<h2>CHAPTER XXXII</h2>
<h3>The Power behind the Work</h3>
<div class="blockquot"><p>"To Him difficulties are as nothing, and improbabilities of less than
no account."—<i>Story of the China Inland Mission.</i></p>
</div>
<div class='cap'>THE Power behind the work is the interposition of God
in answer to prayer.</div>
<p>Recently—so recently that it would be unwise to
go into detail—we were in trouble about a little girl of ten
or eleven, who, though not a Temple child, was exposed to
imminent danger, and sorely needed deliverance. I happened
to be alone at Dohnavur at the time, and did not know what
to answer to the child's urgent message: "If I can escape
to you" (this meant if she braved capture and its consequences,
and fled across the fields alone at night), "can you
protect me from my people?" To say "Yes" might have had
fatal results. To say "No" seemed too impossible. The
circumstances were such that great care was needed to avoid
being entangled in legal complications; and as the Collector
(Chief Magistrate) for our part of the district happened just
then to be in our neighbourhood, I wrote asking for an
appointment. Early next morning we met by the roadside.
I had been up most of the night, and was tired and anxious;
and I shall never forget the comfort that came through the
quiet sympathy with which one who was quite a stranger to<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_294" id="Page_294">[294]</SPAN></span>
us all listened to the story, not as if it were a mere missionary
trifle, but something worthy his attention. But nothing could
be done. It was not a case where we had any ground for
appeal to the law; and any attempt upon our part to help
the child could only have resulted in more trouble afterwards,
for we should certainly have had to give her up if she came
to us.</p>
<p>As the inevitableness of this conclusion became more and
more evident to me, it seemed as if a great strong wall were
rising foot by foot between me and that little girl—a wall
like the walls that enclose the Temples here, very high, very
massive. But even Temple walls have doors, and I could not
see any door in this wall. Nothing could bring that child to
us but a Power enthroned above the wall, which could stoop
and lift her over it. I do not remember what led to the
question about what we expected would happen; but I
remember that with that wall full in view I could only
answer, "The interposition of God." Nothing else, nothing
less, could do anything for that child.</p>
<div class="sidenote">Voices Blown on the Winds</div>
<p>Her case was complicated, if I may express it so, by the
fact that though she knew very little—she had only had a
few weeks' teaching and could not read—she had believed
all we told her most simply and literally, and witnessed to
her own people, whose reply to her had been: "You will see
who is stronger, your God or ours! Do you think your Lord
Jesus can deliver you from our hand, or prevent us from doing
as we choose with you? We shall see!" And the case of an
older girl who had been, as those who knew her best believed,
drugged and then bent to her people's will, was quoted: "Did
your Lord Jesus deliver her? Where is she to-day? And you
think He will deliver you!" "But He will not let you hurt
me," the child had answered fearlessly, though her strength
was weakened even then by thirty hours without food; and,
remembering one of the Bible stories she had heard during<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_295" id="Page_295">[295]</SPAN></span>
those weeks, she added, "I am Daniel, and you are the lions"—and
she told them how the angel was sent to shut the lions'
mouths. But she knew so little after all, and the bravest can
be overborne, and she was only a little girl; so our hearts
ached for her as we sent her the message: "You must not try
to come to us. We cannot protect you. But Jesus is with
you. He will not fail you. He says, 'Fear thou not, for I
am with thee.'" That night they shut her up with a demon-possessed
woman, that the terror of it might shake her faith
in Christ. Next day they hinted that worse would happen
soon. Our fear was lest her faith should fail before deliverance
came.</p>
<p>Three and a half months of such tension as we have rarely
known passed over us. Often during that time, when one
thing after another happened contrariwise, as it appeared, and
each event as it occurred seemed to add another foot to the
wall that still grew higher, help to faith came to us through
unexpected sources like voices blown on the winds.</p>
<p>Once it was something Lieut. Shackleton is reported to have
said to Reuter's correspondent concerning his expedition to the
South Pole: "Over and over again there were times when no
mortal leadership could have availed us. It was during those
times that we learned that some Power beyond our own
guided our footsteps." And the illustrations which followed
of Divine interposition were such that one at least who
