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

others? Men with any notion of self-giving were not to be found when cholera swept again through the village. As before Amy went alone to the “black horror at our doors.” She would not permit the sitties or accals to go. Their work could not be dropped. Amy sallied forth, armed with a dinner bell and a pail full of medicines, bottles, tins, rags, and disinfectants. She tried to get the local Christian leader, the catechist, to carry the heavy pail for her. He preferred to carry his Bible, he told her. He preferred prayer meetings to sanitary work. Once the headman asked her to help him clean out some of the deadliest houses. “I was thankful. When it came to doing it he had urgent work on his fields.” Other men took an interest in the proceedings—to the extent of watching her at work.

When after two weeks the government hospital sent the subassistant surgeon, Amy was hopeful. He was “a dapper little youth with a long Brahman name.”

“May I enquire of madam where you have obtained medical training?” he asked. Nowhere, alas, she said, but in the cholera villages themselves.

“But with ‘excuses for importunance’ he seemed very doubtful as to the propriety of this occupation ‘for lay person.’” When he had delivered himself of a long dissertation on her unqualified practice, she heard herself saying “My dear boy, I was at cholera work when you were in your cradle.”

“May India be pitied on the day when she is handed over to the tender mercies of such,” Amy wrote. “‘We must put on turban or people will not respect,’ remarked the Brahman as he replaced his very nice turban, the nicest thing about him, in fact; but I could not help thinking how truly (and quite unconsciously) he spoke. The people ‘respect’ the outward show of superiority and authority, but not in the very least the inward man of the topmost caste. The poorest peasant, however, respects to the innermost fibre the English Collector or Policeman or Doctor, and would if he were in rags. Take the salt of the land out of it, and what have you left? I don’t often inflict politics on you, but for this once I do it.”

The “salt of the land”—was it Englishmen only who were salty? Was there no such thing as a salty Indian? And of the foreign collectors, policemen, or doctors, were none saltless? Amy would have disclaimed such an implication, but within her own milieu, the evidence seemed to point that way.

The war ended in 1918. The day the Family heard of the Armistice “we had a most thrilling little service, with the Te Deum of course, and every praising thing that we could find.” The school hall was made glorious with palms and yellow flowers, the children decked out in their “Sunday colors,” white and yellow. For them it was all excitement. For Amy there was the dark backdrop.

“We could never for a moment forget the sorrowing hearts upon whom the clash of bells must beat with an almost agony, and the maimed men in hospital, blinded and broken for life, and we longed with a longing that hurt to reach them with our reverent affection. Sometimes it seemed almost unbearable that we should receive so much and give nothing. What we have to give is given in certain songs in Made in the Pans”

This was a collection of her poetry and songs published in 1917, which included a section of war poems such as, “Battle-Burial,” “Died of Wounds,” “Missing,” and “This Great Obedience,” this last to a soldier dying near Ypres who instructed his soldier-servant to go on with his duty.

. . . O English nurseries that trained such sons,

O schools and playing fields that sent them forth,

Where is your like? Decadent have we grown?

Steeped in the spirit of the earth, consumed

By lesser fires than the pure altar fire

Of love of Duty? . . .

“Is There No Balm in Gilead?” touches the deep well of the meaning of suffering:

. . . Today, upon the clan

We call mankind

Falls such a woe that hadst Thou, passionless,

Spent easy days, O Christ, known only joy’s dear kiss,

Walked on safe sandalled feet

In meadowlands—Ah, who that ever ran

Naked across the plain,

Scourged by the vehement, bitter rain

And fearful wind,

But turning to Thee desperate, would miss

Something in Thee, yea, vital things? Tears were Thy meat,

A spear-stab, Thy caress,

Thou suffering Son of Man.

1. Gold Cord, p. 211.

2. Ibid, p. 220.

Chapter 32

Damascus Blades

Books not only about military heroes but about mountaineers (for example, Whymper of the Matterhorn, Somervell of Everest), explorers (Edward Wilson of the Antarctic), and great educators (Arnold of Rugby) strengthened Amy Carmichael’s determination always to aim high in the training of the children committed to her care.

“Give them not only noble teaching but noble teachers,” wrote Dorothea Beale of Cheltenham. Amy felt that the world had far too many run-of-the-mill Christians, cool, respectable, satisfied with the usual, the mediocre. Why bother to lay down one’s life to multiply the number of those? Damascus blades, forged in extremes of heat and cold, were what India needed. For that she was quite prepared to pay the price. The training at Dohnavur—spiritual, intellectual, and physical—must be, as it were, the fire and the ice.

“It is worth anything to be able for the more delicate, difficult things of life and warfare,’’ she wrote to an English recruit who was tempted to impatience at the long period of preparation needed before going to India. “So, darling, we shall think of these two or three years as given to forging the blade for what only a blade of that temper can do.”

After Walker’s death an Englishwoman who had been teaching in India for fifteen years offered her services and was gladly welcomed as God’s provision for the family. Agnes Naish was one of those sterling spinsters, thoroughly dedicated, earnest, and possessing all the right academic qualifications. Though one co-worker called her “a hoot! three thousand years behind