A Lady of England 39

A Lady of England 39

‘I have seen the many beauties of this place well.... I have

looked on the rapids above the Falls. They seemed to me an

emblem of human life. Such a rushing,--such a hurry,--chafing

against obstacles,--impatience, passion, excitement. Then comes

the grand leap--boldly, almost joyously, taken,--the leap into

cloud and mystery,--and below, the river emerges from froth and

foam, comparatively calm. One wonders that it is as quiet as it

appears to be after such a plunge!

 

‘Yes, I shall never see such a sight again, till I behold the

Great White Throne, and the Sea of Glass, like unto crystal.

 

‘We all wandered about yesterday, till we were too much tired

to wander more. We had intended to sit up to see moonlight on

Niagara; but instead of so doing we separated at 9. I soon fell

asleep, but I woke in the dim twilight, I suppose at about 3

A.M. The opportunity was not to be lost. I washed and dressed,

as much by feeling as by sight, opened my venetian shutters,

and walked out into the verandah which commands a fine view of

both Falls.

 

‘I was in utter solitude, under the light of the moon. Not in

silence, for the sound of many waters is unceasing. I suppose

that for thousands of years Niagara has been praising her

Creator, as she does now. The sound is not at all _noisy_; on

the contrary, it does not disturb conversation, which surprises

me.

 

‘I sang snatches of the Hallelujah Chorus, as I looked on the

waterfall by moonlight. There was no distinct play of moonbeams

on the water; there was an immense amount of mist,--one felt

as if looking down on clouds. Presently the clouds in the sky

flushed rosy in the dawn; the moon grew pale; Niagara with

her emerald green more distinct. I waited till I had seen the

sunrise--it was not a very bright one--and then I retired to

my room, and went to sleep again.... Solitude is congenial at

Niagara.... I do not care to write on trifling themes now....

 

‘A thought came to my mind as I was resting just now. As

photographs, however faithful, convey but a very inadequate

idea of the real Niagara, so must our highest conceptions of

Heaven fall short of Heaven itself. Who that has merely seen

a photograph, or many photographs, of the Falls, can drink in

the beauty of the living, bounding, changing, glorious miracle

of Nature, which is beheld here? Yet Niagara itself is but a

bubble, compared with “the glory which shall be revealed.”’

 

Towards the end of July she returned home, to spend a few last weeks with

her dear ones before bidding them a long farewell and going forth to

her Indian campaign. Through all these weeks she does not seem to have

relaxed in her persevering study of Hindustani, or in her struggle with

the difficult gutturals which had to be mastered. Apart from this she

must have had enough to occupy her time. Among lesser employments, she

is said to have spent hours at a time in looking through her papers and

letters--the collection of a literary lifetime--and consigning masses of

the same to destruction. One cannot but wish that the destruction had

been less wholesale.

 

The Dismissal Meeting of Missionaries was on the 11th of October; and two

or three days later the _Strathclyde_ sailed.

 

To most of her relatives the parting was a good deal softened by the

conviction that Charlotte Tucker would surely soon find herself compelled

to give in, and to return to England. One of her nieces can say: ‘We all

thought, when she left us for India, that she would fail in health, and

be obliged to come home again. And so I could stand at the doorway, and

watch her as she turned round in our carriage to wave her last good-bye,

without any misgiving that it was indeed the last time that I should see

that bright smile.’

 

But her sister, Mrs. Hamilton, the loved Laura of early days, had a

truer prescience of how things would be. Speaking afterwards to a friend

about that day of parting, and about the intense, loving devotion which

had always existed between them, she said: ‘When my sister and I parted

from one another, it was a parting for ever on Earth. My sister will not

return to England on furlough, as other Missionaries do, for the reason

that she could not again go through the pain of separation.’

 

At the time little was said in letters about that heart-rending pain. It

had to be endured, and it was endured courageously.

 

So ended the fifty-four years of Charlotte Maria Tucker’s English Life.

She turned herself now, with a smile of good cheer, to the eighteen years

of her Indian Life--the Evening of her days. Three-quarters of her tale

is told, counting by years. Only one-quarter remains to be told.

 

Fifty-four years of preparation; and then the Evening of hard toil.

Fifty-four years given to slow perfecting of the instrument; and then

eighteen years of use for that instrument. This was what it came to. Not

that her English life had been without its uses and its fruits; but the

long, quiet home-existence had doubtless been mainly a making ready--or

rather, a being made ready--for that which was to come after. The first

was subordinate to the second.

