18 Characteristics

Chapter 18

CHARACTERISTICS

MORE than once, since I began to write this book, it has been remarked to me by persons whose thoughts of Mrs. Lewis were altogether kindly, that she was an ordinary woman, and that the interest of her life is rather due to circumstance than to personality. Dissenting profoundly from this judgment, regarding her as one of the most extraordinary women I have ever met, I have wondered how such an opinion could have arisen. And I have to confess that if the lack of specific brilliant endowments makes a person ordinary, then perhaps there is excuse for speaking of Mrs. Lewis in such terms. Of genius, in the usual acceptation of the term, she had none. And no one was more perfectly aware of this than herself. She had no great learning. She was not a great speaker. Her speeches were quiet, earnest, matter-of-fact statements of the things which she had seen with her eyes, or which she most surely believed in her heart. She was not a brilliant writer. Her letters are interesting, and often fascinating, because she tells, with artless directness, stories of life and work which are remote from common experience. And withal her personal bearing was quiet and unobtrusive to a degree.

Mrs. Lewis was an extraordinary woman, not by reason of unusual mental endowments, but rather by reason of distinguished moral and spiritual qualities, which achieved such co-ordination and control and consecration of modest gifts, as resulted in the building up of exalted character and the accomplishment of splendid work. Her life affords an illustration of the truth that common gifts, conscientiously used to the utmost limits of their content, become uncommon, and that whoso does his absolute best in a good cause avails himself of the mystic forces of a divinely ordered universe, unconsciously, if unconsciously, fulfilling Emerson’s injunction: " Hitch your waggon to a star."

If Mrs. Lewis’s gifts were common gifts, they were good gifts, and she had good store of them. No woman could have done what she did without a splendid physical constitution, managed and conserved with the wisdom of common sense. Her powers of endurance under exhausting and perilous conditions often elicited her wondering gratitude. In exigent circumstances, when the call of God came to her, she could take the biggest risks, brave woman that she was. But in normal conditions her devotion to her vegetable garden and her religious solicitude for all the details of domestic management which made for hygiene, proved how precious in her eyes was the matter of health, without which the work could not be done. The reader will remember that in her discussion of the qualifications of a woman missionary, next after spiritual fitness she places a sound constitution. In her judgment an imperfect recognition of the fundamental importance of this matter was the simple and lamentable explanation of much sorrow and disappointment and loss.

Possibly not without subtle relation to her sound physical constitution was her notable force of will, which has been sufficiently illustrated in the foregoing pages. And I think it likely that the calmness which was one of her marked characteristics was due to her consciousness that when all was said she would do what seemed to her to be right, to the limit of her powers, irrespective of opposition, protest, or demur. Irritation, fuss, and fluster are the froth of weakness. She knew herself to be strong. She feared God and nothing else, and declined to waste her energy in superfluous perturbation. In her native force of will is to be found the explanation of her extraordinary power of work. The amount of labour which she got through day by day in the debilitating climate of tropical Africa is amazing to many people of normal health, who perform their tasks in the comparatively bracing atmosphere of the homeland. What she willed to do she did. Fluctuations of mood were disregarded; petty distractions were disallowed. Enlightened and determined, she kept her course, as a liner forges on its way in spite of contrary winds, or buffeting seas, or enervating calms. Of course the volume and value of her work were immensely increased by her strict observance of method. She worked by plan; and here again it is force of will that tells. We are all of us methodical in ideal. The most casual of mortals has probably made schemes of work and time-tables enough to suffice for the good ordering of half a dozen lives. We resolve to make plans, exhaust our impulses in the seductive labours of construction, and fail in the detail of fulfilment. Mrs. Lewis made her plans and did what she planned to do. In an early chapter I have referred to her diary-keeping. Another illustration may be cited. Fifteen years before her death she determined to retain copies of her letters. The last letter she ever wrote, given in the previous chapter, was taken from her copy, and not from the original. Her patience was as impressive as her strength of mind, and she had need of it all. The perversities and the backslidings of men and women and children for whose salvation she toiled and prayed tried her sorely, but she never gave up hope or the effort and the prayer which hope inspires. The children under training in her household were a care to her by day and night, which she sustained to the very end. After the session had closed at Kirapese, and when the illness was already upon her which resulted in her death, she wrote a long letter to Mrs. Bowskill, extending to several closely written quarto pages, discussing mission business. In the course of it she gave an account, not untouched with humour, of the impish tricks of one small girl of the household, whose genius for mischief engineered a series of midnight casualties and alarms suggestive of the interference of malignant spirits. Detected and foiled in other matters, the culprit one night startled the dormitory with outbursts of screaming, ostensibly occasioned by a recurrent dream that she was being badly beaten. Finally, Mrs. Lewis sent her husband to assure the innocent sufferer that next time the dream came he would fulfil it with a stick. There was no next time. But the grand trial of her patience was the seven years’ work at Kibokolo. By long labour, by kindness which could not be exhausted and would not be gainsaid, she won the respect and confidence of her wild, barbarous neighbours, and toward the end of her stay there were hopeful signs of coming harvest — the harvest of souls, for which her soul longed with passion derived from the very heart of God. She often spoke of the weariness and discouragement of those years of waiting. But her patience never failed. She held to her work, confident that if not in her day, yet surely in days that followed hers, the faithful sowing would be recompensed by Divine increase. It was even so. And the patience which waited for it was divine patience. I do not know whether she was acquainted with Dora Greenwell’s "Carmina Crucis," but I can well imagine her finding comfort in one fine verse, so perfectly expressive of her own soul’s attitude:

"And while my God is waiting I can wait."

