Carest Thou Not?

[Sister Alvear]

Carest Thou Not? (Amy Carmichael)

The tom-toms thumped all night, and the darkness shuddered all around me like a living, feeling thing. I could not sleep, so I lay awake and looked; and I saw, At my feet a precipice broke sheer down into infinite space. I looked, but saw no bottom; only cloud shapes, and unfathomable depths. I saw streams of people flowing from all quarters. All were blind, stone blind; all made straight for the precipice edge. There were shrieks as they suddenly knew themselves were falling, and a tossing up of arms, catching, clutching at empty air. Some went over quietly without a sound.
Then I saw along the edge there were sentries set at intervals, but the intervals were too great. The people fell in their blindness, quite unwarned; and a gulf yawned like the mouth of hell. Then I saw a group of people under some trees, with their backs turned towards the gulf. They were making daisy chains. Sometimes when a piercing scream reached them it disturbed them, and they thought it a rather vulgar noise. And if one of their number wanted to go and do something to help, then all the others would pull that one down. “Why should you get so excited about it? You must wait for a definite call to go! You haven’t finished your daisy chain yet.”
There was another group. It was made up of people whose great desire was to get more sentries out; but they found that very few wanted to go, and sometimes there were no sentries set for miles and miles of the edge. Once a girl stood alone in her place, waving the people back; but her mother and other relatives called, and reminded her that her furlough was due. No one was sent to guard her gap, and over and over the people fell like a waterfall of souls.
Then they sang a hymn. There came another sound of a million broken hearts wrung out in one full drop, one sob. And a horror of darkness was upon me, for I knew what it was. It was the cry of blood. Then thundered the voice of the Lord, “What hast thou done? The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto me from the ground.”
The tom-toms beat heavily, the darkness still shuddered and shivered about me: I heard the yells of the devil-dancers and weird shrieks of the devil possessed just outside the gate. What does it matter after all? It has gone on for years; it will go on for years. Why make such a fuss about it? God forgive us! God arouse us! Shame on us for our sin! Help us reach these multiplied millions around the world with the Gospel through the printed page, before they go into a Christ less eternity.