Always watching for great things
Chapter 5
Always watching for great things
Called for mission work
In Amy Carmichael we will meet a missionary who intensely felt the cost of the Cross of Jesus Christ, and who had to learn to live by faith only. She believed that God dealt with her as he dealt with the Israelites, and that God would speak the counsels of his Word to her:
But how different it was on the second occasion,348 when God taught them to obey without, as it were, making it first of all impossible to disobey. The priests had to stand still in the water of the river. What a sight for men to scoff at, that standing still in the water! But it was not till the obeyed – and, without a particle of visible proof that they were doing right, went on to carry the ark right into the river – that the water rolled back before them. So, it seems to me, we may as we go on with God be called again and again to go right into our rivers, to wet our feet in them. We may be called to do what nobody understands but those to whom the word has come and the promise. But the word must come first and the promise too. We must be sure, with an inward conviction that absolutely nothing can shake. In my own case again and again I have had to wet my feet in the water. But when the Red Sea of guidance is given I am always very glad, for then others can see, and that does help. […] Only God and those who have to walk in that path know how hard it can be. But He does know, and when the people about us don’t hear the words of the voice, but only say ‘It thunders’, well, He comes near, and we know Him as we never knew Him before. At least it seems so to me.349 ‘It is only a sense of vocation that brings out from England women of the best type, intellectual, moral, and social, to take up the very trying work of a teacher in India’.350 Do not women’s responses to
348. Here Amy refers to the Israelites after having crossed the Red Sea, having to cross the river Jordan. See Joshua 3.
349. Candles in the Dark, 51.
350. Quotation in Seton, Western Daughters in Eastern Lands, 42.
How to cite: Kommers, J. (Hans), 2017, ‘Always watching for great things’, in Triumphant Love: The contextual, creative and strategic missionary work of Amy Beatrice Carmichael in south India, pp. 97–112, AOSIS, Cape Town. https://doi.org/10.4102/aosis.2017.tl41.05 the appeals for mission work reveal an awareness of the power of Christian religion and a compassion and a commitment, we, in our post secular age find so difficult to appreciate fully? The obedience to Christ’s call, the ‘lost ones’ far away or the fate often so pitiful of the women and children were strong motivations for the 1600 single British women who by 1899 had been appointed overseas, of whom Amy was one.351 She showed a strong sense of vocation for missionary service. In particular, the CIM looked for spiritual qualities in its aspirant missionaries, regardless of education, class, and gender. Hudson Taylor of the CIM sought missionaries from ‘outside the usual social bracket’. He looked for ‘willing, skilful labourers’ from all classes for whom ‘God has His own universities’.352 Missionary service was for Amy a way of fully consecrating herself to God’s purpose:
Thy prayer shall be fulfilled; but how? Thy Father reigns supreme above:
His thoughts are not as thine, Thy glory of His Name.
While thou wouldst only weep and bow, Is Grace and Wisdom, Truth and Love,
He said, ‘Arise and shine!’ His Will must be the same.
Thy thoughts were all of grief and night, And thou hast asked all joy in one
But His of boundless joy and light. In whispering forth, ‘Thy will be done’.353
Parallel with the call is the power for the work. In her Bible she once wrote: ‘First the Call. Then the Power, and between them, closeness to Jesus.’354 Amy Carmichael’s life shows a pattern of spiritual biography in which her life ascended from the rational and she was personally accountable for the traced footsteps of her soul’s path to God. The way she went in humility is the great characteristic of a true servant of Christ. Every time on the outlook, watching for great things.355
In the early 1890s, the face of the globe was scattered with the Christian missions that arose out of the evangelical revival in England and kindred movements in many other countries. Without exaggeration we can say that these years were turbulent for the young Irish lady. With only the Bible as her guide, she must have needed much strength of mind and fixity of purpose to be prepared to leave family, friends and the work she did in England and step out from Victorian comfort and luxury to the comparatively primitive life in Japan and India. Although she went out with the full blessing of her mother, of Mr Wilson and of the Keswick Mission Committee, she certainly had her inward battles. She recorded a glimpse of it, as the abundance of notes in the margin of her Bible show us how God in his Word sustained and led her to look forward in confidence.
Glasgow 1886: ‘All means all’
In 1886 Amy received an invitation to attend a convention in Glasgow, a convention on Keswick lines. Here in Glasgow God spoke clear to her:
351. By 1899, more than 1600 single women went for mission work overseas; by 1916, there were around 2500. These numbers in Seton, Western Daughters in Eastern Lands, 33.
352. G. Guinness, The Story of the China Inland Mission (vol. I; London: Morgan & Scott, 1893), 235. Cf. E. Stock, The History of the Church Missionary Society, its environment, its men and its work (vol. III; London: CMS, 1899), 627: ‘God does not commit his work in the world to one class only. He can use persons of all classes.’
353. Frances Ridley Havergal (1836–1879).
354. In Amy’s Bible (1895), in the margin of Matthew 10:1.
355. In Shanghai, April 1893, she walked through the streets of the city. There Amy constantly recalled words she once read in her homeland: ‘Blessed are the far-seeing men and women of all ages, who are always watching for great things, bending forward, and listening for the prophetic voices; quick to see the great light in heavens, when it first gilds the tops of the Eastern hills’ (From Sunrise Land, 7).
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A door was opened for me into a new life. […] I had been longing for months, perhaps years, to know how one could live a holy life, and a life that would help others. I came to that meeting, half hoping, half fearing. Would there be anything for me? I don’t remember feeling there was anything (my fault) in either of the two addresses. The fog in the hall seemed to soak into me. My soul was in fog. Then the chairman rose for the last prayer. Perhaps the previous address had been about Peter walking on the water, and perhaps it had closed with the words of Jude 24, for the one who prayed, began like this, –‘O Lord, we know Thou art able to keep us from falling’. Those words found me. It was as if they were alight, and they shone for me.356 Later she wrote in her Bible about her Glasgow experience: ‘In His quiver has He kept me close. Sep.
23. 1886. Glasgow Convention.’357 Full of wonder and exaltation she left the meeting with her friend to go to a restaurant for lunch:
The mutton chop wasn’t properly cooked and somebody said so. I remembered wondering, ‘Whatever does it matter about chops? O Lord, we know Thou art able to keep us from Falling’.
