After Amma

Chapter 19

After Amma

The extent of her influence

‘The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world.’ This expression emphasises that women have a strong influence on events through their children.2206 Catherine Carmichael’s spirituality and education at home in Millisle can be seen in her daughter’s work in Dohnavur. Were not all the lessons learned in Millisle, Belfast, Manchester, Broughton Grange and Japan, fuelled by David and Catherine Carmichael’s prayers for their daughter and Catherine’s understanding, her support in the many letters written and her stay in Dohnavur in 1906? These platforms for the future were built on solid Biblical ground. Amy, stamped and sealed by God, remained lifelong true to his call.

All great work requires patience and time. Amy’s work, seen in the Dohnavur institutions, had an even greater invisible dimension. She saw direct results, but her influence was much wider and the outcome of her long-term vision does not go unnoticed in present-day south India. Amy could wait upon the Lord and rest in his will and was not ruled by statistics. Love does not work on statistics and calculation. In her evangelicalism, she emphasised preaching for the salvation of individual men and women, but presented Christianity by means of not only devotional books and prayer, as something touching the soul only, but in practical ways: she contributed schooling, medical care and agricultural skills, for the salvation of man, body and soul. Souls were saved but she saw in the Dohnavur boys and girls, after they had left Dohnavur, missionary-minded persons with a warm heart for those in need, forming stable Christian families and trustworthy workers in medicine, schools and government all over India. Amy, as the initiator, only had one wish for herself: that God might be glorified through her. The following words referring to Jeanne-Françoise Frémyot, describe Amy’s experience – in the margin she wrote the words: ‘March 3, 1893, a clearly marked and time-worn route’ and ‘March 6, 1901’:2207

2206. See the Cambridge Advanced Learners Dictionary & Thesaurus (Cambridge: CUP).

2207. Both dates mark an important event in Amy’s life. The call to missionary work in Japan and the coming of the first child to Dohnavur.

How to cite: Kommers, J. (Hans), 2017, ‘After Amma’, in Triumphant Love: The contextual, creative and strategic missionary work of Amy Beatrice Carmichael in south India, pp. 501–514, AOSIS, Cape Town. https://doi.org/10.4102/aosis.2017.tl41.19

She was a traveller who, starting on her journey with a clearly-marked and time-worn route before her, found herself checked by the Touch that is not human […] attracted to the piece of a surrender to obedience.2208 This little place in the south Indian plains, where for more than 100 years God has done such a great work, what influence does it have in God’s world-wide mission work? And in what way does the study of the life’s work of Amy Carmichael contribute to further understanding and development of missionary concepts and outreach? Who knows about Dohnavur today? Is this type of mission work not too oldfashioned, and is it relevant for our 21st century? Her attractive and commanding personality will cause her to be remembered as a missionary of great importance. She was unremitting in her zeal, but amidst all the day-to-day work she kept to her guiding principle of the ‘one thing necessary’. She was not easily inclined to any modernity, but a quiet and practical piety, combined with humility, charity and unselfishness, had the foremost place. Having set her hand to the plough she never seemed to look back, with steady perseverance moving forward, led by God’s Spirit:

Thoughts came about the big missions and their so much greater stories. It seemed like turning a straw into a pillar or making a song over pulling up spinach, as we say here, to write Windows at all. Ought we to do it? ‘Our Fellowship is such a little thing’, I said to M.M.,2209 who chanced just then to come into the room. ‘But it isn’t our little thing: it’s His little thing’, she answered. So the book goes on to tell what it may of the kindness of God to one of His little things.2210 ‘His little thing.’ We are dealing with the method by which God does work and will accomplish his ends. His very methods in fulfilling the ultimate goal by sending his servants into the world seem unfortunate and too simple in our eyes. We like to use and to expect the blessings and the praise from men and women well known, much-praised convention speakers, people of reputation, and from numbers, organisation, budgets, methods, plans, prestige, et cetera. But God’s emphatic word to us is ‘not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit’.2211 We can only understand the whole of t-he Dohnavur Fellowship when we see God’s Spirit at work in that desert-like area more than 100 years ago. How he used humble women and men with no standing, an ordinary missionary with ordinary local people with no social advantages, chosen by him, to heal deep wounds in the spiritual and social realm.

Is not the DF today a monument of His faithfulness? Is not giving glory and honour to him and for us a saving token to save us from foolish and sinful pride? It is all God’s work in the way which has been described, by the gentle working of his Spirit, by the quiet but disturbing influence of his Word, using the feeble testimony of a missionary from Ireland and faithful Indian women. God crowns his own work, not our merits.

