1.07.04. Book 7: 4. No Purple Fields
4. NO PURPLE FIELDS "You’ll find no purple fields of Arcady out there." THE SHOCK: This is the short, sharp name given by some of us to the first year abroad. There are places where it is not so. All skies have their starry patches. But many have felt it exactly that.
Ragland had not fed before coming out on the type of missionary literature which paints the picture with the devil out of it, or, if in it, elderly, tamed-almost a respectable devil. Such books had not been written then. But, being the man he was, he had gathered a series of impressions, and looked to find blessed ardours, a general beaming of heavenly rays more evident than at home and, as a matter of course (and why not?), Pentecostal things happening constantly.
He found, as many another has since, a certain chasm between platform and floor. Set on the common sand of life, the missionary glow is not always as luminous as one might expect. The only glow apparent after the first rosy days of rosy glasses is that proceeding from a very hot sun, and it leads straight, grace being in abeyance, to what is politely called nervous irritability, a sin without a halo; and then, if there was a particle of self-deception in the call, or mere skin-deep emotion in the circumstances attending it, with ruthless fingers the strong facts of life tear to shreds that poor little forlorn scrap, till Truth stands naked and shivers.
Ragland was a man of most tender and sensitive spirit. To such a one there is sure to be a time of inward trembling. What of oneself? It is so easy to settle down to less than the arduous, so easy to condone impatience and trifling lapses in love; easy, too, to slip into a soft tolerance, which does not see sin as such in those for whom one is responsible, but slides along comfortably for the sake of peace and avoids tackling it in right earnest. Above all, it is terribly easy to get accustomed to the thought and the sight of people living without Christ: "My principal grief was, and so it has continued to be, that I grieved so little," he said before he had been long in India.
It is not difficult to trace the track of the shock through Ragland’s truthful letters. His chief temptation leaned towards sarcasm and fretfulness, he says, but though nothing of either appears, there are little revealing words which show the inmost to one who knows it by experience: "Has your heart been wounded, my brother; I mean since your arrival in India? Well, we must suffer; but He suffered and will comfort."
How well one who knows the place where that letter was written can picture him as he wrote. The house familiar afterwards as one of the battle-houses of South India stands alone in its large compound, a roomy but strangely lonely-feeling house, with a bitterly hostile Hindu village on one side and an indifferent Christian community on the other. Near the gate is a sheet of water over which the sun sets in a double glory, but on the bank, buried among palms, is a wicked little demon-shrine whose night-noises keep the weary awake. To a happy heart all looks, or at any rate can be looked upon, happily; but to a wounded spirit there is a sigh in the wind in the palms, and sitting in that house one can be very sorrowful. But the hope then, as now, was the coming of our Lord. "Unbelief says, ‘He delays, and will still delay; He must, things are not ripe enough.’ But He is the faithful and true witness. Oh, when He does come, do you not think we shall all cry, ‘How quickly, how quickly’? Meanwhile, then, let our loins be girded and our lamps burning, let us run and fight each day as if our last." And he signs himself, "Your companion in tribulation (real, though unseen and sweetened) and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, to whom let every knee bow."
Other letters touch on more outward matters, but always with the same sincerity. For Ragland, by force of his character and training, could not help being sincere; he clearly saw and clearly said what he saw. Wonderfully soon he pierces the appearance and gets at what is:
"The spiritual trial to be expected most is, I think, that arising from disappointed hopes of the success of our ministry." So he writes to R. L. Allnutt of Cambridge, who was thinking of coming out. "Access to the heathen, too, is much more difficult than a person unacquainted with the country would suppose; and preaching to those who have just renounced heathenism is not so naturally or even spiritually interesting as romantic people before trial picture it to themselves." Then he hopes he is not discouraging him, but only driving him to his God for sure guidance. And he tells him something of the need, that need which can never be exaggerated. No fear there of an over-coloured canvas. And again, "Were all Christ’s dear servants only made willing to be as corn of wheat to fall into the ground and die, I should be content and thankful." And he writes of the temptation to be satisfied without getting into real touch with vital things: " Without watchfulness on the missionary’s part he will seldom come to close quarters with the great enemy in the souls of his people,"-a word that cuts to the quick, so keen is it in its truth-telling. He speaks, too, of preparation, deprecating long absorption in the study of Indian philosophy, for instance; for he longs to see the new missionary right among the people "while his feelings are fresh, before he has lost his first missionary aspirations, and begun to prefer European society and work, and to look wistfully towards home." And again in his sixth year he writes, and the words are written in golden letters in the hearts of some of us who follow after:
"Of all qualifications for mission work, and every other, charity is the most excellent.
"Of all methods of attaining to a position of usefulness and honour, the only safe and sure one is to fit ourselves for it by purging our hearts from vain-glory, worldliness and selfishness.
"Of all plans for ensuring success, the most certain is Christ’s own-becoming a corn of wheat, falling into the ground and dying.
"May the Lord’s presence go with you, wherever you go; and when you have done His work, may He give you rest."