Amy Carmichael lay awake long into the night. The pounding drums of a Hindu festival drove sleep from her. “The darkness,” she later wrote, “shuddered round me like a living, feeling thing.” As she lay there, her mind wandered from the village where she lived in India to eternity. She recorded her pondering in her 1903 book Things as They Are:

Carmichael’s Allegory

“I saw, as it seemed this: That I stood on a grassy sward [field], and at my feet a precipice broke sheer down into infinite space. I looked, but saw no bottom; only cloud shapes, black and furiously coiled, and great shadow-shrouded hollows, and unfathomable depths. Back I drew, dizzy at the depth.

The Precipice

“Then I saw forms of people moving single file along the grass. They were making for the edge. There was a woman with a baby in her arms and another little child holding on to her dress. She was on the very verge. Then I saw that she was blind. She lifted her foot for the next step . . . it trod air. She was over, and the children over with her. Oh, the cry as they went over!

“Then I saw more 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 falling, and a tossing up of helpless arms, catching, clutching at empty air. But some went over quietly, and fell without a sound.

The Sentries

“Then I wondered, with a wonder that was simply agony, why no one stopped them at the edge. I could not. I was glued to the ground, and I could not call; though I strained and tried, only a whisper would come.

“Then I saw that along the edge there were sentries set at intervals. But the intervals were far too great; there were wide, unguarded gaps between. And over these gaps the people fell in their blindness, quite unwarned; and the green grass seemed blood-red to me, and the gulf yawned like the mouth of hell.

The Distracted

“Then I saw, like a little picture of peace, a group of people under some trees, with their backs turned towards the gulf. They were making daisy chains. Sometimes when a piercing shriek cut the quiet air and reached them it disturbed them, and they thought it a rather vulgar noise. And if one of their number started up and 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 chains yet. It would be really selfish,’ they said, ‘to leave us to finish the work alone.’

The Gaps

“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 relations called, and reminded her that her furlough was due; she must not break the rules. And being tired and needing a change, she had to go and rest for awhile; but no one was sent to guard her gap, and over and over the people fell, like a waterfall of souls.

“Once a child caught at a tuft of grass that grew at the very brink of the gulf; it clung convulsively, and it called—but nobody seemed to hear. Then the roots of the grass gave way, and with a cry the child went over, its two little hands still holding tight to the torn-off bunch of grass. And the girl who longed to be back in her gap thought she heard the little one cry, and she sprang up and wanted to go; at which they reproved her, reminding her that no one is necessary anywhere; the gap would be well taken care of, they knew. And then they sang a hymn.

“Then through the hymn came another sound like the pain of a million broken hearts wrung out in one full drop, one sob. And a horror of great darkness was upon me, for I knew what it was—the Cry of the Blood.

“Then thundered a Voice, the Voice of the Lord: ‘And He said, What hast thou done?”

Wait! What?

Is this too much? Are these pictures too vivid? Are these realities too . . . real? What does God say?

  • “The Lord is . . . not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).
  • “Even so it is not the will of your Father which is in heaven, that one of these little ones should perish” (Matthew 18:14).
  • “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him” (John 3:36).
  • “And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal” (Matthew 25:46).
  • “There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 8:12; 22:13; 24:51; 25:30; Luke 13:28).

Maybe Amy Carmichael‘s description is not so over-the-top after all. It’s at least worthy of consideration. Time is short. Hell is hot. Eternity is real. Stop making daisy chains. Get off the sidelines. Make a difference for eternity while you and they still have time. I need this reminder. Do you?

Christian, is your post at the edge of the precipice unmanned?

Carmichael, Amy. Things as They Are Mission Work in Southern India (London: Morgan and Scott, 1905), 33-35.

Read more about Amy Carmichael in my book, Daring Devotion: A 31-Day Journey with those who Lived God’s Promises.

Photo credit: Leio McLaren on unsplash