 

Was it very long preparation for comparatively short work? But the worth

of work done does not depend upon the length of time occupied in the

doing. We may better understand this if we think of our Blessed Lord’s

Life,--the Thirty Years of silent preparation and waiting; and then the

Three Years’ Ministry. Each moment of His Life upon Earth bore fruit; but

none the less, those Thirty Years were mainly of preparation for what

should follow.

 

There are some who would not agree with Charlotte Tucker in considering

‘Missionary work of all work the highest’; yet in one sense, if not in

all senses, it certainly is so. The soldier who goes on a forlorn-hope

expedition ranks higher in the minds of men than the soldier who remains

in camp; and the pioneer is counted worthy of more honour than the

settler.

 

We hear in these days many a careless sneer levelled at attempts to

convert the Heathen, at the uselessness and fruitlessness of such

efforts. Nothing is easier than for a man, sitting at home in his

luxurious arm-chair, to flout those who go forth into heathen lands.

And there is a certain trick of seeming common-sense in the arguments

used, which sounds convincing. So much money spent, and so many lives

sacrificed,--and for what? Half-a-dozen converts, perhaps, in a dozen

years, some of whom prove in the end to be faithless, while others are

very far from being faultless saints. Is the result worth the outlay?

 

As for the characters of some of the converts, we only have to look at

home, and to see for ourselves what the average civilised and well-taught

and highly-trained Englishman is--how very far in a large majority of

cases from being either blameless, or saintly, or entirely faithful to

his Baptismal vows. After that glance, one may feel less surprised to

hear of failures among young and untrained converts, the whole _pull_ of

whose previous lives has been utterly adverse to Christianity; not to

speak of the baneful effects of a surrounding heathen atmosphere, always

present after conversion.

 

But as to the main argument,--whether the result is worth the outlay,--I

should be disposed to say at once frankly that, from a purely mercantile

point of view, it certainly is _not_. Very often indeed the immediate

results, seen to follow upon Missionary work, are not at all commensurate

with the amount of money spent. Many a Missionary has given his time, his

income, his life, his all, for the sake of no apparent results in his own

lifetime. There have been grand men, who have toiled steadily on through

ten years, twenty years, thirty years; and at the close, if they have had

any converts at all to show for their labours, those converts could be

counted on their fingers.

 

It may well be that one man brought out of the darkness of heathendom is

a prize worth fifty times--or five thousand times--the money expended in

bringing him. But this would not be seen from the mercantile point of

view. Neither does it touch the true gist of the question.

 

A little story told of the great Duke of Wellington, so ardently admired

by Charlotte Tucker, shall supply us with a clue here. Whether or no

the tale itself be genuine hardly affects its value as bearing on the

subject. A young clergyman is stated to have one day, in the presence of

the Duke, spoken about foreign Missions in the disparaging terms often

affected by a particular class of young men. One can exactly picture how

he did it,--the supercilious contempt of one who knew little about the

matter; and the careless looking down upon all who did not agree with

himself. But the Iron Duke is said to have responded sternly:--

 

‘SIR, YOU FORGET YOUR MARCHING ORDERS,--“GO YE INTO ALL THE WORLD, AND

PREACH THE GOSPEL TO EVERY CREATURE!”’

 

If the Duke did not speak the words, they sound very like what he would

have spoken. It is a soldier’s view of the matter, and it is the view

which all true ‘soldiers and servants of Christ’ ought to take. For this

is no question of mercantile views, of business arrangements, of what

will or will not repay, of so many converts more or less, of success and

failure. This is not in any wise a question of results. It is purely and

simply a question of Obedience. The Church generally is commanded to

preach the Gospel throughout the world; whether men will hear, or whether

they will not. Individuals are bound to go, _if called_,--and if not

themselves called, they are bound to send others.

 

All of us who are Baptized in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and

of the Holy Spirit, are bound to His Service who is our Royal Master;

and His orders we have unquestioningly to obey. Whether or no we can

see the wisdom, the necessity, of what He commands to be done, makes

no difference. We are but privates in His Army; and a private has no

business with an opinion of his own as to where he shall go or what he

shall do in the time of war.

 

When the ‘noble six hundred’ of Balaclava were ordered to charge the

Russian guns, they knew the uselessness of the act, the certainty of a

blunder; but with that they had no concern.