavur the children were taught the ways of prayer:

We learned that the kind of intercession that is like a musical cord, every note in harmony with each other, and all seeking to be tuned perfectly to the keynote (the will of the great Intercessor) is something worth guarding at any cost. […] We ask to be led by the Holy Spirit from point to point, each prayer leading on from the preceding prayer till the particular subject laid on our hearts has been dealt with, and we have the assurance that the Lord will complete all.2090 Once a month one day of settled prayer was a great help for the Fellowship. True prayer according to Amy required strength, and for that, quietness and being free from daily business were necessary. She knew that every Tuesday and Friday nights, tom-toms were heard calling worshippers all over south India for demon worship. ‘For all such conditions we found just one antidote – the peace of God.’2091 A corollary related to Amy’s understanding of spiritual empowerment is prayer. The importance of prayer can be found in the majority, if not all, of her publications, because it was for her the way of getting into perfect communion with God and knowing his will. Temple children, exposed to imminent danger, locked up behind high, massive walls and huge, heavy doors, how can we reach them and get them out? Or how to get a magistrate who is not bribed? Any appeal to the law is in vain,2092 what can be done? A power beyond their own guided their footsteps and opened doors, which seemed to be closed forever and his hand was seen. Amy wrote of a child for whom was prayed in India and England:

Not to the mere easy prayer which costs little and does less, but to that waiting upon God which does not rest till it knows it has obtained access, knows that it has the petition that it desires of Him This sort of prayers costs. But to us down in the thick of the battle, it was strength to think of that prayer. […] We have known what it is to toil for the salvation of some little life.2093 Only divine interposition could save the children. She learned how important it was to know how to pray. Prayer is the cornerstone of the DF, for the attacks are many:

There is nothing in our DF life that is more persistently attacked than our Prayer-meetings because there is nothing that matters so much. So I know you all will forgive this note.2094 There is the restful prayer of committal to which the immediate answer is peace. We could not live without this sort of prayer; we should be crushed and overborne, and give up broken-hearted if it were not for that peace.2095 With the above note, she also wrote about the disappearing of quietness during the meetings. ‘There is a fussy noise of the turning over of pages.’ She went on and wrote then about the opening of a book

2090. Gold Cord, 76–78.

2091. Here Amy refers to the habit of the sisters of the Oxford Mission in Calcutta who set apart times for quiet and prayer. Daily the sisters are confronted with a heathen world, and work in an atmosphere, whether they are conscious of it or not. They lived in an environment full of deadly evil influences; this, when it is combined with hard work in a very enervating climate, tends greatly to wear them out, and makes it necessary for them to be in direct and habitual contact with Him who is the Source of Life. See * in Gold Cord, 78–79.

2092. An Indian barrister wrote to Amy one day: ‘Is it not a sad thing that a Christian Government is unable to legislate to save the children of Temple women? I am sorry my opinion has made you sad. Giving my opinion as a layer, I could not take an optimistic view of the matter. The law as it stands at present is against reform in matters of this kind. Even should a good Christian judge take a strong view of the matter, the High Court will stick to the very letter of the law’ (in Lotus Buds, 327).

2093. Lotus Buds, 308–309.

2094. In ‘My sontha all’, letter to the DF, 11 January 1944, p. 1 (in the Dohnavur library).

Chapter 17

and maintaining quietness in the meetings.2096 For opening a book, ‘one way is disturbing. The other is not’. Is it not that we want ‘to serve without distraction’? Several songs were written with many repetitions. To ‘avoid ruts do not make a lot of repetitions’. Also ‘some find kneeling tiring (David sat before the Lord). Let each be free to be simple and do whatever helps most to draw near to Him’. Finally she pleaded ‘to pray more about our Prayer-time and to pray for those who lead’. In mission work there is ‘a golden thread of thought’:

The God who works for him that waits for Him is continually preparing the way for a larger answer to our prayer than we had imagined, and influences are being fashioned (and who can define a spiritual influence?) that will effect what we have asked. […] Even now, as we pray like that, our Father is moving in ways that we know not, and fires are being kindled that shall thaw their coldness. Prayer in the Name of His Beloved Son cannot lose its way in the void. It must find the ear of God. For prayer is not emotion, it is a traffic between earth and heaven, a commerce of love. […] We think in terms of time: God thinks in terms of eternity.’2097 Amy was convinced that God never shuts the door for prayer. In 1941 she wrote to Godfrey:

