Oh for a love, for a burning love, like the fervent flame of fire!Oh for a love, for a yearning love, that will never, never tire!Lord, in my need I appeal unto Thee;Oh, give me my heart's desire!
THEY come in many ways through the help of many friends. We have told before[A]how our first two babies came to us through two pastors, one in the north, the other in the south of our district. Since then many Indian pastors and workers, and several warm-hearted Christian apothecaries and nurses in Government service, have become interested; with the result that little children who must otherwise have perished have been saved.
One little babe, who has since become one of our very dearest, was redeemed from Temple life by the wife of a leading pastor, who was wonderfully brought to the very place where the little child was waiting for the arrival of the Temple people. We have seldom known a more definite leading. "I being in the way, the Lord led me," was surely true of that friend that day, and of other Indian sisters who helped her. Later, when she came to stay with us, she told us about it. "When first I heard of this new work, I was not in sympathy with it. I even talked against it to others. But when I saw that little babe, so innocent and helpless, and so beautiful too, then all my heart went out to it. And now——" Tears filled her eyes. She could not finish hersentence. Nor was there any need; the loving Indian heart had been won.
My mother was with us when this baby came; and she adopted her as her own from the first, and always had the little basket in which the baby slept put by her bedside. When the mosquitoes began to be troublesome, the basket was slipped under her own mosquito net, lest the little pink blossom should be disturbed. But the baby did not thrive at first; and the pink, instead of passing into buff, began to fade into something too near ivory for our peace of mind. It was then the friend who had saved the little one came to stay with us; and she proposed taking her and her nurse out to her country village, in hopes of getting a foster-mother for her there. So my mother, the pastor's wife, the baby, and her nurse, went out to the Good News Village, and stayed in the pastor's hospitable home. The hope which had drawn them there was not fulfilled; but the memory of that visit is fresh and fragrant. We read of alienation between Indian Christians and missionaries. We are told there cannot be much mutual affection and contact. We often wonder why it should be so, and are glad we know by experience so little of the difficulty, that we cannot understand it. We have found India friendly, and her Christians are our friends. In these matters each can only speak from personal experience. Ours has been happy. There may be unkindness and misunderstanding in India, as in England; but nowhere could there be warmer love, more tender affection.
All sorts of people help us in this work of saving the children. Once it was a convert-schoolboy who saw a widow with a baby in her arms. Noticing the bright large eyes, and what he described as the "blossoming countenance of the child," he got into conversation with the mother, and learned that she had been greatly tempted by Temple women in the town, who had admired the baby and wanted to get it. "IfI give her to them, she will never be a widow," was the allurement there. The bitterness of widowhood had entered into her soul, and poisoned the very mother-love within her; and yet there was something of it left, for she did not want her babe to be a widow. The boy, with the leisureliness of the East, dropped the matter there; and only in a casual fashion, a week or so later, mentioned in a letter that he had seen this pretty child, and that probably, the mother would end in yielding to the temptation to give her to the Temple—"but it may be by the grace of God that you will be able to save her." We sent at once to try to find the mother; but she had wandered off, and no one knew her home. However, the boy was stirred to prayer, and we prayed here; and a search through towns and villages resulted at last in the mother being traced and the child being saved.
The Talk on the Verandah
Christian women have helped us. One such, sitting on her verandah after her morning's work, heard two women in the adjoining verandah discuss the case of a widow who had come from Travancore with a bright little baby-girl, whom she had vowed she would give to one of our largest temples. The Christian woman had heard of the Dohnavur nurseries, and at once she longed to save this little child, but hardly knew how to do it. She feared to tell the two women she had overheard their conversation, so in the simplicity of her heart she prayed that the widow might be detained and kept from offering her gift till our worker, old Dévai, could come; and she wrote to old Dévai.
Happily Dévai was at home when the letter reached her; otherwise days would have been lost, for her wanderings are many. She went at once, and found the mother most reasonable. Her idea had been to acquire merit for herself, and an assured future for her child, by giving it to the gods; but when the matter was opened to her, she was willing to giveit to us instead. In her case, as in the other, our natural instinct would have been to try to make some provision by which the mothers could keep their babies; but it would not have been possible. The cruel law of widowhood had begun to do its work in them. The Temple people's inducements would have proved too much for them. The children would not have been safe.
