Dust of the earth, dust of God (part 2 of 2)

Scripturally soaked

Amy’s books give many guiding principles for missionary work and still she surprises us by her psychological observation and sparkling pedagogical wisdom. The first things that draw our attention when reading her written work is its familiarity with the Bible. Amy and the people close to her lived in a scriptural atmosphere. Scripture moulded Amy’s thinking. As far as composition is concerned, her written work is in some way a little dispersed. It consists of letters, poems, Dohnavur history, biographies, Bible study, daily money affairs and writing about the children – but it is sustained by a deep searching, coherent vision, so that, without looking at the diversity, by only appreciating the content and style, we can consider these books of permanent value which Christian literature in the course of ages has brought forth. We admire the depth of thought, the law of love, the beauty of style and the simplicity of language. Her books are masterpieces of mission literature. Before 1931, most of her books fell into the category of missionary biographical issues, nearly all relating to the work of the Dohnavur Fellowship. As an invalid she was aware what other sick people had to suffer and

2342. Here the poem refers to Romans 8:22. ‘We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoptions as sons, the redemption of our bodies’.

2343. In the foreword of The Continuation of a Story, 4.

2344. In From the Fight, 3.

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in her books after 1931 several books deal with the issues of sickness, pain and deliverance, books written ‘from the ill to the ill’. The distinction of her work is connected with the sheer piety, the (mystic) experience and practice of fellowship and communion with the living God, inwardly and in real life. The secret fascination of Amy’s language is made up of the way in which she makes the impression that it is welled up from a pure fountain, unfathomably deep. She writes nothing but that which she has experienced in her inner life. Writing meant for her: bringing people into the world of soul’s fruit and soul’s delight. She passes on what she receives from God. Amy does not write about mission, but as mission! It is difficult to choose which of the books she wrote is her magnus opus, but still today many books give us very worthwhile spiritual and missionary insights. During her life she wrote 35 books which all breathe a challenge urging all to be zealous for the Lord while there is opportunity. Her books have been translated into at least 15 languages. If and Mimosa are on top of the list of translated books.

Her subject matter was unvarying: the practical work of a practical mission. The many bookcases in her room show a wealth of books on various subjects and a look inside reveals that she read many of them all the way through. That she must have read a lot of books is also shown by the many quotations of other authors that can be found in her books. Many of her books have stories of the children in Dohnavur, interspersed with Scripture verses and illustrated with photographs of the children, the Dohnavur compound and several beautiful sepia pictures of flowers and landscapes. The work with the children inspired Amy to write her books and many of them have extended in their influence far beyond the scope of foreign missions. Still today from Dohnavur in south India Amy’s influence is spreading throughout the whole world. Has any active missionary ever published so much? One wonders that she even managed to write some sentences, while she was interrupted all the time by visitors or staff members who needed her advice. Often she wrote while children were playing on the ground and claimed her attention permanently.2345 Gold Cord was written in a room full of ‘a jumble of common affairs’.2346 From Japan many letters were written to family and friends. Amy’s first printed book From Sunrise Land, published in 1895, contains excerpts from her letters home. Some of the sketches in it were from her hands, and William, Mr Wilson’s son, contributed the others.

Things as They Are, Mission Work in South India, with a preface by Eugene Stock, published in 1903, did not receive a cordial welcome. It was too honest.2347 It was not nicely polished and not fit for those at home who always wanted to hear nice mission stories. Amy’s books picture reality by camera and pencil.2348 The reading public expected a missionary to share only dynamic conversion stories and tales of miracles, not the difficulties and the setbacks of the work. Amy defended the descriptions of her less glamorous struggles by putting experiences into words, but she confessed that even for herself it was a challenge. She expressed her longing for the Indian people to know the Saviour:

I write this under a sense of the solemnity of being ‘a servant’… separated unto the Gospel. I would not write one word lightly. But oh! may I ask you to face it? Are we honest towards God? If we were, would these people be left to die as they are being left to die? We feel for them. But feelings will not save souls; it cost God Calvary to win us. It will cost us as much as we may know of the fellowship of His sufferings, if those for whom He died that day are ever to be won. I am writing in the midst of the sights and the sounds of life. There is life in the

2345. Cf. in Lotus Buds, Chapter III, 19–26. ‘I am writing in the afternoon, and two little people are playing on the floor. One has a picture book, and the other is looking eagerly as she turns the pages and questions: “What is it”? “What is it”?’ (p. 31). 2346. Gold Cord, 366.

