The women we were teaching broke in with eager explanations. "Oh, he was such a great one! He had received the Initiation. There will be a grand ceremonial, grander than ever you have!" Then they told us how this great one had been initiated into the Hindu mysteries by his family priest, and that the mystical benefits accruing from this initiation were to be caused to revert to the priest. This Reverting of the Initiation was to be one of the ceremonies. We watched the procession pass down the street. They were going for water from a sacred stream for the bathing of purification. When they return, said the women, the ceremonies will begin.

A little later we passed the house, and stood looking in through the doorway. There was the usual large square courtyard, with the verandah running round three sides. The verandah was full of women. We longed to go in, but did not think they would let us. The courtyard was rather confused; men were rushing about, putting up arches and decorating them; servants were sweeping, and cooking, and shouting to one another; the women were talking and laughing. And all the time from within the house came the sound of the dirge for the dead, and the laugh and the wail struck against each other, and jarred. No one noticed us for awhile, but at last a woman saw us, and beckoned us to come. "We are all defiled to-day; you may sit with us," they said; and yielding to the instincts of their kindly Tamil nature, they crushed closer together to make room for us beside them. How I did enjoy being squeezed up there among them. But to appreciate that in the least you would have to work in a caste-bound part of old India; you can have no idea, until you try, how hard it is to refrain from touching those whom you love.

The house door opened upon the verandah, and we could hear the moan of the dirge. "There is sorrow on the sea; it cannot be quiet." There was no quietness, only the ceaseless moan, that kept rising into a wail; there were tears in the sound of the wail, and I felt like a sort of living harp with all its strings drawn tight.

But the women outside cared nothing at all. It was strange to see how callous they were. It was not their own who had died, so they chatted and laughed and watched the proceedings—the tying of the garlands round the arches, the arrangement of offerings for the Brahmans. It was all full of interest to them. We tried to turn their thoughts to the Powers of the World to Come. But no. They did not care.

Presently there was a stir. "The men are coming!" they said. "Run! there is a shady corner under those palms on the far verandah! Run and hide! They are here!" And, even as they spoke, in streamed the men, each with his brass water-vessel poised on his head, and they saw us standing there. We thought they would turn us out, and were quite prepared to go at a sign from the head of the clan. But he was a friend of ours, and he smiled as we salaamed, and pointed to a quiet corner, out of the way, where we could see it all without being too much seen.

To understand this, which to me was a surprise, one must remember that by nature the Indian is most courteous, and if it were not for Caste rules we should be allowed to come much closer to them than is possible now. To-day they were all ceremonially unclean, so our presence was not considered polluting. Also the Indian loves a function; sad or glad, it matters little. Life is a bubble on the water; enjoy it while you may. And they sympathised with what they thought was our desire to see the show. This was human; they could understand it. So they let us stay; and we stayed, hoping for a chance later on.

Then the ceremonies began. They carried the dead man out and laid him in the courtyard under the arch of palms. He was old and worn and thin. One could see the fine old face, with the marks of the Hindu trident painted down the forehead. He had been a most earnest Hindu; all the rites were duly performed, and morning and night for many years he had marked those marks on his brow. Had he ever once listened to the Truth? I do not know. He must have heard about it, but he had not received it. He died, they told us, "not knowing what lay on the other side."

The water-bearers laid their vessels on the ground. Each had a leaf across its mouth. The priest was crowned with a chaplet of flowers. Then came the bathing. They threw up a shelter, and carried him there. It was reverently done. There was a touch of refinement in the thought which banished the women and children before the bathing began. Tamils bathe in the open air, and always clothed, but always apart. And as the women's verandah overlooked the screened enclosure, they were all ordered off. They went and waited, silent now, awed by the presence of the men. While the bathing was going on the priests chanted and muttered incantations, and now and again a bell was rung, and incense waved, and tapers lighted. Now they were causing that mysterious Something which still hovered round the lifeless form to leave it and return to them, and when the bathing was over they signified that all was done; the Influence had departed, descended; the funeral ceremonies might proceed.

And all this time, without a break, the dirge was being sung by the mourners in the house. It was a sort of undernote to all the sounds outside. Then the old man, robed in white and crowned and wreathed with flowers, was carried round to the other side; and oh, the pitifulness of it all! St. Paul must have been thinking of some such scene when he wrote to the converts, "That ye sorrow not even as others which have no hope." And I thought how strangely callous we were, how superficial our sympathy. The Lord's command does not stir us, the sorrow of those we neglect does not touch us; we think so much more of ourselves and our own selfish pleasure than we think of the purpose for which we were saved—and at such a tremendous cost! Oh for a baptism of reality and obedience to sweep over us! Oh to be true to the hymns we sing and the vows we make! God make us true.

Forgive all this. It was burnt into me afresh that day as I sat there watching the things they did and listening to what they said. We had come too late for that old dead man, too late for most of the living ones too. Can you wonder if at such solemn times one yields oneself afresh and for ever to obey?

Rice was prepared for the dead man's use, and balls of rice were ready to be offered to his spirit after his cremation; for the Hindus think that an intermediate body must be formed and nourished, which on the thirteenth day after death is conducted to either heaven or hell, according to the deeds done on earth. The ceremonies were all characterised by a belief in some future state. The spirit was somewhere—in the dark—so they tried to light the way for him. This reminds me of one ceremony especially suggestive. All the little grandchildren were brought, and lighted tapers given to them; then they processioned round the bier, round and round many times, holding the tapers steadily, and looking serious and impressed.

Then the widow came out with a woman on either side supporting her. And she walked round and round her husband, with the tears rolling down her face, and she wailed the widow's wail, with her very heart in it. Why had he gone away and left her desolate? His was the spirit of fragrance like the scented sandal-wood; his was the arm of strength like the lock that barred the door. Gone was the scent of the sandal, broken and open the door; why had the bird flown and left but the empty cage? Gone! was he gone? Was he really gone? Was it certain he was dead? He who had tossed and turned on the softest bed they could make, must he lie on the bed of his funeral pyre? Must he burn upon logs of wood? Say, was there no way to reach him, no way to help him now? "I have searched for thee, but I find thee not." And so the dirge moaned on.

I could not hear all this then; Victory told it to me, and much more, afterwards. "Last time I heard it," she said, "I was inside, wailing too."

As the poor widow went round and round she stopped each time she got to the feet, and embraced them fervently. Sometimes she broke through all restraint, and clasped him in her arms.



After many ceremonies had been performed, the men all went away, and the women were left to bid farewell to the form soon to be carried out. Then the men came back and bore him across the courtyard, and paused under the arch outside, while the women all rushed out, tearing their hair and beating themselves and wailing wildly. As they were lifting the bier to depart the cry was, "Stop! stop! Will he not speak?" And this, chanted again and again, would have made the coldest care. Then when all was over, and the long procession, headed by the tom-toms and conch shells, had passed out of sight, the women pressed in again, and each first let down her hair, and seized her nearest neighbour, and they all flung themselves on the ground and knocked their heads against it, and then, rising to a sitting posture, they held on to one another, swaying backwards and forwards and chanting in time to the swaying, in chorus and antiphone. All this, even to the hair-tearing and head-knocking, was copied by the children who were present with terrible fidelity.

We sat down among them. They took our hands and rocked us in the orthodox way. But we did not wail and we did not undo our hair. We tried to speak comforting words to those who were really in grief, but we found it was not the time. A fortnight later we went again, and found the house door open because we had been with them that day.

But we could not help them then, so we rose and were going away, when, held by the power of that dirge of theirs, I turned to look again. The last rays of the afternoon sun were lighting up the courtyard, and shining on the masses of black hair and grey. As I looked they got up one by one, and put their disordered dress to rights, and shook out the dust from their glossy hair, and did it up again. And one by one, without farewell of any sort, they went away. An hour later we met groups of them coming home from bathing. They would not touch us then. Afterwards the chief mourners came out and bathed, and went all round the village wailing. And the last thing I saw, as the sun set over the hills and the place grew chill and dark, was the old widow, worn out now, returning home in her wet things, wailing still.

I write this under a sense of the solemnity of being "a servant . . . separated unto the Gospel." I would not write one word lightly. But oh! may I ask you to face it? Are we honest towards God? If we were, would these people be left to die as they are being left to die?

We feel for them. But feelings will not save souls; it cost God Calvary to win us.

It will cost us as much as we may know of the fellowship of His sufferings, if those for whom He died that day are ever to be won.

. . . . . . .

I am writing in the midst of the sights and the sounds of life. There is life in the group of women at the well; life in the voices, in the splash of the water, in the cry of a child, in the call of the mother; life in the flight of the parrots as they flock from tree to tree; life in their chatter as they quarrel and scream; life, everywhere life. How can I think out of all this, back into death again?

But I want to, for you may live for many a year in India without being allowed to see once what we have seen twice within two months, and it cannot be for nothing that we saw it. We must be meant to show it to you.



The Picture-catching Missie and I were in the Village of the Tamarind Tree, when for the second time I saw it. They are very friendly there, and just as in the Red Lake Village they let us look behind the curtain, so here again they pushed it back, and let us in, and went on with their business, not minding us. We crouched up close together on the only scrap of empty space, and watched.