Weeks after she had heard, and for the first time understood and believed, that she could be kept from falling, she attended another meeting to get more insight in the Scriptures. At the Bridge of Allan Convention in Scotland, she heard Andrew Bonar, a man who was intimately acquainted with Jesus Christ. At that time Bonar was very old and it was difficult for her to understand what he said. The hall was full and Amy, sitting near the back, could not hear one single word, except the word all. Bonar read 2 Corinthians 9:8 and ‘he put every bit of strength he had into it, so that the one word rang out – all – always – all – all’. This one word ‘all’ she never forgot throughout her life. And once, when in Dohnavur, writing her daily Bible thoughts for her fellow workers, this little word ‘helps me fresh today’358 to face the day-to-day affairs within the Fellowship.
The revelation of God who was able to keep her from falling from him, and who could make it possible to stay in close connection with him and so to live in holiness at all times, was in line with the leading thought of the Keswick movement at that time.
Again one year later, a similar convention was held in Belfast. It was here that Amy, nearly 20, and her aunts met Mr Robert Wilson. Another leading exponent then present was the founder of the CIM, James Hudson Taylor. Here in Belfast she was on the course that determined her future. Mr Wilson became a ‘life-long friend of the family’. That evening instead of answering some of their questions, he read to them from a card, which he carried in his pocket:
We Master, how I shall bless Thy name,
For love so great to me;
For sweet enablings of Thy Grace,
So sovereign, yet so free,
That taught me to obey Thy Word,
And cast my care on Thee?359
Robert Wilson, born at Kendal, owned several coal mines in Cumbria. In 1858 on the rising ground above the river Derwent, near Cockermouth, he built a house for his family, Broughton Grange. A Quaker, he worshipped at the Friends’ Meeting House, where the Friends had worshipped since
356. Scraps no. 7; Cf. Elliot, A Chance to Die, 99.
357. In Amy’s Bible (1895) in the margin of Isaiah 49:2. ‘In the shadow of His hand has He hid me, and made me a polished shaft; in His quiver has He hid me.’
358. See Edges on His Ways, 8.
359. In E.J. Young (ed.), That in All Things He Might Have the Pre-eminence, Welcome Evangelical Church Centenary 1887–1987 (Belfast: Welcome Evangelical Church, 1987), 5.
1653, and often he attended the Baptist Chapel, erected in 1648. He also owned two seats in the local Anglican Church, where he often went on Sunday evenings. He liked the Anglican liturgy. Mr Wilson was very broadminded concerning churches and no wonder that here at Broughton Grange Amy learnt ‘to drop all labels’. Amy participated in Sunday school work and after her death, Frank Houghton met someone who told him that she could remember that as a child Amy’s brightness and cheerfulness impressed her and ‘that we children used to enjoy her verbal messages in our meeting for worship’.360 He also heard memories from those who had attended the Mission Hall of the Scripture Union on Tuesday evenings.
Mr Wilson always had many visitors, many of them involved in mission work, like Hudson Taylor, Theodore Monod, F.B. Meyers and many others, and from them, Amy heard and learned a lot. She also joined in 1890 Hannah Govan, of the Faith Mission, in an evangelic tour along the villages up the Clyde. Hannah Govan invited her to write some articles in Bright Words, the organ of the Faith Mission.361
‘I cannot be mistaken’
Throughout her whole life, for Amy there were three things that were very important to get true guidance: the Word, the inward voice, and the leading of circumstance. It meant for her to be close to God. God does not want us to rush:
Especially when we are meditating a ‘leap in the dark’, a ‘venture of faith’ – which are names for simple obedience – let us stand still in Jordan, then triumph shall come, but not till then. Until after they obeyed there were no ‘circumstances’ to guide, only His bare Word.362 It was here through contacts with the Keswick movement that the call came to her to become a missionary. She saw missionary service as a way of fully consecrating herself to the purpose of God. Amy knew exactly to the day when, on 13 January 1892, the Lord spoke to her. ‘I cannot be mistaken, for I knew He spoke. He said “Go,” I cannot stay.’363 God’s message went through her heart. Later she would write in her Bible in the margin of Acts 8:54, ‘Broughton. Jan. 92’.364
God pressed his finger very strongly on her and she had to give the evidence of her love to Christ. What was the proof of it? In just one word – Obedience! Obedience to his command. There is no shortcut here, and there is no way around it. She knew that if the heart is with God’s heart, God will tell her and that she could count on him to do his own work.
Like Paul’s Macedonian call, God’s calling meant an intensification of religious experience for Amy, and that if she really did love him, she should go all the way in her obedience to him, at all costs. Amy, confused and surprised, took God at his Word, willing to go with, and for, the Lord Jesus, who out of love for her went all the way to the Cross of Calvary. She came in the presence of the King and on the flyleaf in her Bible we can still see in the corner of two sentences written on Tuesday 26 July at the Keswick Convention: ‘Day the missionary committee met’, and added the words from the Daily Light of that day: ‘He shall choose our inheritance for us’ (Ps 47:4). She could not resist writing and encircling in
360. Amy Carmichael of Dohnavur, 38.
361. In 1891 a first article appeared, ‘Fighting Sall’ – the story of a ‘Shawlie’ converted at The Welcome in Belfast.
362. See Fragments That Remain, 129–130.
363. In Amy Carmichael of Dohnavur, Chapter VI: The Call, 43–53.
364. In Amy’s Bible (1895).
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the corner ‘Go ye’, conveying these words to the Lord himself, in the quiet of her heart. For her, who had given up all life’s ambition several years ago at Belfast’s fountain, these two words here ‘Go ye’ reveal ‘to me to live is Christ’. And it was Christ, and nothing but Christ, till the end of her life. In the light of that ambition, life and death lose their significance, and in life’s darkest experience, there is a resounding note of victory. Christ was the source of life, her sustainer of life, the crown of her life.365 Arthur Helps says ‘the mill-streams that turn the clappers of the world arise in solitary places’. This experience would be the source of a fruitful stream.
That time the Holy Spirit brought God’s command in her heart and applied it to her particular circumstances. The point was would she obey? ‘Whosoever … heareth My sayings and doeth them.’ That time when Jesus Christ brought his word home to her, she did not shirk. She would go in the armour of God. She did not oppose him in her own strength, but she stood with the strength and the courage of God, not giving anything that stood against her decision an inch. In unshaken faith she banked on the Word of Christ Jesus.
