Mr. Wilson wrote to comfort Mrs. Carmichael in the giving up of her “dear Child for the Lord’s work amongst the heathen. I know something of what it must cost you. . . . It hardly seems a case for anything but bowing the head in thankful acquiescence when the Lord speaks thus to one so dear. . . . The future seems changed to me. . . . She has been and is more than I can tell you to me, but not too sweet or too loving to present to Him who gave Himself for us.”
Sometimes Wilson comforted himself with the words about the colt Jesus had asked His disciples to fetch: “If any man say unto you, Why do ye this? say ye that the Lord hath need of him.”5 He needed Amy far more desperately, surely, than the man needed the colt. But it was the same Lord who asked for her. Who could say no?
1. Bishop Handley Moule, Thoughts on Christian Sanctity.
2. Matthew 16:24, 25.
3. Matthew 10:37.
4. 1 Samuel 15:22.
5. Mark 11:3.
Chapter 6
Small Shall Seem All Sacrifice
The two Wilson sons were shocked to learn of Amy’s decision. By this time they had come to terms with her lively presence in Broughton Grange. What had once been upsetting had become a part of their lives, and, though probably neither had allowed himself to admit it, they had, like Henry Higgins, “grown accustomed to her face.” Suddenly she was about to abandon them all and go off to some godforsaken place forever. Their protests were ostensibly on their father’s behalf. It was for his sake that they had tolerated her moving in with them, and certainly the old man needed her. How heartless of her to leave. It was, in effect, a breach of contract.
The Wilsons were not the only ones who were unsympathetic. Some whose names were well-known as Keswick leaders spoke “words that cut like knives.” Someone suggested that the D.O.M. would be dead before Amy was through the Mediterranean. Even Mrs. Carmichael’s sisters wondered if the girl was not enchanted by the notion of a foreign land. “If they only knew how torn in two I feel today,” Amy wrote to her mother. She was beginning to understand a little of what it might mean to “bear shame” for the sake of Christ. She was ashamed to think that as a follower of a Savior who was “despised and rejected,” she herself shrank from being merely misunderstood and misjudged. So this was what those stark Scripture passages meant: dead to self, alive to God—“dead to all one’s natural earthly plans and hopes, dead to all voices, however dear, which would deafen our ear to His.”
The old man himself, though his heart was breaking, did his best to be cheerful and comfort Amy. He had made it clear at the beginning that hers was not a binding arrangement with him, and was prepared to say so to those who accused her of a breach of faith.
One old friend, Mrs. Bell, a Quaker, actually clapped when she heard of Amy’s call.
The “Go ye” part of the call had been crystal clear. Autumn of 1892 seemed to be the right time. She would sail then. But where? That was the vague part. Africa? China? She had often thought of both. Perhaps it was the solidity of her confidence in the Great Shepherd that prevented her worrying much over the geography. He would get her where she belonged, wouldn’t He? Perhaps, too, a certain charming insouciance was a part of her nature. But now the island of Ceylon (Sri Lanka) came constantly to her attention. Why not go to Ceylon? She knew next to nothing about it—it wasn’t “all flat,” there were a lot of rats and insects there which at times “feed upon live missionaries.” It was not long, however, before Ceylon dropped out of sight and Amy began thinking of China again and of Hudson Taylor’s reminder of a million a month dying without God. She met a Mrs. Stewart, missionary from Fukien, China, and this seems to have been all that was necessary to convince her that she should go to Fukien with the Stewarts in the fall, probably under the Church of England Zenana (i.e. women’s) Missionary Society. Plans were made, but on July 16 word came that Mrs. Stewart could not return that autumn. Amy accepted it as part of the Master Plan, not dreaming that if she had gone she would most likely have been murdered three years later as were the Stewarts and several single women missionaries.
