Things as they are : $b Mission work in Southern IndiaCarmichael, Amy
Religion
Things as they are : $b Mission work in Southern India
Carmichael, Amy
India -- Social life and customs; Missions -- India
Identification with the people whom we have come to win is the aim of
many a missionary, but the difficulty always is the same--climate and
customs are dead against it; how can we do it? George Bowen struck at
English life and became a true Indian, so far as he could, but even he
could not go all the way. No matter how far you may go, there is always
a distance you cannot cover--yards or inches it may be, but always that
fatal hiatus. We seem so undeniably up, far up above them in everything,
and we want to get to the lowest step down, low enough down to lift lost
souls up.
[Illustration: "I went down to the potter's house, and, behold, he
wrought a work on the wheels." The vessel the potters are making here is
worth about a halfpenny, but it is perfect of its kind. The moulder
never lifts his hand from it from the moment he puts a lump of shapeless
clay on the wheel till the moment he takes it off finished, so far as
the wheel can finish it. If it is "marred," it is "marred _in the hand_
of the potter," and instantly he makes it again another vessel as it
seems good to him. He never wastes the clay.]
On and on, if they will let us, time after time, by text and hymn and
story, we have to explain what things really mean before they are able
to understand even a fraction of the truth. The fact that this girl had
thought enough to get her ideas into shape was encouraging, and with
such slender cause for hope we still hoped. But when after some weeks'
visiting she began to see that the question was not one of curries and
seeleys but of inward invisible gifts, her interest died, and she was
"out" when we went, or too busy patting her pots to have time to listen
to us.
Humdrum we have called the work, and humdrum it is. There is nothing
romantic about potters except in poetry, nor is there much of romance
about missions except on platforms and in books. Yet "though it's dull
at whiles," there is joy in the doing of it, there is joy in just
obeying. He said "Go, tell," and we have come and are telling, and we
meet Him as we "go and tell."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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