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
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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