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.

[Illustration: Enlargement of one of the old dames seen in chapter vi. A
capital typical face. We have a number of these keen, interesting old
people, but very rarely find they have any desire to "change their
religion." They are "rooted."]

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 Samâj 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.

[Illustration: This old man is the Hindu village schoolmaster. The boys
write on a strip of palm leaf with an iron style. These little lads come
to us every Sunday afternoon. Will some one remember them?]

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.

[Illustration: A village woman of the Shanar Caste. The photo shows the
baby's ears being prepared for the jewels her mother hopes will fill
them by and by. Holes are made first and filled with cotton wool,
graduated leaden weights are added till the lobes are long enough.]

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 æsthetic 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.

[Illustration: Cooking in a house of the Shanar Caste, always the most
accessible of all Castes here, but this is a specially friendly house,
or we should not have been allowed to take the photo. The small girl who
is grinding curry stuff on the stone is the "Imp" of chapter xx.]

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!

[Illustration: "I determined not to laugh!" That was what she said when
she saw it, and she was fairly satisfied with the result of her efforts.
The jewels are gold, the seeley a rich red. A woman of this type makes a
fine picture,--the strong intelligent face, the perfect arms and hands,
the glistening gold on the clear brown, and the graceful dress
harmonising so perfectly with the colour of eyes and hair. The one
deformity is the ear, cut so as to hold the jewels, which are so heavy
that one wonders the stretched lobes do not break.]

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.

We could touch this visible wall, press against it, feel its solid
strength. Run hard against it, and you would be hurt, you might fall
back bleeding; it would not have yielded one inch.

And the other invisible wall? Oh, we can touch it too! Spirit-touch is a
real thing. And so is spirit-pain. But the wall, it still stands strong.

It was moonlight. We had walked all round the great temple square, down
the silent Brahman streets, and we had stood in the pillared hall, and
looked across to the open door, and seen the light on the shrine.

Now we were out in God's clean light, looking up at the mass of the
tower, as it rose pitch-black against the sky. And we felt how small we
were.

Then the influences of the place began to take hold of us. It was not
only masonry; it was mystery. "The Sovereigns of this present Darkness"
were there.

How futile all of earth seemed then, against those tremendous forces and
powers. What toy-swords seemed all weapons of the flesh. Praise God for
the Holy Ghost!

While we were sitting there a Brahman came to see what we were doing,
and we told him some of our thoughts. He asked us then if we would care
to hear his. We told him, gladly. He pointed up to the temple tower.
"That is my first step to God." We listened, and he unfolded, thought by
thought, that strange old Védic philosophy, which holds that God, being
omnipresent, reveals Himself in various ways, in visible forms in
incarnations, or in spirit. The visible-form method of revelation is
the lowest; it is only, as it were, the first of a series of steps which
lead up to the highest, intelligent adoration of and absorption into the
One Supreme Spirit. "We are only little children yet. We take this small
first step, it crumbles beneath us as we rise to the next, and so step
by step we rise from the visible to the invisible, from matter to
spirit--to God. But," he added courteously, "as my faith is good for me,
so, doubtless, you find yours for you."

Next morning we went down to the river and had talks with the people who
passed on their way to the town. It was all so pretty in the early
morning light. Men were washing their bullocks, and children were
scampering in and out of the water. Farther downstream the women were
bathing their babies and polishing their brass water-vessels. Trees met
overhead, but the light broke through in places and made yellow patches
on the water. Out in one of those reaches of yellow a girl stood bending
to fill her vessel; she wore the common crimson of the South, but the
light struck it, and struck the shining brass as she swung it up under
her arm, and made her into a picture as she stood in her clinging wet
red things against the brown and green of water and wood. Everywhere we
looked there was something beautiful to look at, and all about us was
the sound of voices and laughter, and the musical splashing of water;
then, as we enjoyed it all, we saw this:

Under an ancient tree fifteen men were walking slowly round and round,
following the course of the sun. Under the tree there were numbers of
idols, and piles of oleander and jessamin wreaths, brought fresh that
morning. The men were elderly, fine-looking men; they were wholly
engrossed in what they were doing. It was no foolish farce to them; it
was reality.

There is something in the sight of this ordinary, evident dethronement
of our God which stirs one to one's inmost soul. We could not look at
it.

Again and again we have gone to that town, but to-day those men go round
that tree, and to-day that town is a fort unwon.

Petra, I have called it; the word stands for many a town walled in as
that one is. In Keith's _Evidence of Prophecy_ there is a map of Petra,
the old strong city of Edom, and in studying it a light fell upon
David's question concerning it, and his own triumphant answer, "Who will
lead me into the strong city? Who will bring me into Edom? Wilt not
Thou, O God?" for the map shows the mountains all round except at the
East, where they break into a single narrow passage, the one way in.
There was only one way in, but there _was_ that one way in!

Here is a town walled up to heaven by walls of Caste and bigotry, but
there must be one way in. Here is a soul walled all round by utter
indifference and pride, but there must be one way in.

"Who will lead me into the strong city? Who will bring me into Edom?
=Wilt not Thou, O God?="

CHAPTER XIII

Death by Disuse

          "There is a strong tendency to look upon the
          Atonement of Christ as possessing some quality by
          virtue of which God can excuse and overlook sin in
          the Christian, a readiness to look upon sinning as
          the inevitable accompaniment of human nature
          'until death do us part,' and to look upon
          Christianity as a substitute for rather than a
          cause of personal holiness of life."
                                _Rev. I. W. Charlton, India._

          "From many things I have heard I fancy many at
          home think of the mission as a sort of little
          heaven upon earth, but when one looks under the
          surface there is much to sadden one. . . . Oh,
          friends, much prayer is needed! Many of the agents
          know apparently nothing about conversion.

          "You may not like my writing so plainly, but
          sometimes it seems as if only the bright side were
          given, and one feels that if God's praying people
          at home understood things more as they really are
          . . . more prayer for an outpouring of the Holy
          Spirit on our agents and converts would ascend to
          God. . . . We do long to see all our pastors and
          agents really converted men, men of prayer and
          faith, who, knowing that they themselves are
          saved, long with a great longing to see the
          heathen round them brought out of darkness into
          His light, and the Christians who form their
          congregations, earnest converted men and women."
                                _A. J. Carr, India._

          "Fifty added to the Church sounds fine at home,
          but if only five of them are genuine what will it
          profit in the Great Day?"
                                _David Livingstone, Africa._

          "Oh for the Fire to set the whole alight, and melt
          us all into one mighty Holy-Ghost Church!"
                                _Minnie Apperson, China._

THE lamps were being lighted, the drums beaten, the cymbals struck, and
the horns blown for evening pujah in all the larger temples and shrines
of the "Strong City," when we turned out of it, and, crossing the
stream that divides the two places, went to the Christian hamlet, which
by contrast at that moment seemed like a little corner of the garden of
the Lord. Behind was the heathenish clash and clang of every possible
discord, and here the steady ringing of the bell for evening service;
behind was all that ever was meant by the "mystery of iniquity," and
here the purity and peace of Christianity. This is how it struck me at
first; and even now, after a spell of work in the heart of heathendom,
Christendom, or the bit of it lying alongside, is beautiful by contrast.
There you have naked death, death unadorned, the corpse exhibited; here,
if there is a corpse, at least it is decently dressed. And yet that
evening it was forced upon me that death is death wherever found and
however carefully covered.