During the 1887 convention in Keswick she had already heard Hudson Taylor. She then felt strongly called for missionary work and it was renewed during the Glasgow experience, but now she was totally sure. Amy came to the turning of ways in her life, and was sorely perplexed, realising that to follow what she felt was God’s call and will for her would be the breaking of most precious ties. The only option for her now was to obey God! Around this time she wrote to her mother:
Everything, everything seemed to be saying ‘Go’, through all sounds the cry seemed to rise, ‘Come over and help us’. Every bit of pleasure of work, which has come to me, has had underlying in the thought of those people who have never, never heard of Jesus; before my eyes clearer than any lovely view has been the constant picture of those millions who have no chance, and never had one, of hearing of the love which makes our lives so bright. Having received the Holy Spirit turned her into a passionate follower of Jesus Christ. Out of her life would flow those rivers of living water that heal and bless, and she spent and suffered in patience all because of one and the one only.
In the following year, 1888, a Keswick mission committee, chaired by Robert Wilson, was formed with a view to send out and support Keswick ‘missioners’, for which cause funds had begun to be made available. In the event, Amy became the first Keswick missionary, though not at once, and not without conflict. Here Amy got preparation:
[F]or something out of sight. For if ever I was to do the things ‘before prepared’,366 certain great lessons not learned yet had to be learned, and Broughton Grange was the appointed school.367 Vocation is a word that has gone out of fashion. When we use it, it normally refers simply to our chosen career or line of work. In this regard, the meaning has slipped from earlier usage of the word, especially by Christians. Originally, when Christians spoke of their vocation, the word had great depth and breadth. Vocation is ‘experiencing and living by a calling’ in such a way ‘that it provides a fundamental orientation to every day’s life’. All the ramifications of God’s calling are in view: tasks, practices, attitudes, perspectives, beliefs, vows. God’s call in Christ orients and governs the choices we make, which then become more like discernments of calling than that they are personal preferences. That Wednesday evening on 13 January 1892, Amy, at Broughton Grange, very clearly heard the Lord saying to her, ‘Go ye’.
365. Cf. A. Redpath, ‘Triumphant Assurance’, TKW (1953): 19–21.
366. See Ephesians 2, 10 (RV).
In such a genuine way Amy wrote to her mother about how she had heard God’s call. This ‘Macedonian type’ call is authentic and nicely she describes her anxious feelings, her empathy for her mother and Mr Wilson, and yet so sure of what she had heard from God that there was no way back. Her letter and her mother’s answer show such a deep insight in both their motives that I decided to copy them here fully.368 To her mother Amy wrote 14 January 1892:
MY PRECIOUS MOTHER, Have you given your child unreservedly to the Lord for whatever He wills? Oh may He strengthen you to say ‘Yes’ to Him if He asks something which costs. Darling mother, for a long time as you know the thought of those dying in the dark – 50,000 of them every day, while we at home live in the midst of blazing light – has been very present to me, and the longing to go to them, and tell them of Jesus, have been strong upon me. Everything, everything seemed to be saying ‘Go’, through all sounds the cry seemed to rise, ‘Come over and help us’. Every bit of pleasure or work which has come to me, has had underlying in the thought of those people who have never, never heard of Jesus; before my eyes clearer than any lovely view has been the constant picture of those millions who have no chance, and never had one, of hearing of the love which makes our lives so bright. But home claims seemed to say ‘Stay’, and I thought it was His will; it was perhaps till yesterday. I can’t explain it, but lately the need seems to have come closer, and I wrote down a few days ago, just to have it in black and white, why I am not going.
(1) Your need of me, my mother.
(2) The great loneliness it would mean to my dear second Father.
(3) The thought that by staying I might make it easier for the others to go if He called. (4) My not being strong. But in His sight are these four things worth staying from those poor heathen for? You have given me three-quarters up as it is. My dear old Fatherie in the Lord’s wholly, he would not let me be kept up for him. The other two things surely I could trust about. Still they seemed to say ‘Stay’. Yesterday suddenly the impulse came to have a good talk with my dear Fatherie – I can’t call him ‘Mr. Wilson’, he is too close for that now – at any rate to you, Mother, and after it I went to my own room and just asked the Lord what it all meant, what did He wish me to do, and Mother, as clearly as I ever heard you speak, I heard Him say ‘GO YE’
I never heard it just so plainly before: I cannot be mistaken, for I know He spoke. He says ‘Go’, I cannot stay. Mother, I feel as if I had been stabbing someone I loved. It is Friday now, I could not finish this yesterday, and through all the keen sharp pain which has come since Wednesday, the certainty that it was His voice I heard has never wavered; though all my heart has shrunk from what it means, though I seem torn in two, and just feel one big ache all over, yet the certainty is there – He said to me ‘Go’. Oh, nothing but that sure word, His word, could make it possible to do it, for until He spoke, and I answered, ‘Yes, Lord’, I never knew what it would cost. These are the verses He gave to me, when He spoke to me,- ‘If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me’. ‘For whosesoever will save his life shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his life for My sake shall find it’. ‘He that loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me’. ‘To obey is better than sacrifice’. Many difficulties have risen in my mind, they seem very great, the ‘crooked places’ seem very crooked, but it seems to me that all He asks is that we should take the one step He shows us, and in the simplest, most practical trust leave all results to Him. Mother, I know that very Few of our friends will think I am right. Those who don’t know the Shepherd’s Voice themselves will be quite sure I am very wrong and mistaken, but He has said, ‘Walk before Me, and be thou perfect’. He knows, and He won’t let me dishonour Him by making a mistake, and following my own fancy instead of Him. If it is so, He will show it to me, but if it is His Will, I must do it. There isn’t much of gladness in this letter, I’m afraid, but I don’t feel anything except sore at the pain this must bring my loved ones.
Goodbye, my mother. May He come very near to you and strengthen and comfort you. Your own Amy.
368. Amy Carmichael of Dohnavur, 44–47.
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Some of these things may cross your mind as they have mine. What about leaving my God-given Father who does seem to need me a little? Cannot I trust Him to care for Him? If He tells me to leave Him, He won’t let him suffer. Clara Bradshaw met Hudson Taylor once, and he prayed, ‘Show this child of Thine what blessing she is keeping from her own father’ – by staying when He had called her. If I stayed, might I not keep those dearest to me from God’s richest blessing? But this is a very hard bit to think of, I can hardly face it steadily yet. Then as to ‘the children’. [And here she discusses the future of the three who were still in England]. God knows what it means, but ‘The Lord is able to give much more than this’. He gave Himself for us, is anything too great to give to Him? ‘Health’ you will think of. He won’t let that hinder if He has said ‘Go’. Then as to the money – I don’t see clearly, but I believe He will show us about that. If He does not, I will take it that that means ‘stay’, for He could not mean me to let you suffer wrongly. But I think soon the boys will be able to help. Two days later, her mother wrote back. The letter opens with a poem by Frances R. Havergal. Amy was very glad for her mother’s letter, and marked on the back, ‘First letter received – praise the Lord!’