Everything was less intense; the dead was only a poor and very old widow who had lived her life out, and was not wanted. There were no near kindred, only relations by marriage; it was evident everyone went through the form without emotion of any sort.

The woman lay on a rough bier on the floor, and round her crowded a dozen old women. At her head there was a brass vessel of water, a lamp-stand, some uncooked rice, and some broken cocoanuts. Just before we came in they had filled a little brass vessel from the larger one. Now one of the old hags walked round the dead three times, pouring the water out as she walked. Then another fed her—fed that poor dead mouth, stuffed it in so roughly it made us sick and faint. There were other things done hurriedly, carelessly; we could not follow them. The last was the rubbing on of ashes—she had been a worshipper of Siva—also they covered the closed eyes with ashes and patted them down flat. And all the time the gabble of the women mocked at the silence of death. There was no reverence, no sense of solemnity; the ceremonial so full of symbol to its makers, the thinkers of Vedic times, was to them simply a custom, a set of customs, to be followed and got through as quickly as might be by heedless hands. And yet they faithfully carried out every detail they knew, and they finished their heartless work and called to the men to come. The men were waiting outside. They came in and carried her out.

It seemed impossible to think of a photograph then; it was most unlikely they would let us take one, and we hardly felt in the spirit of picture-catching. Yet we thought of you, and of how you certainly could never see it unless we could show it to you; and we wanted to show it to you, so we asked them if we might. Of course if there had been real grief, as in the other I had seen, we could not have asked it, it would have been intrusion; but here there was none—that was the pathos of it. And they were very friendly, so they put their burden on the ground, and waited.

There it is. To the right the barber stands with his fire-bowl hanging from a chain; this is to light the funeral pyre. The smoke interfered with the photo, but then it is true to life. To the left stands the man with the shell ready to blow. At the back, with the sacred ashes rubbed on forehead and breast and arms, stand the two nearest relatives, who to-morrow will gather the ashes and throw them into the stream.

The picture was caught. The man with the shell blew it, the man with the fire came in front, the bearers lifted the bier; they went away with their dead.



Then the old women, who had been pressing through the open door, rushed back in the usual way and began the usual rock and dirge. These Comparison Songs are always full of soul. They have sprung into being in times of deepest feeling, taken shape when hearts were as finely wrought moulds which left their impress upon them. And to hear them chanted without any soul is somehow a pitiful thing, a sort of profanation, like the singing of sacred words for pay.

The photograph was not easy to take, the space was so confined, the movement so continuous, the commotion so confusing. How it was taken I know not; the women massed on the floor were not still for more than a moment. In that moment it was done. Then we persuaded three of them to risk the peril of being caught alone. They would not move farther than the wall of the house, and as it was in a narrow street, again there were difficulties. But the crowning perplexity was at the water-side. It was windy, and our calls were blown away, so they did not hear what we wanted them to do, and they splashed too vigorously. Their only idea just then was to get themselves and their garments ceremonially clean, defiled as they were by contact with the dead.

But let those six whom you can partly see stand for the thousands upon thousands whom you cannot see at all. Those thousands are standing in water to-day from the North to the uttermost South, as the last act in the drama which they have played in the presence of the dead.

. . . . . . .

The women have gone from the well. The parrots have flown to other trees. The Tamils say the body is the sheath of the soul. I think of that empty sheath I saw, and wonder where the soul has flown. It has gone—but where? Has it gone home, like the women from the well? Has it flown far, like the birds among the trees? It has gone, it has gone, that is all we know. It has gone.

Then I read these words from Conybeare and Howson's translation: "If the tent which is my earthly house be destroyed I have a mansion built by God . . . eternal in the heavens. And herein I groan with earnest longings, desiring to cover my earthly raiment with the robes of my heavenly mansion. . . . And He who has prepared me for this very end is God."

The dead man missed his End. That old dead woman missed it too. And the millions around us still alive are missing their End to-day. "This very End"—think of it—Mortality swallowed up in Life—Death only an absence, Life for ever a presence—Present with the Lord who has prepared us "for this very End."

Can we enjoy it all by ourselves? Will there be no sense of incompleteness if the many are outside, missing it all because they missed their End? Will the glory make us glad if they are somewhere far away from it and God? Will not heaven be almost an empty place to one who has never tried to fill it? Yet there is room, oh so much room, for those we are meant to bring in with us!

And there is room, oh so much room, along the edge of the precipice. There are gaps left all unguarded. Can it be that you are meant to guard one of those gaps? If so, it will always remain as it is, a falling-point for those rivers of souls, unless you come.

Are these things truth or are they imagination? If they are imagination—then let the paper on which they are written be burnt, burnt till it curls up and the words fall into dust. But if they are true—then what are we going to do? Not what are we going to say or sing, or even feel or pray—but what are we going to do?



CHAPTER VII

"The Dust of the Actual"

"This may be counted as our richest gain, to have learned afresh one's utter impotency so completely that the past axiom of service, 'I can no more convert a soul than create a star,' comes to be an awful revelation, so that God alone may be exalted in that day." Rev. Walter Searle, Africa.

WE have just come back from a Pariah village. Now see it all with me. Such a curious little collection of huts, thrown down anywhere; such half-frightened, half-friendly faces; such a scurrying in of some and out of others; and we wonder which house we had better make for. We stop before one a shade cleaner than most, and larger and more open.

"May we come in?" Chorus, "Come in! oh, come in!" and in we go. It is a tiny, narrow slip of a room. At one end there is a fire burning on the ground; the smoke finds its way out through the roof, and a pot of rice set on three stones is bubbling cheerfully. No fear of defilement here. They would not like us to touch their rice or to see them eating it, but they do not mind our being in the room where it is being cooked.

At the other end of the narrow slip there is a goat-pen, not very clean; and down one side there is a raised mud place where the family apparently sleep. This side and the two ends are roofed by palmyra palm. It is dry and crackles at a touch, and you touch it every time you stand up, so bits of it are constantly falling and helping to litter the open space below.



Five babies at different stages of refractoriness are sprawling about on this strip of floor; they make noises all the time. Half a dozen imbecile-looking old women crowd in through the low door, and stare and exchange observations. Three young men with nothing particular to do lounge at the far end of the platform near the goats. A bright girl, with more jewellery on than is usual among Pariahs, is tending the fire at the end near the door; she throws a stick or two on as we enter, and hurries forward to get a mat. We sit down on the mat, and she sits beside us; and the usual questions are asked and answered by way of introduction. There is a not very clean old woman diligently devouring betel; another with an enormous mouth, which she always holds wide open; another with a very loud voice and a shock of unspeakable hair. But they listen fairly well till a goat creates a diversion by making a remark, and a baby—a jolly little scrap in its nice brown skin and a bangle—yells, and everyone's attention concentrates upon it.

The goat subsides, the baby is now in its mother's arms; so we go on where we left off, and I watch the bright young girl, and notice that she listens as one who understands. She looks rather superior; her rose-coloured seeley is clean, and two large gold jewels are in each ear; she has a little gold necklet round her throat, and silver bangles and toe rings. All the others are hopelessly grubby and very unenlightened, but they listen just as most people listen in church, with a sort of patient expression. It is the proper thing to do.

I am talking to them now, and till I am half-way through nobody says anything, when suddenly the girl remarks, "We have ten fingers, not just one!" which is so astonishing that I stop and wonder what she can be thinking of. I was talking about the one sheep lost out of one hundred. What has that got to do with one finger and ten? She goes on to explain, "I have heard all this before. I have a sister who is a Christian, and once I stayed with her, and I heard all about your religion, and I felt in my heart it was good. But then I was married" ("tied," she said), "and of course I forgot about it; but now I remember, and I say if ten of our people will join and go over to your Way, that will be well, but what would be the use of one going? What is the use of one finger moving by itself? It takes ten to do the day's work."

"If ten of you had cholera, and I brought you cholera medicine, would you say, 'I won't take it unless nine others take it too'?" I replied. She laughs and the others laugh, but a little uneasily. They hardly like this reference to the dreaded cholera; death of the body is so much more tremendous in prospect than death of the soul. "You would take it, and then the others, seeing it do you good, would perhaps take it too"; and we try to press home the point of the illustration. But a point pricks, and pricking is uncomfortable.

The three men begin to shuffle their feet and talk about other things; the old mother-in-law proposes betel all round, and hands us some grimy-looking leaves with a pressing invitation to partake. The various onlookers make remarks, and the girl devotes herself to her baby. But she is thinking; one can see old memories are stirred. At last with a sigh she gets up, looks round the little indifferent group, goes over to the fireplace, and blows up the fire. This means we had better say salaam; so we say it and they say it, adding the usual "Go and come."

It will be easier to help these people out of their low levels than it will be to help their masters of the higher walks of life. But to do anything genuine or radical among either set of people is never really easy.

"It takes the Ideal to blow a hair's-breadth off the Dust of the Actual."