read, took courage; for the God of the great Ice-fields is
the God of the Tropics.</p>
<p>Once it was a passage opened by chance in a friend's book—Pastor
Agnorum. The subject of the paragraph is the
schoolboy's attitude towards games: "Glimpses of his mind
are sometimes given us, as on that day at Risingham when
you refused to play in your boys' house-match, unless the other
house excluded from their team a half-back who was under
attainder through a recent row. They declined, and you stood<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_296" id="Page_296">[296]</SPAN></span>
out of it. The hush in the field when your orphaned team, in
defiance of the odds, scored and again scored! Their supporters,
in chaste awe at the marvel, could hardly shout: it
was more like a sob: a judgment had so manifestly defended
the right. The cricket professional, a man naturally devout,
looked at me with eyes that confessed an interposition, and all
came away quiet as a crowd from a cemetery. It was not a
game of football we had looked at, it was a Mystery Play: we
had been edified, and we hid it in our hearts."</p>
<p>And once, on the darkest day of all, it was the brave old
family motto, on a letter which came by post: "Dieu défend
le droit." It was something to be reminded that, in spite of
appearances to the contrary, the kingdom is the Lord's, and
He is Governor among the people.</p>
<p>"Eyes that confessed an interposition." The phrase was
illuminated for us when God in very truth interposed in such
fashion that every one saw it was His Hand, for no other
hand could have done it. Then we, too, looked at each other
with eyes that confessed an interposition. We had seen that
which we should never forget; and until the time comes when
it may be more fully told to the glory of our God, we have hid
it in our hearts.</p>
<p>The reason we have outlined the story is to lead to a
word we want to write very earnestly; it is this: Friends
who care for the children, and believe this work on their
behalf is something God intends should be done, "pray as
if on that alone hung the issue of the day." More than we
know depends upon our holding on in prayer.</p>
<p>All through those months there was prayer for that child
in India and in England. The matter was so urgent that
we made it widely known, and some at least of those who
heard gave themselves up to prayer; not to the mere easy
prayer which costs little and does less, but to that waiting
upon God which does not rest till it knows it has obtained<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_297" id="Page_297">[297]</SPAN></span>
access, knows that it has the petition that it desires of Him.
This sort of prayer costs.</p>
<div class="sidenote">"I Should utterly have fainted but—"</div>
<p>But to us down in the thick of the battle, it was strength
to think of that prayer. We were very weary with hope
deferred; for it was as if all the human hope in us were
torn out of us, and tossed and buffeted every way till there
was nothing left of it but an aching place where it had
been. God works by means, as we all admit; and so every
fresh development in a Court case in which the child was
involved, every turn of affairs, where her relatives were
concerned (and these turns were frequent), every little
movement which seemed to promise something, was eagerly
watched in the expectation that in it lay the interposition
for which we waited. But it seemed as if our hopes were
raised only to be dashed lower than ever, till we were cast
upon the bare word of our God. It was given to us then
as perhaps never before to penetrate to the innermost
spring of consolation contained in those very old words: "I
should utterly have fainted, but that I believe verily to see
the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living. Oh,
tarry thou the Lord's leisure: be strong, and He shall comfort
thine heart; and put thou thy trust in the Lord."</p>
<p>This Divine Interposition has been very inspiring. We
feel afresh the force of the question: "Is anything too
hard for the Lord?" And we ask those whose hearts are
with us to pray for more such manifestations of the Power
that has not passed with the ages. Lord, teach us to pray!</p>
<p>For it has never been with us, "Come, see, and conquer,"
as if victory were an easy thing and a common. We have
known what it is to toil for the salvation of some little life,
and we have known the bitterness of defeat. We have had
to stand on the shore of a dark and boundless sea, and
watch that little white life swept off as by a great black
wave. We have watched it drift further and further out<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_298" id="Page_298">[298]</SPAN></span>
on those desolate waters, till suddenly something from
underneath caught it and sucked it down. And our very
soul has gone out in the cry, "Would God I had died for
thee!" and we too have gone "to the chamber over the