My own precious child,
He Who hath led will lead
All through the wilderness,
He who hath fed will surely feed…
He Who hath heard thy cry
Will never close His ear,
He Who has marked thy faintest sigh
Will not forget thy tear.
He loves always, fails never,
So rest on Him today- forever.
Yes, dearest Amy, He has lent you to me all these years. He only knows what a strength, comfort and joy you have been to me. In sorrow He made you my staff and solace, in loneliness my more than child companion, and in gladness my bright and merry-hearted sympathizer. So, darling, when He asks you now to go away from within my reach, can I say nay? No, no, Amy, He is yours – you are His – to take you where He pleases and to use you as He pleases. I can trust you to Him, and I do – and I thank Him for letting you hear His voice as you have done. I shall not speak of your dear loving letter or my feelings. How weak we are. But He knows our frame, and remembers. ‘Go ye’- my heart echoes. ‘O send forth Thy light and Thy truth, let them lead me – let them bring me into Thy holy hill and to Thy tabernacles’, met my eye as I opened my Bible – do you see what the holy hill and tabernacles mean to me in this connection? I never saw it before – and then in the next page comes, ‘Therefore God hath blessed thee forever’.
Al! day He has helped me, and my heart unfailingly says, ‘Go ye’. He only knows what this means and will mean to me – to you – to us all. I dare not think – but His grace is sufficient, Amy. Let us keep our eye on Him – and then no wave will swamp us – and He will bear us up in His arms. Oh, isn’t it strange we are not more cheerfully willing followers – to think of his wonderful everlasting love to us, and how little He ever asks in return. Amy, darling, today I got a moments glimpse of it all, and how small this life seemed. When we are dying, how very little will it seem that He has asked us to give up for Him. So, my precious Child, I give you back into His loving arms, saying from the depths of my being, ‘Take her, dear Lord – Thou wilt take the most loving care of her, use her in Thy service, and for Thy glory now and where thou pleases, for Christ’s sake. Amen’. For dear Mr. Wilson I feel so much, perhaps more than for myself, but God has His in His keeping. He cannot and will not make a mistake. All other points are minor and must wait – the one thought has been enough today. One step is all that I am equal to – all else will clear. ‘The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want’. ‘Goodness and mercy shall follow me’ – and we shall all gather from the north, south, east and west in His home above, and will cast our crowns at His feet, saying, ‘Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honour and glory and blessing’. Till then may we each be found faithful. Ever my darling child’s loving Mother. For days, it seems to me now the Lord has been preparing the way, Amy, for your letter.
The sight of what Jesus did on the Cross, and to have heard him say, ‘Go ye’, makes a missionary. Amy in a conflict of loyalties obeyed Jesus at all costs. Her letter suggests that she had been deeply influenced by the appeals for missionaries to go to those living ‘in darkness’ made by Hudson Taylor and which frequently appeared in the works of Frances Ridley Havergal and others. In 1892 she was again in Keswick, now as a single missionary candidate. A year later in Japan she remembered the deep Keswick word about vocation, that ‘God sends us to the heathen for two purposes, to do them good, and to find a grave for a good self’, and with that word in mind she sighted: ‘May he make our self-funeral the greatest fact in our existence’.369 Years later she would write:
There is the Cross. He emptied Himself. The death of the cross. If I am going after Him I must deny myself. He went all the way to the cross. If I am going to be His disciple I must accept the cross as the principle of all life and service. That is what He meant here. He says: ‘If men are coming after Me, they must go My way’. Discipleship does not merely mean the salvation of the soul. It means fellowship with Him in the travail, and then the triumph. Unless we are prepared for that, He says we cannot be His disciples.370 She always kept in mind this ‘Keswick experience’, having lifelong in her room a piece of wood on which was written: Go Ye. Connected with God’s commission is our obedience. ‘He just said, “Go ye,” and as we obey He gives us all we need to lead them (the people) to Him’.371 Being 25 years old now, this young woman put her hand to Christ’s plough; never looking back, she continued to plough in the field of heathenism, till when the last call came, it found her in the great field of her lifelong great labours in that tiny south Indian village. Her whole confidence was in God and his work of grace, while her emotions became the beautiful ornament of her life, not the source of it.
‘The rudder set’
In India Amy had told Sherwood Eddy – in his eyes she was the ideal Keswick missionary – what the real secret of her dedicated life was. In a meeting, someone had prayed, ‘We thank Thee, Lord, that Thou art able’, and a new meaning leaped from the context of the prayer to her immediate need. If God was able to make all grace abound, able to make a weak brother stand, able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, able and willing to supply all her need, moment by moment, hour by hour, day by day, and if the living Christ could say, ‘Lo, I am with you always, even to the end’, then what had she to fear for the rest of her life? She then took a bold step in faith.372 She was open to everyone about her call to the mission field, and never hiding even her own anxieties, she could keep hidden in her heart what she communed with her God. Once in India she wrote, ‘It is good to learn to keep secrets with God’.373 ‘The rudder of her will was set’ towards God’s purpose.374 He had called her to go. Called, but go where? Amy simply did not know. For her it was a thrilling experience to be called by God, who would put this daughter of former mill owners through mills she had never dreamed of. To learn the ABC of
369. From Sunrise Land, 119.
370. In Whispers of His Power, Amy’s thoughts about Philippians 2:5–8, 25 August, 181–182.
371. Candles in the Dark, 120.
372. In S. Eddy, Pathfinders of the World Missionary Crusade (New York, NY: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1945), 124. ‘All the promises of God she continuously claimed; all the triumph of the life consistently taught for so many decades at the Keswick Convention, that meant so much to evangelicals of both Anglican and the free churches in Britain and India, were hers.’
373. This she wrote in the margin of H. Streeter & A.J. Appasamy, The Sadhu (London: MacMillan & Co, 1921), 144.
374. A Hanna Whitall Smith expression. See Huffmann Rockness, A Passion for the Impossible, 61.
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God, day by day, and to sacrifice herself to the will of Jesus. Gone was all self-realisation and Christrealisation made its entrance. She had found her niche in life and spirituality after having received her ministry from God. ‘This one thing I do’, to set her face towards the purpose of God, eyes fixed upon Jesus, going steadfastly on with the sacrifice of herself for Jesus as he sacrificed himself for his father. In close relation with God, she learned the secret of discipleship, viz. the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, and commissioned to lift up Jesus Christ.375 On 18 January, she wrote to her mother:
You will wonder what place I think of. Ceylon seems to be much upon my mind, but of course I cannot tell yet. I think He is guiding me to go there, but we are waiting unto Him to be sure. China and Africa are somehow not as strong upon my mind as they used to be, and Ceylon, a place I never knew of, is constantly before me. He will choose.376 Mr Wilson and Amy visited the Stewarts of Fukien (China), in Bedford. For Amy a very special place, because one of her favourite books, The Pilgrim’s Progress, was written there. It was decided Amy would travel to China with the Stewarts in autumn, under the CEZMS. However, the journey for the Stewarts changed, because they first had to go to Australia.377 Eventually the Mission Committee agreed she would go to China under the Keswick Mission Committee.
