A Chance to Die Elisabeth Elliot (electronic reader .txt) 📖

and leaving all for Christ? Because it is absolutely impossible for a Mohammedan or Hindu to be a Christian at home. In a very tolerant house they may be allowed to read the Bible and pray. In very rare instances exemption from various idolatrous ceremonies has been allowed, but open confession and baptism—NEVER.’’

“She shall burn to ashes first,” said one of the men. “She may go out dead if she likes. She shall go out living—NEVER!” There was nothing for it but obedience at all costs and at all risks.

For Amy, as for any true-hearted soldier, there was the element of thrill in battle. The reality of danger energizes and sharpens the faculties. “Will Gold [a high-caste woman who had shown an interest] come out? If so we shall be in the very thick of the fight again—Hallelujah! Will God move in Beautiful’s heart so that she will dare her husband’s fury and the knife he flashed before her eyes? If so, our bungalow will be in the very teeth of the storm, angry men all around it, and we inside, kept by the power of God!”

Miraculously another girl in addition to Jewel of Victory escaped. There was the same furor and consequent need for protection at Palamcottah. When the time came for the annual trip to the hills, Amy received permission from Mrs. Hopwood to bring the girls along. This was her chance to spend uninterrupted time with them, teaching them what discipleship meant. Amy Carmichael never sugarcoated the terms. They must learn to love the Lord and to forsake all—even their beloved Ammal (Amy)—to follow Him. She saw the danger of their becoming dependent on her, clinging to human love rather than to divine. They were desolate. One of them said she would be “like a withered stump in a field” if Amy sent her back to Palamcottah. The feeling was mutual. She felt for the girls what Paul felt for Onesimus: “my very heart would fain have kept him with me.” But to them she was adamant. They must learn to stand. The one whose name meant Ladychild, when only four months out of the “horrible pit” of heathenism, confessed, “When I’m told to do what I don’t like, something springs up in my heart which says, ‘Don’t do it! Don’t! Don’t!’ and I listen and think, ‘No, I won’t do it.’” Amy saw that some of the “miry clay” was still sticking. A new heart was what the child needed, she explained.

Victory was overjoyed to receive a letter from her brother, but the contents brought tears. “Most beloved and cherished, most precious and most beautiful, as the apple of the eye, as the jewel among jewels, as the ruby, as the pearl, as our joy and delight, our immaculate and learned and advanced in all wisdom, yet all wisdom-despising younger sister. . . .” Then followed a string of pathetic stories—one member of the family ill, another weak with waiting for Victory to come home, another who had tried to see her but could not catch a glimpse “even with the extreme corner of the eye.

“In the Hindu Religion,” the letter went on, “as you ought to understand, Caste and Piety are one and the same. Piety IS Caste. Caste is Piety. Why then do you defile your Caste? Have you entirely defiled it? If so, you have entirely defiled your family. If you choose to write, write, but not upon a subject with which my mind has no affinity.”

One scene burnt into Amy’s mind as never before the horrors of caste. She had seen a little boy 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 the whole time they were in the house. Two months later she visited the same house. There he lay, crying still, though his cries were weary and much weaker.

They lifted him out. I should not have known the child—the pretty face drawn, 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 doesn’t make much noise now.” He couldn’t, poor little lad. I begged them to take him to the hospital at Palamcottah, 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 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 the weak little wails. And to think—it need not have been! The last thing I heard them say as we left the house was “Cry softly, or we’ll put more medicine in!” The little hands tightened over the poor eyes as he tried to stifle the sobs and “cry softly.”. . . Oh friends, is it not a cruel thing, this horrid hydra-headed caste? Those women were not heartless, but they would rather see their baby die in torture by