2347. ‘Stories stripped of any glamour one might expect or imagine foreign missions to have. It is an honest, heart-rending account of Amy’s itinerant evangelistic work in villages’ (Williamson, Amy Carmichael, 29).

2348. As one wrote: ‘The pen, as faithfully as the camera, has told the truth, and nothing but the truth’ (confirmatory notes in Things As They Are, VI). group of women at the well; life in the voices, in the splash of the water, in the cry of a child, in the call of the mother; life in the flight of the parrots as they flock from tree to tree; life in their chatter as they quarrel and scream; life, everywhere life. How can I think out of all this, back into death again.2349 Amy wrote about the things as she saw them in India – the events described took place in the years 1899–1901 – and what she knew about the practices in the Hindu temples painted a dark picture of Hindu life. At that time two of Amy’s friends from Manchester visited her. With their help Things As They Are was eventually published. Mr Hemingway of the Indian Civil Service was not pleased with this book. He could not believe the things Amy had revealed to be true. He started to research himself and found that Amy had written the truth. He became her lifelong friend. Through this book Christians from all over the world saw the burden and were stirred to think and to pray for the children’s rescue work. Mr Hemmingway gave the report Amy had written about child trafficking and about what was happening in the temples to the Governor of Madras. Things As They Are led thousands of Christians to prayer and many started to protest against the evils Amy had described. In 1947, planning a new edition – the 13th reprint! – Amy wrote:

There is very little to revise. I had not looked at the book, much less re-read it, for forty years or more. To read it was like reading a new book – a new story, and a scorching one. Again and again, I had to stop. I could not bear it at all, I think, if I could not shut my eyes and see the House of Prayer full of redeemed children, the nurseries full of babies – and – such babies! – the Place of Heavenly Healing and all its lovely activities, the Converts’ Home, too, and so many there and elsewhere saved and protected from the wrongs and sorrows of which the book tells.2350 Reading Things As They Are one cannot remain indifferent and it stirred a lot of people to compassion and action. The publisher also had problems with some parts of From the Forest, ‘it was too harrowing’, and it had to be ‘modified, even for the grown-up people’, so he returned the manuscript. ‘But I could not’, she wrote, because:

[D]id it mean turn the pepper into flour, and the wrist-twisting into pats, smother the misery of the cross with flowers? But what good would it do? So I put the unwanted manuscript back in its envelope and wrote across it words I had read a week or two before in ‘Aurora Leigh’, ‘You must not pump cold water unawares upon a gracious public full of nerves’.

In the manuscript Amy refers to the Brownie and Pearl-Boy, she had wanted to help.2351

The people in England did not have the slightest inkling of these things, used as they were to the romantic and adventurous mission stories told by many missionaries. Amy must have thought during the writing this book: ‘Facts, not mere sentiment, will move hearts’. Sometimes it was necessary to use ‘unpainted words’.2352 According to Seton, this book:

[W]as shot across the bows of much of the overly optimistic missionary discourse of the period, and resonated with those who had experienced at first hand the frustrations and obstacles of evangelistic work […] Her stark analysis offended many.2353 Eric Sharpe says: ‘The book came as an unpleasant shock to romantics and triumphalists alike’. But Amy had to bring the truth to light. She revealed the ‘Actual of India’. Eugene Stock, the author of the history of the CMS, writes in the preface: ‘What she says is the truth, and nothing but the truth’. And yet not everything could be written. ‘If she wrote it, it could not be printed.’ As Dr Rudisill writes in the

2349. Things As They Are, 51.
2350. In Amy Carmichael of Dohnavur, 331.
2351. See From the Forest, 20.
2352. From the Forest, 20.
2353. In Western Daughters in Eastern Lands, 185–186.

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confirmatory notes, ‘if the whole truth were told, an evil spirit only could produce the pictures, and hell itself would be the only place in which to publish them’. Stock very strikingly urges:

God grant that its terrible facts and its burning words may sink into the hearts of its readers! Perhaps, when they have read it, they will at least agree that we have used no sensational and exaggerated language when we have said that the Church is only playing with mission.2354 Worldwide the book found readers, especially after many had admitted the truth. Reviewers wrote:

The account of native life, of the customs of the people, of the few pleasures they enjoy, and the many sorrows that oppress them, is as accurate as it is lucid and entertaining. We will do well to give this book serious attention; it is so completely sincere, and so free from prejudice; and there are many excellent illustrations after photographs. In Things As They Are, are pictured by pen and camera some things as they are. It is all the more needful now when so many are deceived, and are being deceived as to the true nature of idolatry, that people at home who give and pray should be told plainly that what Paul wrote about idolaters in Rome and Corinth is still true of idolaters in India.2355 Other books followed. The first was strategically called Overweights of Joy (1906). The title of this book is from Coneybear and Howson’s translation of 2 Corinthians 7:4: ‘I have more than an overweight of Joy’. Thomas Walker wrote the preface, in which he confirmed that everything Amy had written was ‘true again, absolutely true. […] And Truth (with a capital “T”) is the main thing’. Walker emphasises to the reader to read between the lines:

India has not yet been won. Thank God for what has been done; and Miss Carmichael was not ignorant of it when she wrote her book, as will be clear to anyone who reads between the lines.2356 Amy was at pains to point out that the book was written from ‘Old India’, the India of the villages, and not the ‘New India’ of the universities and colleges and political platforms, about which she sensibly disclaimed being qualified to write. In several reviews we read:2357

[O]ne of the most striking and inspiring missionary books of recent years. There is a life and enthusiasm and devotion, combined with literary ability and winsomeness of style, which make the book very captivating, as well as very touching. It is quite wonderfully illustrated with sunsets on the Ghauts, and all kinds of wonders, and withal it is a song of spiritual triumph from a soul that feels intensely the cost of the Cross. A book, indeed, for every Christian home.

Mr Hemingway also urged Amy to write about some of the children now safely in Dohnavur. It was then that Amy wrote Lotus Buds.2358 Lotus Buds was published in November 1909, when Amy was little short of her 42nd birthday. The book is known for the beautiful sepia photography illustrating it, and especially the photographs of young children, some of which are tiny masterpieces. Two visitors from England, Mary Hatch and Ella Crossley, a friend from Manchester, were the ‘picture catchers’. Also a famous photographer, Mr Penn, of Ootacamund (Ooty), previously a landscape photographer, illustrated several Dohnavur books with beautiful photos. Otherwise, while some of the tough-mindedness of Things As They Are remains in Lotus Buds, it is counter balanced and sometimes overbalanced by sentimentality, especially where children died far too soon. In speaking about the matters of the trafficking of children in danger, she

2354. In confirmatory notes and preface of Things As They Are, VI and XII.

2355. In Literary World book review of Things As They Are, and Dr A. Rudisill’s review published by M.E. Press, Madras. Both reviews in Ling, Dawn in Toda Land, 93.

2356. Rev. Thomas Walker in the preface of Overweights of Joy, VIII.
2357. In The Christian World, in The Churchman and in Ling, Dawn in Toda Land, 94.
2358. See also Wilkinson, At BBC Corner, 84–85.

avoided sentiment and banished all imagination: she expressed in her books the reality. ‘We write for the earnest-hearted, who are not ashamed to confess they care.’2359 And yet:

[T]his book comes hot from the fight. It is not a retrospect written in the calm after-years, when the outline of things has grown indistinct and the sharpness of life is blurred.2360 Overweights of Joy, was meant to be a song of praise out of the darkness, which was the background of the work. Also in this book it is her aim to be true. In what she writes, she tries to avoid ‘overcolouring’ as she would avoid a lie.2361 She even asks forgiveness for writing so plainly:2362

Graves and gardens: Weights and Overweights. Sometimes we pass backwards and forwards from grave to garden; then the scales are poised just evenly. Sometimes the grave appears to encroach upon the garden; then life’s equilibrium becomes disturbed. Sometimes what we thought was a grave blossoms into a garden; then there is an Overweight of Joy.2363 One of Amy’s most loved and trusted co-workers was Ponnamal. She was one of the leading women in the Starry Cluster and eventually she became Amy’s right hand in the work. She was the one who with so many babies was sent to Neyyoor, where night and day she took care of the children. Even after being diagnosed with cancer, she continued doing her work as well as possible until she died in 1916. For Amy and the whole Fellowship a great blow, for her wisdom and leadership qualities would be greatly missed. In 1924 Ponnamal, Her Story, appeared, in which Amy paid a beautiful tribute to her. No less than Bishop Handley Moule wrote the foreword. In Amy’s personal copy she wrote in 1936: ‘Whose faith follow’.

