A Door Shut, a Door Opened

“Trust in Jehovah with all thy heart, And lean not upon thine own understanding: In all thy ways acknowledge him, And he will direct thy paths.”

— Proverbs 3:5-6, ASV

Ceylon

Amy Carmichael arrived in Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, in the late summer of 1894. She was ill, tired, and uncertain of her future, and she had come without the approval of the committee that had sent her to Japan. To some of her friends at home it looked like a mistake: a young woman acting on impulse, mistaking her own restlessness for the leading of God. She herself believed that she had been guided, and that she was meant to be in Ceylon, at least for a time.

Her stay there was short, and we know comparatively little about it. She was received by Christian friends, she recovered some of her strength, and she took part in evangelistic work, speaking at meetings and visiting homes. The island was warm, green and beautiful, and its people, Sinhalese and Tamil, were of many faiths: Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims and Christians. For the first time, she was among Tamil-speaking people, though she could not yet have known that Tamil would become the language of her life.

It is tempting to see the Ceylon months as a bridge to India, and in a sense they were. But at the time they must have felt more like a pause, or a detour. She did not know where she was going. She had left Japan, she had not been accepted by any mission board, and her health was as poor as ever. If she had a plan, it was simply to obey day by day and wait for the next step to become clear.

News from Broughton Grange

The next step came in a form she did not expect. Late in 1894 news reached her that Robert Wilson had suffered a stroke. He was an old man, and it seemed possible that he would not recover. Amy did not hesitate. She left Ceylon at once and sailed for England, arriving home towards the end of the year.

Robert Wilson recovered, at least in part, and lived for another ten years. Amy stayed with him at Broughton Grange through his convalescence, and for some months it seemed that her missionary career might be over. She had gone out to Japan and come back ill; she had gone to Ceylon and come back to nurse an invalid. Some of those who had criticised her for leaving him in the first place must have felt that events had proved them right.

But she did not believe that the call had been withdrawn. She had been told to go, and she had gone; that she had come back did not mean that she was meant to stay. She waited, and she prayed, and she watched for a door to open.

The Zenana Society

The door that opened in 1895 was the Church of England Zenana Missionary Society. It had been founded in 1880 to send women missionaries to work among women in India and China, especially in the zenanas, the secluded women’s quarters of high-caste homes, where no male missionary could go. It was an Anglican society, and Amy was not an Anglican, but its leaders knew of her through the Keswick connection, and they were willing to accept her.

The question of health came up again. On medical advice it was agreed that if she were to go to India at all, she should go to Bangalore, in the south, where the climate on the high plateau was cooler and healthier than on the plains. It was a sensible precaution, and Amy accepted it. She was to go to Bangalore, learn the language, and see whether her health would bear the strain. Nobody, least of all Amy herself, knew that she was going to India for good.

Robert Wilson gave his consent again. It must have been even harder the second time. He was older and weaker, and he knew now what it meant to lose her. But he let her go, and he continued to support her with his letters and his prayers until his death in 1905.

Sailing for India

In October 1895 Amy Carmichael sailed for India. She was twenty-seven. She arrived at Madras, on the south-east coast, in November, and travelled inland to Bangalore. She did not know it, but she would never see Britain again. She would spend the remaining fifty-five years of her life in India, and she would never take a furlough. In an age when missionaries normally went home every few years to rest, to report and to raise support, her staying would become one of the things she was known for.

It was not, at first, a deliberate decision. She did not sail in 1895 with a vow never to return. The decision grew out of circumstances: the work she found herself doing, the children who came to depend on her, the dangers that would face them if she left, and her own conviction that she was needed where she was. In later years it hardened into a principle, and she encouraged the members of her Fellowship to think carefully before going home. But in 1895 she was simply a young missionary of uncertain health, going out on trial, to a station she had not chosen, for a society she did not belong to by tradition.

India in 1895

The India to which she sailed was ruled by the British Crown, which had taken over the government of the country from the East India Company after the great rising of 1857. The south of the peninsula was governed from Madras as the Madras Presidency, alongside a number of princely states whose rulers kept a measure of independence under British oversight. British rule was at its height, and to most Britons it seemed permanent. But the Indian National Congress had been founded ten years earlier, Indian newspapers were debating self-government, and educated Indians were asking hard questions about the foreign power that ruled them and the foreign religion that so many of its people professed.

Hinduism itself was in a period of ferment. Reformers were challenging child marriage, the treatment of widows and the rigidities of caste, while others were defending the old ways with new confidence against both the reformers and the missionaries. Christianity was, in most of India, the faith of a small minority. In a few places, however, it had taken root in whole communities, and one of those places was the Tinnevelly district in the far south, where Amy Carmichael would spend almost all of her life. She knew none of this in detail when she landed. She would learn it slowly, and partly by painful experience.

Guidance and Its Mysteries

The story of Amy Carmichael’s path from Broughton Grange to Bangalore raises questions about guidance that Christians have always found difficult. She believed she was called to China, and China would not have her. She went to Japan, and her health broke down. She went to Ceylon, believing herself guided, and was called home within months. She went to India because a doctor thought the climate would suit her. If one were to tell the story only by its outward events, it would look like a series of false starts.

She did not see it that way. She saw it as a path along which God had been leading her, step by step, even when she could not see where it went. The verse at the head of this chapter says, “Trust in Jehovah with all thy heart, And lean not upon thine own understanding: In all thy ways acknowledge him, And he will direct thy paths.” It does not say that the path will be straight, or that its turnings will make sense at the time. It says that God will direct it.

That is a hard kind of faith. It is easy to say afterwards that the false starts were part of the plan. It is much harder to go on trusting while the path is winding and the destination is unclear. Amy Carmichael was not always sure, in 1894 and 1895, that she was doing the right thing. She was criticised, and she sometimes doubted herself. But she kept acknowledging God in the decisions she made, and she kept moving when the next step became clear. In later years she would often counsel others not to try to see the whole road, but to take the next step in obedience.

It is worth adding a word of caution. Not every winding path ends well, and not every sense of guidance is reliable. Amy’s decision to leave Japan without consulting those who had sent her was, in the view of some who loved her, not well handled, and the criticism she received was not all unfair. Faith in God’s guidance does not excuse us from the ordinary duties of consultation and accountability. Amy learned that too, in time, though she never found it easy to submit her own sense of God’s will to the judgement of others.

What She Carried

When Amy Carmichael landed at Madras in November 1895, she carried with her more than she knew. She carried the faith of her parents and the conversion of Harrogate, the lesson of the fountain and the assurance of Glasgow. She carried the experience of the Welcome Hall and the hard lesson of Manchester. She carried the interdenominational spirit of Keswick and the quiet faith of Robert Wilson. She carried the lessons of Japan about dress and identification, and the promise received in a cave that she would not be left desolate. And she carried her neuralgia, which went with her everywhere.

She did not carry a plan. She did not know about the temple children, or Dohnavur, or the family she would gather. She knew only that she had been sent, and that she was going. The rest, as she would have said, was in other hands.