It takes more. It takes God. It takes God to do anything anywhere. Yesterday we were visiting in one of the Caste villages, and one old lady, who really seems to care for us, said she would greatly like to take my hand in hers; "but," she explained, "this morning one of the children of the place leaned over the edge of the tank to drink, and he fell in and was drowned; so I have been to condole with his people, and I have now returned from bathing, and do not feel equal to bathing again." If she touched me she would have to bathe to get rid of the defilement. Of course I assured her I quite understood, but as she sat there within two inches of me, yet so carefully preserving inviolate those two inches of clear space, I felt what a small thing this caste-created distance was, the merest "Dust of the Actual" on the surface of the system of her life; and yet, "to blow a hair's-breadth of it off, nothing less is needed than the breath of the power of God." "Come, O Breath, and breathe!" we cry. Nothing else will do.

Something in our talk led to a question about the character of Jesus, and, as we tried to describe a little of the loveliness of our dear Lord to her, her dark eyes kindled. "How beautiful it is!" she said; "how beautiful He must be!" She seemed "almost persuaded," but we knew it was only almost, not quite; for she does not yet know her need of a Saviour, she has no sense of sin. Sometimes, it is true, that comes later; but we find that if the soul is to resist the tremendous opposing forces which will instantly be brought to bear upon it if it turns in the least towards Christ, there must be a conviction wrought within it; nothing so superficial as a feeling, be it ever so appreciative or hopeful or loving, will stand that strain.

So, though the eyes of this dear woman fill with tears as she hears of the price of pain He paid, and though she gladly listens as we read and talk with her and pray, yet we know the work has not gone deep, and we make our "petitions deep" for her, and go on.

In India men must work among men, and women among women, but sometimes, in new places, as I have told before, we have to stop and talk with the men before they will let us pass. For example, one afternoon I was waylaid on my way to the women by the head of the household I was visiting, a fine old man of the usual type, courteous but opposed. He asked to look at my books. I had a Bible, a lyric book, and a book of stanzas bearing upon the Truth, copied from the old Tamil classics. He pounced upon this. Then he began to chant the stanzas in their inimitable way, and at the sound several other old men drew round the verandah, till soon a dozen or more were listening with that appreciative expression they seem to reserve for their own beloved poetry.

After the reader had chanted through a dozen or more stanzas, he stopped abruptly and asked me if I really cared for it. Of course I said I did immensely, and only wished I knew more, for the Tamil classics are a study in themselves, and these beautiful ancient verses I had copied out were only gleanings from two large volumes, full of the wisdom of the East.

They were all thoroughly friendly now, and we got into conversation. One of the group held that there are three co-eternal substances—God, the Soul, and Sin. Sin is eternally bound up in the soul, as verdigris is inherent in copper. It can be removed eventually by intense meditation upon God, and by the performance of arduous works of merit. But these exercises they all admitted were incompatible with the ordinary life of most people, and generally impracticable. And so the fact is, the verdigris of sin remains.

I remember the delight with which I discovered that Isaiah i. 25 uses this very illustration; for the word translated "dross" in English is the colloquial word for verdigris in Tamil; so the verse reads, "I will turn My hand to thee, and thoroughly purify thee, so as to remove thy verdigris."

Most of the others held a diametrically opposite view. So far from Soul and Sin being co-eternal with God they are not really existent at all. Both are illusory. There is only one existent entity. It is the Divine Spirit, and it has neither personality nor any personal qualities. All apparent separate existences are delusive. Meditation, of the same absorbing type held necessary by the other, is the only way to reach the stage of enlightenment which leads to reabsorption into the Divine essence, in which we finally merge, and lose what appeared to be our separate identity. We are lost in God, as a drop is lost in the ocean.

Some of the men advocated a phase of truth which reminds one of Calvinism gone mad, and others exactly opposite are extravagantly Arminian. The Calvinists illustrate their belief by a single illuminating word, Cat-hold, and the Arminians by another, Monkey-hold. Could you find better illustrations? The cat takes up the kitten and carries it in its mouth; the kitten is passive, the cat does everything. But the little monkey holds on to its mother, and clings with might and main. Those who have watched the "cat-hold" in the house, and the "monkey-hold" out in the jungle, can appreciate the accuracy of these two illustrations.

But running through every form of Hinduism, however contradictory each to the other may be, there is the underlying thought of pure and simple Pantheism. And this explains many of the aforesaid contradictions, and many of the incongruities which are constantly cropping up and bewildering one who is trying to understand the Hindu trend of thought. So, though those men all affirmed that there is only one God, they admitted that they each worshipped several. They saw nothing inconsistent in this. Just as the air is in everything, so God is in everything, therefore in the various symbols. And as our King has divers representative Viceroys and Governors to rule over his dominions in his name, so the Supreme has these sub-deities, less in power and only existing by force of Himself, and He, being all-pervasive, can be worshipped under their forms.

This argument they all unitedly pressed upon me that afternoon, and though capital answers probably present themselves to your mind, you might not find they satisfied the Hindu who argues along lines of logic peculiar to the East, and subtle enough to mystify the practical Western brain; and then—for we are conceited as well as practical—we are apt to pity the poor Hindu for being so unlike ourselves; and if we are wholly unsympathetic, we growl that there is nothing in the argument, whereas there is a good deal in it, only we do not see it, because we have never thought out the difficulty in question. Quite opposite, sometimes we have to meet a type of mind like that of MacDonald's student of Shakespeare, who "missed a plain point from his eyes being so sharp that they looked through it without seeing it, having focussed themselves beyond it." Assuredly there is much to learn before one can hope to understand the winding of the thread of thought which must be traced if one would follow the working of the Hindu mind. Let no one with a facility for untying mental knots think that his gift would be wasted in India!

The word that struck those men that afternoon was 1 John v. 11 and 12: "God hath given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son. He that hath the Son hath life, and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life." I was longing to get to the women, but when they began to read those verses and ask about the meaning, I could not go without trying to tell them. Oh, how one needed at that moment Christ to become to us Wisdom, for it is just here one may so easily make mistakes. Put the truth of God's relation to the soul subjectively—"He that hath the Son hath life"—before thoughtful Hindus such as these men were, and they will be perfectly enchanted; for the Incarnation presents no difficulty to them, as it would to a Mohammedan; and perhaps, to your sudden surprise and joy, they will say, that is exactly what they are prepared to believe. "Christ in me"—this is comprehensible. "The indwelling of the Spirit of God"—this is analogous to their own phrase: "The indwelling of the Deity in the lotus of the heart." But probably by trading on words and expressions which are already part of the Hindu terminology, and which suggest to them materialistic ideas, we may seriously mislead and be misled. We need to understand not only what the Hindu says, but also what his words mean to himself, a very different thing.

That talk ended in a promise from the men that they would arrange a meeting of Hindus for the Iyer, if he would come and take it, which of course he did. I should like to finish up by saying, "and several were converted," but as yet that would not be true. These deep-rooted ancient and strong philosophies are formidable enough, when rightly understood, to make us feel how little we can do to overturn them; but they are just as "Dust" in comparison with the force of the "Actual" entrenched behind them. Only superficial Dust; and yet, as in every other case, nothing but the Breath of God can blow this Dust away.



We left the old men to their books and endless disquisitions, and went on to the women's quarter. There we saw a young child-widow, very fair and sweet and gentle, but quieter than a child should be; for she is a widow accursed. Her mind is keen—she wants to learn; but why should a widow learn, they say, why should her mind break bounds? She lives in a tiny mud-built house, in a tiny mud-walled yard; she may not go out beyond those walls, then why should she think beyond? But she is better off than most, for she lives with her mother, who loves her, and her father makes a pet of her, and so she is sheltered more or less from the cruel scourge of the tongue.

There is another in the next courtyard; she is not sheltered so. She lives with her mother-in-law, and the world has lashed her heart for years; it is simply callous now. There she sits with her chin in her hand, just hard. Years ago they married her, an innocent, playful little child, to a man who died when she was nine years old. Then they tore her jewels from her, all but two little ear-rings, which they left in pity to her; and this poor little scrap of jewellery was her one little bit of joy. She could not understand it at first, and when her pretty coloured seeleys were taken away, and she had to wear the coarse white cloth she hated so, she cried with impotent childish wrath; and then she was punished, and called bitter names,—the very word widow means bitterness,—and gradually she understood that there was something the matter with her. She was not like other little girls. She had brought ill-fortune to the home. She was accursed.

It is true that some are more gently dealt with, and many belong to Castes where the yoke of Custom lies lighter; for these the point of the curse is blunted, there is only a dull sense of wrong. But in all the upper Castes the pressure is heavy, and there are those who feel intensely, feel to the centre of their soul, the sting of the shame of the curse.

"It is fate," says the troubled mother; "who can escape his fate?" "It is sin," says the mother-in-law; and the rest of the world agrees. "'Where the bull goes, there goes its rope.' 'Deeds done in a former birth, in this birth burn.'"