At the end of July Amy and Mr. Wilson went as usual to the Keswick Convention. By this time missionary meetings had become a regular part of it. In 1887 thirty young people had volunteered for missionary service, and the next year someone sent a ten-pound note to the chairman “as the nucleus of a fund for sending out a Keswick missionary.” It was in 1892 that the first one was chosen to be sent and supported by that fund: Amy Beatrice Carmichael. In her Daily Light, a book of daily Scripture readings arranged for morning and evening, she recorded in the margin of July 26, “Definitely given up for service abroad.” The opening verse for that day was, “By faith Abraham . . . called to go out . . . obeyed”1 Looking back after fifty years Amy declared that she was “no more fit to be a Keswick missionary than a Skye terrier puppy.” That estimate never caused her to question the validity of the call—or, we may assume, the judgment of the One who issued it.
Sometime in August Amy decided that she would offer herself to Hudson Taylor’s China Inland Mission. The wheels of mission boards in those days did not grind nearly so slowly as they do now. There was no psychological screening, no language schools, no jungle camps to survive. On August 10 she and Mr. Wilson left Broughton Grange for London. One evening as the two sat by the fire in the home of Miss Soltau, who was in charge of women candidates, “Fatherie” said to Amy, “Thee must sign thy name Carmichael Wilson in the C.I.M. papers. I would not have the world think that thou art not my child any more.” Later he changed his mind. “Thee had better write, ‘Wilson Carmichael.’” So it was that for many years she was Amy Wilson Carmichael.
Wilson returned home. That night Amy was overcome with sorrow for the Dear Old Man. She stood by the window of her little bedroom, tortured with thoughts of his desolation. Miss Soltau came and stood beside her:
The window had been open, and the little white dressing-table cover was powdered with smuts. As a tortured heart does always notice trifles, so I noticed those smuts. The words broke from me, “They say that if I leave him he will die. Even so am I right to go?” “Yes,” was Miss Soltau’s answer, “I think even so, you are right to go.”
It was a tremendous answer. She must have added something about trusting our Father to deal tenderly with His servant who had truly given me to Him, though his heart still clung to me. But all I remember of the next few minutes is that with her arms around me I entered into peace. Often, through the many years that have passed since that night, I have been helped by the memory of her courage in the ways of God to strengthen a younger soul who was being torn as I was then.2
Geraldine Guinness, who later married Hudson Taylor’s son Howard, was staying at the mission at the same time. One day she handed Amy a little folded slip of paper. On the outside she had written, “Love and deepest sympathy, my dear Amy, and many thanks for your precious, helpful words yesterday. Geraldine. A little question, Darling—see over.” On the inside:
CAN YE? Mark 10:38.
Can ye drink of the cup that I drink of? And be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?
CAN GOD? Psalm 78:19. Ye shall indeed. . . for with God all things are possible.
Now is my soul troubled—and what shall I say? Father, save me . . . Father, glorify Thy name. For this cause came I unto this hour. John 12:24-28.
On the back of this note sometime later Amy wrote:
Give and it shall be given unto you, good measure’, pressed down, shaken together and running over. Luke 6:38. God’s Good Measure.
An exceeding and eternal weight of glory. 11 Cor. 4:17,18. Lord, I believe. Help Thou mine unbelief.
Who for the joy that was set before Him—endured.
As seeing Him who is invisible
O small shall seem all sacrifice
And pain and loss,
When God shall wipe the weeping eyes,
For suffering give the Victor s Prize,
The Crown for Cross.
“I wi
ll trust and NOT be afraid.
Jan. 18923 Jan. 18935
Sept. 18924 March 3, 18936 from today till He come.”
The paper is dog-eared, insect-eaten, stained. She must have carried it in her Bible for the rest of her life.
Miss Soltau took her shopping for the things she would need in China. Together they packed them in two airtight tin trunks. Everything was ready.
No, it wasn’t. The mission doctor refused to give approval for Amy to go to China, so back she went to Broughton Grange. The D.O.M. was ecstatic. “The Lord has given me back my Isaac!” he said. So it was the old peaceful grange life again. Amy played with her dog, Scamp, rode the pony Wilson gave her, helped with his writing, spoke in women’s meetings. But one thought never left her: “This is not your rest.” Doctors’ verdicts notwithstanding, she knew she had to go.