[Illustration: "I do feel so shy!" she was just on the point of saying
to me, by the way of appeal to be released, when the camera clicked and
she was caught. Widows do not wear jewels, as a rule, among the Hindus
of the higher Castes, but Christians do as they like. She is a village
woman of fairly good position.]

The first of the Christians to welcome us was a bright-looking
widow--this is her photograph. We soon made friends. She told us she had
been "born in the Way"; her grandfather joined it, and none of the
family had gone back, so she was sure that all was right. We were not so
sure, and we tried to find out if she knew the difference between
joining the Way and coming to Christ. This was only a poor little
country hamlet, but everywhere we have travelled, among educated and
uneducated alike, we have found much confusion of thought upon this
subject.

"God knows my heart," she said, "God hears my prayers. If I see a bad
dream in the night, I pray to God, and putting a Bible under my head, I
sleep in perfect peace." Could anything be more conclusive?

There were numbers of other proofs forthcoming: If your grandfather gave
six lamps to the church, value three and a half rupees each (the
lamps are hanging to-day, and bear witness to the fact); if your father
never failed to pay his yearly dues, besides regular Sunday collections
(his name is in the church report, and how much he gave is printed); if
you freely help the poor, and give them paddy on Christmas Day (quite a
sackful of it); if you never offer to demons (no, not when your children
are sick, and the other faithless Christians advise you); if you never
tie on the cylinder (a charm frequently though covertly worn by purely
nominal Christians); and finally, if you have been baptised and
confirmed, and "without a break join the Night-supper," surely no one
can reasonably doubt that you are a Christian of a very proper sort? As
to questions about change of heart, and chronic indulgence in sins, such
as lying--who in this wicked world lives without lying? And when it
pleases God to do it He will change your heart.

We took the evening meeting for the villagers, who meanwhile had
gathered and were listening with approval. Privacy, as we understand it,
is a thing unknown in India. "That is right," they remarked cheerfully;
"give her plenty of good advice!" And we all trooped into the
prayer-room.

Once in there, everyone put on a sort of church expression, and each one
took his or her accustomed seat in decorous silence. The little
school-children sat in rows in front on the mats with arms demurely
folded, and sparkling eyes fixed solemnly; the grown-up people sat on
their mats on either side behind, and we sat on ours facing them. We
began with a chorus, which the children picked up quickly and shouted
lustily, the grown-ups joining in with more reserve; and then we got to
work.

Blessing spoke. She had once been a nominal Christian, and she knew
exactly where these people were, and how they looked at things. Her
heart was greatly moved as she spoke, and the tears were in her eyes,
for she knew none of these friends had the joy of conscious salvation,
and she told me afterwards she had thirst and hunger for them. But they
listened unimpressed. Then we had prayer and a quiet time; sometimes the
Spirit works most in quiet, and we rose expectantly; but there was no
sign of life.

After the meeting was over they gathered round us again. They are always
so loving and friendly in these little villages; but they could not
understand what it was that troubled us. Were they not all _Christians_?

Shortly afterwards they came, as their kindly custom is, to bring us
fruit and wreaths of flowers on New Year's Day. I missed my first friend
of that evening, and asked for her. "That widow you talked to?" said the
old catechist, "three days ago fever seized her, and"--He broke off and
looked up. Then I longed to hear how she had died, but no one could tell
me anything. Oh, the curtain of silence that covers the passing of
souls!

We went soon afterwards to the village, sure that at last the people
would be stirred; for she had been a leader among the women, and her
call, even in this land of sudden calls, had been very sudden. But we
did not find it had affected anyone. They all referred to her in the
chastened tone adopted upon such occasions, and, sighing, reminded each
other that God was merciful, and she had always been, up to the measure
of her ability, a very good woman.

We felt as if we were standing with each one of those people separately,
in the one little standing space we were sure of, before that curtain,
and we spoke with them as you speak with those whom you know you may
never see again on this side of it. But they looked at us, and wondered
what was the matter with us. Were they not _Christians_? Did they not
believe in God? Did they not pray regularly night and morning for
forgiveness, protection, and blessing? So they could not understand.

Was it that the power to understand had been withered up within them?
Was the soul God gave them dead--"sentenced to death by disuse"? Dead
they are in apathy and ignorance and putrefying customs, and the false
security that comes from adherence to the Christian creed without vital
connection with Christ. These poor Christians are dead.

"Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you that God should
raise the dead?" Lord, it is not a thing incredible. Thou hast done it
before. Oh, do it again. Do it soon!

I have told you how much we need your help for the work among the
heathen; but often we feel we need it almost as much for the work among
the Christians. Over and over again it is told, but still it is hardly
understood, that the Christians need to be converted; that the vast
majority are not converted; that statistics may mislead, and do not
stand for Eternity work; that many a pastor, catechist, teacher, has a
name to live, but is dead; that the Church is very dead as a
whole--thank God for every exception. We do not say this thoughtlessly;
the words are a grief to write. We humble ourselves that it is so, and
take to ourselves the blame. It is true that the corpse of the dead
Church is dressed, just as it is at home, only here it is even more
dressed; and because the spirit of the land is intensely religious, its
grave-clothes are vestments. But dressed death is still death.

This will come as a shock to those who have read stories of this or that
native Christian, and generalising from these stories, picture the
Church as a company of saints. God has His saints in India,[1] men and
women hidden away in quiet places out of sight, and some few out in the
front; but the cry of our hearts is for more. So we tell you the truth
about things as they are, though we know it will not be acceptable, for
the best is the thing that is best liked at home; so the best is most
frequently written.

This may seem to cross out what was said before, about the darker side
of the truth being often told. It does not cross it out: read through
the magazines and reports, and you will find truth-revealing sentences,
which show facts to those who have eyes to see; but though this is so,
all will admit that the sanguine view, as it is called, is by far the
most in evidence, for the sanguine man is by far the most popular
writer, and so is more pressed to write. "People will read what is
buoyant and bright; the more of that sort we have the better," wrote a
Mission secretary out in the field not long ago, to a missionary who did
not feel free to write in quite that way. Those who, to quote another
secretary, "are afraid of writing at all, for fear of telling
lies"--excuse the energetic language; I am quoting, not
inventing--naturally write much less, and so the best gets known.

This is nobody's fault exactly. The home authorities print for the most
part what is sent to them. They even call attention sometimes to the
less cheerful view of things; and if, yielding occasionally to the
pressure which is brought to bear upon them by a public which loves to
hear what it likes, they take the sting out of some strong paragraph by
adding an editorial "Nevertheless," is it very astonishing?