The gates of access into the Father’s presence are open continually. There is no need to push – perhaps ‘trying to pray’ is sometimes a sort of pushing. This is how it came to me – If the gates are open, there is nothing to do but go in. It sounds too simple to tell, but it helped me very much.2098 Our prayers not so much alter the things as alter the man who prays, and that man alters things. In our prayers we ask what we will, not what we like. She experienced the gift of healing; however, she showed that the power to heal belonged to God. She herself suffered a great deal in the last 20 years of her life, yet she was not healed. For her it was enough that the Lord reigned in His sovereignty. Neither did she want people to exaggerate the significance of miracles, or they would turn to God because of miracles and then reject Him while beset by trouble. In this, she always prayed ‘Control my prayers’.2099 This meant the bringing of her will into active sympathy with the will of God. She did not change the mind of God but she was changed by God. Early records show that every decision in the Fellowship, regarding new staff, every forward advance, every purchase of new land, was cleared by a prayerful goahead from her.

Daily the Fellowship had its half-hour prayer meeting and for Amy this was ‘the innermost heart of its being’, for it was primarily a fellowship with God and only secondarily a company of men and women in fellowship with one another. Was not the devil always alert to make disturbance and sow his bad seed into the lives of young children?

To use that half hour in prayer efficiently she gave some advice. We do not need to explain to our Father things that are known to him. We do not need to press him, as if we had to deal with an unwilling God. We do not need to suggest to him what to do, for he himself knows what to do.

In the first few years after the accident she was sometimes carried up to the Forest House. Once she wrote to Godfrey while she was in the forest with some others that she had a wonderful prayer meeting with them:

2096. In ‘My sontha all’, letter to the DF, 11 January 1944, p. 1–3 (in the Dohnavur library).

2097. Ploughed Under, 150–151.

2098. Here Amy is referring to Isaiah 60:11: ‘Therefore thy gates shall be open continually; they shall not be shut day nor night’ (KJV).

2099. In Makower, Follow My Leader, 91.

I think we shall go on, waiting on Him together for a few minutes every day till we go down (from the Forest). If we prepare the wood, the fire will fall and kindle it. It was wonderful to be in the prayer meeting after the two long years, and so good to feel the living throb of the other five. The hour passed like five minutes. There were three main reasons that Amy emphasised prayer as it was related to spiritual empowerment: the need for leadership, the need for revival and the reality of spiritual warfare. The continual search for connexion with her Father in prayer and believing him on his Word were the greatest and fundamental lines of her life.

From Japan and India her letters and books are full of stories of answered prayers, prayers for the rescue work of the children, prayers for funding all the needs of the Fellowship. Never asking for money but laying down the burdens before God. Amy’s accounts of Gospel advance in south India document for us the way God uses intercessory prayer to further his purposes. During one of their itinerary journeys:

[T]he band believed God wanted them to ask specifically for one convert on a given day. On one such day, they were on their way back to the tent without having seen a convert. Something the bandy-man said made Amy ask him when he would come to Jesus. ‘Tonight’, was his answer. He came into the tent, ‘we prayed and he prayed too, and we think the Good Shepherd found him’. A letter from England told them that people there had asked specifically on that date for a convert. What a cynic would call a coincidence Amy called a clear answer, and more than an answer – a sign of the Love of the Lord’.2100 In the first years of the Fellowship, when everybody was very busy caring for the babies and little ones, and the questions of education and the future of the children began to come into Amy’s mind, it was prayer that settled in those moments all her questions. A circle of friends stood with her, in India as well as in England:

In the work of which these chapters have told [in Lotus Buds] there has been the wonderful comfort of sympathy and help from fellow-missionaries of our own and sister missions; and, as all who have read, understand, nothing could have been done without the loyal co-operation of our Indian fellow-workers whose tenderness and patience can never be described. […] The future is full of problems. Even now in these Nursery days questions are asked that are more easily asked than answered. We should be afraid if we looked too far ahead, so we do not look. We spend our strength on the day’s work, the nearest ‘next thing’ to our hands. But we would be blind and heedless if we made no provision for the future. We want to gather and lay up in store against that difficult time (should it ever come) a band of friends for the children, who will stand by them in prayer.2101

