Lois Hoadley Dick - Amy Carmichael: Let the Little Children Come

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

All Scripture quotations, unless noted otherwise, are from the King James Version.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Dick, Lois Hoadley.

Amy Carmichael: let the little children come

Bibliography: p.

1. Carmichael, Amy, 18671951. 2. MissionariesIndiaBiography. 3. MissionariesIrelandBiography. 4. Dohnavur FellowshipHistory. 5. Church work with childrenIndia. I. Title.

BV3269.C32D5 1984 266.00924 [B] 84-166-4

ISBN-10: 0-8024-0433-2

ISBN-13: 978-0-8024-0433-6

We hope you enjoy this book from Moody Publishers. Our goal is to provide high-quality, thought-provoking books and products that connect truth to your real needs and challenges. For more information on other books and products written and produced from a biblical perspective, go to www.moodypublishers.com or write to:

It should be understood that this book represents a specific time framethe opening years of the twentieth centuryand that much of what is recorded here is not true of India today. Social reformersBritish, American, Indian alikefought to bring an end to child prostitution in India. As a result, a law was passed in 1947 making it illegal to dedicate a child to a temple.

Amy Carmichael was born December 16, 1867, in Ireland and died January 18, 1951, in Dohnavur, South India.

A biographer trying to research her life faces two drawbacks: First is the lack of personal information. Amy was so self-effacing she destroyed letters, diaries, ledger books, and even scratched out her picture in photograph albums. She never referred to herself by name in her books, either omitting all references to herself or disguising her presence by saying, A person who was there.

The second drawback is the lack of chronological order in the limited information available. Amys quicksilver mind and vivid imagination saw spiritual lessons in the commonplace, and she often interrupted the story of a convert to describe some beauty of nature, then forgot to finish the story. Or, while telling of a recent answer to prayer she would be reminded of how God spoke to her years ago, and the final answer to prayer she began to tell would be finished in another book!

Time became hazy to her as she immersed herself body, mind, and soul in the culture of India, becoming truly Indian. Her spirit refused to be bound by clock or calendar. In this book, we dont see Amy as much as we see through Amys eyes. It is to her credit that we often lose sight of her and see, instead, her God and His doingsand the crying need of the vast Undone.

1869, England

The horrors of the slave trade broke my heart. Anger, fear and dismay filled my heart. I could see no God, or such as I could see appeared to me an immoral God. I staggered on the verge of madness and blasphemy. I asked, Does God not care? Has God not seen? I could not love God!

1984, New York City

Whatre lookin for? I got what yer lookin for.

I was thinking about eight years old

You talkin about kiddie porn?

Well, yeah. Yeah, thats what I mean.

You talkin about baby porn. Five years old?

Five? Yeah, thats what I mean.

Five years old. I can get it for ya.

Little children, little children, who love their Redeemer, are the jewels, precious jewels

Firmly relying ourselves on the truth of Christianity and acknowledging with gratitude the solace of religion, we disclaim alike the right or desire to impose our convictions on any of our subjects.

She was five years old, and she wanted her mother. Light-skinned and pretty, with a mop of black curly hair, she was a high-caste child living in the temple womens house next door to the powerful bastion whose heavy carved door was the gate to hell for hundreds of little ones inside. She had enormous, perfectly round eyes like a deep-water pearl, and so she was called Pearleyes.

The temple was in a village called Perungulam, dedicated to the worship of the god Perumal. Shut away behind closed doors, Pearleyes was given picture books to look at, scenes of the vileness and depravity, and when she pushed them away the temple woman beat her soft shoulders with a stick.

But she was only five years old, and she wanted to go home to Tuticorin, twenty miles away. Watching her chance, she ran out into the street one day when the door was accidentally left open by a careless servant, but the temple woman was swiftly beside her. Aiyo! Ungrateful one! Should a servant of the gods run about in the streets?

And because it was not the first time she had disobeyed, she was dragged into the courtyard, where the woman heated an iron rod in the flame and branded her on the back of both hands.

Pearleyes lay on her mat that night, and even though another temple woman rubbed some oil on the burns, she cried. But her cry was only one in many thousands, for this was India.

India, turning the corner into the twentieth century, was little different from India through almost five thousand years of history. On the surface were colorful layers of tapestry but underneaththe mud floor and muck and dark corners and crawling things. To a new arrival, India was hot, dry air that parched the throat, filling the mouth with dust that could neither be swallowed nor coughed up.

India was a mosaic of scenes. Early morning with the suns rays splayed out, scintillating over the marketplace, where streets teemed with noisome life, stinking of garbage, ginger, goat urine, the vendors smoky food, incense, sweat, hot curry. A bewitchment of color. Lavish, inflammatory rug colors were set against a background of dullest squalor. Shopkeepers spilled out wares into the streets: Watery sweets speckled with flies. Ivory carvings. Leather goods and brassware. Large, practical jugs in red and blue and earth colors, mounded to stack one atop the other. Turbans purpural. Rainbowed saris hung on racks, pretty as pink tinsel. Filigreed jewelry, glass bangles, and loops of silver; golden ornaments poured out without measure on a merchants table. Amber, the size of knuckles, strung on thong. Carnelian. Jade drops, like liquid grass.

A snake charmer with a turban as huge as last weeks laundry, offering to charm poisonous snakes out of old walls, sat cross-legged before a cobra, its hood spread, the creature rising and swaying from side to side, eyes following the piping flute of its owner.

Tired, bony cows jostled against people in the streets, their eyes stupid and full of hopeless resignation. A fungus-spread of wasted beggar bodiesbodiesbodiesskeletal bodies as far as eye could see. A vast, open-air morgue.