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 The Silver Linings 
 
 of a 
 
 Missionary’s 
 
 Clouds 
 
 BY 
 
 L. W. CRONKHITE 
 
 American Baptist Foreign Mission Society 
 Ford Building, Boston. Mass. 
 
 
 

 
 
 Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2019 with funding from 
 Columbia University Libraries 
 
 
 https://archive.org/details/silverliningsofmOOcron 
 
The Silver Linings of a 
 Missionary’s Clouds 
 
 BY L. W. CRONKHITE 
 
 O FTEN as one passes through some dark 
 fleecy clouds to the far side and sees them 
 squarely, reflecting the radiance of the sun, 
 one becomes aware of their brilliant silver lining. 
 Such is our experience on the foreign field. The 
 terrific heat of the tropics is like a huge, dark, op¬ 
 pressive cloud. But there is a silver lining. There 
 is a picturesqueness about life in a tropical climate 
 that fascinates, and often the missionary settles 
 back into it after furlough with a feeling of real satis¬ 
 faction. There are no coal bills. There are no arti- 
 fically superheated houses or trains. It is pleasant, 
 too, when one has done something of which one is 
 ashamed, to know that there is always the heat to 
 which he can blame it. 
 
 More seriously, the missionary has the high 
 privilege of living in the midst of a low civilization, 
 and a still lower moral atmosphere,—a putrid at¬ 
 mosphere. God says to him, “I am going to raise 
 these people up. I am going to lift their civilization 
 and cleanse their atmosphere. I did it once for your 
 fathers. I used missionaries from Rome to help me. 
 
 x 
 
Now the time has come to prepare this race for their 
 place in the affairs of the Kingdom. Like those 
 from Rome, you are laying foundations.” It does put 
 meaning into life—to feel that we are doing some¬ 
 thing worth while, wherever the place, high or low. 
 That satisfaction remains like a silver lining and 
 does not wear off. 
 
 The foreign language comes up before the mis¬ 
 sionary like a huge cloud, but presently it shows its 
 silver lining. Centuries ago, our mother tongue 
 was a scanty language, but those who brought us 
 the Gospel began the work of enriching it. A mis¬ 
 sionary wakes up to the consciousness,—and it may 
 come like a flash of light,—that he is being per¬ 
 mitted of God to do the same thing for some of the 
 scanty heathen languages of today. They are yet 
 to be rich for the uses of men and of the Kingdom 
 of God. The Karens in their heathenism, of course, 
 had no idea of holiness, and no word for it. Yet one 
 cannot preach, nor translate the Bible nor hymns, 
 without the word. So the missionary said, in sub¬ 
 stance, “You have a word for ‘clean,’ as a cloth is 
 clean, and you have a word for ‘clear,’ as water is 
 clear. Then you have a word for ‘heart,’ standing, 
 as in English, for both the physical heart and the 
 spirit. Now when we want to speak of anything 
 that is clean in the realm of the heart, or the spirit, 
 we will put together your words for ‘clean’ and 
 
‘clear,’ and make one new word from the two.” And 
 so we get the word for “holy,” and gradually the 
 Christians come to understand it. Put the new word 
 with that for “book” and we have a word for “Bible” 
 or “Holy Book.” That was before my day. My own 
 contribution has been the translating of about 270 
 of our standard English hymns and Sunday school 
 songs, in which I have tried, as far as possible, to 
 adapt the words which the language provides to 
 somewhat higher and more spiritual meanings. The 
 Karens love to sing, and it has been a great joy to 
 me to reflect that, long after I am gone, they will 
 still be singing these translatiohs and still gaining 
 from them instruction and inspiration. It is worth 
 while. A fine house and an auto, taken alone, do not 
 touch it. 
 
 Again there is the cloud which comes with trying 
 to work with scanty resources. While the mission¬ 
 ary’s salary is always paid promptly, funds for his 
 work at large are often very short. This cloud also 
 has a silver lining. Almost any Christian of ex¬ 
 perience to whom the choice were given between a 
 check book, each check signed by some thoroughly 
 responsible party, to be filled in at any time for any 
 amount, and, on the other hand, the privilege of 
 going on in the old way with scanty visible resources, 
 but with God as partner, would choose the latter. 
 The reason is simple. The check book can, indeed, 
 
 3 
 
give the money through life, without fail. But that 
 is all, for the check book has no personality. But 
 God so often uses the need of money to teach us so 
 many things for which He has no other opportunity. 
 We look back over five years and find that, all in all, 
 our needs have been well met financially, and withal 
 so many lessons have been taught us, and so much 
 of the divine nearness made manifest, that the 
 check book, by itself, has no attractions. 
 
 The heaviest, darkest cloud of all comes with the 
 separation of parent and child. Yet even there can 
 be seen the silver lining. God seems to feel a special 
 responsibility for children whose parents have gone 
 far afield in the work of the Gospel. Oftentimes the 
 children seem to appreciate parents who have done 
 so and are especially responsive to influences which 
 they may exert, even through the weekly mail. The 
 children’s vision is broadened by the early foreign 
 residence. There is, too, the familiar experience 
 of all Christians everywhere,—for there is no geog¬ 
 raphy in Christian experience,—that God seems to 
 draw nearest to us at the times when He most 
 severely tries us. Many a missionary has found this 
 in the agony of the first days of separation from 
 children, or from wife or husband. The pain is not 
 made less,—but there is something else and one would 
 not retrace one’s steps and escape the trial if one 
 could. 
 
