“Train up a child in the way he should go.”

---

Scene One: A Mohammedan home in Persia.

The women’s apartments opening onto an inner court-yard present an animated scene, for some ladies from another harem have come with children and servants to make a call; i.e., to spend the afternoon, drink unlimited quantities of tea and pussy-willow-water, smoke unnumbered cigarettes alternating with the water pipe, and nibble at sweetmeats and fruits provided in large abundance. The greetings are conducted with due decorum by women and children, and then, while the servants and concubines of the home move to and fro with the proper refreshments, and while the children dispose of large quantities of sweets, the gossip of the neighborhood is discussed with animation. The conversation,—no, it cannot be repeated here, for it is not fit for the printed page; but little girls sit eagerly drinking it in, and little boys stop in their play to wink at each other with knowing looks as they catch the drift of the talk. A mere baby crawls up to attract his mother’s attention and, not succeeding, slaps her with all his tiny might as she sits on a cushion on the floor. “Oh brave boy! oh splendid boy! just see how he hits me when I do not listen to him!” And the little boy is hugged and his wishes are granted while he learns well his lesson of the inferiority of a woman,—even his mother. Presently a little girl begins to scream vigorously, having been pounded and scratched by a small boy in the party. The lad is rewarded for his manliness with a big piece of saffron candy, but the girl, being a visitor, must be consoled; and so the delightful promise is made: “Never mind; stop crying, and we will find you a nice husband. Now wouldn’t it be fine to arrange a marriage for her with the son of ——?” and so the whole matter is discussed in the child’s hearing, and she too learns her lesson,—that the one ambition of a girl must be to get married as early as possible, and the more valuable she is, the greater settlement must her prospective husband make upon her, to be paid in case he wishes to divorce her.

It is evening, the visitors are gone, and the head of the home with the older boys will take his evening meal in the anderun (women’s apartment). No cloth is spread for the whole family. The husband and sons are served on large copper trays by the women of the household, who eat later what is left. The husband is in a wretched mood and vents his anger right and left. Even the favorite wife, a young girl who has recently superseded in his affections the mothers of his children, trembles for her position when the rice is not to his taste; and suddenly at some further provocation he turns upon her, and with the words, “I divorce you,” sends her cowering from him, a divorced woman of fifteen, amid the sneers and insults of those who served and fawned on her earlier in the day.

Scene Two: A hut in Central Africa.

Soon after sunrise a number of women and girls, laden with hoes, baskets, and babies, start out from the grass hut which is home to them, and make their way to the field to work all day in the hot sun. Having leisurely smoked his pipe in preparation for the day’s labors, the man of the house starts with sons and neighbors on a hunting expedition, or goes to a neighboring town to exchange his stock for some coveted article. Towards evening all is bustle and confusion about the home, as the women have returned and are preparing the evening meal. All goes merrily, for here comes the head of the house in an excellent humor. Picking up the nearest baby, he fondles it and says, “A man in the next town has just bought this baby of me as wife for his son. Being strong and fat and lusty, she has brought a good price.” Whereupon a small brother shouts with delight, for this means that the dowry for his wife is provided and the girl on whom he has set his affections can be procured without further delay. His mother is pleased,—the prospect adds to her importance,—but the seventeen year old mother of the fat, cooing baby turns away to hide her face and surreptitiously to hug her two other children. “Anyway, they are boys; they cannot be taken from me.”

The boy who is to profit by the sale of his little sister is not suited with his evening meal, and, catching a chicken, he cuts off one leg and demands that it be cooked for him. No thought of the suffering fowl interferes with his appetite, any more than of the little sister so soon to be sent out on the forest trail, her little brown body carefully oiled, to be subjected to the blows and ill-treatment of an unknown mother-in-law. But even before the little one goes, she has learned her life lessons,—that a lie is a crime only if it is discovered,—that if she does not like her husband she may console herself with some other man so long as she is not found out. And, after all, the relation may be of short duration, for, if her future husband is unkind, one of his wives will surely be an adept in the art of poisoning, and then all of them will be inherited by his brother. And so the little brown baby, fondled, petted, spoiled today, is sent out tomorrow with foul words on her tongue and foul thoughts in her heart, to be a wife and the future mother of little brown babies whose possibilities are infinite, whose opportunities are to be,—what?

Scene three: A Christian Home in Zululand.[15]

“I have already given you a peep at the life in a heathen kraal. Now repair to a Christian home. Here we find everything simpler and more quiet. Here polygamy, with all its attendant sensualities and riot, has given place to restraint of passions and a purer union. Here is but one house and one wife. The Christian man’s love is now undivided, and all his efforts are centred in one objective. The single house is no longer a stack of grass enclosing a dungeon of darkness, but a square-walled building, humble indeed, but airy and bright. In place of being obliged to crawl like animals on our knees into the heathen hut, we may enter erect as becomes the dignity of man, through swinging doors. We come not into a smoky darkness, but into a dwelling flooded with the light of glazed windows. In the kraal we found the whole family, old and young, male and female, huddled together night and day in the one small room; here we have a dwelling with separate rooms, so that parents and children and strangers may each enjoy some privacy. The air is not only light with sunshine; it is also pure and clean, for no cooking operations are performed herein, but in a special kitchen outside. In the heathen hut, whether for sitting or sleeping, we were accommodated on the floor; now we may sit more respectably on chairs, eat our meals from a table, and rest our weary bones on a raised bed.