Once it was a man-servant who saved a lovely child. He heard an aside in the market which put him on the track. The case was very usual. The parents were dead, and the grandmother was in difficulties. For the parents' sake she wanted to keep the dear little babe; but she was old, and had no relatives to whose care she could commit it. Mercifully we were the first to hear about this little one; for even as a baby she was so winning that Temple people would have done much to get her, and the old grandmother would almost certainly have been beguiled into giving her to them. How often it has been so! "She will be brought up carefully according to her caste. All that is beautiful will be hers, jewels and silk raiment." The hook concealed within the shining bait is forgotten. The old grandmother feels she is doing her best for the child, and the little life passes out of her world.
"It is a dear little thing, and the man (its grandfather) seemed really fond of it. He said he would not part with it; but its parents are both dead, and he did not know what might happen to it if he died." This from the letter of a fellow-missionary, who saved the little one and sent her out to us, is descriptive of many. "Not the measure of a rape-seed of sleep does she give me. I have done my best for her since her mother died, but her noise is most vexatious." This was a father's account of the matter only a week or two ago. "Have you no women relations?" we asked him. "Numerous are my womenfolk,but they are all cumbered with children: how can they help me?"
Not Waifs and Strays
Given these circumstances of difficulty, and the strong under-pull of Temple influence—is it wonderful that many an orphaned babe finds her way to the Temple house? For in the South the child of the kind we are seeking to save is never offered to us because there is no other place where she is wanted. Everywhere there are those who are searching for such children; and each little one saved represents a counter-search, and somewhere, earnest prayer. The mystery of our work, as we have said before, is the oftentimes apparent victory of wrong over right. We are silent before it. God reigns; God knows. But sometimes the interpositions are such that our hearts are cheered, and we go on in fresh courage and hope.
Among our earliest friends were some of the London Missionary Society workers of South Travancore. One of these friends interested her Biblewomen; and when, one morning, one of these Biblewomen passed a woman with a child in her arms on the road leading to a well-known Temple, she was ready to understand the leading, and made friends with the mother. She found that even then she was on her way to a Temple house. A few minutes later and she would not have passed her on the road.
There was something to account for this directness of leading. At that time we had our branch nursery at Neyoor, in South Travancore, ten miles from the place where the Biblewoman met the mother. On that same morning, Ponnamal, who was in charge there, felt impelled to go to the upper room to pray for a little child in danger. She remained in prayer till the assurance of the answer was given, and then returned to her work. That evening a bandy drove up to the nursery, and she saw the explanation of the pressure and the answer to the prayer. A little childwas lifted out of the bandy, and laid in her arms. She stood with her nurses about her, and together they worshipped God.
This prayer-pressure has been often our experience when special help is needed to effect the salvation of some little unknown child. It was our Prayer-day, July 6, 1907. Three of us were burdened with a burden that could not be lightened till we met and prayed for a child in peril. We had no knowledge of any special child, though, of course, we knew of many in danger. When we prayed for the many, the impression came the more strongly that we were meant to concentrate upon one. Who, or where, we did not know.
Five days later, a letter reached us from a friend in the Wesleyan Mission, working in a city five hundred miles distant. The letter was written on the 8th:—
"On the morning of the 6th, a woman who knows our Biblewomen well, told them of a little Brahman baby in great danger; so J. and two others went at once and spent the greater part of the morning trying to save the child. It was in the house of a so-called Temple woman, who had adopted it, and she had taken every care of it. For some reason she wanted to go away, and could not take it with her. Two or three women of her own kind were there and wanted it. One had money in her hand for it. But J. had already got the baby into her arms, and reasoned and persuaded until the woman at last consented. They at once brought it here. Had the friendly woman not told J., the baby would now be in the hands of the second Temple woman. I visited the woman afterwards. She had two grown girls in the room with her, the elder such a sweet girl. She told me openly it was all according to custom, and that God had arranged their lives on those lines, and they could not do otherwise. It is terribly sad, and such houses abound."