There is little need to speak of her courage. I decline to call it masculine. There was nothing masculine about her. Her courage was sustained by faith. She was engaged on God’s business; she trusted Him to take care of His servant, and trusting found no cause for fear. One incident which I have failed to locate in the story may be cited in further illustration. In the course of a journey which she was making with her husband through unexplored country, her hammock-bearers and a number of carriers got ahead of Mr. Lewis, who had been detained. Suddenly their progress was barred by armed natives, who opened fire. The carriers dropped their loads and bolted, and her hammock-bearers besought permission to set her down. This she peremptorily refused, and by sheer power of will kept them to their duty. There was more firing, but putting large trust in God and some lesser confidence in the bad marksmanship of the natives with their flint-lock guns, she waited until Mr. Lewis came up and placated the enemy.

If Mrs. Lewis lacked the brilliant intellectual qualities which are notes of genius, she possessed in liberal measure what genius often wants, in disastrous destitution, viz., good sense — sense so good that it made her far-seeing, as Mr. Brock justly observes, and of sound judgment. Her papers which have passed through my hands prove abundantly how profoundly her practical wisdom was respected by her colleagues, who, as I have already stated, were accustomed to appeal to her for counsel in their many difficulties; and I know that I can claim the concurrence of Mr. Baynes and Mr. Wilson when I say that there was no woman on the field whose opinions concerning the conduct and the policy of the Mission were received by the Committee with greater consideration.

She was an excellent judge of character, and though charitable toward all men, by no means confined herself to the use of honeyed words. She never found fault where there was none; but when she found it she described it in plain terms. In confidential letters to her friends occur passages of personal criticism which would make piquant reading if it were permissible to publish them. Conscientious and painstaking herself, she loathed slackness and slovenliness, especially when they appeared in what purported to be the service of God. Once, upon a great occasion, she heard a paltry speech from a minister of repute. Upon a lesser occasion he repeated large part of this speech, watered down to more insipid weakness, in her hearing and mine. I had known her a long time, but the withering terms of her criticism were something of a revelation. Her habitual calmness of demeanour tended to suggest that she was unemotional; and this sometimes placed her at a temporary disadvantage in dealing with people who looked for demonstration. She was conscious of such disadvantage; and I recall a letter in which she congratulates a sister missionary upon the possession of a temperament which encouraged instant response. But " still waters run deep," and if Mrs. Lewis was a great woman, as I believe she was, it was in chief because "she loved much." She loved the dumb creatures about her, and was profoundly moved by the sight of their suffering. I once said to her husband, since her death, " Was her calmness never broken up? Did she never explode? " And he replied, " I only remember three or four occasions upon which she was carried away by fierce anger, and in every instance it was cruelty to animals which provoked the explosion."

She loved the lowly creatures of God; but her greater love was given to those whom He has made in His own image, and for whom Christ died. Of her love for her husband and her kinsfolk and her elect friends, who answered her love in kind, little need be said. It was beautiful and worthy of her, but still within the common range of human experience and emotion. The love which marked her out and made her great was that holy charity which regards with divine compassion the ugly, the unthankful, and the evil. Squalid African babies, men and women foul with hideous vices and enthralled by bestial customs, were to her kind heart the dear objects of incessant solicitude. Enlightened by her great love, she understood the frightful strength of the forces which crushed them, yet steadfastly believed in the possibility of their deliverance. Surrounded by naked savages possessed by legions of devils, she saw as in a vision these same savages, clothed and in their right minds, sitting at the feet of Jesus, and the vision lured her on to persist, at any cost, in those ministries of love through which she hoped He might effect the transforming exorcism. And this great love was begotten and sustained in her soul by faith in "Jesus Christ and Him crucified." She was an evangelical Christian. In early youth, as she journeyed, she came to a place where there was a cross, and as she gazed at Him who hung there, the burden of sin rolled away, but the burden of love came upon her, and she never dropped the blessed load. " He loved me and gave Himself for me," was the dominant note of those " everlasting chimes " which made the cheer and inspiration of her sacrificial life. And the love which was " unto death " for her, was "unto death" for the whole world. And where in the whole world were men and women whose need of the knowledge of the love of God was more clamant and tragical than that of the Congo peoples? The fingers of the pierced hand beckoned her to Africa. To Africa she went; and for Africa she lived and died.

One personal word, and my task is done. Upon his return to England, alone, Mr. Lewis told me that during one whole day, as his wife lay dying, her minister’s name was continually upon her lips; and, moreover, that she had expressed the desire that if anything were written about her it should be written by his hand. The kindly reader will understand that this affecting statement could not fail to impart a certain solemn tenderness to the temper in which I undertook my work. I would that the hand had been more cunning, and the heart and brain behind it worthier of the confidence and affection of my friend. But I have done my best. I have observed restraint. I have painted in quiet colours, as she herself would have desired. And if this simple memorial of Christian character and consecrated service carries on the thought of the reader to the Lord who inspired them, and elicits sympathy for the cause to which they were so freely given, my recompense will be great, and I will render humble thanks to God, Who made her what she was, and permitted me to write her story.