1. Hebrews 11:8.
2. Mildred Cable and Francesca French, A Woman Who Laughed: Biography of Henrietta Soltau, pp. 154ff.
3. The date of her hearing the GO YE.
4. To the China Inland Mission Home in London.
5. “Go to Japan” (see chapter 7).
6. Sailed for Japan.
Chapter 7
The Rending
On January 13, 1893 “the thought came” to Amy that Japan was the place for her to go. She had been praying and waiting for months, sure that she was not to “nestle down,” that God in His time would make things plain. The battle with her feelings for the Dear Old Man was not finished. The words of Matthew 10:37 were always with her: “He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me.”
If it was in fact God’s leading, it was not by any miracle such as a pillar of fire, an audible voice, an angelic visit, a star, or handwriting on the wall. It was not by the ordinary methods by which, in combination, God seems to nudge us in the path of righteousness: circumstances, common sense, godly counsel, biblical principles. It was a thought. We may believe that God can impress such a thought on a mind surrendered to Him, and leave it at that. The pitfalls are many, however, and the story of Amy’s next year or two may illustrate this.
She knew no one in Japan, but the D.O.M. did. Barclay Buxton, a missionary with the Church Missionary Society, was the leader of the Japan Evangelistic Band, a group of young people not necessarily associated with the CMS. Wilson wrote to tell him of Amy’s “strange feeling” (her words) that she was to go to Japan, and asked if he had a place for her. Instead of expecting that Buxton’s reply, negative or affirmative, might be an indication of the will of God, they were so confident of the validity of their first feeling that they followed another one. Both “felt” she should head for Japan at the earliest possible moment. A party of CIM women was to sail on March 3 for Shanghai. Why not go with them? Buxton could send his reply there. Amy confidently booked a passage.
The few weeks that remained before she was to part with her beloved “Fatherie” were filled with anguish. Mr. Wilson believed God had given her to him as if she were his own lost daughter brought back from the dead, and his “flesh and his heart failed” at the prospect of Broughton Grange without Amy. No doubt she kept her sunny disposition with him, and they comforted each other with the promises of Scripture—anyone who relinquishes anything for the Lord’s sake will not go unrewarded. But there were times alone in her room when all the waves and billows washed over her.
“Never, I think, not even in Heaven shall I forget that parting,” Amy wrote fifty-two years later. “It was such a rending thing that I never wanted to repeat it. . . . Even now my heart winces at the thought of it.” At about the same time she told a friend what she had never told anyone: “The night I sailed for China, March 3, 1893, my life, on the human side, was broken, and it never was mended again. But He has been enough.”
The steamship Valetta of the Peninsula and Orient Lines left the dock in Tilbury where many friends of the four women had gathered to say good-bye. Farewells to those leaving nowadays by jet plane are nothing compared to the protracted agonies of dockside partings. Now the traveler simply disappears into the jetway. It is a mere walking into another room. Then it was gangplanks, hours of visiting on board, the “All ashore!” the deep-throated whistles, the throwing off of moorings, the slow glide away from the dock, the almost imperceptible widening of the great gulf between voyager and loved ones, the straining to discern till the last possible moment the diminishing face. When Amy sailed, friends stood on the wharf and sang, “Crown Him with Many Crowns, the Lamb upon His Throne,” and “Like a River Glorious is God’s Perfect Peace,” one of the Keswick hymns. The ship was within a stone’s throw for an hour, so the singing went on and on, the same hymns sung again and again, the words taking on an ever more poignant significance:
Crown Him the Son of Man
Who every grief hath known
That wrings the human breast,
And takes and bears them for His own
That all in Him may rest.
MATTHEW BRIDGES
Amy stood by the rail, watching intently the dear wrinkled face of the old man. Each, “on the human side,” was broken. When, many years later, she held up before prospective missionary recruits the standard of the Cross of Jesus, no one could say she knew not whereof she spoke. If there was peace in her heart at that moment, it was nothing less than Jesus’ last gift to His own—“My own peace, such as the world cannot give. Set your troubled hearts at rest, and banish your fears.”1 It was the peace her friends were singing about, “like a river glorious.” But it did not utterly cancel the pain. As the ship rounded the last corner there stood the Dear Old Man again, having hiked a half-mile down the docks for a last glimpse. They were close enough to call out Bible verses to each other and a phrase Amy remembered from the farewell meeting, “Jesus has two nail-pierced hands. He lays one upon each and parts us so—He does the parting.”