"Father, we adore Thee"
Happenings of this sort—if the word "happen" is not irreverent in such a connection—have a curiously quieting effect upon us. We are very happy; but there is a feeling of awe which finds expression in words which, at first reading, may not sound appropriate; but we write for those who will understand:—
Oh, fix Thy chair of grace, that all my powersMay also fix their reverence ;. . .Scatter, or bind, or bend them all to Thee!Though elements change and Heaven move,Let not Thy higher court remove,But keep a standing Majesty in me.
FOOTNOTE:[A]"Overweights of Joy."
[A]"Overweights of Joy."
[A]"Overweights of Joy."
STURDY AND STOLID, AND LITTLE VEERA —whose story, however, is different.STURDY AND STOLID, AND LITTLE VEERA—whose story, however, is different.
WE have some children who were not in Temple danger, but who could not have grown up good if we had not taken them. "If peril to the soul is of importance," wrote the pastor who sent us two little girls, "then it is important you should take them": so we took them. These little ones were in "peril to the soul," because their nominal Christian mother had, after her husband's death, married a Hindu, against the rules of her religion and his. The children were under the worst influence; and both were winning little things, who might have drifted anywhere. We have found it impossible to refuse such little ones, even though danger of the Temple kind may not be probable.
Such a child, for example, is the little girl the Moslem is ready to adopt and convert to the faith. Our first redeemed from this captivity (literally slavery under the name of adoption) was a cheerful little person of six, with the sturdy air the camera caught, and a manner all her own. An American missionary in an adjoining district heard of her and her little sister, and wrote to know if we would take them if he could save them. We could not say No; so he tried, and succeeded in getting the elderchild; the little one had been already "adopted," and he could not get her. "The whole affair was the most astonishing thing I have ever seen in India," he wrote when he sent the little girl. The child upon arrival made friends with another, and confided to her in a burst of confidence: "Ah, she was a jewel, my own little sister—not like me, not dark of skin, but 'fair' and tender; and the great man in the turban saw her and desired her, and he took her away; and she cried and cried and cried, because she was only such a very little girl."
"The business was being discussed out in the open street"—the writer was another missionary—"the pastor heard of it from a Christian who was passing, and saw the cluster of Muhammadans round the mother and her children. It was touch-and-go with the child." These two, Sturdy and Stolid, side by side in the photograph, are in all ways quite unlike the typical Temple child; but the danger from which they were delivered is as real, and perhaps in its way as grave.
We know what her Heart is Saying
One of the sweetest of our little girls, a child with a spiritual expression which strikes all who see her, came to us through a young catechist who heard of her and persuaded her people to let her come to Dohnavur. She is an orphan; and being "fair" and very gentle, needed a mother's care. Her nearest relatives had families of their own, and were not anxious for this addition to their already numerous daughters; and the little girl, feeling herself unwanted, was fretting sadly. Then an offer came to the relations—not made expressly in words, but implied—by which they would be relieved of the responsibility of the little niece's future. All would not have been straight for the child, however, and they hesitated. The temptation was great; and in the end it is probable they would have yielded, had not the catechist heard of it, and influencedthem to turn from temptation. It was the evening of our Prayer-day when the little Pearl came; and when we saw the sweet little face, with the wistful, questioning eyes like the eyes of a little frightened dog taken away alone among strangers, and when we heard the story, and knew what the child's fate might have been, then we welcomed her as another Prayer-day gift. We do not look for gratitude in this work; who does? But sometimes it comes of itself; and the grateful love of a child, like the grateful love of a little affectionate animal lifted out of its terror and comforted, is something sweet and tender and very good to know. The Pearl says little; but her soft brown eyes look up into ours with a trustful expression of peaceful happiness; and as she slips her little hand into ours and gives it a tight squeeze, we know what her heart is saying, and we are content.
Two more of these "others" are the two in the photograph who are playing a pebble game. Their parents died leaving them in the care of an aunt, a perfectly heartless woman whose record was not of the best. She starved the children, though she was not poor; and then punished them severely when, faint with hunger, they took food from a kindly woman of another caste. Finally she gave them to a neighbour, telling her to dispose of them as she liked.