 4 
 
Then there is the “hundred fold.” You leave one 
 home to go abroad, and when you come back on fur¬ 
 lough again, homes are open to you all over the land, 
 from the Atlantic to the Pacific, simply because you 
 are a missionary. You leave your children, it may 
 be two or three or four or five. On your mission 
 field, everywhere in the villages, and in your central 
 training school, you find children giving you a wel¬ 
 come, calling you “father,” or later on it may be 
 “grandfather,” especially if their parents have been 
 pupils of yours. And those children need you so 
 much. Then when you come home, there are chil¬ 
 dren all over America to welcome and love you as 
 you speak in their churches and Sunday schools, and 
 visit in their homes. Many of them, perhaps, write 
 to you for years after. No words can express how 
 much they warm the heart. They do not take 
 the place of your own children, but they do fill their 
 own places very sweetly and tenderly. There is, too, 
 the grip which the leaving of your family in America 
 often gives you upon the people to whom you are 
 giving your life. Thousands of times I have heard 
 the Karens, both Christians and heathen, say, 
 “Teacher is here all alone, away from Mamma and 
 the children for our sakes, and we ought to be good 
 to him and help him.” How truly my people out 
 there have tried to do it. Words are feeble to express 
 the love and the tender care and the great outpouring 
 
 5 
 
of prayer which my Karens manifested when in 1913 
 I lay hovering on the border, sick with bubonic 
 plague. You feel that even the separations are 
 worth while if they give you so much of a hold upon 
 people who need you so badly, and whom you have 
 come to love with a great love. The cloud has a 
 silver lining, indeed. 
 
 The golden lining to all clouds comes in the dis¬ 
 covery that the heathen for whom one is working 
 are well worth while. There are many tons of blue 
 clay, sticky and slimy, in the diamond field at 
 Kimberly, but we talk about the diamonds. Who 
 cares or thinks about the blue clay? There are 
 diamonds there. Four-fifths of the human race are 
 still outside the Gospel message, or are only just 
 beginning to be reached by it. Sometimes we are 
 apt to think of them as blue clay. But there are 
 pure diamonds there. Ex-Secretary of State, John 
 W. Foster, speaking of the position of China, says 
 that it is one which “the vision of a political seer 
 might place in the van of all the nations.” Ex-U. S. 
 Minister Conger, of Pekin, tells us of the Chinese 
 that “they will dispute with the Japanese and the 
 Germans (he leaves us out) the intellectual suprem¬ 
 acy of the world.” Prof. Reinsch declares that “it 
 is the general conclusion reached by all who have 
 investigated the matter that it may be predicted 
 with absolute certainty that the coal and general 
 
 6 
 
mineral wealth of China, taken in connection with 
 her vast and highly trained, frugal and capable 
 population, will in this twentieth century make of 
 China the industrial centre of the world, and of the 
 Pacific the chief theatre of commerce.” Dr. Ament 
 tells us that “Christianity is germane to the nature 
 of the Chinese,” while Dr. Charles Cuthbert Hall 
 says of the people of India that “they will be the 
 spiritual eyes of the church.” Fruit is germane to 
 the soil of southern Idaho, even where no sprig of 
 fruit ever grew since creation. Given water, it springs 
 into life at once. We have living water, and our 
 missionaries daily see divine fruit springing in the 
 hitherto desert. 
 
 Teaching in our Pwo school in Bassein, Burma, is a 
 Karen woman past forty, whose entire ancestry back 
 of her parents was heathen. I have known her since 
 she was a twelve-year-old pupil in our school. For 
 some years, till her health broke in that climate, she 
 did most faithful and effective work as a missionary 
 among the Shans. She is an effective teacher, using 
 up-to-date normal methods, a fine disciplinarian, a 
 wise and indefatigable personal worker. She reads, 
 writes and speaks well, five languages, besides having 
 a knowledge for correspondence purposes of the 
 Esperanto. I close by quoting, without alteration, 
 from two letters in English, received from her within 
 the past few months. “I love to hear about your 
 
home life and the beautiful country, America. I 
 have read so many American papers, and I am very 
 much interested in them. How many times I have 
 pictured the places in my mind. Lately I am reading 
 more about ‘Alaska’ and its progress, both political 
 and religious. It is interesting to learn something 
 more about the northern regions. By the way, I 
 have lost track of the explorer’s latest party.” 
 
 The other quotation shows how contagious is our 
 American custom of sending missionary boxes at 
 Christmas. “Our Christmas box for the Kachin 
 school at Myitkyina is on its way now. It is the first 
 Christmas box, since the time of Adam, from the 
 Karens in Bassein. I saw them last hot season, 
 and I felt very sorry for the children, especially the 
 motherless and the fatherless ones.” 
 
 Silver, indeed, are the linings of the missionary’s 
 clouds. 
 
 Pwo Karen Mission , Burma. 
 
65-10M-4-20-1917