“At four or five o’clock in the morning, according to season,—for the Zulu is an early riser,—all are up. We hear a gentle murmur from within. Ah! it is the familiar sound, so sweet to us, but never heard in the heathen kraal. It is the hour of morning prayer, when husband and wife and little ones join their hearts and voices together in a fervent hymn of praise or hopeful supplication for protection and aid.”

The home is the centre of a nation’s life. More and more emphasis is being laid in enlightened communities on the need of proper home environment and on the grave risks and great dangers that accompany the lack of such environment. If one studies the labors and writings of the great social and religious workers of today, this note of emphasis on home life and training will be heard to ring out loud and clear, above all other sounds of harmony or discord,—a call to meet a definite need.

Dr. Devine has voiced this thought and enlarged upon it in its various phases in his recent book, “The Family and Social Work,” in which he claims that “To maintain normal family life, to restore it when it has been interfered with, to create conditions more and more favorable to it, is thus the underlying object of all our social work. Efforts to relieve distress and to improve general conditions are shaped by our conception of what constitutes normal family life.”

Any candid woman who has studied the “home-scenes” at the beginning of this chapter and has then proceeded (as it is hoped and expected that she will) to study home conditions and surroundings in other lands, will surely be ready to admit that the greatest gift Christianity has to offer to a non-Christian land is the introduction of the power of the Christ life into the homes of that land. Dr. Dennis lays great emphasis on the necessity and opportunity for missionary endeavor along this line.

The reconstruction of the family, next to the regeneration of individual character, is the most precious contribution of missions to heathen society, and we may add that it is one of the most helpful human influences which can be consecrated to the service of social elevation. In the effort to hallow and purify family life we stir the secret yearning of fatherhood and motherhood; we enter the precincts of the home, and take childhood by the hand; we restore to its place of power and winsomeness in the domestic circle the ministry of womanhood; and at the same time we strike at some of the most despicable evils and desolating wrongs of our fallen world. Nothing in the history of human society, except the teaching and example of Jesus Christ, has wrought with such energy and wisdom in introducing saving power into social development as a sanctified home life. If parental training can be made loving, faithful, conscientious, and helpful, if womanhood can be redeemed and crowned, if childhood can be guided in tenderness and wisdom, if the home can be made a place where virtue dwells, and moral goodness is nourished and becomes strong and brave for the conflicts of life, we can conceive of no more effective combination of invigorating influences for the rehabilitation of fallen society than will therein be given.[16]

The task fairly staggers us with its greatness and its limitless scope; but let us be big enough to look even beyond all this, and, with the glorious capacity for motherhood that lies in every good woman’s breast, let us see not only the millions of homes that are in darkness and sorrow and degradation today, but also realize that the children of today are to be the fathers and mothers of tomorrow. Our work as a “great, beautiful, organized motherhood for the world” must include the preparation of these children to assume the duties of parenthood in the future, and to raise from generation to generation the standards of individual and home and national life “till we all attain unto a full grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.”

The physical conditions of a home, and the moral and spiritual characters developed in the home act and re-act on each other with clock-like precision. Would you expect a neat and orderly housemaid if you engaged a girl from a home in China which Mrs. S. C. Perkins thus describes?—

The great mass of the people live in what can only be called hovels, the family occupying one room, shared with pigs and chickens; damp, dark, unventilated, and unclean. Even in the houses of the rich there is a certain cheerlessness owing to the lack of carpets, the absence of sunlight, and the stiff arrangement of the furniture. The odor of incense in all houses renders the atmosphere close and unpleasant. The people will not use whitewash, because white is an unlucky color; indeed, their many superstitions interfere with the comfort of the poorer classes quite as much as does their poverty. In Northern China every house has its kang, a platform of stone about two feet high, underneath which a fire is kindled for warmth and for cooking, the heat being carried through it by a flue into the chimney. Here the family sleep at night, sit by day, and on it they cook their food.[17]

How much ambition would one be able to arouse in a school girl coming from this home in Burma?

The home of one of the mission school girls is described in this way: “It is a large teakwood house, and we walk right in, for there is no door bell. The large hall is half filled with piles of wood, for the family lives on the second floor. A servant tells us to go up, and we climb the long stairs. At the top we find the lady of the house sitting on a mat smoking. She motions us to be seated. In the large room are two mats, two chairs, and two tables.”[18]

Innocent childhood, modesty, purity can hardly be counted on in the unnumbered homes of Africa, India, Persia, Korea, and other lands where the whole family lives in one room, where sons bring their brides to swell the number of those whose every act and word is seen or heard by the whole patriarchal family. If further evidence is needed of the inter-relation of the physical home surroundings and the formation of character, study the history of those savage communities that have come under the power of the Gospel, as for instance the New Hebrides Islands, and it will be very evident that “godliness is profitable for all things,” even for introducing a comfortable, tidy home in which one can stand upright and enjoy some degree of privacy!

In order to learn what should be done for little children in non-Christian lands, we must know in addition to their physical needs something of the moral and spiritual influences that surround them. Of the spiritual influences we shall speak in a later chapter, and, though the moral effects on life and character have already been touched on in various ways, it seems wise to sum up briefly some of the special home influences that affect child life in the lands of which we are studying. We must be humble and teachable too, for it is true that we Americans could well be learners when it comes to the lessons in filial piety taught to Chinese children, and the careful attention to etiquette and social graces which form an important part of the training of Japanese girls.