History is God’s history, and contemporary believers are all standing on the shoulders of those who served God in their time. They left a testimony behind and these beacons of faith will guide and inspire us to go deeper with God. Amy did her work in subjection to God and was used by God who himself took the surprising initiative, and Amy, in his hands, had the vision, was able to work out the planning and the strategy. Lesslie Newbigin (1909–1998) is surely right when he comments that ‘a whole history of the “expansion of Christianity” could be written with very few missionary names in it’.2212 In the history of mission work in the first half of the 20th century, the name of Amy Carmichael will be like a

2208. In Sanders, Sainte Chantal, 1 and 5.

2209. Mary Mills.

2210. Windows, 113.

2211. Zechariah 4:6.

2212. In International Bulletin of Missionary Research, vol. 6/4, October 1982, 150.

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star. Some people are like comets, just appearing for a moment; stars last, do not make noise, are not very much in the public eye, but just twinkle in God’s firmament for his glory.

The subject of this book is an outstanding figure in the first half of the 20th-century mission era. Despite many after her serving in the mission, it will be difficult to find one remotely comparable appearing on the horizon. It is the aim of the author that our generation will be connected to our heritage of faith. Young Christians need spiritual role models and the encounter with Amy, her life and her ultimate adoration to Jesus Christ alone, gives them a road map for their spiritual journey. Special focus has been laid on the life of faith and Amy’s mission drive to give this generation the inspiration to trust God for the impossible in life and mission service.

A single-minded woman with firm theological and vocational convictions, which gave birth to a strong commitment, was made a role model for missions today. Some consider her ‘an antiquarian’ because she was very reluctant to change her missiological stance to adopt any other views. Today some of the issues she regarded as important are dated or not so relevant anymore, but in her lifelong service, she never abandoned her biblical principles. The readers will have noticed that this book merges the evangelical and charismatic streams to show that to transform life’s greatest challenges the love of and the hope in Jesus Christ is the only power to heal this world and have men reconciled with God. Through her books and poems Amy has influenced and encouraged innumerable men and women. A favourite poem in the radiant life of Adelaide Locher, captured in her biography, was Amy Carmichael’s ‘From a subtle love of softening things’.2213 In her missionary training she was inspired by Amy’s books and poems, even then when she entered the valley, ‘and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable unto His death’.

Now that her span of life was over, Dohnavur seemed empty without Amy. The influence of her ministry of love still lingers all around the Dohnavur premises. The whole secret of her fruitful life – and she never made a secret of it! – came from her love and the joy of the indwelling Christ, which can be seen outwardly in her love for the Indian children. In every inch, Amy was a woman with a character and her individuality was very marked. No one could mistake her for another missionary woman. Her individuality was not marred by posing, affection or that egotism which is the disease of individuality. Physically weak in her teens and 20s, she was an energy incarnate, and her activities were surprisingly numerous and unique. Few women missionaries had a career as she had. In her were united the foresight of a Christian worker, believing in the sovereignty of God, the enterprise of a pioneer, and the common sense of a businessman ready for action. Along with these endowments, she had many ordinary qualities to an average degree, and they were all well developed, for an experience like this could not fail to pull out all the stops in her being.

I discovered, and this I value, her strenuous and courageous championship of the Christian faith, together with her – for her time! – modern outlook and her (reluctant) readiness to adopt new things which are real and true in present-day thought and life. What attracts me to her is this blend of conservative and assimilative elements and a mind by nature conservative. Her mind was not a house with the blinds drawn down; all the windows were open – open to ‘Jerusalem’ and open for the real things on earth. She was far from narrow-minded, as can be seen in Dohnavur where she introduced many new things like electricity, a microscope, a swimming pool, a car, etcetera. She combined elements of her strong character with a life close to the Word of God, in great humility. She was attuned to the Word of God so that her amazed heart recorded his voice. She was not in for new doctrinal teachings but loyal to the Bible and meanwhile open to listen to other people and interested in other subjects, like

2213. Cf. C. Canfield, The Radiant Valley (London: CIM, 1954 [1951]), 42. The poem is in Gold Cord, X and in Towards Jerusalem, 104. See too C.L. Canfield, See the Glory (Solid Christian Books, 2015 [1956]). the life of birds and dogs and mountaineering. What was important to Thomas Walker was also important for her:

Solemnised myself, but oh for the solemnising Spirit to work in every heart! Not happy about things here. Worldliness is eating up the leading families. Not much response; people seem very dead as a whole. Also Walker’s watchword fits her: ‘with God for men; with men for God’.2214

We also note a noble simplicity and unity in her life. When it joined the ocean, the stream had the same colour as at its source. There is no puzzling complexity of thought and action. She kept in the path of duty, never mind the consequences. This simplicity and unity were secured by the permanence of her convictions and enthusiasm. Often elderly people naturally grow weary of details and loose the keenness of their sympathies. Not so Amy; though crippled, she was herself a lifelong steadiness and undecaying zeal. She had passed through many testing and dark places, but never surrendered her faith, always living in the desire to do the will of God. In the lives of others she was looking for real conversion, broken hearts and a ‘Nineveh repentance’.2215 The longer she was in India the more she understood that the real work was in the heart and not in excited feelings. Her definite purpose was the mission and it was for this that she had come to India, and that she had given all her energy. She disliked to talk about others and rather kept silent. From time to time she had secrets with God.

