Amy Carmichael

"The roads are rugged, the precipices steep; there may be feelings of dizziness on the heights, gusts of wind, peals of thunder, nights of awful gloom. Fear them not!

"There are also the joys of sunlight, flowers such as are not in the plain, the purest of air, restful nooks, and the stars smile thence like the eyes of God."—PÈre Didon (translated by Rev. Arthur G. Nash).

Shortly before that time we had been brought into touch with the medical missionaries at Neyoor, in South Travancore. The senior missionary, Dr. Fells, was about to retire; but his successor, Dr. Bentall, cordially agreed to let us rent a little house in the village and fill it with babies, though he knew such a houseful might materially add to the fulness of his already overflowing day. He, and afterwards Dr. Davidson (now the only survivor at Neyoor of that kind trio of doctors), seemed to think nothing a trouble if only it helped a friend. So the little house was taken and the babies installed.

The first day, September 25, 1905, is a day to be remembered. I had gone on before to prepare the house, and for a day and a half waited in uncertainty as to what had happened to the little party which was to have followed close behind. I had left one baby ill. She was the first child sent to us from the Canarese country; and I thought of the friends who had sent her, newly interested and stirred to seek these little ones, and of what it would mean of discouragement to them if she were taken, and my heart held on for her.

At last the carts appeared in sight. It was the windy season, and six carts had been overturned on the road, so they had travelled slowly. Then a wheel came off one of their carts and an accident was narrowly averted. This had caused the delay. The baby about whom I had feared had recovered in time to be sent on. She was soon quite well, and has continued well from that day to this.

How familiar the road between Dohnavur and Neyoor became to us, as the months passed and frequent journeys were made with little new babies! Sometimes those journeys were very wearisome. There was great heat, or a dust-laden wind filled the bandy to suffocation and blew out the spirit-lamp when we stopped to prepare the babies' food. How glad we used to be when, in the early evening, the white gleam of the stretch of water outside Nagercoil appeared in sight! We used to stop and bathe the babies, and feed them under some convenient trees, and then go on to our friends with whom we were to spend the night, trusting that the soothing effect of the bathe and food would not pass off until after our arrival. Those friends, our comrades of the L.M.S., like the Medicals at Neyoor, seemed made of kindness. How often their welcome has rested us after the long day!

Next morning we tried to start early, so as to arrive at Neyoor before the sun shone in fever-threatening strength straight in through the open end of the cart. This plan, however, proved too difficult, so we found it better to travel slowly straight on from Dohnavur to Neyoor. In this way we missed the blazing sun; but we also missed the refreshment of our friends at Nagercoil, and arrived more or less tired out, after a journey which, because of slow progress and frequent stops, was equal in time to one from London to Marseilles. But the welcome at the nursery made up for everything.

How vividly the photograph recalls it! The house opened upon the main street of the village, and there was nearly always a watcher on the look-out for us. Sometimes it was Isaac, our good man-of-all-work, who never failed Ponnamal through the two years he was with us. Then we would hear a call, and Ponnamal (we used to call her the Princess, but dignity gives place to something more human at such moments) would come flying down the path with a face which made words superfluous. Then there was the scramble out of the bandy, and the handing down of babies and exclamations about them; and all the nurses seemed to be kissing us at once and making their amazed babies kiss us, and everything was for one happy moment bewilderingly delightful.

Then there was the run round the cradles in which smaller babies were sleeping, and an eager comparing of notes as to the improvement of each. And if there were no improvement, how well one remembers the smothered sense of disappointment—smothered in public at least, lest the nurses should be discouraged. Then came a cup of tea on the mat in the little front room, where four white hammock-cradles hung, one in each corner; while Ponnamal sat beside me with three babies on her knee and two or three more somewhere near her. The babies used to study me in their wise and serious fashion, and then make careful advances. And so we would make friends.