In a most interesting and enlightening study of “The Chinese Mother Ideal”[19] Mrs. Gammon shows that “even a cursory glance through Chinese literature reveals teachings which if carried into effect might transform the whole empire.” But alas! “to the majority of the women of China the printed page is a sealed book,” and in many of the moral as well as the spiritual teachings we find minute instructions for outward observances, but no life-principles upon which true character may be built.

Immodesty, shocking impurity, dishonesty, lying, disobedience, foul and abusive language, quarrelsomeness, bad habits, cruelty, anger, jealousy,—we might go on with the long terrible list of influences that surround the child from babyhood up, that are a part of his heritage, and are not treated as evils to be uprooted by careful training and wholesome example, but as qualities to be emulated. One of the “Sacred Books” of Burma says, “A statement constitutes a lie when discovered by the person to whom it is told to be untrue!” In the same way millions of children are today being taught that sin is sin only when it is found out or when it inconveniences a superior avenging power. How to teach the mothers so that their example and precepts may produce different children, that is our great problem. We hear of a convert in India who told a missionary that she “often prays for power to forget the words she heard and the things she saw and the games she played when she was a little child in her mother’s room.” I often recall an impromptu mothers’ meeting held on the mud roof of a village home in Persia, where the text was furnished by a self-righteous mother whose child had misbehaved at the afternoon service conducted by my husband. The mother boasted that she had dragged her child out of the meeting and beaten him on the head till his nose bled.

Of real discipline,—punishment administered in love, not in anger, for the purpose of teaching great life principles, I have yet to discover a trace in homes untouched by the love of Christ in the lands of which we are speaking. Love there is, and how often the unexpressed yearning of the mother heart finds utterance at last when she comes into contact with a mother who knows of these things. “No plan.” A young missionary mother from China told me about a pleasant gathering of women in her parlor after her youngest baby was born. One woman said to her, “I wish I knew what to do when my children are naughty. I have no plan.” The poor woman was nursing her fourth baby, and worn by wakeful nights and constant nursing was in no condition, physically, mentally, or morally, to rule wisely her mischievous, disobedient, crying children.

From the vast amount of interesting information which our missionaries are glad to share with us the moment this subject is broached, it is difficult to select something for the limited space in this chapter. In this as in other instances, the intention is rather to whet the appetite for more, than to make an exhaustive study of the subject. Miss G. Y. Holliday of Persia says,—

I find children passionately longed for, much loved, though not at all wisely; often the tyrants of the household. It is a sad commentary on the depravity of human nature, that no matter what outrage a child commits or how abominable his conduct may be, it is considered an all-sufficient excuse to say, “He is a child,” as if there were no such things as good and well behaved children, and nothing else was to be expected but disorder and disobedience from them. The atmosphere of a Moslem home is so bad for them, with the continual swearing and vile language. I was talking one day to a small boy, the idol of his grandparents, with whom he spends most of his time. The subject was family discipline; I said, “Parents sometimes find it necessary to punish the children.” He replied with emphasis, his eyes opening wider and wider, “Yes, parents whip, they kick, they strike.”

One of the most terrible results to children of the lack of proper home life and training is loss of innocence coupled with appalling ignorance. This condition existing also in our own land is being faced in these days with new purpose and determination by earnest, conscientious men and women who are seeking in many ways to find and apply a remedy. From the many strong, true writers and speakers on this subject we select a few words written by Professor E. P. St. John of the Hartford School of Religious Pedagogy.

It is unsafe to leave a child ignorant about sex. The writer firmly believes that a majority of the evils that appear in connection with this phase of human nature could be avoided by simple, frank instruction of children and youth. The great trouble has been that parents who have clean ideas about sex and its relations have kept their lips sealed on the subject.... Even if it were desirable, children cannot be kept in ignorance of these things. Through the parents’ neglect their thoughts of these matters have too often been perverted and impure from the first. The aim should be to pre-empt the ground for cleanness and truth.

All honor and assistance be given to the missionary mother who, feeling the horrible need of China’s children and youth in this respect, is spending much of her furlough year in working out a plan,—a “dream” she calls it. Will you listen to her dream, and then see if it is not in your power to help the missionary mothers whom you know to make this dream a great and living reality in many of the dark habitations of the earth? “A Chinese child knows all there is to be known about the deep life truths, and knows it without the beauty of life being impressed on him. I am going to tell you a dream I have. Perhaps it is not necessary to speak of it, but it will show how strongly the awfulness of conditions has forced certain truths on me. I am inquiring among my friends, those who would know, what are the best books of sex knowledge for men and women, and especially the books or stories for children. I am already beginning the little nature stories with my own boys and intend to teach them scientifically all the truths about themselves so beautifully and so naturally and so early that they will never know when they weren’t acquainted with these facts, and will never have aught but the deepest love for the knowledge I give them. I think I can do it, with plenty of study and determination. Then as I know Chinese better, I want to conduct classes for mothers and for children, and also to get hold of our school boys and talk to them or put literature in their hands that will make better men of them. If I stayed in this country, I should push such knowledge at every turn. I expect to keep a library that I can loan to American sailors and other young men. I thoroughly believe that the propagation of such information will do more to change the life of children and the atmosphere of the Chinese home than anything else. For with this knowledge one learns the beauty and wonder of a God that could make such a beautiful human body. It is wonderful to see what Christian homes are doing, but how much more they could do with knowledge, scientific Christian knowledge, in the hearts of the parents!”

