1.07.14. Book 7: 14. Dumb, Because Thou Didst It
14. DUMB, BECAUSE THOU DIDST IT
SLOWLY, slowly the long weeks passed. Raymon Lull in his great hour saw Calvary, bleeding outstretched hands, bleeding feet, eyes that followed and pierced, and from that vision was born a deathless word, "He that loves not lives not; he that lives by the Life cannot die." Zinzendorf when his moment came stood by an Ecce Homo, "I suffered this for thee: what hast thou done for Me?" was the question scored upon his heart, so that his motto AEternitate henceforth expressed him. No vision, no picture, has part in Ragland’s story; but through those weeks of waiting his very being was laid upon the altar of God, his exceeding joy, and the Lord whom he loved turned to ashes his burnt sacrifice. For his offer was accepted. The good old Bishop of Madras felt the matter so far out of his reach for the pure devotion in it that he could only write, "God speed it." So said the two Committees, so said everyone whose word had weight. He was persuaded not to resign his Fellowship, and the men to be sent to him were to be the care of the C.M.S. With this one exception all his plans were commended, and by Christmas Eve, 1851, the hundred hindrances whose forbidding faces all who have attempted even the least of unattempted things know so well, were got over or under or round. The door swung open. . . then slammed shut. A sudden and serious haemorrhage from the lung seemed to end all. But it was no accident. It was the working out of the law of pains for the pioneer; was ever one who was not tested to the uttermost, beset behind and before, crushed and milled till nothing was left for the eye of man to find beauty in, or any power? And so it is that when the work is accomplished the excellency of the power is shown and known to be of God and not of us. The thing is done. Who did it? Not this poor man, how could he? Who, then, but the Lord, Karia Kartar, Doer of things? But for the moment on that strange day, like a loving child struck sharply by the hand it trusts, so was that stricken heart, and as the child speaks not a word, only tries hard to keep the tears back, so it was now: "Dumb, because Thou didst it."
Didst it, but how? Not in the sense of giving the distress of disease. But in the sense of allowing yet another battle-field to be spread out before His warrior, that strength, being perfected in weakness, should triumph gloriously.
"Put forth Thine hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh. And the Lord said unto Satan, Behold, he is in thine hand." And yet was ever Job, the real Job, held closer in the hand of his God than when that alien hand touched his bone and his flesh? But all down the ages the Lord God Omnipotent has turned the tremendous attack of His foe ("An enemy hath done this") into magnificent gain. In suffering, more than conquerors; see them, the Lord’s peculiar treasure, by whom He sits watching as the goldsmith of the East by his gold in the red fire.
Consciously or unconsciously, Ragland must have thought along these lines, for he conquered by the grace of his God. But for the moment he was stricken hard, "Satan’s angel dealing blow after blow." So for awhile he was dumb.