This Divine Interposition has been very inspiring. We feel afresh the force of the question: "Is anything too hard for the Lord?" And we ask those whose hearts are with us to pray for more such manifestations of the Power that has not passed with the ages. Lord, teach us to pray!
For it has never been with us, "Come, see, and conquer," as if victory were an easy thing and a common. We have known what it is to toil for the salvation of some little life, and we have known the bitterness of defeat. We have had to stand on the shore of a dark and boundless sea, and watch that little white life swept off as by a great black wave. We have watched it drift further and further out on those desolate waters, till suddenly something from underneath caught it and sucked it down. And our very soul has gone out in the cry, "Would God I had died for thee!" and we too have gone "to the chamber over the gate" where we could be alone with our grief and our God—O little child, loved and lost, would God I had died for thee!
Should we forget these things? Should we bury them away lest they hurt some sensitive soul? Rather, could we forget them if we would, and dare we hide away the knowledge lest somewhere someone should be hurt? For it is not as if that black wave's work were a thing of the past: it has gone on for centuries unchecked: it is going on to-day.
Several months have passed since the chapters which precede this were written. We are now, with some of our converts who needed rest and change, in a place under the mountains a day's journey from Dohnavur. It is one of the holy places of the South; for the northern tributary of the chief river of this district falls over the cliffs at this point in a double leap of one hundred and eighty feet, and the waters are so disposed over a great rounded shoulder of rock that many people can bathe below in a long single file. To this fall thousands of pilgrims come from all parts of India, believing that such bathing is meritorious and cleanses away all sin. And as they are far from their own homes, and in measure out on holiday, we find them more than usually accessible and friendly. This morning I was on my way home after talk with the women, and was turning for a moment to look back upon the beautiful sorrowful scene—the flashing waterfall, the passing crowd of pilgrims, the radiance of sunshine on water, wood, and rock, when a Brahman, fresh from bathing, followed my look, and glancing at the New Testament and bag of Gospels in my hand, smiled indulgently and asked if we seriously thought these books and their teaching would ever materially influence India. "Look at that crowd," and he pointed to the people, his own caste people chiefly. "Have we been influenced?"
Deep Calleth unto Deep
Then he told me the story of the Falls, how ages ago a god, pitying the sins and the sufferings of the people, bathed on the ledge where the waters leap, and thereafter those waters were efficacious to the cleansing of sin from the one who believingly bathes. To the one who believes not, nothing happens beyond the cleansing of his body and its invigoration. "Even to you," he added, in his friendliness, "virtue of a sort is allowed; for do you not experience a certain exhilaration and a buoyancy of spirit and a pleasure beyond anything obtainable elsewhere [which is perfectly true]? This is due to the benevolence of our god, whose merits extend even to you."
He was an educated man; he had studied in a mission school, and afterwards in a Government college. He had read English books, and parts of our Bible were familiar to him. He assured me he found no more difficulty in accepting this legend than we did in accepting the story of our Saviour's incarnation. And then, standing in the Temple porch with its carved stone pillars, almost within touch of the great door that opens behind into the shrine, he led the way into the Higher Hinduism—that mysterious land which lies all around us in India, but is so seldom shown to us. And I listened till in turn he was persuaded to listen, and we read together from the Gospel which transcends in its simplicity the profoundest reach of Hindu thought: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." We did not pause till we came to the end of the paragraph. I could see how it appealed, for deep calleth unto deep; but he rose again up and up, and that unknown part of one's being which is more akin to the East than to the West, followed him and understood—when the door behind us creaked, and a sudden blast of turbulent music sprang out upon us, deafening us for a moment, and he said, "It is the morning worship. The priests and the Servants of the gods are worshipping within." It was like a fall from far-away heights to the very floor of things.
Then he told me how in the town three miles distant, the Benares of the South, the service of the gods was conducted with more elaborate ceremonial. "I could arrange for you to see it if you wished." I explained why I could not wish to see it, and asked him about the Servants of the gods, and about the little children. "Certainly there are little children. The Servants of the gods adopt them to continue the succession. How else could it be continued?"