About this time our head worker, Ponnamal, was travelling in search of a child of whom we had heard in a town near Palamcottah. She could not find the child, and, tired and discouraged, turned into the large Church Missionary Society hall, where a meeting was being held to welcome our new Bishop. As Ponnamal was late, she sat at the back, and could not hear what was going on; so she gave herself up to prayer for the little child whom she had not found, and asked that her three days' journey might not be all in vain.
PEBBLES.PEBBLES.
As she prayed in silence thus, another woman came in and sat down at the back near Ponnamal. When Ponnamal looked up, she saw it was a friend she had not met for years. She began to tell her about her search for the child; and this led on to telling about the children in general, and the work we were trying to do. The other had known nothing of it all before; but as she listened, a light broke on her face, and she eagerly told Ponnamal how that same morning she had come across a Hindu woman in charge of two little girls. The Tamils when they meet, however casually, have a useful habit of exchanging confidences. The woman had told Ponnamal's friend what her errand was. Ponnamal's talk about children in danger recalled the conversation of the morning. In a few hours more Ponnamal was upon the track of the Hindu woman and her two little charges. It ended in the two little girls being saved.
SHE has been called "Old Dévai" ever since we knew her, twelve years ago; and she is still active in mind and body. "As I was then, even so is my strength now for war, both to go out and to come in," she would tell you with a courageous toss of the old grey head. Her spirit at least is untired.
We knew her first as a woman of character. One Sunday, in our Tamil church, a sermon was preached upon the love of the Father as compared with the love of the world. That Sunday Dévai went home and acted upon the teaching in such fashion that she had to suffer from the scourge of the tongue in her own particular world. But she went on her way, unmoved by adverse criticism. Some years later, when we were in perplexity as to how to set about our search for children in danger of being given to temples, old Dévai offered to help. She was peculiarly suitable, both in age and in position, for this most delicate work; and we accepted her offer with thanksgiving. Since then she has travelled far, and followed many a clue discovered in strange ways and in strange company. Perhaps no one in South India knows as much as Dévai knows about the secret system by which the Temple altars are supplied with little living victims;but she has no idea of how to put her knowledge into shape and express it in paragraph form. We learn most from her when she least knows she is saying anything interesting.
When first we began the work, our great difficulty was, as it is still, to get upon the track of the children before the Temple women heard of them. Once they were known to be available, Temple scouts appeared mysteriously alert; and it is doubly difficult to get a little child after negotiations have been opened with the subtle Temple scout. How often old Dévai has come to us sick at heart after a long, fruitless search and effort to save some little child who, perhaps, only an hour before her arrival was carried off in triumph by the Temple people! "I pursued after the bandy, and I saw it in the distance; but swiftly went their bullocks, and I could not overtake it. At last they stopped to rest, and I came to where they were. But they smiled at me and said: 'Did you ever hear of such a thing as you ask in foolishness? Is it the custom to give up a child, once it is ours?'" Sometimes a new story is invented on the spot. "Did you not know it was my sister's child; and I, her only sister, having no child of my own, have adopted this one as my own? Would you ask me to give up my own child, the apple of my eye?" Oftener, however, the clue fails, and all Dévai knows is that the little one is nowhere to be found. Once she traced it straight to a Temple house, won her way in, and pleaded with tears, offering all compensation for expenses incurred (travelling and other) if only the Temple woman would let her take the child. But no: "If it dies, that matters little; but disgrace is not to be contemplated." When all else fails, we earnestly ask that the little one in danger may be taken quickly out of that polluted atmosphere up into purer air; and it is startling to note how solemnly the answer to that prayer has come in very many instances.
The Knock at Night
The clue for which we are always on the watch is often like a fine silk thread leading down into dark places where we cannot see it, can hardly feel it; it is so thin a thread. Sometimes, when we thought we held it securely, we have lost it in the dark.
