1.07.13. Book 7: 13. Vaira: Savi

13. VAIRA: SAVI WOULD he be understood? There was an abandon about the idea that caught at the breath and made men wonder, as he had once about himself, if he were in his senses. Would any understand? But his time had come. When the Lord opens who can shut? Very wistfully-for he was a child to the end in simplicity of character and did most truly trust his fellows and longed for their full sympathy-he unfolded in detail the desires of his heart, pleading for men in real sympathy, and with candid earnestness showing how if the plan were to be tried at all it should have a fair trial, which could not be unless men of steadfast purpose were entrusted with carrying it out.

"They will have very many temptations to change their way of working. Perhaps some of the best Christians, nay, even my dear brethren already in Tinnevelly, may prove in this respect temptations. They see not the matter precisely as I do." So the men must be steadfast. And humble. "I am more prolix than I intended to be, but I must still say what I meant by the requirement of peculiar humility. First, the work will be, in appearance at least, more self-denying than that of our South Indian missionaries generally; and therefore only to a very humble man would I entrust it. My hopes would be at an end if those engaged in it gave the least indication that they thought them­selves a superior class of missionaries. It would most probably considerably alienate from them our present excellent missionaries in the south; and, what is far worse, would withhold God’s blessing. Another reason for peculiar humility has reference to the intention, which I should be glad if those engaged in this work formed, of not marrying for a few years. I can conceive of no one forming this [resolve] so as not to be ensnared by it, except a person who has so little care for his reputation among men as to be content, on seeing good reasons, simply to say he had been mistaken in imagining he could live a single life."

He had another unusual idea. It was, as regards Indian workers, "not to get money from the Society and then go to the market and buy them," but to write, when he wanted them,

"to the missionaries in their different districts, and press upon them to stir up their people to supply the want; to find the men, and men of a right missionary spirit, who would leave their homes, not for larger salaries nor for batta [extra pay given to men who serve away from home], but for Christ and souls." And he had as new a thought about himself and his English colleagues. He wanted men looking not to any promised support, but cast in what was then a new way upon God. Per­sonally he purposed to resign his Fellowship (which supplied sufficient for his needs) and to take only what might be given to him by his Master through free-will gifts from Christians in India, even though he knew that might be very little, for he could not ask his colleagues to walk in a path he had not trodden himself. He knew, too, that this, his whole thought about working without guaranteed support and breaking new ground in this new way, would be called "romantic," and so he takes the bull by the horns and writes straightly, "St. Paul considered it as wages to work at Corinth without wages, and had a feeling (which in anyone else we should call romantic) about preaching Christ where he had not been named before. . . . Indeed, I am not clear that the feeling commonly called ’romantic’ is not, as much as any other natural feeling, sanctifiable, and applicable to Christ’s purposes."

He wanted men to whom even this would commend itself, for to do that particular work he required only such men as had burned their boats, every little spar of them, men ready for anything. It was fourteen years before the birth of the China Inland Mission. But Rag­land of India and Hudson Taylor of China were blood-brothers. In India we call sound timber vaira, diamond. Poorer stuff is savi. Tap a palmyra palm and you know in a moment which is within. The one makes roofs that for strength and lightness cannot be equalled except by teak, the other fails under strain.

Ragland dared not ask for less than vaira, and he besought those responsible to send only that-an anxious charge for them. (Would to God soul-substance were as quickly discoverable as palms!) But he had no choice. To ask for less was to court defeat. He was up against a power that had never been attacked, much less conquered, a power that knew how to use every element of difficulty and discourage­ment, climatic and other, in this tremendous warfare. "That supernatural power standing behind the national gods," as Delitzsch has it, in commenting upon the prince of the kingdom of Persia who was able to withstand even an angel of God for three full weeks, is no myth. The princes of the many kingdoms of India, the particular prince of this particular and as yet unchallenged territory, who may measure his force? Of what use would savi be in the stress of life? He must have men whose hearts were fixed To defy power that seems omnipotent, To love and bear, to hope till hope creates From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;

Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent:

Yes, he must have vaira, men with no weak strain in them, no reservations, and no " buts."

Quiet waiting months followed upon the letter-writing. He had once more been judged worthy to anticipate, as Hannington put it years afterwards, but much had to happen before things could ripen for action. The Committees of Madras and London had to be satisfied. This took time, for he would not hurry. He had learned to wait. He kept back his letter to Mr. Venn for a month, lest he should run before his Lord. And when the letter finally went, with what earnestness he held himself in stillness before God, praying, praying for the right men: Searcher of souls, send vaira. Was it all foolishness? Did he ask for too much? Has the Cross ceased to attract? Surely each generation as it rises thrusts forth some men and women whose hearts bound forward at the very thought of suffering for Christ crucified. The true soldiers among those who offer, those who have it in them to be warriors to the end, ask for no creamy smoothness, no sham battle-fields. They want the real thing. And the call finds them, thrills through them. They rise and obey, and a joy that passes the joy of the morning lightens upon them and abides.