The position of the husband and father in most non-Christian lands is that of supreme ruler and despot in his home. In many cases he has the power of life and death over his children, during infancy at least, and where polygamy exists many a wife has suddenly disappeared, never to be heard of again; but no one thinks of questioning the rights of the husband in the matter. His attitude toward the mothers of his children is the “sample copy” for his boys to imitate, and right faithfully do they follow his example.

In the native quarter of Alexandria, Egypt, I saw a little boy who was very fond of making mud-pies in front of the house. One afternoon his mother stepped into the doorway and called:

“Come in, darling; don’t get your clothes so dirty. Come in, sweet one.” No answer from the four-year-old.

The mother stepped into the road, looking about to see that there were no men near to watch her, and laid a kind motherly hand on the child to take him into the house.

“Come, little one. I will give you sweets; come!”

Her husband at that moment came around the next corner, and stood still to see what would happen. The child turned on his mother, and, doubling up his little dirty fist, he beat her right in the face, and snarled, “Bint el kelb!” (Daughter of a dog), tearing himself loose.

The father stepped up, and, in place of giving the little scoundrel a thrashing, he patted his son on the back, smiled upon him, and said: “Brave little fellow! Thou magnificent little fellow!” Proud of the son who could treat a woman thus![20]

Through the jungle of Africa strides the man carrying his pipe and a big hunting knife; after him comes his wife with a baby slung at her side, stooping under the great pack on her back, to lighten which he will not lift his little finger. Fathers transformed by Christianity. Oh! it is a sight to make angels rejoice when the grace of God touches the heart, and manliness and chivalry are aroused in him who had all his life seemed absolutely callous to the needs and sufferings of those dependent on him! In a Persian village where a missionary lady was touring, a man came to evening prayers and slipped a note into her hand that read, “Receive M. B. with love,—he is a brother.” Several years later she again visited the village, but though she had no opportunity to talk with M. B. she saw something that spoke louder and more forcibly than a dozen conversations would have done. When he was ready to go home from the meeting in the missionary’s rooms, he said to his wife, “Give me the child,” and took the heavy, sleeping boy out of her arms. In all her long years of work among Mohammedans this missionary had never seen a Mohammedan man do such a thing.

“A Japanese woman whose husband is a Christian,” writes Miss Ransome, “though she is as yet only an inquirer, said recently that the change for the better had been so marvelous in her husband that she had decided to try to rear her boy in such a way that he would eventually become an evangelist. She wanted others to know of the power of Christianity which could change a quarrelsome, drinking man to a kind, sober, industrious father.” That boy’s chance for a happy, useful life was the direct result of what the knowledge of Christ had done for his father.

The sacred vocation of motherhood is regarded almost entirely from a commercial or social standpoint in non-Christian lands. The free woman who remains unmarried is wellnigh an impossibility,—she has no chance for winning respect or position in this life, and, according to Mohammedan belief, has a very inferior place in heaven. The woman who marries and has no children needs one’s sympathy almost as much as does her unmarried sister. In many cases she may be divorced after a certain number of years if no child has been born to her, or she lives in dread of having another wife brought into the home, who will make her life miserable with taunts such as Peninnah heaped upon Hannah in days of old. And there is no hope that her lord and master will comfort her as Elkanah comforted Hannah, offering her the devotion of ten sons.

But the unmarried woman and the childless wife are not alone in their degradation and distress. Never can I forget my feelings when told of a neighbor in Persia who had just given birth to her seventh daughter. Her husband on visiting the room crossed over to where she lay on her bed on the floor, looked at her with disgust and disapproval, spat in her face and covered it with a cloth to show that she was a disgraced wife. To be the mother of sons is the great wish of a woman’s heart, to have many daughters-in-law brought into the home to serve her and cower before her tyranny is her fondest ambition, and when she attains it her influence is indeed great, and in one respect at least she is queen of her home.

Is it a mistake in this study of child life to pay so much attention to the subjects of fatherhood and motherhood? Nowhere can we find the real remedy for the evils that degrade and debase and oppress and crush the sweet innocence and dependence of childhood unless we go back of the child to the very foundations of family life. Many great authorities in America and Europe, as well as those who have labored and studied in Oriental lands, will testify to the truth of this statement. Rev. J. Sadler of Amoy says, “You would be profoundly impressed if you could realize how the strength of heathenism is in the women. From earliest years they teach their children concerning demons, and to be early eager as to inheritance, and thus inspire selfish and quarrelsome ideas leading to divisions and life-long conflicts. The importance of women’s work cannot be estimated. The destiny of the country is largely in their hands.”[21]

This is one side of the picture. The other is equally true. Dr. Daniel McGilvary, for half a century a missionary among the Siamese and Lao, tells of the wonderful result of a school for girls that provides Christian wives and mothers.