Much of the working of the curse is hidden behind shut doors. I saw a young widow last week whose mind is becoming deranged in consequence of the severity of the penance she is compelled to perform. When, as they put it, "the god of ill-fortune seizes her," that is, when she becomes violent, she is quietly "removed to another place." No one sees what is done to her there, but I know that part of the treatment consists in scratching her head with thorns, and then rubbing raw lime juice in—lime juice is like lemon juice, only more acid. When the paroxysm passes she reappears, and does penance till the next fit comes. This has been repeated three times within the last few months.

I was visiting in a Hindu house for two years before I found out that all that time a girl of seventeen was kept alone in an upper room. "Let her weep," they said, quoting a proverb; "'though she weeps, will a widow's sorrow pass?'" Once a day, after dark, she was brought downstairs for a few minutes, and once a day, at noon, some coarse food was taken up to her. She is allowed downstairs now, but only in the back part of the house; she never thinks of resisting this decree—it, and all it stands for, is her fate. Sometimes the glad girl-life reasserts itself, and she plays and laughs with her sister-in-law's pretty baby boy; but if she hears a man's voice she disappears upstairs. There are proverbs in the language which tell why.

I sat on the verandah of a well-to-do Hindu house one day, and talked to the bright-looking women in their jewels and silks. And all the time, though little I knew it, a widow was tied up in a sack in one of the inner rooms. This wrong is a hidden wrong.

I do not think that anyone would call the Hindus distinctively cruel; in comparison with most other Asiatics their instincts are kind. A custom so merciless as this custom, which punishes the innocent with so grievous a punishment, does not seem to us to be natural to them. It seems like a parasite custom, which has struck its roots deep into the tree of Hindu social life, but is not part of it. Think of the power which must have been exerted somewhere by someone before the disposition of a nation could be changed.

This custom as it stands is formidable enough. Many a man, Indian and foreign, has fought it and failed. It is a huge and most rigorous system of tyrannical oppression, a very pyramid to look at, old, immovable. But there is Something greater behind it. It is only the effect of a Cause—the Dust of the Actual.

What can alter the custom? Strong writing or speaking, agitations, Acts of Parliament? All these surely have their part. They raise the question, stir the Dust—but blow it off? Oh no! nothing can touch the conscience of the people, and utterly reverse their view of things, and radically alter them, but God.

Yes, it is true, we may make the most of what has been done by Government, by missionaries and reformers, but there are times in the heart histories of all who look far enough down to see what goes on under the surface of things, when the sorrow takes shape in the Prophet's cry, "We have not wrought any deliverance in the earth!"

It is true. We have not. We cannot even estimate the real weight of the lightest speck of the Dust that has settled on the life of this people. But we believe that our God, Who comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, comprehends to the uttermost the Dust of the Actual, and we believe to see Him work, with Whom is strength and effectual working.

We believe to see, and believing even now we see; and when we see anything, be it ever so little, when the Breath breathes, and even "a hair's-breadth" of that Dust is blown away, then, with an intensity I cannot describe, we feel the presence of the Lord our God among us, and look up in the silence of joy and expectation for the coming of the Day when all rule, and all authority and power, yea, the power of the very Actual itself, shall be put down, that God may be all in all.

So again and yet again we ask you to pray not less for the Reform movement, and the Educational movement, and the Civilising movement of India, but far more for the Movement of the Breath of God, and far more for us His workers here, that we may abide in Him without Whom we can do nothing.



CHAPTER VIII

Roots

"It is not an easy thing in England to lead an old man or woman to Christ, even though the only 'root' which holds them from Him is love of the world. As the Tamil proverb says, 'That which did not bend at five will not be bent at fifty,' still less at sixty or seventy. When a soul in India is held down, not by one root only, but by a myriad roots, who is sufficient to deliver it? Only He who overturneth the mountains by the roots. 'This kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.'" An Indian Missionary.

"AMMA, you are getting old."

"Yes (grunt), yes."

"When we are old then death is near."

"Yes (grunt), yes."

"Then we must leave our bodies and go somewhere else."

Three more grunts.

"Amma, do you know where you are going?"

Then the old woman wakes up a little, grunts a little more, "Who knows where she is going?" she mumbles, and relapses into grunts.

"I know where I am going," the girl answers. "Amma, don't you want to know?"

"Don't I want to know what?"

"Where you are going."

"Why do I want to know what?"

The girl goes over it again. The old woman turns to her daughter-in-law. "Is the rice ready?" she says. The girl tries again. The old woman agrees we all must die. Death is near to the ancient; she is ancient, therefore death is near to her, she must go somewhere after death. It would be well to know where she is going. She does not know where she is going. Then she gazes and grunts.



The girl tries on different lines. Whom is the old woman looking to, to help her when death comes?

"God."

"What God?"

"The great God." And rousing herself to express herself she declares that He is her constant meditation, therefore all is well. "Is the rice ready?"

"No."

"Then give me some betel leaf," and she settles down to roll small pieces of lime into little balls, and these balls she rolls up in a betel leaf, with a bit of areca nut for taste, and this betel leaf she puts into her mouth—all this very slowly, and with many inarticulate sounds, which I have translated "grunts." And this is all she does. She does not want to listen or talk, she only wants to scrunch betel, and grunt.

This is not a touching tale. It is only true. It happened this evening exactly as I have told it, and the girl, a distant connection of the old woman, who had come with me so delightedly, eager to tell the Good Tidings, had to give it up. She had begun by speaking about the love of Jesus, but that had fallen perfectly flat; so she had tried the more startling form of address, with this result—grunts.

I spent an afternoon not long ago with a more intelligent specimen. Here she is, a fine sturdy old character, one of the three you saw before. She was immensely interested with her photo, which I showed her, and she could not understand at all how, in the one moment when she stood against a wall, her face "had been caught on a piece of white paper." A little explanation opened the way for the greater thing I had come about. We were sitting on a mud verandah, opening on to a square courtyard; two women pounding rice, two more grinding it, another sweeping, a cow, some fowls, a great many children, and several babies, made it exceedingly difficult to concentrate one's attention on anything, and still more difficult to get the wandering brains of an old woman to concentrate on a subject in which she had no interest. She had been interested in the photograph, but that was different.

The conversation ended by her remarking that it was getting dark, ought I not to be going home? It was not getting dark yet, but it meant that she had had enough, so I salaamed and went, hoping for a better chance again. Next time we visited the Village of the Tamarind she was nowhere to be seen; she had gone to her own village, she had only come here for the funeral. Would she return, we asked? Not probable, they said, "she had come and gone." "Come and gone." As they said it, one felt how true it was. Come, for that one short afternoon within our reach; gone, out of it now for ever.

In that same village there is one who more than any other drew one's heart out in affection and longing, but so far all in vain.

I first saw her in the evening as we were returning home. She was sitting on her verandah, giving orders to the servants as they stood in the courtyard below. Then she turned and saw us. We were standing in the street, looking through the open door. The old lady, in her white garments, with her white hair, sat among a group of women in vivid shades of red, behind her the dark wood of the pillar and door, and above the carved verandah roof.

The men were fresh from the fields, and stood with their rough-looking husbandry implements slung across their shoulders; the oxen, great meek-eyed beasts, were munching their straw and swishing their tails as they stood in their places in the courtyard, where some little children played.

The paddy-birds, which are small white storks, were flying about from frond to frond of the cocoanut palms that hung over the wall, and the sunset light, striking slanting up, caught the underside of their wings, and made them shine with a clear pale gold, gold birds in a darkness of green. A broken mud wall ran round one end, and the sunset colour painted it too till all the red in it glowed; and then it came softly through the palms, and touched the white head with a sort of sheen, and lit up the brow of the fine old face as, bending forward, she beckoned to us. "Come in! come in!" she said.

We soon made friends with her. She was a Saivite and we heard afterwards had received the Initiation; the golden symbol of her god had been branded upon her shoulder, and she was sworn to lifelong devotion to Siva; but she had found that he was vain, and she never worshipped him, she worshipped God alone, "and at night, when the household is sleeping, I go up alone to an upper room, and stretch out my hands to the God of all, and cry with a long, loud cry." Then she suddenly turned and faced me full. "Tell me, is that enough?" she said. "Is it all I must do for salvation? Say!"

I did not feel she was ready for a plunge into the deep sea of full knowledge yet, and I tried to persuade her to leave that question, telling her that if she believed what we told her of Jesus our Lord, she would soon know Him well enough to ask Him direct what she wanted to know, and He Himself would explain to her all that it meant to follow Him. But she was determined to hear it then, and, as she insisted, I read her a little of what He says about it Himself. She knew quite enough to understand and take in the force of the forceful words. She would not consent to be led gently on. "No, I must know it now," she said; and as verse by verse we read to her, her face settled sorrowfully. "So far must I follow, so far?" she said. "I cannot follow so far."

It was too late for much talk then, but she promised to listen if we would come and read to her. She could not read, but she seemed to know a great deal about the Bible.

For some weeks one of us went once a week; sometimes the men of the house were in, and then we could not read to her, as they seemed to object; but oftener no one was about, and she had her way, and we read.