Windows shows the way the Lord supplied all the Dohnavur needs. The book is very helpful and show us how the Lord dealt among his own, and how the work in Dohnavur went on.2364

Amy’s walk of faith, is expressed in her ‘crowning work’,2365 the classic little book If. It epitomises her Christian walk and challenges us to walk in Calvary love – the way of the Cross – dying to ourselves and to the world. This booklet is written, especially for under-shepherds,2366 who are missing the way of love. In their work, they often encounter pride, selfishness, or cowardice in themselves. The only help is the knowledge of the love of God shown forth on Calvary. About how this little book came to be written, Amy says:

One evening a fellow-worker brought me a trouble about a younger one who was missing the way of Love. This led to a wakeful night, for the word at such times is always, ‘Lord, is it I? have I failed her anywhere? What do I know of Calvary Love?’? And then sentence by sentence the ‘Ifs’ came, almost as if spoken aloud to the inward ear. […] Some of the ‘ifs’ appear to be related to pride, selfishness, or cowardice, but digging deeper we come upon an unsuspected loveliness at the root of them all.2367

2359. Lotus Buds, 283.
2360. Lotus Buds, 45.
2361. Overweights of Joy, 4.

2362. Overweights of Joy, 59: ‘Forgive me for writing thus plainly. I pray that this message may shake in you all that can be shaken, that that which cannot be shaken may remain firm as the Rock of Ages’.

2363. Overweights of Joy, 212.

2364. Cf. the way Hudson Taylor informed the people about mission work in China. China’s Millions reported about the progress and the defeats of the work, and about travel and Chinese affairs. In Wigram, The Bible and Mission in Faith Perspective, 11 and 12.

2365. This expression is from P.L. King, ‘Amy Carmichael’, in Moving Mountains, 184.
2366. Amy Carmichael in the foreword of If, VII.
2367. In the introduction to If, V and VI.

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Amy wrote If for the Fellowship community she led to help them to love better. She asked the question ‘what do I know of Calvary love?’ with the hope of stimulating love in her team. Loving deeply is always a challenge, especially among those with whom we live, and those with whom we work. For me, a heartpiercing ‘if’ statement is this one:

If I say, ‘Yes, I forgive, but I cannot forget’,
as though the God,
who twice a day washes all the sands
on all the shores of all the world,
could not wash such memories from my mind,
then I know nothing of Calvary love.2368

This ‘if’, and also the others are strong stuff. But what a beautiful analogy to show God’s mercy for us.

Some years after her accident, in about 1935, Amy thought a lot of Arulai, who was physically very weak, due to smallpox and other illnesses. Up to that moment, several operations had not given promising results. What if she were to lose Arulai, a woman she fully trusted and of whom she thought of her as a future leader of the Fellowship? Her thoughts were put together in a dialogue between ‘the son’ (herself) and the Father. This dialogue was later published as His Thoughts Said … His Father Said. Arulai was very precious to her. Arulai had her ‘Celestial Birthday’ on 24 May 1939. Already in 1939, on 21 April, Amy had written in the margin of 2 Timothy 4:

For now she is ready to be offered, and the time of her departure is at hand. She had fought the good fight, she has finished her course, she has kept the faith.

Amy’s books were ‘given’ to her, as she believed. She had the gift of writing. The limpid quality of her style, the grace and the charm of it grips the reader and the nice cadences make reading easy, although what she writes is not always understandable for those who are not fully introduced to the Scriptures. The flights of her fancy sometimes went high. Her written work is spiritual, and therefore eternal. In this sphere, words such as ‘success’ or ‘nice’ and ‘celebrated author’ are words and thoughts that did not appear in Amy’s writing head. Her books strike down to the reality.2369 She was not always content with a manuscript, and often many parts were rewritten and every word was thought about. ‘Words should be like colours, each one a dot of colour supplying a need, not one over’, she wrote in 1930 to Godfrey when he was writing his Brothers of the Lotus Buds.2370

One wonders, reading her work, about her ability to put into words deep thoughts in flowing sentences, but for her it was all God’s. In 1941 His Thoughts Said … His Father Said, was ‘made up of ever so many people’s thoughts, talking aloud as it were […] Some are very private thoughts’. ‘This morning’ – Amy wrote in 1947 to Godfrey – ‘I was reading His Thoughts Said. Constantly I find that the things His Father said open out, and I see what I did not see before in those words’.