Several spiritual milestones could be seen in her life until then: faithful parents leading their little daughter to Jesus and teaching her to love and trust him, the Harrogate experience of receiving assurance of salvation – ‘the one watered moment in an arid three years’ – the encounter at the fountain in Belfast where the eternal values became a reality for her, and the assurance that her Saviour is trustworthy and was able to keep her from falling. These were the ‘spiritual milestones of Amy Carmichael’s awakening and preparation for her long and fruitful service for the Lord Jesus’.378 Life changing ‘stones’. Amy, in all her work, never came to the forefront, always it was God first! This she showed in her life and in her writings that all was focused on the glory of her Saviour. Years later in Dohnavur, Amy would write about Joshua 4:8–9, about the heap of stones Joshua had to set up in the river:
Have you passed through some new experience of the power and the love of our Lord? The children you look after, the sick you tend, the people you meet, will notice something that will make them ask questions. Take them in confidence. Tell them what has been done for you, […] Set up your heap of stones to the glory of your Lord, so that all will see that He is indeed a God of Deliverances, a splendid, loving, joy-giving Lord whom to serve is the greatest joy in all the world.379 The Lord had prepared her for her true vocation: a life of service to others, in the name of Christ.380 Amy’s life is an illustration of unreserved surrender to God, and of God’s full possession of this child of his for his own highest end. Obedience to the effective call of God and the unreserved resignation to God. Living in glad submission to God’s will, her spiritual muscles developed. She writes:
375. Cf. Galatians 6:14; 1 Corinthians 2:2; John 12:32. See also Oswald Chambers: ‘God can never make us wine if we object the fingers He uses to crush us with’ (The Complete Works, 250).
376. Amy Carmichael of Dohnavur, 50.
377. On 01 August 1895, the Rev. Stewart, his wife and several unmarried women missionaries were murdered at Kucheng, Fukien Province. Amy would have been certainly among these women if she had joined the Stewarts’ journey to China.
378. ‘Amy Carmichael, the Radiant Life’, in V.R. Edman, They Found the Secret (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1984 [1960]), 45.
379. See Whispers of His Power, 248–249.
380. As L. Trotter says: ‘We ourselves are “saved to save” – we are made to give – to let everything go if only we may have more to give. The pebble takes in the rays of light that fall on it, but the diamond flashes them out again: every little facet is means, not simply of drinking more in, but of giving more out’ (Parables of the Cross (London: Marshall, Morgan & Scott and Algiers Mission Band, 1947), 18).
I had thought that the plan was for me to stay with the D.O.M. till he went to Heaven. But crashing through that thought came a word I could not mistake and dare nor resist. It came on a snowy evening, 13 January 1892.381 Immediately she realised it would cost a lot, and she strongly felt the devil was trying to withhold her from obeying this call. Mr Wilson, after ‘long wrestling with himself’ gave his consent to her going to China. That was the country Amy believed the Lord had called her to that night. She had to go, even when it meant leaving her mother, family and a lot of friends:
But I had no choice and he had no choice. If any man say unto you, why do ye this? say ye that the Lord hath need of him, he [Mr Wilson] used to quote the words half to himself.382 In the things of competition in loyalty, she was challenged between that which is good, nice and beautiful in itself and loyalty to him. ‘We must trample across our own hearts and go after Him, without any compromise and any questionings.’383
At that time Amy met Hudson Taylor’s future daughter-in-law Geraldine Guinness. In Geraldine she found someone who understood her questions, doubts and uncertainties about going into mission work. Geraldine herself was also comforted by Amy. Until the end of her life Amy kept in her Bible a letter Geraldine gave her. On the outside of the envelope, Geraldine had written: ‘Love and deepest sympathy, my dear Amy, and MANY thanks for your precious helpful words yesterday.’ Inside were the words:
Can ye? Can God?
(Mark 10:28) (Ps 78:19)
Can ye drink the cup that I drink Ye shall indeed … For with
of – and be baptised with the God all things are possible.
baptism that I am baptised with?
Now is my soul troubled – and what shall I say?
Father, Save Me… Father, GLORIFY THY NAME. For this cause I came into this hour. (Jn 12:24–28).384 In 1948 Amy wrote of Geraldine Guinness:
I don’t think an older girl could have helped a younger girl more. There was no weakening that was what helped so much. There was just the steadfast look towards Gethsemane and Calvary.385 A Quaker friend, Mrs Bell, and several others were very enthusiastic hearing of Amy’s call, but she also encountered a lot of opposition. Not only from ordinary Christians, but also from well-known and respected Christian leaders. Their words ‘cut like knives’.386 Others she gratefully named, like Rev. C.A. Fox, Miss Soltau387 and Miss Sophia Nugent, because they stood with her.
381. Amma’s Book, 24.
382. Amma’s Book, 24.
383. Whispers of His Power, 23 August, 180.
384. In Amy Carmichael of Dohnavur, 53.
385. In Amy Carmichael of Dohnavur, 53.
386. Amma’s Book, 24. One said to her about Mr Wilson: ‘He will be dead before you are through the Mediterranean’, 24.
387. See M. Cable & F. French, The Woman Who Laughed (London: CIM, 1934), 154–155, for more on what Miss Soltau did for Amy.