‘What of the girl by the fire side?’ ‘What if she misses her chance?’2216 She had heard the call from heaven, which had changed unto a song, and she had obeyed. The Lord had guided her through all the loneliness, through all the disillusions when her dreams of fair romance slipped away from her, and the usual and the commonplace were all about her. Then and forever that song of the Lord would sing through the quiet places of her soul, and she would be sure – with the sureness that was just pure peace – that she was where the Master meant her to be.2217 In the world of mission, Amy had a unique position in the way she managed to maintain a consistent stand:

• She had a long-term vision. Her work was not superficial. She went to the bottom of the problem, and sought and found, to some extent, a way to really help the children in need. She was the pivot upon which all turned. In a certain way, her control was autocratic, but she found it difficult to delegate and share authority. It can be shown that not everything was centred around her, for after her death the work continued. Criticism of her character did not often reach her, and when she heard it, it did not really disturb her. It gave her pain, but she did not change the course and the standard once set. • She had a strong grasp of detail. The track set was followed to the end and the work done in unwearied patience. In the first years of the work, she knew the details of every child and when the number of children grew she wanted to be informed about all of them. Once they were away from the compound, students had to report to her their daily doings.

• Fidelity to the Word of God characterised her whole life. She liked to ponder it, and to expound it for the benefit of the others. Her extensive reading kept her in touch with present-day events and the wise sayings of divines, who lived ages ago, guided her in her decisions.

• She was a woman of prayer. One could disagree about her methods of decisions, but no one could deny that her motives were pure and that her desires centred on spiritual results and on the well-

2214. In Walker of Tinnevelly, 344.

2215. A Walker expression. In Walker of Tinnevelly, 372–373.

2216. This refers to Amy’s thoughts in Broughton Grange when she was sitting next to the fireside and thought about God calling her to the mission field. Cf. Lotus Buds, XXXVI, 335–341.

2217. Cf. Lotus Buds, 340.

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being of the children. From God and his Word came her wisdom. No decision in Dohnavur was taken before a prayer meeting had been held, and only after all had agreed did things go on. • Being a woman with a strong personality and a magnificent presence, she went her own way in the height of Western mission work and influence in the East and in a field in which men and women of fundamentally different opinions and practices operated.

• Her use of time was intense. The rescue work in Dohnavur was a kairos moment in India’s mission history and national history.

The legacy left by her serves for us as a model of inner resolve and deep faith for our generation. She paid the price of exile, as the ultimate consequence of the two words that accompanied her everywhere: ‘Yes Lord’:

We cannot flow both deep and wide.
Only God can do that.
We have only a limited number of days to live,
And only a limited quantity of energy to spend.
So the important thing is to spend ourselves
As entirely possible
Upon whatever is our special calling.

To say she had her limitations is only to say that she was an ordinary woman, and lower than the angels. She was a missionary not of a conventional type, but to say that she was too much wedded to her own views, too neglectful of the views of others, and too reluctant, is to say what has probably been truly said concerning every man or woman who has done work like hers in the mission field. Usually missionaries know what they want, know who has sent them and are driven in a way they cannot escape. To obey and to be trustful, the power of holding on and holding out, is to look only to him who has sent and to follow where he is going. There is no other option, and therefore their views do not always correspond with fellow workers. Amy was far from claiming that she was free from defects in this matter.

It cannot be denied that this policy might be seem to some to be autocratic or even dictatorial. Tasks like these have demanded such qualities and dispatch as we expect in a general on a battlefield. What may be said is that her compelling influence usually gained what she had in mind. What was done was done after exceptional consideration and prayer and in all Dohnavur work, Amy was free from selfseeking and unworthy motives. She advocated only for what she believed to be the best for the DF and the children under her care. Differences of opinion never lessened the admiration of many, all over the world, for her. This fact is a supreme proof of the genuineness, real compassion and love of this woman, and it is also highly creditable to those who could not always think along the same lines as her. Their generosity in esteeming her services was like her own in estimating theirs. She was ready to do the humblest of tasks; her individuality did not lapse into egotism or singularity. To power of vision, she added an extraordinary practical capacity, which enabled her to see the true dimensions of common things; firmly grasping the real while swayed by the ideal. She lived both in the present and in the future. She preserved a fine balance of fearlessness and prudence, and had an instinct for great things alongside wonderful patience in the meanest details. A real pioneer who had nothing of the spirit of an adventurer or self-seeker. The words ‘I’ or ‘my’ seldom intruded in her conversation and writings. Her private letters reveal an exceptionally keen consciousness of defects and failings. Her unfeigned selflessness is rare.

Tenderness of heart in her rose to genius and was not chilled by years of disappointments. Her sympathies overflowed and went down beneath men to the animal world. A man or beast in misery was for her a sacred thing. She could not pass a beggar unheeded. However busy – she was always in a whirlpool of work – she had endless patience with sufferers. She, a woman in a Mammon-worshipping age and community, desired not to be ministered unto, but to minister.