She told us her story one afternoon. She was the head of a famous old house; her husband had died many years ago; she had brought up her children successfully, and now they were settled in life. She had a Christian relation, but she had never seen him; she thought he had a son studying in a large school in England—Cambridge, I knew, when I heard the name; the father is one of our true friends.

All her sons are greatly opposed, but one of her little girls learnt for a time, and so the mother heard the Truth, and, being convinced that it was true, greatly desired to hear more.

But the child was married, and went away, and she feared to ask the Missie Ammal to come again, lest people should notice it and talk. So the years passed emptily, "and oh, my heart was an empty place, a void as empty as air!" And she stretched out her arms, and clasping her hands she looked at the empty space between, and then at me with inquiring eyes, to see if I understood.

How well one understood!

"I am an emptiness for Thee to fill, My soul a cavern for Thy sea, . . . I have done nought for Thee, am but a Want."

She had never heard it, but she had said it. We do not often hear it said, and when we do our whole heart goes out to meet the heart of the one who says it; everything that is in us yearns with a yearning that cannot be told, to bring her to Him Who said "Come."

We were full of hope about her, and we wrote to her Christian relative, and he wrote back with joy. It seemed so likely then that she would decide for Christ.

But one day, for the first time, she did not care to read. I remember that day so well; it was the time of our monsoon, and the country was one great marsh. We had promised to go that morning, but the night before the rivers filled, and the pool between her and us was a lake. We called the bandyman and explained the situation. He debated a little, but at last—"Well, the bulls can swim," he said, and they swam.

We need not have gone, she was "out." "Out," or "not at home to-day," is a phrase not confined to Society circles where courtesy counts for more than truth. "I am in, but I do not want to see you," would have been true, but rude.

This was the first chill, but she was in next time, and continued to be in, until after a long talk we had, when again the question rose and had to be faced, "Can I be a Christian here?"

It was a quiet afternoon; we were alone, only the little grandchildren were with her—innocent, fearless, merry little creatures, running to her with their wants, and pulling at her hands and dress as babies do at home. Their grandmother took no notice of them beyond an occasional pat or two, but the childish things, with their bright brown eyes and little fat, soft, clinging hands went into the photo one's memory took, and helped one the better to understand and sympathise in the humanness of the pretty home scene, that humanness which is so natural, and which God meant to be. I think there is nothing in all our work which so rends and tears at the heart-strings within us, as seeing the spiritual clash with the natural, and to know that while Caste and bigotry reign it always must be so.

We had a good long talk. "I want to be a Christian," she said, and for a moment I hoped great things, for she as the mistress of the house was almost free to do as she chose. I thought of her influence over her sons and their wives, and the little grandchildren; and I think my face showed the hope I had, for she said, looking very direct at me, "By a Christian I mean one who worships your God, and ceases to worship all other gods; for He alone is the Living God, the Pervader of all and Provider. This I fully believe and affirm, but I cannot break my Caste."

"Would you continue to keep it in all ways?"

"How could I possibly break my Caste?"

"And continue to smear Siva's sign on your forehead?"

"That is indeed part of my Caste."

More especially part of it, I knew, since she had received the Initiation.

Then the disappointment got into my voice, and she felt it, and said, "Oh, do not be grieved! These things are external. How can mere ashes affect the internal, the real essential, the soul?"

It was such a plausible argument, and we hear it over and over again; for history repeats itself, there is nothing new under the sun.

I reminded her that ashes were sacred to Siva.

"I would not serve Siva," she answered me, "but the smearing of ashes on one's brow is the custom of my Caste, and I cannot break my Caste."

Then she looked at me very earnestly with her searching, beautiful, keen old eyes, and she went over ground she knew I knew. She reminded me what the requirements of her Caste had always been, that they must be fulfilled by all who live in the house, and she told me in measured words and slow that I knew she could not live at home if she broke the laws of her Caste. But why make so much of trifling things? For matter and spirit are distinct, and when the hands are raised in prayer, when the lamp is lighted and wreathed with flowers, the outward observer may mistake and think the action is pujah to Agni, but God who reads the heart understands, and judges the thought and not the act. "Yes, my hand may smear on Siva's ashes, while at the same moment my soul may commune with God the Eternal, Who only is God."

I turned to verse after verse to show her this sort of thing could never be, how it would mock at the love of Christ and nullify His sacrifice. I urged upon her that if she were true, and the central thought of her life were towards God, all the outworkings would correspond, creed fitting deed, and deed fitting creed without the least shade of diversity. But faith and practice are not to be confused, each is separate from the other; the two may unite or the one may be divorced from the other without the integrity of either being affected: this is the unwritten Hindu code which she and hers had ever held; and now, after years of belief in it, to face round suddenly to its opposite—this was more than she could do. She held, as it were, the Truth in her hand, and turned it round and round and round, but she always ended where she began; she would not, could not, see it as Truth, or perhaps more truly, would not accept it. It meant too much.

There she sat, queen of her home. The sons were expected, and she had been making preparations for their coming. Her little grandchildren played about her, each one of them dear as the jewel of her eye. How could she leave it all, how could she leave them all—home, all that it stands for; children, all that they mean?

Then she looked at me again, and I shall never forget the look. It seemed as if she were looking me through and through, and forcing the answer to come. She spoke in little short sentences, instinct with intensity. "I cannot live here and break my Caste. If I break it I must go. I cannot live here without keeping my customs. If I break them I must go. You know all this. I ask you, then, tell me yes or no. Can I live here and keep my Caste, and at the same time follow your God? Tell me yes or no!"

I did not tell her—how could I? But she read the answer in my eyes, and she said, as she had said before, "I cannot follow so far—so far, I cannot follow so far!"

"Reverence for opinions and practice held sacred by his ancestors is ingrained in every fibre of a Hindu's character, and is, so to speak, bred in the very bone of his physical and moral constitution." So writes Sir Monier Williams. It is absolutely true.

Oh, friends, is it easy work? My heart is sore as I write, with the soreness that filled it that day. I would have given anything to be able truthfully to say "yes" to her question. But "across the will of nature leads on the path of God" for them; and they have to follow so very far, so very, very far!

All trees have roots. To tear up a full-grown tree by the roots, and transplant it bodily, is never a simple process. But in India we have a tree with a double system of roots. The banyan tree drops roots from its boughs. These bough roots in time run as deep underground as the original root. And the tap root and its runners, and the branch roots and theirs, get knotted and knit into each other, till the whole forms one solid mass of roots, thousands of yards of a tangle of roots, sinuous and strong. Conceive the uprooting of such a tree, like the famous one of North India, for instance, which sheltered an army of seven thousand men. You cannot conceive it; it could not be done, the earthward hold is so strong.

The old in India are like these trees; they are doubly, inextricably rooted. There is the usual great tap root common to all human trees in all lands—faith in the creed of the race; there are the usual running roots too—devotion to family and home. All these hold the soul down.

But in India we have more—we have the branch-rooted system of Caste; Caste so intricate, so precise, that no Western lives who has traced it through its ramifications back to the bough from which it dropped in the olden days.

This Caste, then, these holding laws, which most would rather die than break, are like the branch roots of the banyan tree with their infinite strength of grip. But the strangest thing to us is this: the people love to have it so; they do not regard themselves as held, these roots are their pride and joy. Take a child of four or five, ask it a question concerning its Caste, and you will see how that baby tree has begun to drop branch rootlets down. Sixty years afterwards look again, and every rootlet has grown a tree, each again sending rootlets down; and so the system spreads.

But we look up from the banyan tree. God! what are these roots to Thee? These Caste-root systems are nothing to Thee! India is not too hard for Thee! O God, come!



CHAPTER IX

The Classes and the Masses

"We speak of work done against the force of gravitation. If the magnitude of a force can be estimated in any sense by the resistance which it has to overcome, then verily there is no land under the sun more calculated than India to display the Grand Forces of God's Omnipotent Grace. For here it has to face and overcome the combined resistances of the Caste system, entrenched heathenism, and deeply subtle philosophies. Praise God! it can and will be done. Thou, who alone doest wondrous things, work on. 'So will we sing and praise Thy power.'" Rev. T. Walker, India.

PERHAPS it would help towards the better understanding of these letters if we stopped and explained things a little. Some may have been wondering, as they read, how it is that while the South Indian fields are constantly quoted as among the most fruitful in the world, we seem to be dealing with a class where fruit is very rare, and so subject to blighting influences after it has appeared, that we hardly like to speak of it till it is ripe and reaped and safe in the heavenly garner. I think it will be easier to understand all this if we view Hindu Tamil South India (with which alone this book deals) from the outside, and let it fall into two divisions the Classes and the Masses. There is, of course, the border line between, crossed over on either side by some who belong to the Classes but are almost of the Masses, and by some who belong to the Masses but are almost of the Classes. Broadly speaking, however, there is a distinct difference between the two. As to their attitude towards the Gospel, the Classes and the Masses unite; they are wholly indifferent to it.