Ponnamal had always much to tell about the exhaustless kindness of the doctors and their wives and the lady superintendent of the hospital. And the chief Tamil medical Evangelist had been true to his name, which means Blessedness. Once, in much distress of mind, we sent a little babe to the nursery, hardly daring to hope for her. When she arrived, the doctors were both away on tour, and the medical Evangelist was in charge. He attended to her at once, and by God's grace upon his work was able to relieve the little child, who has prospered ever since.

But I must leave unrecorded many acts of helpfulness. In those early days of doubt and difficulty, almost forgotten by us now, we beckoned to our "partners which were in the other ship," and their Master and ours will not forget how they held out willing hands and helped us.

It was not always plain sailing, even at Neyoor. "You are fighting Satan at a point upon which he is very sensitive; he will not leave you long in peace," wrote an experienced friend. On Palm Sunday, 1907, our first little band of young girls, fruit of this special work, confessed Christ in baptism, and we stood by the shining reach of water, and tasted of a joy so pure and thrilling that nothing of earth may be likened to it. A fortnight later we were ordered to the hills, and then the trouble came.

The immediate cause was overcrowding. Why did we overcrowd?

Friends at home to whom the facts about Temple service were new, were stirred to earnest prayer. Out here fellow-missionaries helped us to save the children. God heard the prayer and blessed the work, and children began to come. Soon our one little room became too full. We had babies in the bungalow and on our verandah, babies everywhere. Then money came to build two more rooms, but they were soon too full. At Neyoor the pressure was worse, for we could only rent two small houses; and though we put up mat shelters, and the children lived as much as possible in the open air, it was difficult to manage. But how could we refuse the little children? The Temple women were ready to take them if we had refused. Their houses are never too full. There was no other nursery to which they could be sent. Little children who had passed the troublesome infant stage could sometimes find a home elsewhere; but only the Temple houses were open at all times to babies. Could we have written to the friend who had saved a little child: "Hand her back to the Temple. It is the will of our Father that this little one should perish"? Should we have done it? We dare not do it. We prayed that help would be sent to build new nurseries, and we went on and did our best; but it was difficult.

We had just reached the hills in early April, and were forbidden to return, when news reached us of a fatal epidemic of dysentery which had broken out in the Neyoor nursery. Unseasonable rains had fallen and driven the babies indoors; this increased the overcrowding. The doctors were away. Letters telling us about the disaster had been lost—how, we never knew—so that the second which reached us, taking it for granted we had the first, gave no details, only the names of the smitten babes—nineteen of them, and five dead. Then trouble followed trouble. "While he was yet speaking, there came also another." Some evil men who had sought to injure us before, caused us infinite anxiety. And for a time that cannot be counted in days or in weeks it was like living through a nightmare, when everything happens in painful confusion and the sense of oppression is complete.

Out of the maelstrom came a letter from Ponnamal. "We are being comforted," she wrote. "You will be longing to come to us, but oh, do not come! If you were here all your strength would be given to fighting this battle with death, and you would have no strength left for prayer. God wanted to have one of us free to pray; and so He has taken you up to the mountain, as He took Moses when the people were fighting down in the plain." This was the true inward meaning of it all, and I knew it. But Ponnamal is far from strong, and I feared for her; and to stay away with the babies ill—it was the very hardest thing I had ever been asked to do.

When the trouble passed there were ten in heaven. One, a little child of two, had been saved so wonderfully from Temple dedication that we had looked forward to a future of special blessing for her; and another was a very lovely babe, dear to the missionary who, after much toil and many disappointments, had been comforted by saving her. Each of the ten had cost someone much. But this is an earthly point of view. They had cost Him most who had taken them, and he is only an owner in name who has no right to do as he will with his own.