In the Dohnavur logbook of 07 October 1932 is the entry is: ‘Mail. Gold Cord arrived’.2371 Often people asked Amy to write about the history and the principles of the Fellowship, the beginning and the people involved from the beginning. Amy was very reluctant to do this. How could she escape personal details? What had to be mentioned, and what not? Finally, by ‘higher authority’, she was

2368. If, 40.
2369. Cf. her foreword in Godfrey’s Peploe Brothers of the Lotus Buds, V.
2370. Published in 1931 by SPCK (London) with a foreword by Amy Carmichael.
2371. Logbook of the Dohnavur Fellowship 1931–1941 (in the Dohnavur library).

convinced and about 1931 she started writing. This writing led to Gold Cord. She kept true to her principles and the whole story held to a single course, and wherever possible the book omitted personal aspects. She even did not mention her own accident in 1931, which made her an invalid. Yet reading, the reader notices the pen of the author in the way she expresses herself, fully dedicated to the truth, ‘seeing the visible always in the light that streams from the invisible’.2372

Her published work is distinguished by the clearness of style, sparkling epigrams, homely references and clear evangelical teaching. Christ! Christ! All focused upon Christ. What Amy wrote was the transcript of her own life. She used the flowing language of her day to describe her innermost feelings. Amy’s books were and are a real contribution to missionary literature, and to mission history of the later Victorian and Edwardian era. The piercing element in her descriptions is her radical honesty. Her literature was not like the type of missionary literature that paints the picture with the devil out of it, or a tamed, almost respectable, devil. Amy says ‘such books had not been written then’. She talks about 1850. For missionaries it is so easy:

[T]o slip into a soft tolerance, which does not see sin as such in those for whom one is responsible, but slides along comfortably for the sake of peace and avoid tackling it in right earnest. It is terribly easy to get accustomed to the thought and the sight of people living without Christ. ’

Revealing the creepy darkness of what was going on behind the big and strong temple walls, she feared ‘exaggerated language’.2373 Her books strike down to reality and the descriptions are nothing if not earnest. Those who worked with her always said that nothing about her was, or ever had been, light or casual. In her meditations, hymns and sacred powers Amy has left a precious legacy to the Dohnavur Fellowship and to the world. All her poems and hymns were collected and combined in 1999.2374 In the years before her death the long-practised pen did not lose its inspiration. In the early years her books circulated in many countries, though in Northern Ireland it was difficult to find one of her books in the evangelical circles. Miss Wilkinson thinks that the reason is that Amy’s mother settled in Manchester with one daughter, Amy was at Broughton Grange in Cockermouth, and her brothers went overseas, two to Canada and one to South Africa, while only one sister remained in Ireland. In due time the family was forgotten in Ireland, so therefore Amy’s work and books, too, were unknown there for a long time. Miss Wilkinson, who also came from Ireland, heard of Amy while she was a medical student in England! Also in the Netherlands she is still unknown. I myself, having been at a mission college for one year and a pastor for many years, happened to come across her books years later on the mission field in Mozambique.

We really wonder how she managed to get on paper so many deep thoughts throughout all the books, poems and songs. Her sensitive heart and her open eyes felt deeper and saw more behind the clouds. Her vivid sense, not merely of her verse faculty in general being given to her, but every line, every poem or hymn, was given her by prayer.2375

2372. Elliot, A Chance to Die, 282.

2373. Lotus Buds, 298.

2374. See R. Delancy, E. Rogers & J. Longton (ed.), Mountain Breezes, The Collected Poems of Amy Carmichael (Fort Washington, MD: CLC, 1999).

2375. Here we are reminded of Frances Ridley Havergal. She once said: ‘Writing is praying for me, for I never seem to write even a verse by myself, and feel like a little child writing: you know a child would look up at every sentence and say, “And what shall I say next?” That is just what I do; I ask that every line He would give me, not merely thought and power, but also every word, even the very rhymes. Very often I have a most distinct and happy consciousness of direct answers’. In F.R. Havergal, Memorials (Caswell Bay, South Wales: J. Nisbet & Co., 1984 [1880]), 248.

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Amy Carmichael did not merely write about her missionary work. Many of her books are devotionals that have inspired countless men and woman into deeper love for their Saviour and a hunger to follow him more completely. Perhaps the greatest lesson that Amy’s life and writings teach us is how to know Christ in the fellowship of his sufferings. Suffering was a constant companion to Amy Carmichael. Despite the bodily hardships she faced, her worst sufferings were not even physical. She had so much love and tenderness in her heart that words cannot describe her anguish when occasionally she would lose a child she thought she had rescued, sometimes from her very doorstep. Despite the difficulties of her life, the Lord helped Amy to see these sufferings positively, as battle wounds and honours gained in the service of her Saviour.