When the speck that was the dearest face finally disappeared, did she rush to her cabin and throw herself on the bunk sobbing? Not likely. Perhaps she waited by the rail until England dropped from sight, reviewing all the way the Lord had led her. Like Abraham, she did not know where she was going, and found comfort in the words of Genesis 12:1, “unto a land that I will show thee.” Like Abraham, she had by faith obeyed what she believed to be the voice of God.
How would she spend the weeks between England and Colombo where she would transship? She considered the options. There were games. She loved games. But she was a missionary now, and a missionary hasn’t time for games. She prayed for opportunities to speak of Christ to the sailors and fellow passengers. The captain himself asked her to put up Bible verses in his cabin “as a witness to all” that he had come to know the Lord Jesus Christ.
She wrote to the Keswick friends that she was “peacefully miserable,” that is, seasick. She paraphrased a hymn:
Peace, perfect peace, though seasick we can sing,
For even so we are beneath His wing.
On the first Sunday a service was held in the salon. Rough weather took the starch out of most of the passengers—“we sang hymns somewhat faintly”—and the congregation dwindled until a gentleman from first class suggested that the “Salvation Army ladies” (he had heard them singing hymns when they embarked—they must be Salvation Army) should address what Amy called the “survivors.” She and a German missionary gladly complied. She also held a Bible study down below the main hatchway each morning, “a little ‘All-One-in-Christ’ picture, a native Indian gentleman who is searching the records of the world’s religions to find the true one; a poor simple Lascar who once met a missionary who told him about Jesus and who clings to Him very wistfully as his ‘own One,’ a Chinaman, comical and eager who loves Him ‘muchly,’ and a nice old Ayah . . . met with us to read His book together.”
In the Bay of Biscay they sang another Keswick hymn, one stanza of which reads, “O how great Thy lovingkindness, vaster, broader than the sea.”2
Behind us lay the calm, dark waters stretching away and away
, before us they shimmered in a glory of color and gold, above was the glow of eventide, underneath were the everlasting arms of a Love limitless as the encompassing ocean. . . . As we entered the Mediterranean He commanded His stormy wind to lash the quiet waters into a glorious fury. . . . Through the mighty rush and roar the old psalm sung itself chorus-fashion over and over, “The floods have lifted up, O Lord, the floods have lifted up their voice. . . . The Lord on High is mightier than the noise of many waters.”3
As they steamed past the coast of “Darkest Africa” Amy saw one tiny light which typified for her how few spiritual light-bearers there were, and begged her correspondents not to go on leaving “the voiceless silence of despair” unanswered.
While traversing the Suez Canal they passed caravans of camels, pacing through the sand, followed by blue-robed, white-turbaned Arabs. As they passed camps, small boys rushed out and called for “baksheesh,” a handout of money. Seeing the “solemn Sinai ridge” with its bare red peaks and rolling desert, Amy thought of the people of Israel standing far off while Moses went up the mountain and into the thick darkness where God was. At Aden she saw for the first time “the great Need, face to face”—swarms of curio vendors and diving boys, clad in chocolate brown and little else, “without Christ, without hope, without God in the world.” Ceylon, a wonderland of rest to their sea-weary eyes, seemed like “a great peopled hothouse minus the glass.” In Colombo the missionaries were “taken possession of by brothers and sisters in Jesus,” driven over red sand roads to a bungalow where breakfast waited. Amy sat down to the little organ—glad of one that remained steady after the stormy passage—and played Samuel Rutherford’s hymn, “The Sands of Time are Sinking,” a Keswick favorite, as well as Frances Ridley Havergal’s “Like a River Glorious.” In Colombo as in Penang, Singapore, and Hong Kong, Amy asked to see the mission work, and seemed to have Old Home Week with many who had been to Keswick, knew the Keswick songs, read the Keswick magazine, The Life of Faith.
A Chance to Die Page 5