Chapter 5
Doubtful experiences and preparation
Here this young lady was before her God, saved and sanctified and sent, a pilgrim to eternity; trusting God that he would engineer circumstances and thrust her out, she volunteered to the CIM for mission work in China. She would experience that doors to mission work that seem to be ajar can be very stiff on their hinges. The Lord had another destination for her instead of joining the ranks of the CIM. In the KCMMB of 26 July 1892, we read:
A letter was read by Mr Wilson to the committee in which Miss Amy B Carmichael’s call to mission work was detailed and her service offered, to go to China as a missionary in connection with the Keswick Convention Mission (KCM). Mr. Wilson stated his intention of providing her outfit and passage money to China and suggested that the KCM should then take charge. Mr Wilson and Miss C. withdrew and after a short time Mr. Wilson was called in to unite in the consideration and it was unanimously agreed to accept her. A sum of P.100 per annum was agreed, as a medium between the highest and lowest accounts usually provided. To which missionary Society she would be connected was left over. Mr Wilson had communicated with the CEZM Society, and the CMS as to their accepting Keswick Missionaries, as associates not in full membership, and they will gladly welcome Keswick missionaries as full members, subject in all things to the rules of their societies.388 For missionary preparation at that time it was important that the candidate had extensive experience of practical Christian work such as Sunday school teaching, district visiting, working in girls clubs, nursing the sick and it was an advantage if the candidate had some knowledge of distributing medicines. For those who lacked these requirements some mission training institutes were available.389
Prior to acceptance, female applicants of the CIM were first received and assessed at the Women’s Candidates Home in Pyrland Road, London, ‘where their characters and missionary vocation were tested’.390 On 10 September 1892, Amy travelled to London, to be in the care of Miss Soltau, the superintendent, for the first courses. At that time male CIM missionary recruits attended Harley House in Bow and the women were located in Doric Lodge. A 50 yards’ walk from Pyrland Road was the Mildmay Conference Centre, which at that time had become a centre of evangelical activity. In London Amy met and Miss Geraldine Guinness – who encouraged her to pursue missionary work – and especially by Miss Henrietta Soltau391 who oversaw this department. Asked personally by Hudson Taylor, Miss Soltau was appointed to this work in 1889 and in the short time Amy was there, she had a big influence upon her. Later on from India Amy wrote:
When I had to make the final decision about going abroad I was torn in two. Many were saying that I was wrong to dream of leaving home, for there was one there who wanted me and, as it seemed, needed me. His friends, leaders of the Convention, were utterly opposed to my leaving him. Some even told me that if I left him his death would be at my door. Because those who said these things were the very saints of the earth, their words had weight. On one side there were many voices and on the other the One compelling voice. Miss Soltau, perhaps seeing or feeling my distress, came to me that night in my little bedroom at the old Pyrland Road house. The window had been open and the white dressing table cover was powdered with smuts. We stood beside it, and as a tortured heart does always notice trifles, so I noticed those smuts. The words broke from me: ‘They say
388. KCMMB (PRONI DSO 250/1/3/1), Mission Committee meeting report, 25 July 1892.
389. Mentioned in Seton, Western Daughters in Eastern Lands, 42–47.
390. Seton, Western Daughters in Eastern Lands, 45.
391. Henrietta Eliza Soltau, Plymouth, 08 December 1843–05 February 1934. In charge of the Women Candidates’ Department of the CIM. During the period that she was in charge, 547 of the young women who passed through her hands went to China. that if I leave him he will die – even so am I right to go?’ She did not answer for a moment, then said solemnly, ‘Yes, I think even so, that you are right to go’. It was a tremendous answer. She must have added something about trusting our father to deal tenderly with His servant who had truly given me to Him, though his heart still clung to me. But all I remember of the next few minutes is, that with her arms around me I entered into peace. Often, through the many years that have passed since that night, I have been helped by the memory of her courage in the ways of God, to strengthen a younger soul who was being torn as I was then.392 At Pyrland Road the characters and missionary vocation of the women were tested, and their training requirements assessed. At that time many women missionaries were either wholly or partly self-supporting, and those entering the CIM could expect no salary at all:
A combination of obedience to Christ’s teaching, a desire to engage in a “mission of sisterhood” to heathen women, and an awareness of the nobility and self-sacrifice of a calling seemed to have been the strongest motivations.’393 It was a shock for her that the medical adviser of the CIM was not willing to pass her for China. The risk in sending her to the East was too big. In many ways she was an unlikely candidate for missionary work. She suffered neuralgia and this nerve disease made her whole body rather weak and achy and often put her in bed for weeks on end. January 1893 Hudson Taylor wrote a letter to John Stevenson in China, in which he, next to some other CIM issues, reported to Stevenson that:
[A] Keswick missionary, Amy Carmichael, had not been accepted as a candidate, on grounds of health and temperament, but was to sail with a CIM party to join Richard Buxton in Japan.394 Health issues of aspiring missionaries have always been an important consideration. The hot climate in the tropics is trying to Europeans; next to the anxiety, fatigue and exposure to several seen and unseen dangers, it proves a serious strain on physical health and strength. Great emphasis was placed on age. Medical opinion took the view that women were less able to adjust to difficult climate conditions after the age of 30.395 The Scottish Free Church considered ‘the best age for going to India’ to be ‘about 25 years of age, after the character and constitution are formed, and before either the power of languages and the capacity for acclimatization are lost’.396 The CIM was more relaxed about age restrictions.
Amy was only in Miss Soltau’s care for a couple of months. She travelled back from London to the Lake District and by 13 January 1893, the anniversary of her call, she was back as the talks confirmed her going about the lanes of Broughton again with her pony.397 ‘He has given me back my Isaac! Praise Him’, these words from Mr Wilson’s lips were heard when a medical difficulty seemed to shut the door for Amy.398 For her entertainment Mr Wilson had given her the pony and a dog, a terrier called Scamp, and the days were filled with ‘Convention writing’ and taking the ‘Convention women’s meetings’, but always, every day’ this
392. In M. Cable & F. French, A Woman Who Laughed. Henrietta Soltau who laughed at impossibilities and cried: ‘It shall be done’, 154–155.
393. In Seton, Western Daughters in Eastern Lands, 34.
394. See Broomhall, It is not Death to Die!, 182. Here Broomhall adds: ‘The same Amy Carmichael was to become the “Amma” of Dohnavur, the lifelong friend of the CIM.’
395. See more about these issues in Kommers, ‘A flame of sacred love’.
396. Seton, Western Daughters in Eastern Lands, 36.
397. Some details of her stay in London I received 25 September 2013 from Marion Osgood, archivist of the OMF International in London.
Chapter 5
thought was with her, ‘This is not your rest’. She knew she had to go to the mission field, but to where? Afterwards she explained to the Dohnavur children that God’s plan for her was for the children in India: ‘I was guarded and kept for you, my children’.399
Amy kept a steady head and an unmoved conviction that her call to mission work was a divine commission, not fully dependent on the opinion of either a medical adviser or a mission council. She postponed her missionary career with the CIM and, on 13 January 1893, for the first time the thought of Japan came as the place of the Lord’s choice. A letter was written to Barclay Buxton, who with a party of young missionaries was in Matsuye on the west coast of Japan. Mr Wilson and Amy decided not to wait for the reply but that she should go on in faith. On 03 March 1893, she sailed with a party of CIM missionaries to Shanghai:
Never, I think, not even in Heaven shall I forget that parting. It was such a rending thing that I never wanted to repeat it. I wondered then how people went through it every five or six years. Even now my heart winces at the thought of it.