From all the fields of secular ambition she deliberately turned to one of the obscurest corners of Christ’s harvest field. She did an uncommon thing ‘in this conservative corner of South India’.2218 True, ‘God’s best is reserved for those who live apart from common things’.2219 Some people write and study mission history, but Amy Carmichael made it. She often thought about the Fellowship’s future but in vain do we look for a concept she had in mind for the Fellowship of the future. The Fellowship was based on strict principles, but in what way this standard should hold in the future, she must have laid in the hands of the Holy Spirit. She believed God that the next generation would find its own best ways of doings the things, unhampered by trying to keep to the conditions of the founder of the Fellowship. We can say that the start of the Santhosha Vidhyalaya Secondary2220 School, on the Fellowship’s compound, is a blessed gift of God to the Fellowship. Is not it according to the measure of blind obedience to God?

Now, more than half a century after her death, the DF can be measured by the pattern laid down 100 years ago, in intercession, in caring, in Christian education, in sacrifice and hospitality; in one phrase: in bringing the love of Christ to India. Those who have been educated at the Santhosha Vidhyalaya Secondary School will be the torchbearers all over India. Now again boys and girls will go out and this combination has a tremendous challenge; even though the boys’ work was stopped in Dohnavur in the 1980s, the young boys’ lives did not drift past the Fellowship. The boys have priceless chances of growing into strong Indian manhood, of standing firm in their respective future work and of being able to form strong Christian families. Beyond all denominational boundaries the Gospel will reach the farthest outposts of the country in a way Amy would have liked: in the pattern of the New Testament and in giving the present-day India the Gospel in the language the people can understand, in the germ of the spiritual language so typical of Dohnavur. Amy’s work does follow her.

Appreciations: ‘Amy my beloved friend’

Dohnavur was visited by many friends and ‘just passing’ visitors. In what way did they see and value this Irish women with so much of India in her? Outwardly, her Victorian upbringing gave the impression of her being reserved, even severe, the product of an English public school and a rather strict Presbyterian upbringing, but inwardly her heart was full of love and gratitude. She had the ability to cross both cultural and social barriers and to relate equally to both Indian government officials and country people.

We cannot avoid the many opinions circulating about Amy. In our 21st century the spell of reverence towards the missionary era and its leading ‘giants’ is broken in many ways. Criticism mostly comes from those who have comfortable, tailor-made careers, who have not seen ‘deep’. Getting to know Amy Carmichael is only possible if one recklessly forsakes all to follow the Lord.

Many trailblazers are forgotten and Amy Carmichael is one of them. There is a circle of mission-minded people who keep her legacy vivid, but in broader mission circles she is just someone from the past. Yet she has be known, and missionaries and mission organisations damage themselves by putting her aside or not lending their ear to her. She had her mistakes, fears, blind spots, and idiosyncrasies, but we see her as God’s unique gift. God used her as his instrument. She was someone whose life was transformed by him and with her fierce convictions she transformed the lives of many others. She did not ask for veneration and admiration, nor for

2218. Ploughed Under, 131.

2219. Ploughed Under, 133.

2220. Santhosha means joy. Vidhyalaya, a place of education.

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nice words in favour of her from the Church or the world; she did not allow anybody to make a parade for her, nor was she open for applause and cheers. She possessed an independence, which places her on the same line with John the Baptist: ‘What did you go out into the wilderness to behold? A reed shaken by the wind?’2221 She was just a shining light, a candle giving light and diminishing while shining. In God’s appointed time, she was there where the Lord wanted her to be. In a daily sacrifice and denial of self, wedded to the Cross, she glorified in the Cross. What you see? A woman after God’s own heart.

Already during her life she was a legend in evangelical circles, from New Zealand to Canada, from England to the USA. Many held views of their own about her, and to the present day she is paid attention to by one or another publication; to one she is sympathetic and laudatory, to another she is just an oldfashioned Victorian missionary with an exceedingly high standard, or there is plain-spoken negativity. Special attention is given to her character in relation to her work, in the way her life formed her theology and missionary method.2222 With the biographical elements in the forefront, especially in the way her character relates to her ministry, the outcome is also that doctrinal and denominational issues that often divide Christians now tend to recede into the background.2223

People who have lived or worked closely with Amy did not find it easy to name any faults of hers; they could not even think about her in terms of any mistakes made by her. It shows grace if we can see her and judge her work in the light of the Gospel. For herself she knew that for God she only could live under the cover of Christ’s blood. Did she not say of a Christian: ‘Christ is all and I am nothing’? She was not a sinless person, but she believed God, and without any reserve I put her in the list of Hebrews 11:

And what more shall I say? For time would fail me to tell of. […] And all these, though well attested by their faith, did not receive what was promised, since God had foreseen something better for us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect.2224 Over the many years of Amy’s missionary career she made a lot of contacts. Many unknown to us today, but also several well-known others related to mission work. It is known that she appreciated Bishop Moule’s books and he was asked by Amy in 1917 to write the foreword of Ponnamal, in which he defines her work as ‘the most pathetic and noble rescue-work in the world’.2225

She was in contact with Rosalind Goforth from China who, on behalf of Madame Chang Kai-Shek, gave her the book China in Peace and War.2226 In the dedication Rosalind wrote ‘From the author, who, for many years was known and loved you from afar’, and closed with Nahum 1:7: ‘The Lord is good, a stronghold in the day of trouble’. Amy herself wrote in this book: ‘The great worth of this book is that

2221. Matthew 11:7; Luke 7:24.

2222. Cf. ‘Theology of character’ in J. Wm. McClendon, Biography as Theology: How Life Stories Can Remake Today’s Theology (Nashville, TN: Abingdon, 1974).

