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

For its own good. The which if thou survive,

Thou’rt labeled one of that community

Who loving much can suffer woefully,

And yet mix laughter with their foolish pains,

And go on unsubdued—

The Calm Community of the Criticized.5

Rumors flew about this extraordinary woman, who at first had no idea that the “fervent, general fuss” pertained to her at all. Once an Anglican canon asked her to speak at a drawing-room meeting in Madras. The last thing Amy sought was the limelight. It had nothing to do with what she called “K.B.,” King’s Business, and it might hinder the work for the children. Furthermore—was she to appear before these Britishers in her sari? Courtesy to her host, however, won the day, and she stood up before the crowd in the bungalow. “The atmosphere was in the main frigid,” said one who was there.

Her opening sentence confirmed one of the rumors. “I had a dream last night.” She was reputed to be a dreamer of dreams.

“I thought I had come to this gathering, and an aged child of God with many years’ service behind him was asked to pray. ‘O Lord,’ he said, ‘here we are gathered together for yet another meeting, and Thou knowest how tired we are of meetings. Help us to get through this one.’ ”

The humor melted some of the ice on that occasion and her listeners allowed themselves to laugh. Perhaps the little sari-clad dark-haired dynamo was not quite so stuffy as they had imagined.

But criticism continued. Someone suggested that her efforts to save temple children were nothing more than a stunt, meant to draw attention to herself. The temple system was centuries old—what did she think she could do about it? Preposterous allegations found ready acceptance: She was a dictator, she opposed marriage, her Indian girls worshipped her.

No wonder she wrote,

O Thou who art my quietness, my deep repose,

My rest from strife of tongues, my holy hill,

Fair is Thy pavilion, where I hold me still.

Back let them fall from me, my clamorous foes,

Confusions multiplied;

From crowding things of sense I flee, and in Thee hide.

Until this tyranny be overpast,

Thy hand will hold me fast;

What though the tumult of the storm increase,

Grant to Thy servant strength, O Lord, and bless with peace.6

1. Gold Cord, p. 58.

2. Scraps No. 2, 1907.

3. Gold Cord, p. 66.

4. Amy Carmichael, Roots, p. 55.

5. Amy Carmichael, Made in the Pans (London: Oliphants), p. 37.

6. Toward Jerusalem, p. 2.

Chapter 25

Place of Dragons

Eight years after Servant of Jesus and Preena had come to Amy’s verandah in Pannaivilai, another woman and child materialized as unexpectedly on her verandah in Dohnavur. It was March 1909.

“Protect us!” the woman begged. Her relatives wanted to take the child from her and marry her to a man of their own choosing. “Muttammal is my only child. I cannot bear to give her up.” Amy took them in, but found that the woman was “thoroughly wicked.” She disappeared for two weeks, then reappeared, demanding the child back. They were forced to comply by order of the sub-magistrate. It proved to be an intricately tangled case, and Amy’s letters were full of it for months to come.

In August Muttammal was released to Amy by the court on the condition that she keep caste. This was a great inconvenience to the Dohnavur family and a sore trial for Muttammal since it meant that she must cook her own food in a kitchen all by herself. The poor child fretted against this till she read the story of the meal prepared for the disciples on the shore. “Who cooked the fish?” There was a long pause. “Why, our Lord must have cooked it Himself! It doesn’t say an angel came to do it.” Another pause. Then, in awed and penitent tones, “And I didn’t want to do my own cooking!” Close watch had to be kept at all times, for if anyone succeeded in tying on her the marriage jewel, she was legally his property. There were repeated summonses to court, the relatives trotting out “proofs” that the girl was being illegally detained, and arguing among themselves as to whose were the rights. It was a cardinal principle of British rule in India that religious neutrality must be maintained. Amy’s claim that she was protecting the child from danger, whether from marriage customs or religious activities that were iniquitous, was seen as a breach of that principle. A year or so before Muttammal’s coming Amy had visited a temple child, “a little dove in a cage,” and had seen the powers of the system at work.

I did not find that she minded her cage. The bars have been gilded, the golden glitter has dazzled the child. She thinks her cage a pretty place, and she does not beat against its bars as she did in the earlier days of her captivity. As we talked with her we understood the change. When first she was taken from school the woman to whose training her mother has committed her gave her polluting poetry to read and learn, and she shrank from it, and would slip her Bible over the open page and read it instead. But gradually the poetry seemed less impossible; the atmosphere in which those vile stories grew and flourished was all about her; as she breathed it day by day she became accustomed to it; the sense of being stifled passed. The process of mental acclimatisation is not yet completed, the lovely little face is still pure and strangely innocent in its expression; but there is a change, and it breaks the heart of the friend who loves her to see it. “I must learn my poetry. They will be angry if I do not learn it. What can I do?” And again, “Oh, the stories do not mean anything,” said with a downward glance, as if the child-conscience still protested. It is worse with that little girl today; there is less inward revolt; and tomorrow how will it be with her?1

So it