Sometimes it seems as if the Evil One, whose interest in these little ones may be greater than we know, lays a false clue across our path, and bewilders us by causing us to spend time and strength in what appears to be a wholly useless fashion. Once old Dévai was lured far out of our own district in search of two children who did not even exist. She had taken all precautions to verify the information given, but a false address had baffled her; and we can only conclude that, for some reason unknown to us, but well known to those whom we oppose, they were permitted on that occasion to gain an advantage over us. We made it a rule, after that will-of-the-wisp experience, that any address out of our own district must be verified; and that the nearest missionary thereto, or responsible Indian Christian, must be approached, before further steps are taken. This rule has saved many a fruitless journey; but also we cannot help knowing it has sometimes occasioned delays which have had sad results. For distances are great in India. Dévai herself lives two days' journey from us, and her address is uncertain, as she sets off at a moment's notice for any place where she has reason to think a child in danger may be saved. Then, too, missionaries and responsible Indian Christians are not everywhere. So that sometimes it is a case of choosing the lesser of two evils, and choosing immediately.
LATHA (FIREFLY) BLOWING BUBBLES.LATHA (FIREFLY) BLOWING BUBBLES.
Once in the night a knock came to Dévai's door. A man stood outside, a Hindu known to her. "A little girl has just been taken to the Temple of A., where the great festival is being held. If you go at once you may perhaps get her."The place named was out of our jurisdiction; but in such cases Dévai knows rules are only made to be broken. Off she went on foot, got a bandyen route, reached the town before the festival was over, found the house to which she had been directed—a little shut-up house, doors and windows all closed—managed, how we never knew, to get in, found a young woman, a Temple woman from Travancore, with a little child asleep on the mat beside her, persuaded her to slip out of the house with the child without wakening anyone, crept out of the town and fled away into the night, thankful for the blessed covering darkness. The child was being kept in that house till the Temple woman to whom she was to be given produced the stipulated "Joy-gift," after which she would become Temple property. Some delay in its being given had caused that night's retention in the little shut-up house. The child, a most lovable little girl, had been kidnapped and disguised; and the matter was so skilfully managed, that we have never been able to discover even the name of her own town. We only know she must have been well brought up, for she was from the first a refined little thing with very dainty ways. She and her little special friend are sitting on the steps looking at Latha (Firefly), who is blowing bubbles. The other little one has a similar but different history. Her father brought her to us himself, fearing lest she should be kidnapped by one related to her who much wanted to have her. "I, being a man, cannot be always with the child," he said, "and I fear for her."
"It"
On another occasion the clue was found through Dévai's happening to overhear the conversation of two men in a wood in the early morning. One said to the other something about someone having taken "It" somewhere; and Dévai, whose scent is keen where little "Its" are concerned, made friends with the men, and got the information she wanted from them. Careful work resulted in a little child's salvation;but Dévai hardly dared believe it safe until she reached Dohnavur. When that occurred we were all at church; for special services were being held in week-day evenings, and old Dévai had to possess her soul in patience till we came out of church. Then there was a rush round to the nursery, and an eager showing of the "It." I shall never forget the pang of disappointment and apprehension. Several little ones had been sent to us who could not possibly live; and the nurses had got overborne, and we dreaded another strain for them. It was a tiny thing, three pounds and three-quarters of pale brown skin and bone. Its face was a criss-cross of wrinkles, and it looked any age. But "Man looketh upon the outward appearance" would have been assuredly quoted to us, regardless of context, had we ventured upon a remark to old Dévai, who poured forth the story of its salvation in vivid sentences. Next evening the old grannie of the compound told us the baby could not live till morning. She laid it on a mat and regarded it critically, felt its pulses (both wrists), examined minutely its eyes and the bridge of its nose: "No, not till morning. Better have the grave prepared, for early morning will be an inconvenient hour for digging." Others confirmed her diagnosis, and sorrowfully the order was given and the grave was dug.
But the baby lived till morning; and though for two years it needed a nurse to itself, and over and over again all but left us, this baby has grown one of our healthiest; and now when old Dévai comes to see us she looks at it, and then to Heaven, and sighs with gratitude.
BUT sometimes old Dévai brings us little ones who do not come to stay. Failures, the world would call them. Twice lately this has happened, and each time unexpectedly; for the babies had stories which seemed to imply a promise of future usefulness. Surely such a deliverance must have been wrought for something special, we say to ourselves, and refuse to fear.