Notwithstanding our disappointment in the delay of the school for boys, it proved a wise arrangement that the girls’ school was started first. A mission church is sure to be greatly handicapped whose young men must either remain single,—which they will not do,—or be compelled to take ignorant non-Christian wives.... After marriage the almost universal custom of the country has been that the husband lives with the wife’s family.... Where all the atmosphere of the family is strongly Buddhist, with daily offerings to the spirits and gala days at the temple, the current would be too strong for a father, with his secondary place in the family, to withstand. For a while it was feared that Christian girls would have difficulty in finding husbands. But, on the contrary, our educated girls become not only more intelligent, but more attractive in manners, dress, and character; and therefore, have been much sought after. The homes become Christian homes, and the children are reared in a Christian atmosphere. The result is that, instead of the wife’s dragging the husband down, she generally raises the husband up; and, as a general rule, the children early become Christians.[22]

The Mohammedan girl educated in a Christian school, even though she must marry and live her life according to Mohammedan customs, takes with her to her father-in-law’s home new ideas and customs that are going far to break down the old walls of prejudice. Mrs. C. M. Wherry of India writes:—

One of the most interesting facts that has come to light during recent years is this: We do not know of any educated Moslem girl who has spent four or five years in our schools,—and I include those of the British workers too,—who has ever been subjected to the indignity of a second wife brought into her home. They seem to have gained strength of character and graces enough to hold their own against the bad influences of Mohammedanism. More and more we hear of Moslem families who practically adopt the Christian idea of marriage, that is, one woman in the home: these families frequently in giving away their daughters take pledges from the bridegroom that she is to be the only wife, while still more encouraging is the fact that many of these educated girls absolutely refuse to be given in marriage unless their parents insist on this single wife.[23]

A little Mohammedan girl had attended for a few months a small day school on the mission premises. Years afterwards her missionary teacher found her in a village, and the woman gathering her children about her led them in the Lord’s Prayer, explaining that she and the children prayed together every day.

Who can foretell the influence that will go on down through the years because of one mother in Syria who has recently passed to her reward at the age of ninety years? She was the mother of eight children, two of whom were ordained pastors, two licensed preachers, one the wife of a pastor, another a helper in the Sidon Missionary School, one is employed by the Church Missionary Society in Nazareth, and two more are teaching and preaching in the German Orphanage in Jerusalem. Think what the land of our Saviour’s sojourn would have lost had not that one mother learned to love and follow Him, and to train her children as a Christian mother should.

Many chapters might easily be devoted to the subjects of child marriage and child widowhood and their frightful effect on past, present, and future generations. They have, however, been treated quite fully in recent mission study books, and so much authoritative literature on these subjects exists that it does not seem best to dwell on them at length in this connection.

But every Christian mother should pause and ask of herself earnestly, “What if it were my daughter, my son, how could I stand it? Would I not move heaven and earth to see that some remedy were found for this monstrous evil?” What if your daughter were that widowed teacher in a missionary school in China who had been married at nineteen to a boy of twelve, and who every morning after washing his face and combing his hair had to see that he started off properly to school, often crying and protesting, and then turn to her weaving, in order to earn money for his education?

Are we overestimating the evil because of our Occidental customs and prejudices? Listen to the words of an Egyptian, translated and re-printed from a Cairo daily paper.

I am an Egyptian, and speak of that which is customary in my land; yet I wait to be shown that the Moslems of India, of Yemen, of Syria, or of Persia are in any better case....

The first step in our faulty marriage system is that of marrying boys of thirteen to girls not more than ten years of age, as is the custom. This custom is like making a fire of tender green branches; you benefit not by its warmth, but you suffer much from its smoke. How many of us have suffered from this cause? The excuse given for it is that it is to preserve our youth from impurity. But what a feeble excuse! Silence were better than such.[24]

Strange customs prevail in different lands regarding betrothal and marriage. Their effect upon the life and status of the boy seems to be peculiarly marked in Korea.

The matter of becoming a full-fledged man does not depend upon years, but is a matter to be decided on its merits by the parents or guardians of the subject in hand. The badge of manhood is none other than the topknot, which is made by combing all the hair to the top of the head and making it into a coil about an inch and a half in diameter and four or five inches high. From the time the boy’s hair is long enough, it is plaited into a straight braid and left hanging down his back. When the time comes for him to be engaged to marry, his topknot is put up, and from that time forth he is recognized as a man. This usually takes place between the ages of ten and twenty, though he is not likely to be so old as twenty....

In a Korean Home

As long as a boy wears his hair plaited and hanging down his back, he is addressed in low talk. His age has nothing to do with the form of speech, but the style of his hair settles that. It sometimes happens that a very poor family will not be able to contract a marriage for their son, and so we occasionally meet a man thirty years old with his hair still hanging down his back.... But the boy who is honored with the precious topknot is addressed in middle or high talk, though he may be only eight or ten years old.[25]

A girl’s hair receives special attention among the Persian Mohammedans, and must be banged when she is taken to the public bath on the day preceding her marriage. In one of the islands of the New Hebrides the struggling girl is held down by several old women while her two upper front teeth are knocked out as a necessary preparation for marriage.

Among the Lao, where marriage is much more honored and considered more sacred than in many other countries, the boys are freer to do their courting in person, and both boys and girls have far more voice in the selection of a life partner than in countries where women live in seclusion and where polygamy abounds.

Through long years there has run in my ears the brief story of a Christian servant in one of the missionary homes in Persia. “I was married at twelve years and had a baby when I was thirteen, and, oh! how glad I was when it died!” Glad? Of course she was glad. What child of thirteen would want the burden of motherhood?

Who of us who has witnessed the agonies of the little dying child-mother can ever for a moment think with carelessness or indifference of the awful custom of child marriage?