The other side, the purely human side, pressed heavily just then. The doctors had most kindly at once ordered a mission room, vacated at that season, to be lent to the nursery, and another little house was taken for the month. How Ponnamal kept all four houses going in an orderly fashion, how she kept her nurses together through that time of almost panic, and how she herself, frail and delicate as she is, kept up till all was over, we cannot understand from any point of view but the Divine. She only broke down once. It was when her dearest child, our merry, beautiful little Heart's Joy, who, having more strength than most, had battled longer and almost recovered, suddenly sank. The visible cause was that a special nutrient, which, being costly, we stocked in small quantities, ran short, and the fresh supply reached the nursery just too late. "If only it had come yesterday!" moaned Ponnamal, and we with her when we heard of the series of contretemps which had delayed its arrival. The torture of second causes is as the blackness of darkness, but the Lord gave deliverance from it; for just as she had to part with all that was left her of our little Heart's Joy, a letter came from Dr. Davidson which was God's own blessed comfort to a heart almost broken. She never refers to that letter without the quick tears starting. "I could let my little treasure go after I read that letter. It strengthened me."

While all this was going on in Neyoor, Chellalu, then just two years old, was very ill in Dohnavur. Mr. and Mrs. Walker were still there, and they nursed her night and day; but at last a letter came, evidently meant to prepare me for fresh sorrow. "Every little lamb belongs to the Good Shepherd, not to us," the letter said, and told of a temperature 106° and rising. The child, all spirit and frolic, had little reserve strength, and there was not much cause for hope. But we were spared this parting. Chellalu is with us still.

The sky was clearing again and we were beginning to breathe freely, when the worst that had ever touched us in all our years of work came suddenly upon us. How small things that affect the body appear when the point of attack wheels round to the soul! The death of all the babies seemed as nothing compared with the falling away of one soul. But God is the God of the waves and the billows, and they are still His when they come over us; and again and again we have proved that the overwhelming thing does not overwhelm. Once more by His interposition deliverance came. We were cast down, but not destroyed.

A time of calm succeeded this storm. Money came to build nurseries at Dohnavur, and buy more of the special nutrients we so much required. The Neyoor remnant picked up, and the nurses took heart again. I went out to them as soon as I could after our return from the hills, and found those who were left well and strong. "They shall see His face" had been the text in Daily Light, the evening the news reached me of the little procession heavenwards. I looked at the ten names written in the margin of my book; and, recalling the story of each, could be glad they have seen the face of the One who loves them best. Lower down on the page come the words, "We shall be satisfied." We thought of our babies satisfied so soon; and then we knelt together and said, "Even so, Father: for so it seemeth good in Thy sight."

Pretty pictures all in colours and bright sunshine tempt one to linger over that visit. I can see the white hammocks slung from the trees in the nursery compound, and happy baby-faces looking out of them. And another shows me one who had been like a sister to Ponnamal, lightening her load whenever she could; sitting with two dear babies in her arms, and another clinging round her neck. "She comes and helps us often in the mornings when we are very busy," said Ponnamal about the doctor's wife, as I noticed the babies' affection for her and her sweet, kind ways with them. "Sometimes when I am feeling down and home-sick, she comes in like this and plays with the babies, and cheers us all up." The Indian woman is very home-loving. Only devotion to the children could have kept the nurses and Ponnamal so long in exile for their sake; and there were times when even Ponnamal's brave heart sank. Then these love-touches helped.

When the time came for the nursery party to leave Neyoor and return to Dohnavur, after two and a half years in that hospitable mission, we were sorry to part. Days like the days we had passed through test the stuff of which souls are made, and they prove what we call friendship. After the fire has spent itself, the fine gold shines out purified, and there is something solemn in its light. We had grown close to our friends in Neyoor; but the cloud had moved, so far as we could read the sign, and it seemed right to return. The missionaries were away when the day came, but the Christians surrounded Ponnamal with tokens of goodwill. "The nursery has been like a little light in our midst," they said; and this word cheered her more than all other words. And so farewelled, they arrived home, all glad and warm with the glow that comes when hearts meet each other and each finds the other kind.