One dear little fat "fair" baby was brought to us as a surprise, for we had not heard of her. It had seemed so improbable that Dévai could get her, that she had not written to us to ask us to pray her through the battle, as she usually does. The sound of the bullock-bells' jingle one moonlight night woke us to welcome the baby. She had travelled fifty miles in the shaky bullock-cart, and she was only a few days old; but she seemed healthy, and we had no fears. "Ah, the Lord our God gave her to me, or never could I have got her! Her mother had determined to give her to the Temple; and when I went to persuade her, she hid the baby in an earthen vessel lest my eyes should see her. But earthen pots cannot hide from the eyes of the Lord. And here she is!" The details, fished out of Dévai by dint of many questions, made it clear that in very truththe Lord, to whom all souls belong, had worked on behalf of this little one; moving even Hindu hearts, as His brave old servant pleaded, making it possible to break through caste and custom, those prison walls of most cruel convention, till even the Hindus said: "Let the Christian have the babe!" We do not know why she was taken. She never seemed to sicken, but just left us; perhaps she was needed somewhere else, and Dohnavur was the way there.
The other meant even more to us, for she was our first from Benares, the heart of this great Hinduism; and her very presence seemed such a splendid pledge of ultimate victory.
This little one was saved through a friend, a Wesleyan missionary, who had interested her Indian workers in the children. The baby's mother was a pilgrim from Benares, and her baby had been born in the South. A Temple woman had seen it and was eager to get it, for it was a child of promise. Our friend's worker heard of this, and interposed. The mother consented to give her baby to us. It was not a case in which we dare have persuaded her to keep it; for such babies are greatly coveted, and the mother was already predisposed to give her child to the gods.
When we heard of this little one, old Dévai was with us. She had only just arrived after a journey of two days with a little girl, but she knew the perils of delay too well to risk them now. "Let me go! I will have some coffee, and immediately start!" So off she went for five more days of wearisome bullock-cart and train. But her face beamed when she returned and laid a six-weeks-old baby in our arms—a baby fair to look upon. We gathered round her at once, and she lay and smiled at us all. Hardly ever have we had so sweet a babe. But the smiling little mouth was too pale a pink, and the beautiful eyes were too bright. She had only been with us a month when we were startledby the other-world look on the baby's face. We had seen it before; we recognised it, and our hearts sank within us. That evening, as she lay in her white cradle, the waxy hands folded in an unchildlike calm, she looked as if the angel of Death had passed her as she slept, and touched her as he passed.
Passion-flowers
She stayed with us for another month, and was nursed day and night till more and more she became endeared to us; and then once more we heard the word that cannot be refused, and we let her go. We laid passion-flowers about her as she lay asleep. The smile that had left her little face had come back now. "She came with a smile, and she went with a smile," said one who loved her dearly; and the flowers of mystery and glory spoke to us, as we stood and looked. "Who for the joy that was set before Him ;. . . endured." The scent of the violet passion-flower will always carry its message to us. "Let us be worthy of the grief God sends."
And oh that such experiences may make us more earnest, more self-less in our service for these little ones! Someone has expressed this thought very tenderly and simply:—
Because of one small low-laid head, all crownedWith golden hair,For evermore all fair young brows to meA halo wear.I kiss them reverently. Alas, I knowThe pain I bear!Because of dear but close-shut holy eyesOf heaven's own blue,All little eyes do fill my own with tears,Whate'er their hue.And, motherly, I gaze their innocent,Clear depths into.Because of little pallid lips, which onceMy name did call,No childish voice in vain appeal uponMy ears doth fall.I count it all my joy their joys to share,And sorrows small.Because of little dimpled handsWhich folded lie,All little hands henceforth to me do haveA pleading cry.I clasp them, as they were small wandering birds,Lured home to fly.Because of little death-cold feet, for earth'sRough roads unmeet,I'd journey leagues to save from sin and harmSuch little feet.And count the lowliest service done for themSo sacred—sweet.