Do you think we are writing like this because we are discouraged? No, we
are not discouraged, except when sometimes we fear lest you should grow
weary in prayer before the answer comes. This India is God's India. This
work is His. Oh, join with us then, as we join with all our dear Indian
brothers and sisters who are alive in the Lord, in waiting upon Him in
that intensest form of waiting _which waits on till the answer comes_;
join with us as we pray to the mighty God of revivals, "O Lord, revive
Thy work! Revive Thy work in the midst of the years! In the midst of the
years make known!"

FOOTNOTE:

[1] See Appendix, p. 303.

CHAPTER XIV

What Happened

          "Some years ago England was stirred through and
          through by revelations which were made as to the
          'Bitter Cry' of wronged womanhood. In India the
          bitter cry is far more bitter, but it is stifled
          and smothered by the cruel gag of Caste. Orthodox
          Hindus would rather see their girls betrayed,
          tortured, murdered, than suffer them to break
          through the trammels of Caste."
                                   _Rev. T. Walker, India._

THERE is another ancient town near Dohnavur, and in that town another
temple, and round the temple the usual Brahman square. In one of the
streets of this square we saw the girl whose face looks out at you. It
struck us as a typical face, not beautiful as many are, but
characteristic in the latent power of eyes and brow, a face full of
possibilities.

[Illustration: Here is one who might be a queen. What she _may_ be is
very different. She is a Brahman girl; all her people are Hindus. She
has never even felt a desire, or seen any one in her town who felt a
desire, to "fall into the pit of Christianity."]

We were rarely able to get anything we specially wanted, but we got
this. I look at it now, and wonder how it will develop as the soul
behind it shapes and grows. That child is enfolded in influences which
ward off the touch of the grace of life.

We saw numbers of women that day, but only at the distance of a street
breadth; they would not come nearer, for the town is still a Petra to
us, we are waiting to be led in.

But if we were able to get in enough to take a photograph, surely we
were "in" enough to preach the Gospel? Why not stop and there speak
of more important matters? What was to hinder _then_?

Only this: in that town they have heard of converts coming out, and
breaking Caste in baptism, and they have made a law that we (with whom
they know some of these converts are) shall never be allowed to speak to
any of their women. That hindered us there. But even supposing we had
been free to speak, as we trust we shall be soon, and supposing she had
wanted to hear, the barriers which lie between such a child and
confession of Christ are so many and so great that when, as now, one
wants to tell you about them, one hardly knows how to do it. Words seem
like little feeble shadows of some grim rock, like little feeble shadows
of the grasses growing on it, rather than of _it_, in its solidity; or,
to revert to the old thought, all one can say is just pointing to the
Dust as evidence of the Actual.

"What is to hinder high-caste women from being baptised, and living as
Christians in their own homes?" The question was asked by an Englishman,
a winter visitor, who, being interested in Missions, was gathering
impressions. We told him no high-caste woman would be allowed to live as
an open Christian in her own home; and we told him of some who, only
because they were suspected of inclining towards Christianity, had been
caused to disappear. "What do you suppose happened to them?" he asked,
and we told him.

We were talking in the pleasant drawing-room of an Indian Hotel. Our
friend smiled, and assured us we must be mistaken. We were under the
English Government; such things could not be possible. We looked round
the quiet room, with its air of English comfort and English safety; we
looked at the quiet faces, faces that had never looked at fear, and we
hardly wondered that they could not understand.

Then in a moment, even as they talked, we were far away in another room,
looking at other faces, faces unquiet, very full of fear. We knew that
all round us, for streets and streets, there were only the foes of our
Lord; we knew that a cry that was raised for help would be drowned long
before it could escape through those many streets to the great English
house outside. There were policemen, you say. But policemen in India are
not as at home. _Policemen can be bribed._

And now we are looking in again. There is a very dark inner room, no
window, one small door; the walls are solid, so is the door. If you
cried in there, who would hear?

And now we are listening--someone is speaking: "Once there was one; she
cared for your God. She was buried into the wall in there, and that was
the end of her." . . .

But we are back in the drawing-room, hearing them tell us these things
could never be. . . . Three years passed, and a girl came for refuge to
us. She loved her people well; she would never have come to us had they
let her live as a Christian at home. But no, "Rather than that she shall
burn," they said. We were doubtful about her age, and we feared we
should have to give her up if the case came on in the courts. And if we
had to give her up? We looked at the gentle, trustful face, and we could
not bear the thought; and yet, according to our friends, the Government
made all safe.

About that time a paper came to the house; names, dates, means of
identification, all were given. This was the story in brief. A young
Brahman girl in another South Indian town wanted to be a Christian, and
confessed Christ at home. She earnestly wished to be baptised, but she
was too young then, and waited, learning steadily and continuing
faithful, though everything was done that could be done to turn her from
her purpose. She was betrothed against her will to her cousin, and
forbidden to have anything to do with the Christians. "She was never
allowed to go out alone, and was practically a prisoner."

For three years that child held on, witnessing steadfastly at home, and
letting it be clearly known that she was and would be a Christian. A
Hindu ceremony of importance in the family was held in her grandfather's
house, and she refused to go. This brought things to a crisis. Her
people appointed a council of five to investigate the matter. "She
maintained a glorious witness before them all," says the missionary;
"declared boldly that she was a Christian, and intended to join us; and
when challenged about the Bible, she held it out, and read it to the
assembled people."

For a time it seemed as if she had won the day, but fresh attempts were
made upon her constancy by certain religious bigots of the town. They
offered her jewels--that failed; tried to get her to turn Mussulman,
that being less disgraceful than to be a Christian; and last and worst,
tried to stain that white soul black--but, thank God! still they failed.

At last the waiting time was over; she was of age to be baptised, and
she wrote to tell her missionary friend about it. He sent her books to
read, and promised to let her know within two days what he could arrange
to do. "Her letter was dated from her grandfather's house," the
missionary writes, "to which she said she had been sent, and put in a
room alone. On the following day, hearing a rumour of her death, I went
to N.'s house, and there found her body, outside the door. I caused it
to be seized by the police, and the post-mortem has revealed the fact
that the poor child was poisoned by arsenic. Bribes have been freely
used and atrocious lies have been told, and the net result of all the
police inquiries, so far, is that no charge can be brought against
anyone."

Last year we met one of the missionaries from this Mission, on the
hills, and we asked him if anyone had been convicted. He said no one had
been convicted, "the Caste had seen to that."

Here, then, is a statement of facts, divested of all emotion or
sensationalism. A child is shut up in a room alone, and poisoned; when
she is dead, her body is thrown outside the door. It was found. _There
have been bodies which have not been found_; but we are under the
British Government--nothing can have happened to them!

The British Government does much, but it cannot do everything. It is
notorious in India that false witnesses can be bought at so much a head,
according to the nature of witness required. Bribery and corruption are
not mere names here, but facts, most difficult for any straightforward
official to trace and track and deal with. We know, and everyone knows,
that the White Man's Government, though strong enough to win and rule
this million-peopled Empire, is weak as a white child when it stands
outside the door of an Indian house, and wants to know what has gone on
inside, or proposes to regulate what shall go on. It cannot do it. The
thought is vain.