gate" where we could be alone with our grief and our
God—O little child, loved and lost, would God I had died
for thee!</p>
<p>Should we forget these things? Should we bury them
away lest they hurt some sensitive soul? Rather, could we
forget them if we would, and dare we hide away the knowledge
lest somewhere someone should be hurt? For it is
not as if that black wave's work were a thing of the past:
it has gone on for centuries unchecked: it is going on
to-day.</p>
<p>Several months have passed since the chapters which
precede this were written. We are now, with some of our
converts who needed rest and change, in a place under the
mountains a day's journey from Dohnavur. It is one of
the holy places of the South; for the northern tributary of
the chief river of this district falls over the cliffs at this
point in a double leap of one hundred and eighty feet, and
the waters are so disposed over a great rounded shoulder
of rock that many people can bathe below in a long single
file. To this fall thousands of pilgrims come from all parts
of India, believing that such bathing is meritorious and
cleanses away all sin. And as they are far from <ins title="Transcriber's Note: original reads 'own their'">their own</ins>
homes, and in measure out on holiday, we find them more
than usually accessible and friendly. This morning I was
on my way home after talk with the women, and was turning
for a moment to look back upon the beautiful sorrowful
scene—the flashing waterfall, the passing crowd of pilgrims,
the radiance of sunshine on water, wood, and rock, when a
Brahman, fresh from bathing, followed my look, and glancing
at the New Testament and bag of Gospels in my hand,<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_299" id="Page_299">[299]</SPAN></span>
smiled indulgently and asked if we seriously thought these
books and their teaching would ever materially influence
India. "Look at that crowd," and he pointed to the people,
his own caste people chiefly. "Have we been influenced?"</p>
<div class="sidenote">Deep Calleth unto Deep</div>
<p>Then he told me the story of the Falls, how ages ago a
god, pitying the sins and the sufferings of the people, bathed
on the ledge where the waters leap, and thereafter those
waters were efficacious to the cleansing of sin from the one
who believingly bathes. To the one who believes not, nothing
happens beyond the cleansing of his body and its invigoration.
"Even to you," he added, in his friendliness, "virtue of a sort
is allowed; for do you not experience a certain exhilaration
and a buoyancy of spirit and a pleasure beyond anything
obtainable elsewhere [which is perfectly true]? This is due
to the benevolence of our god, whose merits extend even
to you."</p>
<p>He was an educated man; he had studied in a mission
school, and afterwards in a Government college. He had read
English books, and parts of our Bible were familiar to him.
He assured me he found no more difficulty in accepting this
legend than we did in accepting the story of our Saviour's
incarnation. And then, standing in the Temple porch with its
carved stone pillars, almost within touch of the great door
that opens behind into the shrine, he led the way into the
Higher Hinduism—that mysterious land which lies all around
us in India, but is so seldom shown to us. And I listened till
in turn he was persuaded to listen, and we read together from
the Gospel which transcends in its simplicity the profoundest
reach of Hindu thought: "In the beginning was the Word,
and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." We did
not pause till we came to the end of the paragraph. I could
see how it appealed, for deep calleth unto deep; but he rose
again up and up, and that unknown part of one's being which
is more akin to the East than to the West, followed him<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_300" id="Page_300">[300]</SPAN></span>
and understood—when the door behind us creaked, and a
sudden blast of turbulent music sprang out upon us, deafening
us for a moment, and he said, "It is the morning worship.
The priests and the Servants of the gods are worshipping
within." It was like a fall from far-away heights to the very
floor of things.</p>
<p>Then he told me how in the town three miles distant, the
Benares of the South, the service of the gods was conducted
with more elaborate ceremonial. "I could arrange for you to
see it if you wished." I explained why I could not wish to see
it, and asked him about the Servants of the gods, and about
the little children. "Certainly there are little children. The
Servants of the gods adopt them to continue the succession.
How else could it be continued?"</p>
<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_303" id="Page_303">[303]</SPAN></span></p>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />
1 of 2
2 of 2
Previous
Next
Update Required
To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.