2223. An example of this can be found in Eddy, Pathfinders of the World Missionary Crusade. Having described the lives of many missionaries, in which he weaved together mission strategy with character, he writes in his epilogue: ‘The great Dane, Larsen, the beloved Charlie Andrews, and the saintly Miss Carmichael were similar in only one respect – they all were Christ like. Larsen was a rational modernist, Andrews was heterodox, and Amy Carmichael was frankly fundamentalist. Yet I cannot find any difference between liberals and conservatives in their consecration or in the spiritual results of their work’ (pp. 311–312). Also Tucker, ‘Biography as Missiology’, 429–430.

2224. See Hebrews 11:32–39.

2225. In the foreword of Ponnamal, V.

2226. Madame Chang Kai-Shek (May-Ling Soong Chiang), China in Peace and War (London: Hurst & Blackett, 1940). The book is in the Dohnavur library. hardness is taken for granted as part of soldiership’, and she underlined the words of Madame Chang Kai-Shek in this book:

Is it possible that modern trained Chinese Christians lack the stuff of which missionaries are made? Are we in the position of accepting all the benefits of the Christian faith without caring to accept the responsibilities and hardships? At the very heart of our faith is hardship, endurance, suffering – a cross. Without them there cannot be any Christian faith.

These words could have been written by Amy. Another missionary to China, Joy Guinness, gave her a book in 1949 with the words: ‘To Amma with love and deep gratitude for all your sharing in the making of this book’. For Christmas 1941, Geraldine and Howard Taylor presented Amy one of the books from their own library, The Success of Christian Missions, ‘with heartiest good wishes’.2227 She read the whole book.

Amy herself always prayed to be guided by the Holy Spirit and was eager to know the path of righteousness, to walk there for others but also for herself.

Humanly speaking we can say that, especially in the beginning, the time she arrived in the mission field, she was too quick in her judgement about others. She learned, as later on she could say to new recruits: ‘There are days when I hope I shall be gone before you come. I can not bear to be a horrid disappointment to you’.2228

Sometimes it took a while to admit or to apologise when a decision proved to be not good. For us, now nearly more than 70 years after her death, the memories of those who have known her are fading. Her books tell everything, and her bold and honest writing tells a lot about her own inner feelings and struggles. She, who spoke so often about love and joy as a work of the Lord in the lives of his children, was the one who, until the end of her life and even further – as one new worker in the Fellowship noticed – ‘wanted joy, triumph, tambourines, even after her burial’. One remembered a young missionary,2229 after having met Amy for the first time, who when she came out of her room, had said after a while, ‘I have seen the Lord Jesus’.

But all this does not alter the fact that some thank God for this missionary, and her valuable legacy, while others see in her only a controversial and outdated missionary. Various different labels are put on her. When we read and hear of childhood memories of Amy from those who as a baby or little child came to Dohnavur, all remember her love for them and without exception, the remembrance of her is one of full blessing.2230

Amy in her work was one with the women with whom she worked at Dohnavur. One of the first ones she fully trusted and with whom she shared her deepest feelings was Ponnamal. It was she who, in short, gives us a very nice comment of what she saw in Amy. Since 1904, in the search for children to save them, Amy had shared with Ponnamal all her fears and anxieties about the whole project and how she brought everything to the Lord. The local people watched the missionary! In Amy, Ponnamal saw a

2227. R. Young, The Success of Christian Missions (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1890). In the Dohnavur library.

2228. In Elliot, A Chance to Die, 289.

2229. See Elliot, A Chance to Die, 291. On the same page: ‘A Canadian woman psychiatrist went to visit, expecting to garner an interesting case study of a neurotic old lady. Five minutes with Amma convinced the doctor she had picked the wrong lady.’ And ‘an Indian pastor who criticised the work of the Fellowship because the children were brought up like “hot house plants”, felt sincerely ashamed of his prejudice once he had met Amma. “My doubts vanished. Instinctively I felt that here was a person just beside me who has realised God. I have never seen such a beautiful face”.’

2230. See Dust of Gold, no. 246, 14.

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missionary full of the love of God and for God. ‘I see God with you’2231 she once uttered and she, too, believed that the work for the children was of God.