In a paper read at the Student Volunteers' Conference in 1900, a South Indian missionary summed up the matter in a comprehensive sentence: "Shut in for millenniums by the gigantic wall of the Himalayas on the North, and by the impassable ocean on the South, they have lived in seclusion from the rest of the world, and have developed social institutions and conceptions of the universe, and of right and wrong, quite their own. Their own religion and traditionary customs are accepted as sufficiently meeting their needs, and they are not conscious of needing any teaching from foreigners. They will always listen courteously to what we say, and this constitutes an open door for the Gospel, but of conscious need and hungering for the Gospel there is little or none. So long as it is only a matter of preaching, there are in the world no more patient listeners than the Hindus. But as soon as a case arises of one of their number abandoning the Caste customs and traditionary worship, all their hostility is aroused, and the whole community feels it a duty of patriotism to do its utmost to deprive that individual of liberty of action, and to defend the vested rights of Hinduism."

For the true Hindu is fervently Hindu. His religion "may be described as bound up in the bundle of his everyday existence." His intense belief in it, and in his Caste, which is part of it, gives edge to the blade with which he fights the entrance of a new religion to his home. This new religion he conceives of as something inherently antagonistic to his Caste, and as Caste is at every point connected with Hinduism, a thing interwoven with it, as if Hinduism were the warp and Caste the woof of the fabric of Indian life, we cannot say he is mistaken in regarding Christianity as a foe to be fought if he would continue a Caste Hindu. So far, in South Indian religious history, we have no example on a large scale of anything approaching the Bramo Samaj of the North. In the more conservative South there is almost no compromise with, and little assimilation of, the doctrine which makes all men one in Christ.

To return to the division—Classes and Masses—the Classes comprise members of what are known as the higher Castes, and in speaking of towns and villages where these dwell, and of converts from among them, the prefix "Caste" is sometimes used. Among the Classes we find women of much tenderness of feeling and a culture of their own, but their minds are narrowed by the petty lives they live, lives in many instances bounded by no wider horizon than thoughts concerning their husbands and children and jewels and curries, and always their next-door neighbour's squabbles and the gossip of the place. Much of this gossip deals with matters which are not of an elevating character. It takes us years to understand it, because most of the conversation is carried on in allusion or innuendo. But it is understood by the children. One of our converts told me that she often prays for power to forget the words she heard, and the things she saw, and the games she played, when she was a little child in her mother's room.



The young girls belonging to the higher Castes are kept in strict seclusion. During these formative years they are shut up within the courtyard walls to the dwarfing life within, and as a result they get dwarfed, and lose in resourcefulness and independence of mind, and above all in courage; and this tells terribly in our work, making it so difficult to persuade such a one to think for herself or dare to decide to believe. Such seclusion is not felt as imprisonment; a girl is trained to regard it as the proper thing, and we never find any desire among those so secluded to break bounds and rush out into the free, open air. They do not feel it cramped as we should; it is their custom.

It is this custom which makes work among girls exceedingly slow and unresultful. They have to be reached one by one, and it takes many months of teaching before the mind opens enough to understand that it may be free. The reaction of the physical upon the mental is never more clearly illustrated than in such cases. Sometimes it seems as if the mind could not go out beyond the cramping walls; but when it has, by God's illumination, received light enough to see into the darkness of the soul, and the glory that waits to shine in on it, conceive of the tremendous upheaval, the shock of finding solid ground sink, as gradually or suddenly the conviction comes upon such a one that if she acts upon this new knowledge there is no place for her at home. She must give everything up—everything!

Do you wonder that few are found willing to "follow so far"? Do you wonder that our hearts nearly break sometimes, as we realize the cost for them? Do you wonder that, knowing how each is set as a target for the archer who shoots at souls, we fear to say much about them, lest we should set the targets clearer in his sight?

The men and boys of the Classes live a more liberal life, and here you find all varying shades of refinement. There is education, too, and a great respect for learning, and reverence for their classic literature and language, a language so ancient that we find certain Tamil words in the Hebrew Scriptures, and so rich, that while "nearly all the vernaculars of India have been greatly enriched from the Sanscrit, Sanscrit has borrowed from Tamil." Almost every Caste village has its own little school, and every town has many, where the boys are taught reading, writing, poetry, and mental arithmetic.

There is not much education among the Masses. Here and there a man stands out who has fought his way through the ignorance of centuries, up into the light of the knowledge of books. Such a man is greatly respected by the whole community. The women have the same kindly nature as the women of the Classes, and there is surprising responsiveness sometimes, where one would least expect it. We have known a Tamil woman, distinctly of the Masses, never secluded in her girlhood, but left to bloom as a wild flower in the field, as sensitive in spirit as any lady born. The people are rough and rustic in their ways, but there are certain laws observed which show a spirit of refinement latent among them; there are customs which compare favourably with the customs of the masses at home. As a whole, they are like the masses of other lands, with good points and bad points in strong relief, and just the same souls to be saved.

Converts from among the Masses, as a general rule, are able to live at home. There is persecution, but they are not turned out of village, street, or house. Often they come in groups, two or three families together perhaps, or a whole village led by its headman comes over. There is less of the single one-by-one conversion and confession, though there is an increasing number of such, and they are the best we have.

It is easy to understand how much more rapidly Christianity spreads under such conditions than among those prevailing among the Classes; we see it illustrated over and over again. For example, in a certain high-caste Hindu town some miles distant from our station on the Eastern side, a young man heard the Gospel preached at an open-air meeting; he believed, and confessed in baptism, thus breaking Caste and becoming an alien to his own people. He has never been able to live at home since, and so there has been no witness borne, no chance to let the life show out the love of God. The men of that household doubtless know something of the truth; they know enough, at least, to make them responsible for refusing it; but what can the women know? Only that the son of the house has disgraced his house and name; only that he has destroyed his Caste and broken his mother's heart. "Shame upon him," they cry with one voice, "and curses on the cause of the shame, the 'Way' of Jesus Christ!" It is useless to say they are merely women, and do not count; they do count. Their influence counts for a very great deal. Theoretically, women in India are nothing where religion is concerned; practically, they are the heart of the Hindu religion, as the men are its sinew and brain. There has never been a convert in that town since that young man was banished from it, out-casted by his Caste.

But in a village only a few miles from that town a heathen lad believed, and was baptised, and returned home, not so welcome as before, but not considered too defiled to be reckoned a son of the household still. His father is dead, his mother is a bitter opponent, but his brother has come since, and within a stone's-throw another; and so it goes on: the life has a chance to tell. Almost every time we have gone to that village we have found some ready for baptism, and though none of the mothers have been won, they witness to the change in the life of their sons. "My boy's heart is as white as milk now," said one, who had stood by and seen that boy tied up and flogged for Christ's sake. They rarely "change their religion," these staunch old souls; "let me go where my husband is; he would have none of it!" said one, and nothing seems to move them; but they let their boys live at home, and perhaps, even yet, the love will break down their resistance. They are giving it a chance.

I think this one illustration explains more than many words would the difference between work among the Classes and the Masses, and why it is that one form of work is so much more fruitful than the other.

The Masses must not be understood as a vast casteless Mass, out-casted by the Classes, for the Caste system runs down to the very lowest stratum, but their Caste rules allow of freer intercourse with others. We may visit in their houses more freely, enter more freely into their thoughts, share more freely in the interests of their lives. We are less outside, as it were. But the main difference between the one set of people and the other lies deeper; it is a difference underground. It works out, however, into something all can see. Among the Masses, "mass movements" are of common occurrence; among the Classes, with rare exceptions, each one must come out alone.



This is often forgotten by observers of the Indian Field from the home side. There are parts of that field where the labourers seem to be always binding up sheaves and singing harvest songs; and from other parts come fewer songs, for the sheaves are fewer there, or it may be there are none at all, only a few poor ears of corn, and they had to be gathered one by one, and they do not show in the field.



CHAPTER X

The Creed Chasm

"I have had to deal in the same afternoon's work, on the one hand with men of keen powers of intellect, whose subtle reasoning made one look to the foundations of one's own faith; and on the other hand with ignorant crowds, whose conception of sin was that of a cubit measure, and to whom the terms 'faith' and 'love' were as absolutely unknown as though they had been born and bred in some undeveloped race of Anthropoids." Rev. T. Walker, India.

IN writing about the Classes and the Masses of South India, one great difference which does not exist at home should be explained. In England a prince and a peasant may be divided by outward things—social position, style of life, and the duty of life—but in all inward things they may be one—one in faith, one in purpose, one in hope. The difference which divides them is only accidental, external; and the peasant, perhaps being in advance of the prince in these verities of existence, may be regarded by the prince as nobler than himself: there is no spiritual chasm between them. It is the same in the realm of scholarship. All true Christians, however learned or however unlearned, hold one and the same faith. But in India it is not so. The scholar would smile at the faith of the simple villagers, he would even teach them to believe that which he did not believe himself, holding that it was more suitable for them, and he would marvel at your ignorance if you confounded his creed with theirs; and yet in name both he and they are Hindus.