"Why not have her put under surveillance?" asked a friend, a military
man, about a certain girl who wanted to be a Christian; as if such
surveillance were practicable, or ever could be, under such conditions
as obtain in high-caste Hindu and Mohammedan circles, except in places
directly under the eye of Government. We know there are houses where, at
an hour's notice, any kind and any strength of poison can be prepared
and administered: quick poison to kill within a few minutes; slow
poisons that undermine the constitution, and do their work so safely
that no one can find it out; brain poisons, worse than either, and
perhaps more commonly used, as they are as effective and much less
dangerous. But we could not prove what we know, and knowledge without
proof is, legally speaking, valueless.

And yet we know these things, we have heard "a cry of tears," we have
heard "a cry of blood"--

          "Tears and blood have a cry that pierces heaven
             Through all its hallelujah swells of mirth;
           God hears their cry, and though He tarry, yet
                        He doth not forget."

CHAPTER XV

"Simply Murdered"

          "'Agonia'--that word so often on St. Paul's lips,
          what did it mean? Did it not just mean the
          thousand wearinesses . . . and deeper, the
          strivings, the travailings, the bitter
          disappointments, the 'deaths oft' of a
          missionary's life?"
                                _Rev. Robert Stewart, China._

THERE are worse things than martyrdom. There are some who are "simply
murdered." There is one who belongs to a Caste which more than any other
is considered tolerant and safe. Men converts from this Caste can live
at home, and if a husband and wife believe, they may continue living in
their own house, among the heathen. And yet this is what happened to a
girl because it was known that she wanted to be a Christian.

First persecution. Treasure, as her name may be translated, had learnt
as a child in the little mission school, and when we went to her village
she responded, and took her stand. She refused to take part in a Hindu
ceremony. She was beaten, at first slightly, then severely. This failed,
so they sent her out of our reach to a heathen village miles away. This
also failed, and she was brought home, and for some months went steadily
on, reading and learning when she could, and all the time brightly
witnessing. She was a joy to us.

She was very anxious to come out and be baptised, but her age was the
difficulty. When a convert comes, the first thing to be done is to let
the police authorities know. They send a constable, who takes down the
convert's deposition, which is then forwarded to headquarters. One of
the first questions concerns age. In some cases a medical certificate is
demanded, and the girl's fate turns on that; if we can get one for over
sixteen we are safe from prosecution in the Criminal Courts, but
eighteen is the safest age, as the Civil Courts, if the case were to
proceed, would force us to give her up if she were under eighteen. The
difficulty of proving the age, unless the girl is evidently well over
it, is very serious. The medical certificate usually takes off a year
from what we have every reason to believe is the true age.

One other proof remains--the horoscope. This is a Hindu document written
on a palm leaf at the birth of the child; but it is always carefully
kept by the head of the family, and so, as a rule, unobtainable. When a
case comes on in Court a false horoscope may be produced by the
relatives; this was done in a recent case tried in our Courts, so we
cannot count upon that. In this girl's case we got the Government
registers searched for birth-records of her village, but all such
registers we found had been destroyed; none were kept of births sixteen
years back. So, though she believed herself to be, and we believed her
to be, and the Christians who had known her all her life were sure she
was, "about sixteen," we knew it could not be proved. She was a very
slight girl, delicate and small for her age. This was against her, and
there were other reasons against her coming just then. She had to wait.

I shall never forget the day I had to tell her so. She could not
understand it. She knew that all the higher Castes had threatened to
combine, and back up her father in a lawsuit, if she became a Christian;
but she thought it would be quite enough if she stood up before the
judge, and said she knew she was of age, and she wanted to come to us.
"I will not be afraid of the people," she pleaded, "I will stand up
straight before them all, and speak without any fear!"

I remember how the tears filled her eyes as I explained things; it was
so hard for her to understand that we had no power whatever to protect
her. It would be worse for her if she came and had to be given up. She
was fully sensible of this, but "Would God let them take me away? Would
He not take care of me?" she asked.

I suppose it is right to obey the laws. They are, on whole, righteous
laws, made in the defence of these very girls. It would never do if
anyone could decoy away a mere child from her parents or natural
guardians. But the unrighteous thing, as it seems to us, is that the
whole burden of proof lies upon us, and that in these country villages
no facilities such as Government registers of birth are to be had, by
which we could hope legally to prove a point about which we are morally
sure. We feel that as the burden of proof rests upon us, surely
facilities should be obtainable by which we could find out a girl's age
before she comes, so that we might know whether or not we might legally
protect her. Still more strongly we feel it is strange justice which
decrees that though a child of twelve may be legally held competent to
undertake the responsibilities of wifehood, six years more must pass
before she may be legally held free to obey her conscience. Free! She is
never legally free! A widow may be legally free; a wife in India, never!
Hardly a single Caste wife in all this Empire would be found in the
little band of open Christians to-day, if the missionary concerned had
not risked more than can be told here, and put God's law before man's.
But oh, the number who have been turned back!

One stops, forces the words down--they come too hot and fast. There are
reasons. As I write, a young wife dear to us is lying bruised and
unconscious on the floor of the inner room of a Hindu house. Her
husband, encouraged by her own mother, set himself to make her conform
to a certain Caste custom. It was idolatrous. She refused. He beat her
then, blow upon blow, till she fell senseless. They brought her round
and began again. There is no satisfactory redress. She is his wife. She
is not free to be a Christian. He knows it. Her relations know it. She
knows it, poor child.

O God, forgive us if we are too hot, too sore at heart, for easy
pleasantness! And, God, raise up in India Christian statesmen who will
inquire into this matter, and refuse to be blindfolded and deceived. His
laws and ours clash somewhere; the question is, where?

To return to Treasure, we left her waiting to come. A Christian teacher
lived next door, and Treasure used to slip in sometimes, as the two
courtyards adjoined. We had put up a text on the wall for her: "Fear
not: for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name; thou art
Mine." This was her special text, and she looked at it now; and then she
grew braver, and promised to be patient and try to win her mother, who
was bitterly opposed.

But oh, how I remember the wistfulness of her face as I went out; and
one's very heart can feel again the stab of pain, like a knife cutting
deep, as I left her--to her fate.

You have seen a tree standing stark and bare, a bleak black thing, on a
sunny day against a sky of blue. You have looked at it, fascinated by
the silent horror of it, a distorted cinder, not a tree, and someone
tells you it was struck in the last great thunderstorm.

Next time we saw Treasure she was like that. What happened between, so
far as it is known, was this. They tried to persuade her, they tried to
coerce her; she witnessed to Jesus, and never faltered, though once they
dragged her out of the house by her hair, and holding her down against
the wall, struck her hard with a leather strap. One of the Christians
saw it, and heard the poor tortured child cry out, "I do not fear! I do
not fear! It will only send me to Jesus!"

Then they tried threats. "We will take you out to the lake at night, and
cut you in little pieces, and throw you into it." She fully believed
them, but even so, we hear she did not flinch.

Then they did their worst to her.