"Until He find it"
But grief is almost too poignant a word for what is so stingless as this. And yet God the Father, who gives the love, understands and knows how much may lie behind two words and two dates. "Given ;. . . Taken ;. . ." Only indeed we do bless Him when the cup holds no bitterness of fear or of regret. There is nothing ever to fear for the little folded lambs. If only the veil of blinding sense might drop from our eyes when the door opens to our cherished little children, should we have the heart to toil so hard to keep that bright door shut? Would it not seem almost selfish to try? But the case is different when the child is not lifted lovingly to fair lands out of sight, but snatched back, dragged back down into the darkness from which we had hoped it had escaped. This work for the children, which seems so strangely full of trial of its own(as it is surely still more full of its own particular joy), has held this bitterness for us, and yet the bitter has changed to sweet; and even now in our "twilight of short knowledge" we can understand a little, and where we cannot we are content to wait.
Four years ago, after much correspondence and effort, a little girl was saved from Temple service in connection with a famous Temple of the South from which few have ever been saved. She had been dedicated by her father, and her mother had consented. Dévai got a paper signed by them giving her up to us instead. But shortly after she left the town, the father regretted the step he had taken, and followed Dévai, unknown to her. Alas, the child had not been with us an hour before she was carried off.
For two years we heard nothing of her. Old Dévai, who was broken-hearted about the matter, tried to find what had been done with her, but it was kept secret. She almost gave up in despair.
At last information reached her that the child was in the same town; and that her father having died of cholera, the mother and another little daughter were in a certain house well known to her. She went immediately and found the older child had not been given to the gods. Something of her pleadings had lingered in the father's memory, and he had refused to give her up. But the mother was otherwise minded, and intended to give both children to the Temple. Dévai had been guided to go at the critical time of decision. The mother was persuaded, and Dévai returned with two sheaves instead of one—and even that one she had hardly dared to expect. Once more we were called to hold our gifts with light hands. The younger of the welcome little two was one of ten who died during an epidemic at Neyoor. The elder one is with us still—a bright, intelligent child.
The only other one whom we have been compelled to giveup in this most hurting way was saved through friends on the hills, who, before they sent the little child to us, believed all safe as to claims upon her afterwards. She was a pretty child of five, and we grew to love her very much; for her ways were sweet and gentle and very affectionate. Lala, Lola, and Leela were a dear little trio, all about the same age, and all rather specially interesting children.
But the father gave trouble. He was not a good man, and we knew it was not love for his little daughter which prompted his action. He demanded her back, and our friends had to telegraph to us to send her home. It was not an easy thing to do; and we packed her little belongings feeling as if we were moving blindly in a grievous dream, out of which we must surely awaken.
There was some delay about a bandy, but at last it was ready and standing at the door. We lifted the little girl into it, put a doll and a packet of sweets in her hands, and gave our last charges to those who were taking her up to the hills, workers upon whom we could depend to do anything that could yet be done to win her back again. Then the bandy drove away.
But we went back to our room and asked for a great and good thing to be done. We thought of little Lala, with her gentle nature which had so soon responded to loving influence, and we knew her very gentleness would be her danger now; for how could such a little child, naturally so yielding in disposition, withstand the call that would come, and the pressure that had broken far stronger wills? So we asked that she might either be returned to us soon or taken away from the evil to come. A week passed and our workers returned without her; they evidently felt the case quite hopeless. But the next letter we had from our friends told us the child was safe.
Carried by the Angels
She had left us in perfect health, but pneumonia set in upon her return to the colder air of the hills. She had beenonly a few days ill, and died very suddenly—died without anyone near her to comfort her with soothing words about the One to whom she was going. Even in the gladness that she was safe now, there was the pitiful thought of her loneliness through the dark valley; and we seemed to see the little wistful face, and felt she would be so frightened and shy and bewildered; and we longed to know something about those last hours. But one of the heathen women who had been about her at the last told what she knew, and our friends wrote what they heard. "She said she was Jesus' child, and did not seem afraid. And she said that she saw three Shining Ones come into the room where she was lying, and she was comforted." Oh, need we ever fear? Little Lala had been with us for so short a time that we had not been able to teach her much; and so far as any of us know, she had heard nothing of the ministry of angels. We had hardly dared to hope she understood enough about our Lord Himself to rest her little heart upon Him. But we do not know everything. Little innocent child that she was, she was carried by the angels from the evil to come.