Sir Monier Williams explains the existence of this difference by describing the receptivity and all-comprehensiveness of Hinduism. "It has something to offer which is suited to all minds, its very strength lies in its infinite adaptability to the infinite diversity of human characters and human tendencies. It has its highly spiritual and abstract side, suited to the metaphysical philosopher; its practical and concrete side, suited to the man of affairs and the man of the world; its aesthetic and ceremonial side, suited to the man of poetic feeling and imagination; its quiescent and contemplative side, suited to the man of peace and lover of seclusion. Nay, it holds out the right hand of brotherhood to nature worshippers, demon worshippers, animal worshippers, tree worshippers, fetich worshippers. It does not scruple to permit the most grotesque forms of idolatry and the most degrading varieties of superstition, and it is to this latter fact that yet another remarkable peculiarity of Hinduism is mainly due—namely, that in no other System of the world is the chasm more vast which separates the religion of the higher, cultured, and thoughtful Classes, from that of the lower, uncultured, and unthinking Masses."

Naturally, therefore, work among them is different; one almost needs a different vocabulary for each, and certainly one needs a different set of ideas. I remember how, in one afternoon's work, we saw the two types most perfectly. In thinking of it, it is as if one saw again the quiet face of the old scholar against a background of confusion, the clear calm features carved as in ivory, and set with a light upon it; chaotic darkness behind. We were visiting his wife, when he came out from the inner room, and asked if he might talk with us. Usually to such a question I say no; we have come to the women, who are far the more needy, the men can easily hear if they will. But he was such an old man, I felt I could not refuse; so he began to tell me what he held as truth, which was, in brief, that there are two sets of attachment, one outer, one inner; that deliverance from these, and from Self, the Ego, which regards itself as the doer, constitutes Holiness; that is, that one must be completely disentangled and completely self-less. This attained, the next is Bliss, which is progressive. First comes existence in the same place as God. Second, nearness to God. Third, likeness to God. Fourth, identity with God. Then he quoted from a classic beloved by all the old Tamil school, stanza after stanza, to prove the truth of the above, ending with one which Dr. Pope has thus translated—

"Cling thou to that which He to Whom nought clings hath bid thee cling, Cling to that bond, to get thee free from every clinging thing."

He knew Sanscrit, and read me strange-sounding passages from a huge ancient book, and then, in return for a booklet, he gave me one of Mrs. Besant's translations from the Bhagavad Gita.

The talk ended in my quoting what he could not deny was the true heart-cry of one of his greatest poets. "I know nothing! nothing! I am in darkness! Lord, is there no light for me?" And another, from the poem he had quoted, which asks the question, "What is the use of knowledge, mere knowledge, if one does not draw near to the All-knowing, All-pure One?" And this led into what he would not listen to at first, a little reading from the Book of books, before whose light even these wonderful books pale as tapers in clear sunshine. The marvel of our Bible never shows more marvellous than at such times, when you see it in deed and in truth the Sword of the Spirit, and it cuts.

The old man asked me to come again, and I did, as the Iyer was away. He often got out of my depth, and I longed to know more; but I always found the Bible had the very word he needed, if he would only take it. So far as I know, he did not, and I left him—to quote his own words, though not spoken of himself, alas!—"bewildered by numerous thoughts, meshed in the web of delusion."

As we left our old scholar, we came upon a thing wholly foolish and brainless, animalism in force. It was the difference between the Classes and the Masses once for all painted in glare. A huge procession was tearing along the streets and roads, with all the usual uproar. They stopped when they got to a big thorn bush, and then danced round it, carrying their idols raised on platforms, and borne by two or three dozen to each. We passed, singing as hard as ever we could "Victory to Jesus' Name! Victory!" and when we got rather out of the stream, stopped, and sang most vigorously, till quite a little crowd gathered, and we had a chance to witness.

It was dark, and the flaming torches lit up the wildest, most barbaric bit of heathenism I have seen for a long time. The great black moving mass seemed like some hellish sea which had burst its bounds, and the hundreds of red-fire torches moving up and down upon it like lights in infernal fishermen's boats, luring lost souls to their doom.

As we waited and spoke to those who would hear, a sudden rush from the centre of things warned us to go; but before we could get out of the way, a rough lad with a thorn-branch torch stuck it right into the bandy, and all but set fire to us. He ran on with a laugh, and another followed with an idol, a hideous creature, red and white, which he also pushed in upon us. Our bullocks trotted as fast as they could, and we soon got out of it all, and looking back saw the great square of the devil temple blazing with torches and firebrands, and heard the drummings and clangings and yells which announced the arrival of the procession.

All that night the riotous drumming continued, and, as one lay awake and listened, one pictured the old scholar sitting in the cool night air on his verandah, reading his ancient palm-leaf books by the light of the little lamp in the niche of his cottage wall.



CHAPTER XI

Caste viewed as a Doer

"It is matter for especial notice that in every department of applied science we have to deal with the unseen. All forces, whether in physics, mechanics, or electricity, are invisible." Alexander Mackay, Africa.

THE division of the Tamil people, over fifteen million strong, into Classes and Masses, though convenient and simple, is far too simple to be of value in giving an accurate idea of the matter as it is understood from within. As we said, it is only an outside view of things. A study of Caste from an Indian point of view is a study from which you rise bewildered.

What is Caste? What is electricity? Lord Kelvin said, on the occasion of his jubilee, that he knew no more of electric and magnetic force . . . than he knew and tried to teach his students of natural philosophy fifty years ago in his first session as Professor. We know that electricity exists, we are conscious of its presence in the phenomena of light, heat, sound; but we do not know what it is.

Nothing could more perfectly illustrate Caste. You cannot live long in a conservative part of India, in close contact with its people, without being conscious of its presence; if you come into conflict with it, it manifests itself in a flash of opposition, hot rage of persecution, the roar of the tumult of the crowd. But try to define it, and you find you cannot do it. It is not merely birth, class, a code of rules, though it includes all these. It is a force, an energy; there is spirit in it, essence, hidden as the invisible essence which we call electricity.

Look at what it does. A few months ago a boy of twelve resolved to be a Christian. His clan, eight thousand strong, were enraged. There was a riot in the streets; in one house the poison cup was ready. Better death than loss of Caste.

In another town a boy took his stand, and was baptised, thus crossing the line that divides secret belief from open confession. His Caste men got hold of him afterwards; next time he was seen he was a raving lunatic. The Caste was avenged.

It may be someone will wonder if these things are confined to one part of the field, so I quote from another, working in a neighbouring field, Tamil, but not "ours."

She tells of a poor low-caste woman who learned in her home, and believed. Her husband also believed, and both thought of becoming Christians. The village soothsayer warned them that their father's god would be angry; they did not heed him, but went on, and suddenly their baby died. This was too much for their faith then, and they both went back to idolatry.

A few years afterwards their eldest child began to learn to read, and the mother's faith revived. The soothsayer and her husband reminded her of the infant's fate, but she was brave, and let her child learn. Then her cow suddenly died. "Did we not tell you so?" they said, and for the moment she was staggered; but she rallied, and only became more earnest in faith. So the soothsayer threatened worse.



Then a Caste meeting was called to determine what could be done with this woman. The husband attended the meeting, and was treated to some rice and curry; before he reached home he was taken violently ill, and in three days he died. The relatives denounced the woman as the cause of her husband's death, took her only son from her, and entreated her to return to her father's gods before they should all be annihilated. They gave her "two weeks to fast and mourn for her husband, then finding her mind as firmly fixed on Christ as before, they sent her to Burmah."

This happened recently. It is told without any effort to appeal to the sympathies of anyone, simply as a fact; a witness, every line of it, to the power of Caste as a Doer. But there is something in the tale, told so terribly quietly, that makes one's heart burn with indignation at the unrelenting cruelty which would hound a poor woman down, and send her, bereft of all she loved, into exile, such as a foreign land would be to one who knew only her own little village. And when you remember the Caste was "low," which they took such infinite pains to guard, you can judge, perhaps, what the hate would be, the concentration of scorn and hate, if the Caste were higher or high.

But look at Caste in another way, in its power in the commonplace phases of life. For example, take a kitchen and cooking, and see how Caste rules there. For cooking is not vulgar work, or infra dig. in any sense, in India; all Caste women in good orthodox Hindu families either do their own or superintend the doing of it by younger members of the same family or servants of the same Caste. "We Europeans cannot understand the extent to which culinary operations may be associated with religion. The kitchen in every Indian household is a kind of sanctuary or holy ground. . . . The mere glance of a man of inferior Caste makes the greatest delicacies uneatable, and if such a glance happens to fall on the family supplies during the cooking operations, when the ceremonial purity of the water used is a matter of almost life and death to every member of the household, the whole repast has to be thrown away as if poisoned. The family is for that day dinnerless. Food thus contaminated would, if eaten, communicate a taint to the souls as well as bodies of the eaters, a taint which could only be removed by long and painful expiation." Thus far Sir Monier Williams (quoted as a greater authority than any mere missionary!). Think of the defilement which would be contracted if a member of the household who had broken Caste in baptism took any part in the cooking. It would never be allowed. Such a woman could take no share in the family life. Her presence, her shadow, above all her touch, would be simply pollution. Therefore, and for many other reasons, her life at home is impossible, and the Hindu, without arguing about it, regards it as impossible. It does not enter into the scheme of life as laid down by the rules of his Caste. He never, if he is orthodox, contemplates it for a moment as a thing to be even desired.