Fellow passengers asked her where her station was. ‘I found Genesis 12:1 comforting then: “unto a land that I will show thee”.’400 Without proper contact having been established, and with a little mission training in London, in March 1893 the 25-year-old Amy simply set off. She sailed for Japan as the first Keswick missionary to join the CMS work led by Barclay Buxton.401
She packed her outfit and arranged for departure and actually sailed on 03 March 1893 in the Valetta for Japan, ‘following the Gleam’. There she ‘received a hearty402 welcome and a cordial invitation was given by Mr Buxton for more Keswick missionaries to join him in that large promising field’. By reading Hebrews 11:8 where Abraham when he was called ‘obeyed … and went out not knowing whither he went’, she found rest. For Amy to go to the mission field in this way was a great lesson in the walk of faith. The journey to Shanghai lasted three months, but ‘some lessons of faith are much longer than that’. In Shanghai she learned the lesson of the lantern, showing just that part of the road directly before you. Towards the end of April, a letter came from Mr Buxton asking her to come to Japan.
In that same year the Mission Committee received an application from Mrs Carmichael for her daughter Eva, ‘who has been in missionary training with Mrs Mergoes, in Liverpool for about two years in the Deaconess House, to go out as a Keswick Missionary’.403 Many women recruits from the CIM had also had their training there before being definitely accepted for mission work.404 The way Mrs Carmichael gave two daughters to the mission without any restriction is evidence of great faith.
God’s calling now oriented Amy to the Orient. The Keswick holiness movement set little store by denominationalism. Though brought up a solid Presbyterian, Amy had learned in Wilson’s company ‘to
399. Amma’s Book, 25.
400. Amma’s Book, 25.
401. ‘Miss T. was followed to the mission field in 1893 by Miss Amy Wilson Carmichael, who sailed in March to join the Rev. Barclay F. Buxton’s mission party at Matsuye, in Japan. She was the first missionary to go out at the charges of the Keswick Mission Committee’ (C.F. Harford, ed., The Keswick Convention. Its Message, its Method and its Men (London: Marshall Brothers, 1907), 149).
402. Amma’s Book, 25.
403. In KCMMB, Mission Committee meeting report, 09 October 1893.
404. See M. Cable & E. French, Something Happened, 33: ‘Deaconess House had a reputation for being the most strenuous of the training-schools.’ drop labels, and to think only of the one true visible Church, to which all who truly love the Lord belong’.405 Amy was and remained a true Presbyterian; however, the width of her sympathies made her approve of the interdenominational character of the mission, and she rejoiced in its spiritual standards and evangelistic methods.
Departure is always painful; ‘it is a stabbing pain’, as she once wrote. To say goodbye is ‘like being torn in pieces without chloroform’. To leave her mother, family, friends and Mr Wilson; the thought of their pain could break her. Those moments she thought of the wounded hands of Christ, with one of them on those who stayed behind, the other on her. The Lord would not leave them comfortless and for her it was enough to know: she was going for his sake and that carried her through.406 The ocean voyage to Asia, first around the Cape of Good Hope and later on, after the completion of the Suez Canal in 1869 via the Mediterranean Sea, was often more dreaded that the final destination.
The Japanese Evangelistic Band
‘God first’ was the wedding motto of Barclay Buxton and Margaret Railton when they were married on 22 July 1886. As the founders of the Japanese Evangelistic Band (JEB), the couple lived this motto throughout all their married life. They would have a great influence upon Amy when she joined them in 1893. Barclay,407 born in 1860 and nurtured in the lap of luxury, was a powerful man with red hair and a healthy complexion. A member of one of the well-known families in the eastern counties, he came of a line of godly men and women. The Buxton family related with William Wilberforce (1759–1833), the well-known fighter for the liberation of slaves. The stately family home in Easneye (Hertfordshire) was the centre for all kinds of missionary enterprise. Bishop Crowther (1807–1891) the first black bishop of west Africa and Rev. Andrew Murray of South Africa, and many others, used to visit there. Barclay was a real sportsman, who played for Cambridge against Oxford in royal tennis and in lawn tennis matches. Ordained deacon in 1884 and priest in 1885, he became curate to the prebendary H.W. Peploe – one of the leading Keswick speakers – and was involved in the work of St Matthew’s Mission Hall. Here 80 people from many churches regularly came together at a meeting for Christian workers, to pray for the great truths of the purifying of the heart by faith in Christ, and of the coming of the Holy Spirit in power to the individual believer. Barclay was a bosom friend of C.T. Studd, one of the famous ‘Cambridge Seven’.
Having collected a carpenter, two housemaids, his wife and his four small children, Buxton left his estate and on 01 October 1890, though he himself was a CMS missionary, sailed for Japan as an independent missionary. He went with the British Church Missionary Society (BCMS) to become the leader of the JEB. The CMS had accepted the Buxtons as independent missionaries of the society, whereas for their work they were accountable to the CMS. The CMS commission to him was a most striking document:408
405. Amy Carmichael of Dohnavur, 37. This ‘Evangelical Alliance’ approach to Christian diversity owes much to John Wesley, but the Evangelical Alliance dates from 1846. It affirmed unity in essentials, freedom in un-essentials, and love in all things. Initially it aimed more at individuals than at churches or denominations. See R. Rouse & St. C. Neill (eds.), A History of the Ecumenical Movement 1517–1948 (London: SPCK, 1954), 318–324.
406. Cf. Candles in the Dark, 18.
407. See his biography by B.G. Buxton, The Reward of Faith in the Life of Barclay Fowell Buxton 1860–1946 (London: Lutterworth Press, 1949).
408. Buxton, The Reward of Faith, 58.
Chapter 5
1. Your primary work is to make known Christ by making known the Gospel. Ask yourself at the close of every week: ‘How many hours have I spent this week in actually setting forth Christ to the heathen?’
2. Remember it is God’s work. Nothing can be done except in the power of the Holy Ghost.
3. Do not think that missionary activity of itself keeps down the flesh or keeps far from temper. Rather the reverse. You challenge the prince of darkness by invading his realms.