Dependence and urgency

In mission work, ‘what was done, was all of God’.2102 Being convinced of the guidance of the Holy Spirit, Amy urged for prayer, ‘Do you ever pray, as you pray for these, that the Spirit would create in them [those who listen to her] what is not there now – true soul-thirst after God’?2103 Amy looked in a different way at mission organisations. We are so well manned and well organised. Every department is doing its own business, but ‘there is no consciousness of need’.2104 In Amy’s time Asia as a whole was, as she called it,

2100. In Elliot, A Chance to Die, 122–123.

2101. Lotus Buds, 296 and 297.

2102. From Sunrise Land, 41.

Chapter 17

‘practically an unconquered fort’. ‘How much are we prepared to sacrifice to win that fort?’2105 We have only one thing to do:

‘This one thing I do. I press’. Let us press on all together in the missionary enterprise, past the dull fog of discouragement, and through it, out into the clear air where we can see The Gleam.2106 Amy was talking about the 100 million people in India at the time she was in Dohnavur. These people had never heard of Jesus Christ, and ‘who as things are now have not the remotest chance to hear about Him. […] It crushes down upon us. […] It would break our hearts’.2107 She believed ‘God is at work in India. Surely India’s future will be better than her past. Howbeit this day be not Christ’s, the morrow shall be His’.2108

One evening, after having travelled the whole afternoon and night, stopping at midnight to dine, sitting in the dark and overlooking the plain, she thought: ‘The people pass across the plain so quickly. Oh, are we half in earnest to reach them before they pass’.2109 ‘Are we ready to combat?’ was her question:

Consider: let us view ourselves in the light of that most awful Sacrifice. Do we believe in Calvary? […] How does this belief affect the spending of our one possession – life? Are we playing it away? […] Too loose in our hold upon eternal verities to feel with real intensity? Too cool to burn? We hear her passionate prayer for those who have no knowledge of Christ, the Saviour. God open our eyes, and touch our hearts, and break us down with the thought of the Love that redeemed us, and a sight of souls as He sees them, and of ourselves as we are, and not as people suppose we are, lest we sail in some pleasure boat of our own devising over the gliding waters that glide to the river of death.2110

A corn of wheat

The encounter in 1885 at the Victorian fountain in Belfast once influenced the whole course of Amy’s life. It was on a hot September day in 1918 that Amy’s thoughts went back 33 years and it was as if she experienced again what had happened then and what had left her unable to return to the ordinary.2111 At the fountain in Belfast she had learned the glorious, unmistakable privilege of being crucified with Christ. That event had given her the light to look at the things of this world and to have for herself the reason for her actions. All her ambitions, religious or otherwise, were identified with the Lord Jesus Christ.

The world, the religious world with its fascination and its power, when it came all before her, found her dead to it. Crucified with Christ, gone through that issue, discerning that her ‘old man’, the disposition of sin, is buried with him, she now stood clear for Christ and Christ only. A daily living experience, in walking and conversation, stamped with the otherworldliness of a life hidden with Christ in God. Amy learned from God for her own spiritual life, and for her fellow workers, that she was in India, walking over the Tinnevelly plains to be broken for the sake of Jesus Christ. She had questions as: ‘So do we have the

2105. Overweights of Joy, 52.

2106. Overweights of Joy, 66. ‘Follow the Gleam’, in Alfred Lord Tennyson, The Complete Works (Ware, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth Editions Ltd. 1904), 867.

2107. Overweights of Joy, 75.

2108. Overweights of Joy, 77.

2109. Overweights of Joy, 240. iron of Christ’s Cross in us?’ ‘Are we prepared to give all that is in us so that would die for Jesus Christ’s sake?’ Otherwise, we are too easily knuckled under to the idea that we have to do so much and achieve so little as if the things of God are in our hands. ‘Do we ask enough of ourselves?’ These were the questions, which often came into Amy’s mind. She answered with words of Brenton Thoburn Badley:

Lord, when I’m weary with toiling,
And burdensome seem Thy commands,
If my load lead to complaining,

Lord, show me Thy hands- Thy nail-printed hands. Thy cross-torn hands-

My Saviour, show me Thy hands.
Christ, if ever my footsteps should falter,
And I be prepared for retreat.
If desert and thorn cause lamenting,

Lord, show me Thy feet- Thy bleeding feet, Thy nail-scarred feet- Lord Jesus, show me Thy feet.