It was a Sunday morning. The Saturday evening before she had managed to
see the teacher. She told her hurriedly how one had come, "a bridegroom"
she called him, a student from a Mission College; he was telling her
all sorts of things--that Christianity was an exploded religion; and how
a great and learned woman (Mrs. Besant) had exposed the missionaries and
their ways, so that no thinking people had any excuse for being deceived
by them.

Then she added earnestly, "It is the devil. Do pray for me. They want me
to marry him secretly! Oh, I must go to the Missie Ammal!" And if we had
only known, we would have risked anything, any breach of the law of the
land, to save her from a breach of the law of heaven! For all this talk,
between an Indian girl of good repute and her prospective husband, is
utterly foreign to what is considered right in Old India. It in itself
meant danger. But we knew nothing, and next day, all that Sunday, she
was shut up, and no one knows what happened to her. On Monday she was
seen again; but changed, so utterly changed!

We heard nothing of this till the following Wednesday. The Christians
were honestly concerned, but the Tamil is ever casual, and they saw no
reason for distressing us with bad news sooner than could be helped.

As soon as we heard, I sent two of the Sisters who knew her best, to try
and see her if possible. They managed to see her for two or three
minutes, but found her hopelessly hard. Every bit of care was gone. She
laughed in a queer, strained way, they said. It was no use my trying to
see her. But I determined to see her. I cannot go over it all again, it
is like tearing the skin off a wound; so the letter written at the time
may tell the rest of it.

"On Saturday I went. I went straight to the teacher's house, and sent
off the bandy at once, and by God's special arrangement got in
unnoticed. For hours we sat in the little inner room, waiting; we could
hear her voice in the courtyard outside--a hard, changed voice. The
teacher tried to get her in, but no, she would not come. Oh, how we held
on to God! I could not bear to go till I had seen her.

"At last we had to go. The cart came back for us, thus proclaiming where
we were, and the last human chance was gone. And then, just then, like
one walking in a dream, Treasure wandered in and stood, startled.

"She did not know we were there. We were kneeling with our backs to the
door. I turned and saw her.

"I cannot write about the next five minutes; I thought I realised
something of what Satan could do in this land, but I knew nothing about
it. Oh, when will Jesus come and end it all?

"Just once it seemed as if the spell were broken. My arms were round
her, though she had shrunk away at first, and tried to push me from her;
she was quiet now, and seemed to understand a little how one cared. She
knelt down with me, and covered her eyes as if in prayer, while I poured
out my soul for her, and then we were all very still, and the Lord
seemed very near. But she rose, unmoved, and looked at us. We were all
quite broken down, and she smiled in a strange, hard, foolish way--that
was all.

"The cause no one knows. There are only two possible explanations. One is
poison. There is some sort of mind-bewildering medicine which it is
known is given in such cases. This is the view held by the Christians
on the spot. One of them says her cousin was dealt with in this way. He
was keen to be a Christian, and was shut up for a day, and came
out--dead. Dead, she means, to all which before had been life to him.

"The other, and worse, is sin. Has she been forced into some sin which
to one so enlightened as she is must mean an awful darkness, the hiding
of God's face?

"I cannot tell you how bright this dear child was. Up till that Saturday
evening her faith never wavered; she was a living sign to all the town
that the Lord is God. The heathen are triumphant now."

I have told you plainly what has happened. God's Truth needs no
painting. I leave it with you. Do you believe it is perfectly true? Then
what are you going to do?

CHAPTER XVI

Wanted, Volunteers

          "We have a great and imposing War Office, but a
          very small army. . . . While vast continents are
          shrouded in almost utter darkness, and hundreds of
          millions suffer the horrors of heathenism or of
          Islam, the burden of proof lies upon you to show
          that the circumstances in which God has placed you
          were meant by Him to keep you out of the foreign
          mission field."
                                _Ion Keith Falconer, Arabia._

IN one of the addresses delivered at the International Student
Missionary Conference, London, in January 1900, a South Indian
missionary spoke of the Brahman race as "the brain of India." "Their
numbers are comparatively small--between ten and fifteen millions--but
though numerically few--only five per cent. of the Hindu
population--they hold all that population in the hollow of their hand.
They occupy every position of influence in the land. They are the
statesmen and politicians, the judges, magistrates, Government
officials, and clerks of every grade. If there is any position
conferring influence over their fellow-men, it will be held by a
Brahman. Moreover, they are a sacred Caste, admitted by the people to be
gods upon earth--a rank supposed to have been attained by worth
maintained through many transmigrations."

[Illustration: A typical Brahman face. It is keener than the photo
shows, and has the cynical expression so many Brahman faces have. Such a
man is hard to win.]

Among the Petras of this district is a little old-fashioned country
town, held in strength by the Brahmans. No convert has ever come from
that town, and the town boasts that none ever shall. None of the houses
are open yet to teaching, or even visiting, but we are making friends,
and hope for an entrance soon. We spent a morning out in the street;
they had no objection to that, and as the free young Brahmans gathered
round us, or stood for a moment against a wall to be "caught," it was
difficult, even for us who knew it, to realise how bound they were.
"Bound, who should conquer; slaves, who should be kings." Bound, body
and soul, in a bondage perfectly incomprehensible to the English mind.

Afterwards, when we saw the photographs, we recalled one and another
who, while they were young students like these, dared to desire to
escape from their bondage; but back they were dragged, and the chains
were riveted faster than ever, and every link was tested again, and
hammered down hard.

We wanted to be sure of our facts about each of them, that these facts
may further answer that smile which assures us things are not as we
imagine; so the Iyer wrote to a brother missionary who had known these
lads well, and asked him to tell what happened to each of them. This
morning the answer to that letter came, and was handed to me with "I
hardly like to give it to you, but it tells the truth about what goes
on." These boys were students in our C.M.S. College.

The first one mentioned in the letter is a young Brahman who confessed
Christ in baptism, and bravely withstood the tremendous opposition
raised by his friends, who came in crowds for many weeks, and tried by
every argument to persuade him to return to Hinduism; but he preached
Christ to them. They brought his young wife, and she tore her hair and
wailed, and besought him not to condemn her to the shame of a widow's
life. This was the hardest of all to withstand; he turned to the
missionary and said, "Oh my father, take her away! She is tearing out my
heart!"

[Illustration: A typical Brahman student. The marks on the forehead are
made of bright red, yellow, and white paste, and represents the
footprint of the god Vishnu. These Brahmans are Vaishnavites.]

Then came the baptism day of another Brahman student, his friend, who
previous to this had been seized by his relatives, shut up and starved,
and then fed with poisoned food; but the poison was not strong enough to
kill, and he had escaped, and was now safe and ready for baptism.

It was remembered afterwards how the friend of the newly baptised stood
and rejoiced, and praised God. Then, the baptism over, fearing no danger
in open day, he went to the tank to bathe. He was never seen again.

What happened exactly no one knows. It is thought that men hired to
watch him seized their opportunity, and carried him off. What they did
then has never been told. Contradictory reports about the boy have
reached the missionaries. One, that he is still holding on, another that
he is now a priest in one of the great Saivite temples of South India.
Which is true, God knows.