“A girl of fifteen was dying,” writes a friend from India. “Her husband, a man of fifty or more, is a man of good position and considerable means. The girl lay in a bare room with nothing but an unbaked earthenware vessel near her. Her second baby had been born a few days or weeks before and something was wrong.... But she was a purdah woman and could not see the doctor. He had asked a few questions from outside and had diagnosed the illness as tuberculosis, was treating it as such,—and had given it as his opinion that she would die. Our pastor’s wife, dear Mrs. Roy, had somehow gone to see her. Even her non-professional eye saw that a mistake had been made, and she tried to persuade the mother to send for a woman doctor. ‘What was the use? She was doing to die.’

“Mrs. Roy expostulated indignantly with the mother for having married this child of twelve to a grown-up man, just for money. The poor child seemed so sad. Mrs. Roy told her of the Christian’s hope and a Saviour’s love. The child listened with the tears running down her face. Then she asked, ‘May I touch you?’ (Being a mother of a few days she was still unclean and no one would touch her). So Mrs. Roy went to her and held her hands and stroked her face and hair and tried to give her comfort for the journey for which she was so little prepared. Thus is the ‘hope of India’ MURDERED by custom and carelessness and greed. Oh, India is horrible!”

From the Missionary Review of the World (August, 1911) we quote the following statistics, each word and figure of which cries out to us Christian women, “How long, oh, how long, shall these things be?”

The figures are appalling in respect of child-marriages. The census of 1901 showed 121,500 married boys and 243,500 married girls, whose age was under five: 760,000 boys and 2,030,000 girls between the ages of five and ten; 2,540,000 and 6,586,000 between ten and fifteen. Of these, all except a certain number of girls under the last class were married before they were able to realize what marriage is. The most deplorable result of such marriages is seen in the number of widowed children; 6,000 widowers and 96,000 widows were between five and ten; 113,000 widowers and 276,000 widows between ten and fifteen.

The homes of the world need nothing so much as the presence and blessing of the Christ who brought cheer to the home in Cana, comfort to the widow’s home at Nain, resurrection and life to the home at Bethany, vision to the home in Emmaus. How are we to help to make it possible that fathers, mothers, and children in homes where He is not known should hear Him as He stands at the door and knocks, and shall open to Him that He may sup with them and they with Him? Three methods of bringing Christ to needy homes. There are at least three practical methods by which Christian women may help to bring about this result.

First: Through Christian schools which take children and youth in their impressionable years and train them to be the Christian fathers and mothers of the future. We have briefly alluded to this method and shall speak of it more at length in a later chapter.

Second: In Zenana work and other forms of visiting in the homes, in crowded cities, and isolated villages, taking to each individual home the story of the Christ who gathered the little ones in His arms, and the practical, homely lessons of efforts that Christian civilization is making in behalf of home life.

Third: Through the great object lesson, the missionary home.

Never again let it be asked in church or missionary society of a young woman starting for the foreign field, “Are you going out as a missionary, or only as a missionary’s wife?” At a conference for outgoing missionaries, a beautiful, talented college graduate, leader in many activities and full of capacity and consecration, said to a returned missionary,—“I am to be married, and have listened and listened at this conference to know what particular work is waiting for me, but there has been nothing for me as yet.” When it was pointed out to her that by means of her paramount duties and obligations as wife and mother in a missionary home she would have an opportunity of living the missionary message such as few of her fellow missionaries might have, her beautiful face lighted up with a look that illumined it. The making of a missionary home was a vocation indeed to call forth all the highest powers of her consecrated womanhood.

Mr. E. A. Lawrence has stated so clearly the possibilities and opportunities of the missionary home that he is worth quoting at length.

There is an element of missionary life which is seldom presented, yet most important. It is the mission home.... It underlies the whole of the work, and discloses the ideal of Protestant missions more clearly than any other point....

The first thing the Protestant missionary does among the heathen is to establish a home. He approaches them not as a priest, not simply as a man, but as the head of a family, presenting Christianity quite as much in its social as in its individual characteristics. This Christian home is to be the transforming centre of a new community. Into the midst of pagan masses, where society is coagulated rather than organized, where homes are degraded by parental tyranny, marital multiplicity, and female bondage, he brings the leaven of a redeemed family, which is to be the nucleus of a redeemed society.... It is on this mission home that everything else is founded—the school, the college, the kingdom itself....

When they are at their homes, this new institution, with its monogamy, its equality of man and woman, its sympathy between child and parent, its co-operative spirit of industry, its intelligence, its recreation, its worship, is at once a new revelation and a striking object-lesson of the meaning and possibility of family life. Whether they come to his church and school or not, the natives seem always ready to visit the missionary’s home, and to remain there so long, and to conduct themselves so familiarly, that it sometimes becomes necessary to teach them by object-lesson another feature of the Christian home—its privacy....

If the family in its very existence is an important missionary agent, having a distinct work to do, not only for its own members, but for the natives, ... then there must be a distinct acceptance of this office by its members, and it must play its part in the outreaching work of the missionary. The natives must be brought in contact with this domestic sphere. The walls of the home should be at least translucent, that its light may continually shine through to them; its doors should be often open, its table often spread for them; a distinct social as well as Christian fellowship should be cultivated.[26]

“Given to Hospitality” might be the true epitaph on the headstone of most missionary wives, and untold lessons in love and deference between husband and wife, obedience of children, interesting and profitable table conversation, self-control, and courtesy, are taught in the missionary dining room as they could never be taught in church or school room.

“Won’t you write an article on the orderly management of a home for the paper published by the mission?” begged a young Christian teacher who was spending her vacation week as a guest in the missionary home. “The work of each servant and person in this house is arranged for every day, and everything goes on quietly and regularly. Our women have no plan for their day’s work, and I wish they might know how you do it.”