The Keswick missioner Dr Inwood2232 spent two days in Dohnavur. He gives the following impression:

The two days spent here have no parallel in my experience. Everything in this work has the touch of God so naturally upon it that I lived in one unbroken act of wonder and worship and adoration […] The visit was to me a sacrament, a new contact with the Spirit of the Master that enriched my own spirit for all coming time.2233 Lilias Trotter from Algiers and Amy corresponded regularly, until Lilias died in 1928. From Algeria this ‘comrade from North Africa’, as Amy called her, sent Amy her newest book The Glory of the Impossible.2234 One of her other books, Parables of the Cross, Lilias dedicated to Amy:

While Lilias and Amy never met, they were kindred spirits, coming from similar backgrounds in Britain and having both been deeply influenced by the Keswick Conferences. Each woman possessed that rare combination of pioneer and poet, developing ministries in their respective countries while writing devotional literature of depth and grace. They would through the years, keep informed of each other’s work through their published writings and personal correspondence. Inspired by the example of this woman fourteen years her junior, Lilias later would encourage the children in Algeria to support the children at Dohnavur with their prayers and offerings, as she herself did.2235 Contributions to the Algiers Mission Band’s quarterly magazine El Couffa show that news from the mission front, such as Amy Carmichael’s work in India, were reported. On her deathbed, Lilias Trotter dictated two final letters, one for Amy in India, ‘with whom she had kept an active correspondence’.2236

‘Amy, my beloved friend. From Mildred.’ These words are in The Cloud of the Unknowing, a book Amy got as a present from Mildred Cable. We do not know if Amy was happy with the book, for we read under the title Amy’s own words: ‘Take the wheat, leave the chaff’. Mildred was one of the well-known CIM Trio. In 1928 the Trio, Evangeline and Francesca French and Mildred Cable, travelled through India.2237 As well as their visit to the Women’s Medical College at Ludhiana2238 they went far to the south to meet Amy and saw what was going on in Dohnavur. As they entered the compound, it was to them, that they were taken ‘out of this century of vulgar exaggeration into the quiet austerities of an earlier age’. They watched the children playing ‘with joyous abandon, sheltered from this gross and evil world’. In talks with Amy they heard of the tremendous conflict which surged around every inmate of this house:

It would be easy on a brief visit to Dohnavur to gain the impression of a garden of paradise where exquisite children play with joyous abandon, sheltered from this gross and evil world, but on the footing of comradeship

2231. Ponnamal, 40.

2232. Those sent by the Keswick Mission Council to visit various mission fields, were called ‘missioners’.

2233. Amy Carmichael of Dohnavur, 194.

2234. See Lotus Buds, 126.

2235. In Huffman Rockness, A Passion for the Impossible, 151.

2236. In Huffman Rockness, A Passion for the Impossible, 244 and 324.

2237. Cf. the biography by W.J. Platt, Three Women, Mildred Cable, Francesca French, Evangeline French (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1964).

2238. It is the largest city north of New Delhi in the state of Punjab. In 1833 American Presbyterian Missionaries established in Ludhiana a Christian Medical College and Hospital. in spiritual campaigns, Amy Carmichael admitted us to the knowledge of the tremendous conflict which surges around every inmate of this house. ‘These beautiful children have been snatched one by one from the very jaws of hell […] and each one within these gates means one victim less for the life of shame which is involved in the betrothal to the gods’.2239 In 1946 they visited India again, but were not able then to travel to Dohnavur, This journey, recorded in Journey with a Purpose, had really given them to see the purpose of their travels, namely that ‘India has had a new place in our prayers ever since’.2240

Murray Webb-Peploe took Hugh Evan Hopkins back with him to Dohnavur after a furlough in England. He served with Godfrey and John Risk in the boys’ compound. From the very beginning, Hugh sensed the high level of spiritual intensity throughout the whole Fellowship. In a unique way, he described his first impression of Dohnavur and Amy:

You sometimes felt guilty about laughing, even. The atmosphere was rather like that of a convent. The first morning after my arrival I came down for chota (early breakfast) at 5.30 a.m. Godfrey and John were both sitting there, so solemn that I couldn’t resist clowning a bit: I put some egg-shell in my mouth and spat it out vigorously. I am not sure how amused Godfrey was, but things did relax a bit after that. It was marvellous to see it all coming to life – the Fellowship that I had heard and read and prayed so much about. One had to realize that under God there was only one boss and that was Amma. She wouldn’t proceed with any course of action until everyone had agreed, but who dared oppose her? We were awed – perhaps excessively so – by her wisdom and experience. She was a remarkable woman, alarming to a raw recruit, with a sort of aura around her. You sensed at once that she walked very closely to God. Quite apart from her spirituality she was a highly gifted person – she was very widely read and had an amazing knowledge of Tamil and of Indian ways. Mercifully she had a sense of humour, which saved the day many a time. When I first met her she was not completely bedridden but was sitting up in a chair, already in the famous room from which she hardly ever emerged.2241 For Stanley Jones (1884–1973) Amy was ‘a true saint of South India’2242; for Elisabeth Elliot (1926– 2015) Amy was her ‘first spiritual mother’2243 and Sherwood Eddy (1871–1963) sees her as the ‘most Christlike character I have ever met’ and a ‘frank fundamentalist’;2244 however, he had also his reservations and did not agree with all her spiritual ideas. Later he said that ‘her life was the most fragrant, the most joyfully sacrificial, that I ever knew’, he goes on:

This does not mean, of course, that her work was the most fruitful, or that I agreed completely with her theology; indeed, some of her convictions were for me quite impossible.2245 And here another opinion about Amy: ‘One of the most selfless, giving persons of the twentieth century – an example of faith unconcerned about self’.2246 In the eyes of Ruth Tucker she was a ‘celebrity’, especially through her writings. Celebrities in missions were often in the right place at the right time, according to Tucker. Which would mean for Amy that she was right when she believed Dohnavur to be the place God

2239. In French, Cable and French, A Desert Journal, 24.

2240. M. Cable & F. French, Journey with a Purpose (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1950), 9.

2241. See Makower, Follow My Leader, 126–127.

2242. Stanley Jones, In Christ, 207.

2243. See her A Chance to Die, IX.

2244. Eddy, Pathfinders of the World Missionary Crusade, 124.

2245. Eddy, Pathfinders of the World Missionary Crusade, 124–125.

2246. P.L. King, ‘Amy Carmichael’, in Moving Mountains (Tonbridge, Kent: Sovereign World Ltd., 2004), 171.

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wanted her to be and the time was right because India still stood under British rule, which gave Amy a lot more opportunities to decide about the affairs in Dohnavur than after 1947 when India got its independence.

Stephen Neill’s judgement cannot be positive, due to his stormy relationship, which ended when Amy ordered him to leave. In his eyes, she was a ‘dictator’ who had plunged him into darkness.2247 Jayawardena, who takes a ‘feminist perspective’, sees Amy as a ‘controversial missionary’, who ‘spoke like an old style-missionary’ and her ‘attitudes to Hinduism also caused problems’ because she did not feel like many other missionaries ‘to project a more liberal Christianity’, condemning the Hindus as ‘heathen’.2248 She questions Amy’s way of working with the women, calling them ‘sisters’, because many women were upset about the way she behaved and sometimes reacted very angrily and ridiculed the Christian and Western social practice.2249 Warren Wiersbe, in his Great Christians You Should Know, called her a ‘Missionary Unpredictable’. Many churches and mission societies today may well struggle with Amy’s unorthodox ways.

A range of opinions, and Amy would be the first to admit that she had her mistakes, but she did where she was called for: she reached the lost and dying with the love of God; she made her life count and left a legacy that is still with us.

Visitors to Dohnavur began to recognise Amy’s uniqueness and the wonderful thing God was doing there. Dr Inwood, a Keswick Convention speaker from 1898 to 1927, said:

The two days spent there have no parallel in my experience. Everything in this work has the touch of God so naturally upon it that I lived in one unbroken act of wonder, worship and adoration.

In the first decade of the 20th century a stained glass window was unveiled in Belfast along with three murals in the Stankill area depicting the three eras of Amy’s life – Millisle, Belfast and India. The Ulster History Council erected a blue plaque (Figure 38) on the front of the old schoolhouse – now Millisle Baptist Church – in November 2006 and another at the Welcome Evangelical Church in 2007.

Today, reading her books, I envision her working in Dohnavur and I see a strong personality, when young with her stubborn character, mellowing with age, a woman of deep personal faith who loved Christ with all her heart. I see a woman versed in the Bible who took God at his Word, a woman who believed in the power of prayer and with the courage of her convictions never budging from her basic principles. I see a woman with a loving concern for those who were in endangered situations; a woman who saw the pain of this world in the light of the Cross.

To the end of her life she was a missionary heart and soul. A heart she had for the glory of God and a heart of mercy for children, which together in need made her a Christ-like missionary. Amy’s life reminds me that God has proven himself sufficient for those who have gone before us in the outreach to the nations with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Used by the Lord not because she was so kind or flawless or better trained or less apt to selfishness, but because she considered him worthy of her life and responded to the call in precious obedience.

The end of an era

Through the Spirit we get fathers and mothers and with them we become one in the Spirit. Therefore, in our spirituality, and thinking of missions, in our mission work we are dealing with those who were

2247. In Neill’s autobiography, God’s Apprentice. The author does not mention Dohnavur and Amy Carmichael.

2248. Jayawardena, The White Women’s Other Burden, 261, 14, 94 and 95.

2249. Jayawardena, The White Women’s Other Burden, 265–266.

Source: © J. (Hans) Kommers.

FIGURE 38: Plaque erected on the Millisle Baptist Church.

before us and walked their way with the Lord in the mission of Christ’s Church all over the world. The Spirit who led those before us goes from them to us, so that we come together with them and we ask them what they have to say to us so that we hear his voice via them. Inspiration does not come without having had a good talk. In this talk the dwarves stand on the shoulders of the giants, and in this dialogue the separation of generations is abolished. In this way Amy has been our interlocutor. She had to pass on something to us. In mission history God gave us people on whom we can pull ourselves up when we want to win the future.