But we are under the English Government. Could nothing be done? One of
his near relatives is the present Judge of the High Court of one of our
Indian cities. And among the crowd of Brahmans who came during those
weeks, there were influential men, graduates of colleges, members of the
legal profession--a favourite profession in India. And yet this thing
was done.

There was another; the means used to get hold of him cannot be written
here. That is the difficulty which fronts us when we try to tell the
truth as it really is. It simply cannot be told. The Dust may be
shown--or a little of it; the whole of the Actual, never.

There were others near the Kingdom, but it is the same story over again.
They were all spirited away from the college; the missionary writes,
"_it makes one's heart sick to think of them, and the hellish means
invented to turn them from Christ_." These are not the words of
sentimental imagination. They are the words of a man who gives evidence
as a witness. But even a witness may _feel_.

He tells us of one, a bright, happy fellow, he says he was, whose
friends made no objection to his returning home after his baptism, and
he returned, thinking he would be able to live as a Christian with his
wife. They drugged his food, then what they did has to be covered with
silence again. . . . They did their worst. . . . When he awoke from that
nightmare of sin, he sought out his missionary friend. Some of the
Hindus even, "ashamed of the vile means used" to entice him and destroy
him, would have wished him to be received again as a Christian, but his
spirit was broken. He said he could not disgrace the cause of Christ by
coming back; he would go away where he would not be known. He left his
wife, and went. He has never been heard of since.

Our comrade tells of another, and again, in telling it, we have to leave
it half untold. This one was eager to confess Christ in baptism; he was
a student at college then, and very keen. His father knew of his son's
desire, and he did what few Hindu fathers would do, _he turned his home
into a hell, in order to ruin his boy_. The infernal plot succeeded. God
only knows how far the soul is responsible when the mind is dazed and
then inflamed by those fearful drugs. But we do know that the soul He
meant should rise and shine, sinks, weighted down by the unspeakable
shame of some awful memory darkened, as by some dark dye that has
stained it through and through.

I think of others as I write: one was a boy we knew well, a splendid,
earnest lad, keen to witness for Christ. He told us one evening how he
had been delivered from those who were plotting his destruction. For
several months after his decision to be a Christian, he lived at home
and tried to win his people; but they were incensed against him for even
thinking of breaking Caste, and would not listen to him. Still he
waited, and witnessed to them, not fearing anything. Then one day,
suddenly some men rushed into the room where he was sitting, seized and
bound and gagged him. They forced something into his mouth as he lay on
the floor at their mercy; he feared it was a drug, but it was only some
disgusting stuff which, to a Hindu, meant unutterable defilement. Then
they left him bound alone, and at night he managed to escape. A few
months after he told us this, we heard he had been seized again, and
this time "drugged and done for."

In South India baptism does not prevent the Caste from using every
possible means to get the convert back; once back, certain ceremonies
are performed, after which he is regarded as purified, and reinstated in
his Caste. The policy of the whole Caste confederation is this: get him
back unbaptised if you can, but anyhow _get him back_. Two Brahman lads
belonging to different parts of this district decided for Christ, went
through all that is involved in open confession, and were baptised. One
of the two was sent North for safety; his people traced him, followed
him, turned up unexpectedly at a wayside station in Central India, and
forced him back to his home in the South. Once there, they took their
own measures to keep him. The other lad was sent to Madras. The Brahmans
found out where he was, broke into the house at night, overpowered the
boy's protectors, and carried him off. They too did what seemed good to
them there, and they too succeeded. No one outside could interfere. The
Caste guards its own concerns.

"O Lord Jesus Christ!" wrote one, a Hindu still, "who knowest us to be
placed in such danger that it is as if we were within some magical
circle drawn round us, and Satan standing with his wand without, keeping
us in terror, break the spell of Satan, and set us free to serve Thee!"

All this may be easy reading to those who are far away from the place
where it happened. Distance has a way of softening too distinct an
outline; but it is not easy to write, it comes so close to us. Why write
it, then? We write it because it seems to us it should be more fully
known, so that men and women who know our God, and the secret of how to
lay hold upon Him, should lay hold, and hold on for the winning of the
Castes for Christ.

[Illustration: Another Brahman, much duller than the last. This and the
two preceding photographs are perfect as a study of three types of
Brahmanhood as we have it in Southern India--keen, thoughtful, dull.]

Surely the very hardness of an enterprise, the very fact that it is what
a soldier would call a forlorn hope, is in itself a call and a claim
stronger than any put forth by something easier. The soldier does not
give in because the hope is "forlorn." It is a _hope_, be it ever so
desperate. He volunteers for it, and win or not, he fights.

There is that in this enterprise which may mark it out as "forlorn." For
ages the race has broken one of nature's laws with blind persistency,
and the result is a certain lack of moral fibre, grit, "tone." No
separate individual is responsible for this, harsh judgments are
entirely out of place; but the fact remains that it is so, and it must
be taken into account in dealing with the Brahmans and several of the
upper Castes of India. Side by side with this element of weakness there
is, in apparent contradiction, that stubborn element of strength known
as the Caste spirit. This spirit is seen in all I have shown you of what
happens when a convert comes. It is as if all the million wills of the
million Caste men and women were condensed into one single Will, a
concentration of essence of Will not comparable with anything known at
home.

Look at this face--it is a photographed fact. Does it not show you an
absence of that "something" which nerves to endurance, stimulates to
dare? Then listen to this:--A Christian man lies dead. The way to the
cemetery lies through the Brahman street, in the chief town of this
District; there is no other way. The Brahman street is a thoroughfare,
it cannot be closed to traffic, but the Brahmans refuse point blank to
allow that dead man to be carried through. The Bishop expostulates. No;
he was a Christian, he shall not be carried through. Time is passing. In
the Tropics the dead must be buried quickly. The Bishop appeals to the
Collector (Representative of Government here). The Collector gives an
order. The Brahmans refuse to obey. He orders out a company of soldiers.
The Brahmans mass on the housetops and stone the soldiers. The order is
given to fire. Then, and not till then, the Christians may carry out
their dead; and later on the Brahmans carry out theirs. This happened
some years ago, and outwardly times have changed since then in that
particular town. But the spirit that it shows is in possession to this
day, and as small things show great, so this street scene shows the
presence of that "something" which intensifies the difficulty of winning
the Castes for Christ. Each unit is weak in itself, but in combination,
strong.

"A forlorn hope" we have called the attempt to do what we are told to
do. The word is a misnomer; with our Captain as our Leader no hope is
ever "forlorn"! But our Leader calls for men, men like the brave of old
who jeopardised their lives unto the death in the high places of the
field, in the day that they came to the help of the Lord, to the help of
the Lord against the mighty. A jeopardised life may be lost.

Christ our Captain is calling for volunteers; here are the terms:
"Whosoever shall lose his life for My sake and the Gospel's the same
shall find it." The teachers' life may seem "lost" who lives for his
college boys; the student's life may seem "lost" who spends hour after
hour through the long hot days in quiet talks in the house. Be it so,
for it may mean that. But the life lost for His Name's sake, the same
shall be found again.