O God, dare I show Thee my hands and my feet?2112 The Lord demands all. ‘It is all or nothing.’2113 Amy laid for God all the powers of body and mind on the altar and consciously gave up all to God as a living sacrifice.2114 She has not seen what the future brought the Fellowship, but in faith she claimed the promised harvest from the buried seed. The Fellowship was God’s, and he was – and still is – able to work out his plans for her in spite of the devilish attacks. ‘Deny Self, Save Men’, this message to Dr Whitfield Guinness was given in 1911 by a hospital assistant to take with him when going on furlough, to pass it on to his friends in England. ‘If they are willing, for Christ’s sake, to deny self, God will use them to save many.’ ‘Be prepared and know that the confession of Jesus brings persecution.’ Missionaries sacrificed themselves for Jesus and their devotion to him ‘is the one great spring’, ‘For My sake’.2115

In the spirit of Ragland, Amy sees her work in Dohnavur in the metaphor of the dying seed. ‘We’re all Christ’s dear servants only made willing to be as corn of wheat to fall into the ground and die, I should be content and thankful.’2116 ‘It is true that our Lord and redeemer calls us to a crucified life; but He calls to a joy too, and it comes by way of the Cross.’2117 And in the margin of Isaiah 22:1 she gives us this thought:

If God leads us in deep places and shows us deep things, there may be joy – But there will be pain – There is such a thing as the Burden of the Valley of Vision.2118

2112. Widow of the Jewels, 92.

2113. Candles in the Dark, 26.

2114. Cf. Paul in Romans 12:1: ‘I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service’ (KJV). This idea is used in 1845 in Phoebe Palmer’s The Way of Holiness. Palmer’s view of total consecration to God and trust that he would sanctify what had been consecrated had a huge impact in the 19th century holiness movement and had many adherents in the Keswick movement. Amy was deeply immersed in this Keswick view.

2115. See O. Chambers on discipleship, in The Complete Works, 17.

2116. Ragland, 15.

2117. The Widow of the Jewels, 87.

2118. In Amy’s Bible (1895) in the margin of Isaiah 22:1.

Chapter 17

Much of Amy’s spirituality is fuelled from Keswick teaching of the late 19th and early 20th century. She expresses in words a deeper experience in the Lord Jesus Christ or victorious life principle. The filling of her life with the Holy Spirit, in the emptying of self and confessing all known sin, she every time reapplied for the blood of Christ. She did not go beyond the boundary of Scripture. The blood of Christ was for her the foundational truth of the forgiveness of sin provided by Christ. In her life, she travelled the ‘Calvary road’.

Concerning Amy’s view on mission work, we can say that she had the same idea Ragland had. She certainly agreed with Ragland’s remark that ‘without watchfulness on the missionary’s part he will seldom come to close quarters with the great enemy in the souls of his people’.2119 Ragland liked to see the missionary right among the people ‘while his feelings are fresh, before he has lost his first missionary aspirations, and begun to prefer European society and work, and to look wistfully towards home’. Ragland:

Of all qualifications for mission work, and every other, charity is the most excellent. Of all methods of attaining to a position of usefulness and honour, the only safe and sure one is to fit ourselves for it by purging our hearts from vainglory, worldliness and selfishness. Of all plans of ensuring success, the most certain is Christ’s own – becoming a corn of wheat, falling into the ground and dying.2120 This death-life makes all the difference in whether the Lord is over all aspects of our lives or whether we are in control of our ‘self-life’. What I have seen of the life and work of Amy is that she made the facts of the redemptive work of Christ on the Cross factors in her life. And her hope? It was anchored in the promise of his coming!

Amy never suffered from a boneless, nerveless, jellyfish condition of soul and her convictions were not negotiable, though she demonstrated a pleasant demeanour and a teachable spirit. Her godly character was displayed not only in what she wrote, but in how she lived and guided the Dohnavur family. She sacrificed herself wholly to India and the Dohnavur children. The great lesson she learned was, ‘that to rule means to serve’!2121 And Dohnavur and all that was going on there, ‘I felt it was worth everything to our God the chance to make something very different’.2122 In what way did she express herself about Hinduism and other religions? She fully believed that Christ Jesus is the only Saviour. For a Hindu ‘life is a bubble on the water; enjoy it while you may’. Someone was singing one of the ‘wildest, weirdest wail of a song all about idolatry’, and Amy could follow what was going on, ‘for I knew the poem well’. In her talks with Hindu scholars, she had no desire to attack their social system, or to defend hers. ‘I only wanted to witness to a living, loving, personal Saviour. And I longed for more power and glow to show that love in its breadth, length, depth, height’.2123 She knew that the hidden sin and the outward expressions of Hindu belief were the outcome of a relationship set up between man and the devil whereby man became the ruler over everything, his own God. Amy wanted to follow the only one Master of men, and that was Jesus Christ. The devil was for her the real antagonist of the living God.