Cooking and kitchen work may seem small (though it would not be easy for even the greatest to live without reference to it), so let us look out on the world of trade, and see Caste again as a Doer there. If a merchant becomes a Christian, no one will buy his goods; if he is a weaver, no one will buy his cloth; if he is a dyer, no one will buy his thread; if he is a jeweller, no one will employ him. If it is remembered that every particular occupation in life represents a particular Caste, it will be easily understood how matters are complicated where converts from the great Trades Unions are concerned. Hence the need of Industrial Missions, and the fact that they exist.

A man wants to become a Christian, say, from the blacksmith or carpenter Caste. As a Christian he loses his trade, and he has been trained to no other. His forefathers worked in iron or wood, and he cannot attempt to learn other work. Let the Christians employ him, you say. Some do; but the question involves other questions far too involved for discussion here. And even if we discussed it, we should probably end where we began—facing a practical problem which no one can hope to solve while Caste is what it is.

Just now this system is in full operation in the case of a lad of the brassworker Caste. He is a thoughtful boy, and he has come to the conclusion that Christianity is the true religion; he would like to be a Christian; if the conditions were a little easier he would be enrolled as an inquirer to-morrow. But here is the difficulty. His father is not strong, his mother and little sisters and brothers are his care; if he were a Christian he could not support them; no one would sell him brass, no one would buy the vessels he makes. He knows only his inherited trade. He can make fine water-pots, lamps, vases, and vessels of all sorts, nothing else. He is too old to learn any other trade; but supposing such an arrangement could be made, who would support the family in the meantime? Perhaps we might do it; we certainly could not let them starve; but it would not do to tell him so, or to hold out hopes of earthly help, till we know beyond a doubt that he is true. This is what is holding him back. He reads over and over again, "He that loveth father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me," and then he looks at his father and mother and the little children; and he reads the verse again, and he looks at them again. It is too hard.

It is easy enough to tell him that God would take care of them if he obeys. We do tell him so, but can we wonder at the boy for hesitating to take a step which will, so far as he can see, take house and food and all they need from his mother and those little children?

These are some of the things which make work in India what is simply called difficult. We do not want to exaggerate. We know all lands have their difficulties, but when being a Christian means all this, over and above what it means elsewhere, then the bonds which bind souls are visibly strengthened, and the work can never be described as other than very difficult.

Or take the power of Caste in another direction—its callous cruelty. I give one illustration from last year's life.

I was visiting in the house where the old lady lives upon whom the afflatus fell. The first time we went there we saw a little lad of three or four, who seemed to be suffering with his eyes. He lay in a swinging bag hung from the roof, and cried piteously all the time we were there. Now, two months afterwards, there he lay crying still, only his cries were so weary he had hardly strength to cry.

They lifted him out. I should not have known the child—the pretty face drawn and full of pain, the little hands pressed over the burning eyes. Only one who has had it knows the agony of ophthalmia. They told me he had not slept, "not even the measure of a rape-seed," for three months. Night and day he cried and cried; "but he does not make much noise now," they added. He couldn't, poor little lad!

I begged them to take him to the hospital, twenty-five miles away, but they said to go to a hospital was against their Caste. The child lay moaning so pitifully it wrung my heart, and I pleaded and pleaded with them to let me take him if they would not. Even if his sight could not be saved, something could be done to ease the pain, I knew. But no, he might die away from home, and that would disgrace their Caste.

"Then he is to suffer till he is blind or dead?" and I felt half wild with the cold cruelty of it.

"What can we do?" they asked; "can we destroy our Caste?"

Oh, I did blaze out for a moment! I really could not help it. And then I knelt down among them all, just broken with the pity of it, and prayed with all my heart and soul that the Good Shepherd would come and gather the lamb in His arms!

I wonder if you can bear to read it? I can hardly bear to write it. But you have not seen the little wasted hands pressed over the eyes, and then falling helplessly, too tired to hold up any longer; and you have not heard those weak little wails—and to think it need not have been!

But we could do nothing. We were leaving the place next day, and even if we could have helped him, they would not have let us. They had their own doctor, they said; the case was in his hands. As we came away they explained that one of the boy's distant relatives had died two years ago, and that this was what prevented any of them leaving the house, as some obscure Caste rule would be broken if they did; otherwise, perhaps they might have been able to take him somewhere for change of treatment. So there that child must lie in his pain, one more little living sacrifice on the altar of Caste.

The last thing I heard them say as we left the house was, "Cry softly, or we'll put more medicine in!" And the last thing I saw was the tightening of the little hands over the poor shut eyes, as he tried to stifle his sobs and "cry softly." This told one what the "medicine" meant to him. One of the things they had put in was raw pepper mixed with alum.

Is not Caste a cruel thing? Those women were not heartless, but they would rather see that baby die in torture by inches, than dim with one breath the lustre of their brazen escutcheon of Caste!



This is one glimpse of one phase of a power which is only a name at home. It is its weakest phase; for the hold of Caste upon the body is as nothing to the hold it has upon the mind and soul. It yields to the touch of pain sometimes, as our medical missionaries know; but it tightens again too often when the need for relief is past. It is unspeakably strong, unmercifully cruel, and yet it would seem as though the very blood of the people ran red with it. It is in them, part of their very being.

This, then, is Caste viewed as a Doer. It does strange things, hard things, things most cruel. It is, all who fight it are agreed, the strongest foe to the Gospel of Christ on the Hindu fields of South India.



CHAPTER XII

Petra

"This work in India . . . is one of the most crucial tests the Church of Christ has ever been put to. The people you think to measure your forces against are such as the giant races of Canaan are nothing to." Bishop French, India and Arabia.

IT was very hot, and we were tired, and the friendly voice calling "Come in! come in! Oh, come and rest!" was a welcome sound, and we went in.

She was a dear old friend of mine, the only real friend I have in that ancient Hindu town. Her house is always open to us, the upper room always empty—or said to be so—when we are needing a rest. But she is a Hindu of the Hindus, and though so enlightened that for love's sake she touches us freely, taking our hands in hers, and even kissing us, after we go there is a general purification; every scrap of clothing worn while we were in the house is carefully washed before sunset.

She insisted now upon feeding us, called for plantains and sugar, broke up the plantains, dabbed the pulp in the sugar, and commanded us to eat. Then she sat down satisfied, and was photographed.

This town, a little ancient Hindu town, is two hours journey from Dohnavur. There are thirty-eight stone temples and shrines in and around it, and five hundred altars. No one has counted the number of idols; there are two hundred under a single tree near one of the smaller shrines. Each of the larger temples has its attendant temple-women; there are two hundred recognised Servants of the gods, and two hundred annual festivals.

Wonderful sums are being worked just now concerning the progress of Christianity in India. A favourite sum is stated thus: the number of Christians has increased during the last decade at a certain ratio. Given the continuance of this uniform rate of increase, it will follow that within a computable period India will be a Christian land. One flaw in this method of calculation is that it takes for granted that Brahmans, high-caste Hindus, and Mohammedans will be Christianised at the same rate of progress as prevails at present among the depressed classes.

There are sums less frequently stated. Here in the heart of this Hindu town they come with force; one such sum worked out carefully shows that, according to the present rate of advance, it will be more than twenty thousand years before the Hindu towns of this district are even nominally Christian. Another still more startling gives us this result: according to the laws which govern statistics, thirteen hundred thousand years must pass before the Brahmans in this one South Indian district are Christianised. And if the sum is worked so as to cover all India, the result is quite as staggering to faith based on statistics.

Praise God, this is not His arithmetic! It is a purely human invention. We believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life; we believe in God, even God Who calleth the things that are not as though they were: therefore these sums prove nothing. But if such sums are worked at all, they ought to be worked on both sides, and not only on the side which yields the most encouraging results.

Two of us spent a morning in the Brahman street. In these old Hindu towns the Brahman street is built round the temple, and in large towns this street is a thoroughfare, and we are allowed in. The women stood in the shadow of the cool little dark verandahs, and we stood out in the sun and tried to make friends with them. Then some Mission College boys saw us and felt ashamed that we should stand in that blazing heat, and they offered us a verandah; but the women instantly cleared off, and the men came, and the boys besought us under their breath to say nothing about our religion.

We spoke for a few minutes, throwing our whole soul into the chance. We felt that our words were as feathers floating against rocks; but we witnessed, and they listened till, as one of them remarked, it was time to go for their noontide bathe, and we knew they wished us to go. We went then, and found a wall at the head of the Brahman street, and we stood in its shadow and tried again. Crowds of men and lads gathered about us, but our College boys stood by our side and helped to quiet them. "Now you see," they said to us, as they walked with us down the outer street, "how quite impossible for us is Christianity."

It is good sometimes to take time to take in the might of the foe we fight. That evening two of us had a quiet few minutes under the temple walls. Those great walls, reaching so high above us, stretching so far beyond us, seemed a type of the wall Satan has built round these souls.