One note still has to be made. Amy took great care about the details and outer format of a book. Books had to be attractive in layout. She often changed the proposals of the publishers. In Houghton we read her correspondence in 1934 with the secretary of the SPCK concerning Ploughed Under, about its size, print cover, pictures and other details. And about price, she also had her opinion. She signed the letter with, ‘Yours troublesomely’:

You say, the more work I can do on it by thinking how I want it to look, the better you will be pleased. That’s the sort of publisher I enjoy. After all, a book is a child, it’s impossible not to know how one wants its hair curled. Well, first I want the book thin. I don’t like podgy books […] Don’t let my little lover come out fat. […] Here as usual we are a nuisance. But think: we are both (you and I) out to do heavenly business. The earthly part of it is only a detail. The people for whom this book is written are not rich […] Please don’t groan, but just do it. 2376 In 1950 she laid down her pen. Her pen had driven her thoughts over endless pages. With her eyes always fixed on her vision, she had used her pen most purposefully. She had gleaned Bible notes, examined the Bible verses and scattered them around, reaping a soul-crop on the way. She had collected poems, even written a lot herself, and presented them to the faint-hearted, the sick and troubled, to encourage, to warn and to uplift those in need. Many friends, family, fellow missionaries, Indians and people overseas were inspired by her. Really, her writings are, even today, a spiritual tonic. It took vision and self-discipline to find time and a quiet place for such precious work. Sometimes Amy went to the house in the forest; there, surrounded by trees and the sound of the wild animals at night together with the grandeur of God’s majesty of the high mountains, she found inspiration. But the inspiration for her writing came from a source higher than the mountains. Her productive pen was filled with more than common ink.

She avoided mentioning her own name or making references to her name. A new book was presented to the Lord. It was for his glory and the welfare of the Fellowship that she wrote. Avoiding her name, yet Amy seemed to make an intimate approach that drew forth an intimate response. She could picture the life, the joy and the problems of the Dohnavur children. She had the talent of making an interesting letter from a small incident in a child’s life. Really a gift from the hand of God.

Her books are nearly over 100 years old. Occasionally the style is dated, and the language is not always very easy, her thoughts often high, and yet surprisingly easy to read in our 21st century. Amy wrote in an expressive and affective way as an impulse for the readers to conversion, to deepen their faith and to emphasise what really happens behind the scenes.

In a very compassionate way she knows how to interpret Christ’s passion on the Cross. Her emotional rendering of the lost state of the heathen and the urgency of telling the Good News to them is a subject which runs through all her work.

Wherever one opens one of her books you will find it easy to get into and you will strike pure gold. There is a variety of themes but everywhere the full implications of the Scripture doctrine of the Saviour are brought to the reader’s notice. It draws us from the human arrogance and confused thinking of much modern evangelism to the apostolic norms, which are permanent. And it comes to us from a woman on the job.

The ardent religiosity of her writing has meant that she often has been unjustly neglected by literary critics. In the last few decades there has been more sympathy for religion in the lives of men and women. The message she wants to spread is for encouragement as well about the need to serve God actively in the world and to demonstrate a return to the inner life and contemplation. Regarding Dohnavur as the radiating centre of her influence, many recognise today that through her books she has enriched the whole Church of God. Many people are still inspired by her writings, not only as a commitment to mission, but even more fundamentally to consecration of one’s whole life to the Lord. Amy’s inspiration will help us in our present era where we see a lack of theological reflection in mission thinking, that we make sure that biblical reflection infuses all that we say, do and write about missionary work.

The path of a good woman is indeed strewn with flowers;

but they rise behind her steps, not before them.

John Ruskin

The most glorious triumphs of Christ are spiritual, and His noblest work is that wrought in the secret of the soul. Not the conquest of kingdoms, but self-conquest; not the renunciation of anything external merely, but self- renunciation; not the consecration of substance, but self- consecration in theservice of God and man – these are the

hardest deeds to accomplish, and the most divine attainments.

They shine with the peculiar light of Calvary. H. Grattan Guinness, in Taylor, Hudson Taylor and the China Inland

Mission, vol. II, 261–262.

Trained faith is a triumphant gladness in having nothing but God - not rest, no foothold - nothing but Himself. A triumphant gladness in swinging out into that abyss, rejoicing in every fresh emergency that is going to prove Him true. ‘The Lord alone” - that is trained faith. Lilias Trotter in M. Huffman Rockness, ed., A Blossom in the Desert. Reflections of Faith in the Art and Writings of Lilias

Trotter (Grand Rapids: Discovery House, 2007), 48.