“I was taking dinner at the home of Mr. C.,” said a native pastor, “and his little boy cried for some more of the food he liked. Instead of giving it to him, his mother actually sent him away from the table to stay until he could be pleasant! I never heard of such a thing, but I went home and told my family about it.”

Mrs. J. C. Worley of Matsuyama, Japan, writes: “One woman whom Mr. Worley baptized a year ago walked thirty-five miles over the mountains and carried a baby on her back to get to us so she could learn foreign cooking in a week. I could not do too much after she had made such an effort. She came over every morning into our kitchen, and we proceeded to cook; she with paper and pencil in hand and watching with both eyes. I am wondering what I shall be expected to eat next time we go there. I taught her some new songs for the Sunday School she and her husband hold in their little mountain village. I just wanted to fill her up with good thoughts and helps to take home, as she had made such an effort to get here.”[27]

Even the little missionary children may have their unconscious share in kindling a new light that shall shine in palace and hovel, and be reflected in the faces of parents and children who have long since lost the radiant look they were meant to wear. A woman of high position was making a very formal call in the missionary home, accompanied by many retainers. Every effort was made by the ladies of the station to entertain her fittingly and to bring some gleam of interest to the weary, hopeless face. The piano, beautiful pictures, the wonderful writing machine (typewriter), dainty refreshments,—all were acknowledged courteously, but, neither interest nor heart was touched. At last in desperation the tiny baby in her dainty, long dress was brought out from the bedroom, and, as the visitor’s arms were stretched out eagerly for the cunning form, so different from any baby she had ever seen, the little face looked up into the sad, wondering eyes, and a beautiful smile crept into the baby eyes and hovered about the rosebud mouth. “Oh, see,” whispered the servants in eager watchfulness, “our lady is smiling,—smiling for the first time since her brother died. God bless the little baby who made her smile!”

Ah yes! God bless the missionary babies, and the missionary fathers and mothers, and every one of the men and women whose hearts glow with the love of the great Father whose supreme will it is that “not one of these little ones should perish!”

QUOTATIONS—CHAPTER II.

CHRISTIANITY AND THE HOME

Christianity will call into existence a sympathy between parents and children hitherto unknown, and one of the greatest needs of the Chinese home. It will teach parents to govern their children, an accomplishment which in four millenniums they have never made an approach to acquiring. This it will do, not as at present by the mere iterative insistence upon the duty of subjection to parents, but by showing parents how first to govern themselves, teaching them the completion of the first relations by the addition of that chiefest one hitherto unknown, expressed in the words Our Father. It will redeem many years during the first decade of childhood, of what is now a mere animal existence, filling it with fruitfulness for a future intellectual and spiritual harvest.

It will show Chinese parents how to train as well as how to govern their children—a divine art of which they have at present no more conception than of the chemistry of soils. (Dr. Arthur H. Smith, “Village Life in China.” Revell.)

MOTHERS’ MEETINGS

I have been much interested in our Mothers’ Meetings this winter. They meet at our house twice a month, and we have been trying to have some very practical talks which shall help them to be better mothers and women. The need for such talks is very great, and I wonder more and more that so many children escape physical and moral wreck. Our more intelligent women realize their need for instruction and help, and are very grateful for the opportunities given them by these meetings, but a large number come only out of curiosity. Some of the young women say, “You ought to have these meetings for our mothers-in-law instead of for us. They govern the house and our children. We would like to try these methods. We know they are right, but we are not allowed our way.” But I know it is hopeless to do anything with the grandmothers, and I believe that at least these young women will learn enough to keep their hands off when their turn comes to be mothers-in-law! It’s a long look ahead, but well worth while to plan for the future generation, even though we cannot do all we long to for the present one. (Mrs. Henry Riggs, Harpoot, Turkey.)

A TRANSFORMED HOME

In a small village near Hoi-How lived Sitli Nin, a poor woman, worn out by a life of hard work, bitter poverty, and sorrow. Her husband had become a victim of the opium habit, and squandered what little property she had. When her eldest boy was eight years old, the inhuman father, in order to gratify his cravings, sold him to a Hong Kong boatman, and the mother never heard from him since. Eight times she had attempted suicide, three times by drowning, three times by hanging, and twice by taking opium; but in the latter case she had failed to take enough, and the other times love for her children restrained her at the last moment. By some chance the ladies of our mission found her. Her husband was persuaded to take the opium cure at the hospital.... While he was in the hospital, she attended the services at the mission, and was genuinely converted. Her husband was cured, and they went home rejoicing in their new-found happiness. (Josephine P. Osmond, “Home Life in Hainan,” leaflet of Women’s Foreign Missionary Society of the Presbyterian Church)

CHILD MARRIAGE, INDIA

Sir W. W. Hunter says, “In Bengal, out of every thousand girls between five and nine years of age, two hundred and seventy-one are married. More than ten boys in every thousand between five and ten years old are bridegrooms; while of girls, twenty-eight in one hundred are wives or widows at an age when, if they were in Europe, they would be in the nursery or infant school.”

In England, out of every hundred females of twenty years of age and upwards, 25.80 are single, 60.60 are married and 13.60 widows.

“A Brahmin of Bengal gave away his six aunts, eight sisters, and four daughters in a batch of altogether eighteen, in marriage to one person—a boy less than ten years old. The brides of three generations were in age from about fifty years to three months at the lowest. The baby bride was brought to the ceremony on a brass plate.” (Quoted from Times of India.)