Of Barclay it has been said that ‘his life was transparent, his character pure gold, his love unfailing, and his message scriptural, dispensing the deep things of God’. In Japan and afterwards he emphasised that in mission work missionaries have to experience being filled with the Holy Spirit.409 In his booklet The Baptism of the Holy Spirit, Barclay described his personal view about the work of the Holy Spirit. He also included in his mission work several workers from denominations outside CMS as evidence that Christ, and not Western denominations, was being brought to Japan. Formally the JEB was launched at the Keswick Convention in 1903, where Buxton and Wilkes were joined by a small group of friends who shared their concern for evangelism in Japan. In Japan the band was known as ‘Kyodan Nihon Dendo Tai’.410 In 1910, his second son, Alfred, accompanied the still famous C.T. Studd on his journey to the heart of Africa. Eventually Edith followed her father, reluctantly, to the Congo. Alfred, like his father was a Quaker at heart. Just before the journey, Alfred and Studd’s daughter Edith fell in love, and he and Edith were married in 1916, the first white wedding ever performed in the heart of Africa.
C.T. Studd after having been sent as a CIM missionary to China in 1885, later felt that the Lord was directing him to India where in 1900 he settled with his family in Ootacamund, south India. Here he became pastor of the independent church under the auspices of the Anglo-Indian Evangelization Society. It was there that Amy frequently met the Studd family; after six years the time to leave India (1906) came in sight and Studd’s four daughters – Edith was the third – were baptised by their father in a self-made baptismal place in the garden. Studd describes this unique baptismal service: ‘We had a good crowd up to our house. […] Amongst the company was […] Miss Amy Carmichael, and sundry other missionaries.’411
Their mutual love was shown in the letters, which were sent from Dohnavur to Africa and England where Edith lived for a while, being for some time separated from Alfred who was then exploring the north-eastern part of Africa. Amy followed the news of Studd and Alfred’s work in central Africa and certainly prayed for the work and for Edith. In October 1940, Alfred and his brother Murray were killed in London when an air raid took place and a highly explosive bomb exploded just outside the room where they were. With some others they were compiling the shorter Moffat Bible.412 Edith’s heart, torn in deep grief, was comforted by a letter from her old friend Amy Carmichael, which pierced the dark cloud of sorrow:
Truly your Treasure is in heaven now; and where your Treasure is, there more and more will your heart be also. You have had many anxious hours, as your soldier paid out the price of hard battle in the battle wounds. All that is over now. Never, never will he be anything but strong and well and vigorous with the glorious vigour
409. ‘The true holiness preacher is one whose experience has led him to know that he is charged with the oracles of God, and backed by Jehovah, an awful woe is on him if he preaches not the Gospel’ (Chambers, The Complete Works, 319).
410. For more details of the JEB, see the SOAS Library: Japan Evangelistic Band (http://www.mundus.ac.uk/cats/4/1066.htm, accessed 15 September 2014).
411. In N.P. Grubb, C.T. Studd, Cricketer and Pioneer (Chennai, India: Evangelical Lit. Service, 1999), 120.
412. The Moffat Bible was published by Hodder & Stoughton, 1942, with an inscription to the two brothers on the title page. of eternity. I am glad that the miles are divided into furlongs and round the last turn of the road the lights of the Homeland are shining. How delighted your father must have been to welcome Alfred, and many more must have gathered round the door as he and Murray entered in. What a welcome. What utter joy.413 Amy respected Mr Buxton very much:
Our leader, Mr. Buxton lived in the clear light of the Lord’s Presence. But that was not no say that no shadows crossed his path. A shadow always was with him. It might easily have darkened his whole life and witness. But it did not. Let the heart of them rejoice that seek the Lord: He lived in the spirit of that command. Over and over again his ‘Good for the flesh’ comes to mind even now and the smile which sweetened the words. For he had the charm ‘Which sets all one’s acts and words in diamonds’, as a book I am reading now, puts it. This lovely charm was the gift of his Lord to him.414 Fifty years after Barclay Buxton left Japan, he paid a visit to his former first mission field. There he found that his converts now were leaders in most of the denominations and missions and that their children and grandchildren had already taken up the torch of the work of God.415 In 1946 in his home in Wimbledon, Barclay Buxton passed over into the presence of Jesus Christ. His last days were spent like all the other days, in Bible study and prayers. Prayers:
[F]or Japan: for individual Japanese: for relations of friends now serving God in different parts of the world. […] Again and again he prayed that we all might be fully surrendered to God and trust Him. The secret of Barclay Buxton’s life as George Ingram – CMS missionary in Etinadpur (India) – declares is that ‘there is a halo of holiness around his name’.416
413. In N.P. Grubb, Alfred Buxton of Abyssinia and Congo (London: Lutterworth Press, 1942), 167.
414. Amma’s Book, 29.
415. Buxton, The Reward of Faith, 79–80.
416. In Buxton, The Reward of Faith, 266, 269–270.
Can you make out what this is meant for? A family party, their goods and chattels, and their god, drifting slowly down the river, drifting slowly, who knows whither? For as I stood on the bank, and watched the little sampan and its strange sad burden, passing down and on, till it slipped round a wooden curve, and was lost to view, it seemed to me that the Idol in its gilded shrine was the moving influence, the active principle there – and no one dreamed that it was so. Those people, the man sculling in the stern, the women sitting in the bows – the thought they were taking their god to a new home somewhere beyond, but was it not rather that it, or the Power of Darkness it stood for, was bearing them swiftly down the river of life, and out to the sea of Eternity? Poor sleeping souls – one longed to send a cry of recall ringing across the water, to spring somehow from bank to boat, and hurl that painted thing overboard! To say anything, do anything to shock them into wakefulness and life! But one could do nothing. And so it is day after day, month after month, year after year.
They are passing out of the world, they are coming into the world faster than we can reach them. This century has seen 60 times as many births as baptisms. Four millions won for Christ, and the heathen population has increased by two hundred and fifty millions. Ten hundred and thirty millions are all drifting thus. We stand on the shores of an infinite ocean, we stretch our arms to them. Some seem to pass us closely that we almost touch them, but we strain to reach them all in vain – they have glided past. Some are away and away beyond our ken. Fifty thousand of that spirit-fleet will touch their horizon tonight. Oh one turns from the thought with almost despair! And yet not so – for His Word abides. The time shall come when the seventh Angel shall sound, and the great voices say –‘The kingdoms of this world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever!’
From Sunrise Land, 115–116.
These beautiful islands, these gems of the sea, are opened before our delighted vision. […] I do not yet know all about Japan, but I am greatly astonished by what I have seen thus far. […] Shall Christianity keep pace with the march of
Western civilisation in this empire? Lucy Ing, missionary, 1875.