Children -- India; India -- Social life and customs; Missions -- India
The other this: a white carved cupola in the centre of a piece of water
enclosed by white walls. People are sitting on the walls and pressing
close about them in their thousands. A gorgeous barge is floating slowly
round the shrine. There is very little moon, but the whole place is
alight; sometimes the water is ablaze with ruby and amber; this fades,
and a weird blue-green shimmers across the barge, and electric lamps at
the corners of the square lend brilliancy to the scene. The barge is
covered with crimson trappings, and hundreds of wreaths of white
oleander hang curtain-wise round what is within--the god and goddess
decked with jewels and smothered in flowers. Round and round the barge
is poled, and in the coloured light all that is gaudy and tawdry is
toned, and becomes only oriental and impressive; and the white shrine in
the centre reflected in the calm coloured water appears in its
alternating dimness, and shining more like a fairy creation than common
handiwork.
We who were at the festival, three of us laden with packets of marked
Gospels, met sometimes as we wandered about unobserved, losing ourselves
in the crowd, that we might the more quietly continue that for which we
were there; and in one such chance meeting we spoke of the English girl
by the fireside, and longed to show her what we saw; and to show it with
such earnestness that she would be drawn to inquire where her Master had
most need of her. But no earnestness of writing can do much after all.
It is true the eye affects the heart, and we would show what we have
seen in the hope that even the second-hand sight might do something; but
words are clumsy, and cannot discover to another that poignant thing the
eye has power to transmit to the heart. And it is well that it is so,
for something stronger and more consuming than human emotion can ever be
must operate upon the heart if the life is to be moved to purpose. "A
moving story" is worth little if it only moves the feelings. How far out
of its selfish track does it move the life into ways of sacrifice? That
is the question that matters. What if it cost? Did not Calvary cost?
Away with the cold, calculating love that talks to itself about cost!
God give us a pure passion of love that knows nothing of hesitation and
grudging, and measuring, nothing of compromise! What if it seem
impossible to face all that surrender may mean? Is there not provision
for the impossible? "In the Old Testament we find that in almost every
case of people being clothed with the Spirit it was for things which
were impossible to them. To be filled with the Spirit means readiness
for Him to take us out of our present sphere and put us anywhere away
from our own choice into His choice for us." These words hold a message
alike for us as we meet and pass in that Indian crowd, and for the girl
by the fireside at home who wants to know her Lord's will that she may
do it, and whose heart's prayer is: "May Thy grace, O Lord, make that
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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