CHAPTER XVII

If it is so very important. . . ?

          "Let us for a moment imagine what would have
          happened on the Galilean hillside, when our Lord
          fed the five thousand, if the Apostles had acted
          as some act now. The twelve would be going
          backwards, helping the first rank over and over
          again, and leaving the back rows unsupplied. Let
          us suppose one of them, say Andrew, venturing to
          say to his brother Simon Peter, 'Ought we all to
          be feeding the front row? Ought we not to divide,
          and some of us go to the back rows?' Then suppose
          Peter replying, 'Oh no; don't you see these front
          people are so hungry? They have not had half
          enough yet; besides, they are nearest to us, so we
          are more responsible for them.' Then, if Andrew
          resumes his appeal, suppose Peter going on to say,
          'Very well; you are quite right. You go and feed
          all those back rows; but I can't spare anyone
          else. I and the other ten of us have more than we
          can do here.'

          "Once more, suppose Andrew persuades Philip to go
          with him; then, perhaps, Matthew will cry out and
          say, 'Why, they're all going to those farther
          rows! Is no one to be left to these needy people
          in front?'

          "Let me ask the members of Congress, Do you
          recognise these sentences at all?"
                  _Eugene Stock, at Shrewsbury Church Congress._

IT was only a common thing. A girl, very ill, and in terrible pain, who
turned to us for help. We could do nothing for her. Her people resorted
to heathen rites. They prepared her to meet the fierce god they thought
was waiting to snatch her away.

We went again and again, but she suffered so that one could not say
much, it did not seem any use. The last time we went, the crisis had
passed; she would live, they told us with joy. They were eager to
listen to us now. "Tell us all about your Way!" clamoured the women,
speaking together, and very loud. "Tell us the news from beginning to
end!" But, alas! they could take in very little. One whole new Truth was
too much for them. "Never mind," they consoled us, "come every day, and
then what you say will take hold of our hearts." And I had to tell them
we were leaving that evening, and could not come "every day."

[Illustration: Is not the contrast good? The old woman so intelligent,
the baby so inane. She made a picture sitting there, in her crimson
edged seeley, with her dark old face showing up against the darker wall.
She is one of the many we have missed by coming so slowly and so late.
"How can I change now?" she says.]

The girl turned her patient face towards us. She had smiled at the Name
of Jesus, and it seemed as if down in the depths of her weakness she had
listened when we spoke before, and tried to understand. Now she looked
puzzled and troubled, and the women all asked, "Why?"

There, in that crowded, hot little room, a sense of the unequal
distribution of the Bread of Life came over us. The front rows of the
Five Thousand are getting the loaves and the fishes over and over again,
till it seems as though they have to be bribed and besought to accept
them, while the back rows are almost forgotten. _Is it that we are so
busy with the front rows, which we can see, that we have no time for the
back rows out of sight?_ But is it fair? Is it what Jesus our Master
intended? _Can it be really called fair?_

The women looked very reproachful. Then one of them said, looking up at
me, "You say this is very important. If it is so very important, why did
you not come before? You say you will come back again if you can, but
how can we be sure that nothing will happen to stop you? We are, some of
us, very old; we may die before you come back. This going away is not
good." And again and again she repeated, "_If it is so very important,
why did you not come before?_"

Don't think that the question meant more than it did. It was only a
human expression of wonder; it was not a real desire after God. But the
force of the question was stronger far than the poor old questioner
knew; it appealed to our very hearts.

The people saw we were greatly moved, and they pressed closer round us
to comfort us, and one dear old grandmother put her arms round me, and
stroked my face with her wrinkled old hand, and said, "Don't be
troubled; we will worship your God. We will worship Him just as we
worship our own. _Now_, will you go away glad?"

The dear old woman was really in earnest, she wanted so much to comfort
us. But her voice seemed to mingle with voices from the homeland; and
another--we heard another--the Voice I had heard on the
precipice-edge--the voice of our brothers', our sisters' blood calling
unto God from the ground.

Friends, are these women real to you? Look at this photo of one of them.
Surely it was not just a happy chance which brought out the detail so
perfectly. Look at the thoughtful, fine old face. Can you look at it and
say, "Yes, I am on my way to the Light, and you are on your way to the
Dark. At least, this is what I profess to believe. And I am sorry for
you, but this is all I can do for you; I can be very sorry for you. I
know that this will not show you the way from the Dark, where you are,
to the Light, where I am. To show you the way I must go to you, or,
perhaps, send you one whom I want for myself, or do without something I
wish to have; and this, of course, is impossible. It might be done if I
loved God enough--_but I love myself better than God or you_."

[Illustration: A Brahman widow, the only Brahman woman who would let us
take her photo. Brahman women wear their seeleys fastened in a peculiar
way, and never cut their ears. Brahman widows are always shaven, and
wear no jewels. This one is a muscular character, strong and resolute,
an ordinary looking woman, but there must be an under-the-surface life
which does not show. A widow's fate is described in one word here,
"_accursed_."]

You would not say such a thing, I know, but "Whoso hath this world's
good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his compassion
from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?"

CHAPTER XVIII

The Call Intensified

          "Sometimes the men and boys will not go away and
          let us talk to the women; in such cases I find
          silent prayer the best refuge. In other places the
          people welcome you, but will listen to anything
          but the Doctrine of Jesus Christ; and this is
          harder to bear than anything else I know."
                                    _Anna Gordon, China._

          "Let the people that are at home not care only to
          hear about successes; we must train them that they
          take an interest in the struggle."
                        _Rev. A. Schreiber, Sumatra and India._

          "It is a fight making its demands upon physical,
          mental, and spiritual powers, and there are many
          adversaries. The dead weight of heathenism, the
          little appreciation of one's object and purpose,
          and the actual, vigorous opposition of the powers
          of darkness, make it a real fight, and only men of
          grit, of courage, devotion, and infinite patience
          and perseverance, will win.

          "_Have I painted a discouraging picture? Am I
          frightening good men who might have volunteered
          and done well? I think not. I think the right sort
          of men, those who ought to volunteer, will be
          attracted rather than repelled by the
          difficulties._"
                                _Rev. J. Lampard, India._

WE got this photograph that day in December which we spent in the
friendly Brahman street. "There is not another woman in the town who
would stand for you like that!" said the men, as she came forward, and,
without a thought of posing, stood against the wall for a moment, and
looked at the camera straight. Most of the women were afraid even to
glance at it, but she was not afraid. She would not stay to talk to us,
however, but marched off with the same resolute air. For Brahman widows
as a whole are by no means an approachable race. Sometimes we find one
who will open out to us, and let us tell her of the Comfort wherewith we
are comforted; but oftener we find them hard, or hardening rapidly.

[Illustration: There is nothing to say about it except what is said in
the chapter. There is nothing much to look at in a Brahman street. But
that single simple street scene represents forces which control two
hundred and seven million minds.]