Old Dévai keeps a brave heart. When she comes to see us, she cheers herself by nursing the cheerful little people she brought to us, small and wailing and not very hopeful. She is full of reminiscences on these occasions. "Ah," she will say, addressing an astonished two-year-old, "the devil and all his imps fought for you, my child!" This is unfamiliar language to the baby; but Dévai knows nothing of our modern ideas of education, and considers crude fact advisable at any age. "Yes, he fought for you, my child. I was sitting on the verandah of the house wherein you lay, and I was preaching the Gospel of the grace of God to the women, when five devils appeared. Yea, five were they, one older and four younger. Men were they in outward shape, but within them were the devils. I had nearly persuaded the women to let mehave you, my child; and till they fully consented, I was filling up the interval with speech, for no man shall shut my mouth. And the women listened well, and my heart burned within me—for it was life to me to see them listening—when lo! those devils came—yea, five, one older and four younger—sent by their master to confound me. And they rose up against me and turned me out, and told the women folk not to listen; and you—I should never get you, said they; and so it appeared, for with such is might, and their master waxes furious when he knows his time is short. But the Lord on high is mightier than a million million devils, and what are five to Him? He rose up for me against them and discomfited them"—Dévai does not go into secular particulars—"and so you were delivered from the mouth of the lion, my child!"
We are not anxious that our babies should know too much ancient history. Enough for them that they are in the fold—
I am Jesus' little lamb,Happy all day long I am;He will keep me safe from harm,For I'm His lamb—
is enough theology for two-year-olds; but Dévai's visits are not so frequent as to make a deep impression, and the baby thus addressed, after a long and unsympathetic stare, usually scrambles off her knee and returns unscathed to her own world.
OLD Dévai, with her vivid conversation about the one old devil and four younger, does not suggest a conciliatory attitude towards the people of her land. And it may be possible so to misinterpret the spirit of this book as to see in it only something unappreciative and therefore unkind. So it shall now be written down in sincerity and earnestness that nothing of the sort is intended. The thing we fight is not India or Indian, in essence or development. It is something alien to the old life of the people. It is not allowed in the Védas (ancient sacred books). It is like a parasite which has settled upon the bough of some noble forest-tree—on it, but not of it. The parasite has gripped the bough with strong and interlacing roots; but it is not the bough.
We think of the real India as we see it in the thinker—the seeker after the unknown God, with his wistful eyes. "The Lord beholding him loved him," and we cannot help loving as we look. And there is the Indian woman hidden away from the noise of crowds, patient in her motherhood, loyal to the light she has. We see the spirit of the old land there; and it wins us and holds us, and makes it a joy to be here to live for India.
The true India is sensitive and very gentle. There is awisdom in its ways, none the less wise because it is not the wisdom of the West. This spirit which traffics in children is callous and fierce as a ravening beast; and its wisdom descendeth not from above, but is earthly, sensual, devilish. . . . And this spirit, alien to the land, has settled upon it, and made itself at home in it, and so become a part of it that nothing but the touch of God will ever get it out. We want that touch of God: "Touch the mountains, and they shall smoke." That is why we write.
For we write for those who believe in prayer—not in the emasculated modern sense, but in the old Hebrew sense, deep as the other is shallow. We believe there is some connection between knowing and caring and praying, and what happens afterwards. Otherwise we should leave the darkness to cover the things that belong to the dark. We should be for ever dumb about them, if it were not that we know an evil covered up is not an evil conquered. So we do the thing from which we shrink with strong recoil; we stand on the edge of the pit, and look down and tell what we have seen, urged by the longing within us that the Christians of England should pray.
"Only pray?" does someone ask? Prayer of the sort we mean never stops with praying. "Whatsoever He saith unto you, do it," is the prayer's solemn afterword; but the prayer we ask is no trifle. Lines from an American poet upon what it costs to make true poetry, come with suggestion here:—