Today most people have no knowledge of missionaries and missions from the past, and therefore they are unable to cope with the future. With access to the past, knowing what others did and why, one will discover that it is not old-fashioned, or a kind of exotic history, but that they, too, aimed at the future. What connects and separates us from Amy is not the time she did her mission work, and her mission view, but it is her connection with Christ. Her passionate love for him and her lifelong devotion

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to his work in Dohnavur stand before us as a unique example of devotion to his work. We have to learn not to avoid the study of mission history and to learn from the fathers of mission to which our generation so easily bid farewell. Our generation has to learn from those before us. In our global world, the world is becoming smaller, but the ‘I’ of men is becoming bigger, and, inherent to that, men are living more and more on their own. It is now that we have to learn again, that the Gospel is a power. And when we meditate upon the extraordinary working of it we will trust the reality of the Gospel more. Today God will do his mighty work among those we are going to work.

When Amy passed away, she left a gap not only among her own people, but throughout the whole of the missionary world, which would be hard, if not impossible, to fill. No eulogy is required about the toil expended. If it be true that ‘it is not the turnpike, but the trackless wild, with the peak in the distance and the star overhead to steer by, that are making the climbers’, Amy was an eminent instance of this class.

Viewing Amy’s work and writings in the context of her time, my intentions have been to convey its subject’s stature without lapsing into either hagiography or denigration. The material is dated, but many of her insights and arguments are still profoundly relevant in our day. Honestly said, the survey has been done in sympathy with her.

Where necessary critical notes had to be made, but Amy’s complete surrender to God, fully dependent on the way he led her, expecting full provision from her Master, and her deep love to bring those lost to Christ, working only for his glory, give missionaries in our generation something to focus upon. Amy was one of the thousands who in their youth responded to the call to the mission field. In the years gone by when a student was converted at Cambridge it was axiomatic that they would be expected soon to offer themselves for the mission field.

When students in the universities in our countries are found in Christ Jesus today, is it axiomatic that they should offer themselves for the mission field? We need again to face the costliness of obedience like that of the Cambridge Seven in the 1880s. Never get away from Jesus and his Cross. Isobel Kuhn wrote of three young CIM workers whom she took to a new station: ‘This day I have planted three corns of wheat to die, that they may bring forth much fruit’.

An era ended, but the work is still going on; times have changed, but the facts will not have altered, and our generation has to have in mind: ‘Consider Him that endured’. God lasts, Christ lasts; his blood retains its efficacy, and the Spirit retains his power, so be sure that the blessing in its essentials will last. The tentacles of imperial English establishment, which never were far from the missionaries in India, were loosened after the independence of India in 1947. The pendulum swung to the other side. The unclouded confidence that the Western way of thinking and commerce together with the British ‘way of life’, which was seen everywhere, now does not go hand in hand in the work of evangelism. The proud and the wealthy of the West, confident of their superiority after the two world wars, have turned their great treasures and rich talents, not to the attainment of world peace but to a frightful carnival of hatred, destruction and death. For Western Christianity this swing of the pendulum meant much heart searching and agonising reappraisal. For the people responsible for the work of missionary societies and of foreign mission committees of various churches, it meant the devising of new policies for their foreign fields.

After World War II the number of Protestant missionaries began to fall markedly and the funds available to maintain those who remained were subject to severe restrictions. This period has been called ‘the end of the missionary’, a period of disentanglement. I was born in the year India got its independence, and having been in the mission field in Europe and Africa, I have come to believe that the gracious purposes of God shall be fulfilled and that his worldwide work is safe in his hands. He will guide his messengers in the last days through the dangerous rocks of adversity until he comes. We go forward in anticipation of tomorrow.

The work done in the first part of the 20th century, the impressive institutions, also in Dohnavur, can be seen as bags for the seed to be sown over the fields, for the ‘bread of the world’, for the breaking and sharing of Christ’s body in a fellowship of which Christ is the head. The modern story of Amy’s Dohnavur Fellowship, after her home-going is faithfully described by Nancy Robbins.2250 From the Santhosha Vidhyalaya Secondary School, yearly hundreds are scattered all over India to act as servants of Christ, proclaiming triumphant joy in Christ Jesus. For the Dohnavur Fellowship the overall content of their joy is the song: ‘Lord God of doors we cannot pass, We go where Thou art leading on.’2251

2250. Not Forgetting to Sing, 1967.

2251. In Robbins, Not Forgetting to Sing, 179.

If you know the satisfaction of performing such a duty, as well as the gratitude to God which the missionary must always feel, in being chosen for so noble, so sacred calling, you would have no hesitation in embracing it. For my own part, I have never ceased to rejoice that God has appointed me to such an office. People talk of the sacrifice I have made in spending so much of my life in Africa. Can that be called a sacrifice which is simply paid back as a small part of a great debt owing to our God, which we can never repay? […] It is emphatically no sacrifice. Say rather it is a privilege. […] I never made a sacrifice. Of this we ought not to talk, when we remember the great sacrifice which He

made who left His Father’s throne on high to give

Himself for us.

David Livingstone at Cambridge University, 04 December 1857.