It is too soon to write about any of those who have listened during the
past few months, but we put this photo in to remind you to remember
those who are freer than most women in India to follow the Lord Jesus
Christ, if only they would let His love have a chance of drawing them.
We have been to the various towns in this and the upper curve of the
mountains, but we have not reached the lower curve towns, or half of the
many villages scattered close under the mountains, and, except when we
went out in camp, we have not of course touched those farther afield.

There are only five working afternoons in a week, for Saturday is given
up to other things, and Sunday belongs to the Christians; and when any
interest is shown, we return again to the same village, which delays us,
but is certainly worth while. Then there are interruptions--sometimes on
the Hindu side; festivals, for instance, when no woman has time to hear;
and on ours, and on the weather's, so to speak, when great heat or great
rain make outdoor work impossible. Theoretically, itinerating is
delightfully rapid; but practically, as every itinerating missionary
knows, it is quite slow. There are other things to be done; those
already brought in have to be taught and trained and mothered, and
much time has to be spent in waiting upon God for more; so that, looking
back, we seem to have done very little for the thousands about us, and
now we must return to the eastern side of the district, for some of the
boy converts are there at school, and there may be fruit to gather in
after last year's sowing.

But I look up from my writing and see a stretch of mountain range thirty
miles long, and this range stretches unbroken for a thousand miles to
the North. I know how little is being done on the plains below, and I
wonder when God's people will awake, and understand that there is yet
very much land to be possessed, and arise and possess it. Look down this
mountain strip with me; there are towns where work is being done, but it
needs supervision, and the missionaries are too few to do it thoroughly.
There are towns and numbers of villages where nothing is even attempted,
except that once in two years, if possible, the Men's Itinerant Band
comes round; but that does not reach the women well, and even if it did,
how much would you know of Jesus if you only heard a parable or a
miracle or a few facts from His life or a few points of His doctrine
_once in two years_? I do not want to write touching appeals, or to draw
one worker from anywhere else,--it would be a joy to know that God used
these letters to help to send someone to China, or anywhere where He has
need of His workers,--but I cannot help wondering, as I look round this
bit of the field, how it is that the workers are still so few.

We have found the people in the towns and villages willing to let us do
what we call "verandah work" when they will not let us into their
houses. Verandah work, like open-air preaching, is unsatisfactory as
regards the women, but it is better than nothing.

We spent an afternoon in the street this photo shows. It is a
thoroughfare, and so we were not forbidden; but even so, we always ask
permission before we walk down it. Such an ordinary, commonplace street
it looks to you; there is no architectural grandeur to awe the beholder,
and impress him with the majesty of Brahmanhood; and yet that street,
and every street like it, is a very Petra to us, for it is walled round
by walls higher and stronger than the temple walls round which it is
built; walls built, as it seems, of some crystal rock, imperceptible
till you come up to it, and even then not visible, only recognisable as
something you cannot get through.

Our first day there was encouraging. We began at the far end of the
street, and after some persuasion the men agreed to move to one side,
and let us have the other for any women who would come. Nothing
particular happened, but we count a day good if we get a single good
chance to speak in quietness to the women.

Next time we went it was not so good. They had heard in the meantime all
about us, and that we had girls from the higher Castes with us, and this
was terrible in their eyes. For the Brahman, from his lofty position of
absolute supremacy, holds in very small account the souls of those he
calls low-caste; but if any from the middle distance (he would not
describe them as near himself, only dangerously nearer than the others)
"fall into the pit of the Christian religion," he thinks it is time to
begin to take care that the Power which took such effect on them should
not have a chance to perform upon him, and, above all, upon his
womankind. So that day we were politely informed that no one had time to
listen, and, when some women wanted to come, a muscular widow chased
them off. We looked longingly back at those dear Brahman women, but
appeal was useless, so we went.

In one of the other Castes, the Caste represented by this row of men, we
found more friendliness; they let us sit on one end of the narrow
verandah fronts, and quite a number of women clustered about on the
other. They were greatly afraid of defilement there, and would not come
too close. And they had the strangest ideas about us. They were sure we
had a powder which, if they inhaled it, would compel them to be
Christians. They had heard that we went round "calling children," that
is, beckoning them, and drawing them to follow after us, and that we
were paid so much a head for converts. It takes a whole afternoon
sometimes simply to disabuse their minds of such misconceptions.

I heard this commercial aspect of things explained by one who apparently
knew. A kindly old Brahman woman had allowed us to sit on her doorstep
out of the sun, and bit by bit we had worked our way to the end of the
verandah, which was a little more shaded, where a girl was sitting alone
who seemed to want to hear. The old woman sat down behind us, and then
an old man came up, and the two began to talk. Said the old woman to the
old man, "She is trying to make us join her Way." (I had carefully
abstained from any such expression.) The old man agreed that such was
my probable object. "What will she get if we join? Do you know?" "Oh
yes; do I not know! For one of us a thousand rupees, and for a Vellalar
five hundred. She even gets something for a low-caste child, but she
gets a whole thousand for one of us!"

[Illustration: A Shepherd-Caste house of the better sort. We would give
a great deal to get into this house, but so far it is closed. You can
see straight through to the back courtyard where the women are, where we
may not go. The old man is typical of his class, a thoughtful man of
refinement of mind, but wholly indifferent to the teaching.]

They were both very interested in this conversation, and so indeed was
I, and I thought I would further enlighten them, when the old woman got
up in a hurry and hobbled into the house. After that, whenever we
passed, she used to shake her head at us, and say, "Chee, chee!" No
persuasions could ever induce her to let us sit on her doorstep again.
We were clearly after that thousand rupees, and she would have none of
us.

In the same village there was a little Brahman child who often tried to
speak to us, but never was allowed. One day she risked capture and its
consequences, and ran across the narrow stream which divides the Brahman
street from the village, and spoke to one of our Band in a hurried
little whisper. "Oh, I do want to hear about Jesus!" And she told how
she had learnt at school in her own town, and then she had been sent to
her mother-in-law's house in this jungle village, "that one," pointing
to a house where they never had smiles for us; but her mother-in-law
objected to the preaching, and had threatened to throw her down the well
if she listened to us. Just then a hard voice called her, and she flew.
Next time we went to that village she was shut up somewhere inside.

Often as one passes one sees shy faces looking out from behind the
little pillars which support the verandahs, and one longs to get
nearer. But it does not do to make any advance unless one is sure of
one's ground. It only results in a sudden startled scurrying into the
house, and you cannot follow them there. To try to do so would be more
than rude--it would be considered pollution.

Only yesterday we were trying to get to the women who live in the great
house of the village behind the bungalow. This photo shows you the door
we stood facing for ten minutes or more, first waiting, and then
pleading with the old mother-in-law to let us in to the little dark room
in which you may see a woman's form hiding behind the door.

But we could not go to them, and they could not come to us. There were
only two narrow rooms between, but the second of the two had brass
water-vessels in it. If we had gone in, those vessels and the water in
them would have been defiled. The women were not allowed to come out,
the mother-in-law saw well to that; never was one more vigilant. She