1.07.12. Book 7: 12. Impossible?

12. IMPOSSIBLE?

SOUTH, by way of Arcot, Salem, Dindigal, Madura, that bullock-cart and its attendant bullock-carts, piled with the required baggage and servants, crawled through the stuffy weeks. For a large part of nine months it was Rag­land’s home, a cramped little vehicle, with a low mat roof, too low to sit up under, too short to stretch out in, for the cart has yet to be evolved that can contain comfortably an Englishman. And as it passed unhastingly through the northern part of the most south­ern district occupied by the C.M.S., Ragland found himself in a waste land (not that that was new, but a waste land for which as a C.M.S. man he felt responsible), for it was unevange­lized. Then, as he saw day after day people who had heard nothing, could hear nothing of Christ, his heart walked after his eyes, and his spirit was greatly set on fire, and his soul was in distress. Why must they go on with­out hearing? Was there no way by which they could hear?

There was a way; but no one had ever tried it. In all India, so far as we can discover, it had never once been tried. That which has never been tried is usually called "impossible" and dismissed. Ragland was a very modest man, very unsure of himself, diffident to a fault, the opposite of the accepted typical pioneer; but here he was again upon the dreadful stairways of desire; the Impossible called him and would not cease. These people must be reached. Impossible or not, the thing must be attempted. And after long pondering (who that has travelled in a South Indian bullock-cart but can imagine that inter­rupted pondering?) he put into words thoughts which had grown up in his heart as he com­muned with his dear Lord, and asked not only to be set free entirely from all other work, but to be given for fellow-workers men to whom the Cross was the attraction.

It could mean nothing less. They must be willing to forgo much then (and now) usually considered essential to the well-being of English­men. They must be willing to live among the people, as nearly as possible one with them, camping out month after month, moving from place to place as the leading came, preach­ing to all within walking distance of each camp, separating as they grew more at home in the work, each Englishman taking an Indian brother, the two to live together as brothers. English home life could not be; it would hinder the work. How could a man give himself to this kind of life, how fulfil its unceasing demands without a care or a distraction if he had a wife and little children whose health and happiness must be his charge?

Only so could the men of that district be reached (the women could only be reached by women, and it fell to the lot of his spiritual successor, Walker of Tinnevelly, to help for­ward the first women’s band). Such a plan must mean sacrifice. There was no easier way.

Sacrifice-when was anything worth attempt­ing accomplished without sacrifice? The very word allured him, enchanted him; but it was a disciplined man and no vague dreamer who calmly set down in black and white what the work demanded and must have if it was to be done as it ought to be done. And as we read we note a change of manner since the day when he burned for far flights, for martyrdom in Japan. From this distance it is clear as light that the little chillings had had their part to play in the plan of his life; to the ardent man thus chilled those trials of the spirit turned to a tempering of the steel. Burn­ing fires of eager loves, then the plunge into iciest water; thus are God’s sword-blades made.