2119. Ragland, 15.

2120. Ragland, 15–16.

2121. From the Forest, 112.

2122. From the Forest, 113.

Amy’s longing was that the people in India should know Jesus Christ, but behind this desire was the passion for sanctification. God saved and mission work for disciplining the people who had come to Christ.

In an effort to respect India’s Hindu culture, members of the DF wore Indian dress2124 and the children got Indian names. Amy herself dressed in Indian clothes and could respect Hindu scholars, for even among them were many who did not agree with the Devadasi system. She saw a lot of nobility and wisdom in Hindu thought:

Anything like an intolerant attitude towards it can only repel those whom we would win. God spoke to men in the old days. His light enlightened them. But the echoes have become confused, the light blurred. They have their old books full of wisdom, but ‘dare you die on them’? Oh, there is only one book, which feeds, only one Book upon which we dare die! Lord, to whom shall this nation go? Lord, to whom shall we go, or they? Thou hast the words of eternal life.2125 Amy’s heart burned with compassion when she saw the multitudes of India, these crowds with ‘the sense of tremendous forces at work among these trivialities’; these crowds of people, absorbed in the interests of the moment – and ‘eternity so near’.

She saw ‘the burden which the prophet did see’.2126 Many times Amy found much courteous attention when the team gathered educated people to listen to the gospel:

But deep down, far out of sight of the speaker, is the ancient life of the ancient land. And the heart breaks into the old, old cry, ‘Oh that Thou would rend the heavens, that Thou would come down, that the mountains might flow down at Thy presence. Most righteous God, O God of Love, so let it be’.2127 She asked herself if she was too narrow-minded or intolerant and not able to see good things outside her own understanding and views. She knew the Hindu system:

We are not ignorant of the lofty and the noble contained in the ancient Hindu books; we are not of those who cannot recognize any truth or any beauty unless it is labelled with our label. We know God has not left Himself without witnesses anywhere. But we know – for the Spirit of Truth Himself has inspired the description – how desolate is the condition of those who are without Christ. We dare not wear down the force of such a description till the words mean practically nothing. We form no hard, presumptuous creed as to how the God of all the earth will deal with these masses of mankind who have missed the knowledge of Him here; we know he will do right. But we know, with a knowledge which is burnt into us, how very many of the units live who compose the masses. We know what they are missing today, through not knowing our blessed Saviour as a personal, living Friend; and we know what it means to the thoughtful mind to face an unknown tomorrow. Amy not only looked at Hinduism in need of the Gospel. She quotes Bishop Moule, who replied when asked ‘What are the great non-Christian religions?’ with ‘Hinduism, Muhammedanism, Buddhism – unspiritual Christianity’.2128 She approached all with the utmost sympathy, and yet we ‘cannot lower the standard and offer them Christ without His Cross. Nor can we dress that Cross in flowers, and hide the thorny Crown’.2129

2124. Lotus Buds, 47.

2125. Overweights of Joy, 84.

2126. Lotus Buds, 49.

2127. Ploughed Under, 120.

2128. In This One Thing, 131.

From Millisle to Madras came a weak young woman to carry out the task she believed God had assigned to her. After fifty-six years there she departed this life as a frail

old lady, but she left behind her a strong and lasting

memorial in the hearts of all those whom
she rescued from danger and introduced to
the unsearchable riches of Christ.

Kathleen White, Amy Carmichael. The Angel Outside the Temple

(Hants, UK: Marchall Pickering, 1986).

Vor Deinen Thron tret’ ich hiemit [Herewith I come before Thy throne]

The last choral Johann Sebastian Bach composed before his

death in 1750.

Amy had read Reginald Lane Pool, Johann Sebastian Bach (London: S. Low, 1884). The hymn is on page 117.