The origin and authority for early marriage are worthy of inquiry. Like so many Hindu customs, it claims a quasi-divine authority, and is based on certain reasons which, from the Hindu point of view, are of great weight. “Reprehensible,” says Manu, “is the father who gives not his daughter in marriage at the proper time.” And all commentators say the proper time is before the age of puberty.... A high legal authority, Mr. Justice Moothoswami Iyer, recently said, “According to custom now obtaining, a Brahmin girl is bound to marry, for fear of social degradation, before she attains maturity. Marriage is of the nature of a sacrament which no Brahmin is at liberty to neglect without forfeiting his caste.”... Thus a religious or sacramental purpose has been operative here, as in most other departments of Hindu life and thought.... There has been one strong incentive to early marriage, which in the past might be urged in its justification. The unsettled, precarious conditions of life, from the remotest times until the establishment of British power, encouraged parents to have their children married as soon as possible. (Rev. E. Storrow, “Our Sisters in India.” Revell.)

CHILD-WIVES, PERSIA

The usual age for a Mohammedan girl to marry is thirteen or fourteen, but in many places they marry as early as eight.... Poor little girl wives! They are taken away from home before they are grown up, and although they are now married women they cannot help behaving as children. There was one young wife of a Government official who received her visitors with the utmost dignity and propriety, and then could not resist the temptation to pinch the old black woman who was handing the tea and make her jump....

Even when the children grow older their mothers, grown-up children themselves, do not know how to manage them.... One woman bit her little boy’s hand till it bled badly. He was about seven, and had cried to have his best coat on when he went to see the missionary. Another woman bit the cheek of a poor little consumptive girl of eight or nine so that there was a great bruise and the skin was broken. She told a neighbor, with a laugh, that she had got angry with the child because she was tiresome about taking her medicine, which was very nasty.

There is no command in the Koran that girls should be married so young, but the mothers declare that it was the command of Mohammed, and certainly he himself set the example by marrying a girl of nine....

The man is absolute master in his own house, and unless his wife has powerful relations he may do what he likes to her and her children, and no one will take any notice. I knew one woman whose husband treated her like a slave. He forced her not only to do all the work of the house, but the work of the stable too, for he was well enough off to keep a horse. He killed one child in her arms, and twice stole another away from her, sending it once to a town a week’s journey off, and once to another part of the town. Finally he divorced her, without giving any reason, and left her ill and destitute. And she had at no time any redress.... Little Bagum, the child-wife, was deliberately and cruelly burnt by her husband, and was brought to the mission hospital. There was no hope of recovery, but all was done that was possible to relieve her pain and brighten her last days. She had heard something of the Gospel story from a missionary who had paid a visit to her native village, and she had been so interested that she asked two Persian children to teach her more. When she was brought to the hospital even the terrible pain she was suffering did not make her forget the wonderful story, and she begged to be told more and more. And, resting in the love of Christ and trusting wholly in Him and His salvation, she loved to sing of the joy to which He was going to take her, and kept begging for “Here we suffer grief and pain,” until even the Mohammedan women would sit beside her and sing the hymn that comforted her so much....

“I have a foolish husband,” said one little girl, “He says he will beat Jesus Christ out of me, but he can only beat my body, and Jesus Christ is in my heart, so he cannot beat Him out.”

(Mrs. Malcolm, “Children of Persia,” Oliphant, Anderson & Ferrier.)

BIBLE READING
THE IDEAL HOME

Psalm 128

v. 2. The busy father working with joy for the maintenance of the home.

v. 3. The happy, willing, successful mother, striking the keynote of the home.

v. 3. The vigorous young children growing up in the home.

v. 4, 5. All this is the token of God’s rich blessing to him who puts God first, and who is interested in the growth of God’s kingdom as well as in his own home.

v. 6. Not only as parents but as grandparents God’s blessing will be enjoyed.

PRAYER

We thank Thee, O Lord,

For the sweet and silent years of the Holy Childhood.

For the light and gladness brought into the world by little children.

For Thy servants who, by word and good example, are protecting and guiding Thy lambs in the dark and waste places.

For the Christian nurture, Christian homes, and Christian parents, which are the gifts of the Christ-Child to our nation; the strength of its life and the hope of its future.

For Thine assurance that inasmuch as we have done it unto the least of Thy little ones, we have done it unto Thee.

For the growing interest and co-operation of the children of the Church in the up-building of the world-wide Kingdom.

May it please Thee—

To guard and protect the innocence of children, and by their example to win men and women to a worthier life.

To bless family life, and direct parents in their sacred task, that Thy children may have a fear and love of Thy Holy Name.

To bring to the mothers of the world the knowledge which alone can sanctify their joy and soothe their sorrow.

(Spirit of Missions, February, 1910.)

QUESTIONS

1. What is the saddest part of the life of a girl in India?

2. What do you consider the greatest sorrow of Mohammedan motherhood? Of heathen motherhood?

3. What methods can you suggest for effecting a beneficial change in the home life of the Chinese? 4. What feature of home life in Mohammedan lands most needs to be improved?

5. What effect would it have on your boy to be married at the age of fourteen?

6. If you could make marriage laws, what would you set as the lowest marriage age for boys? For girls?

7. Name the missionary wives and mothers of your acquaintance. In what ways do they serve and help the communities in which they live?

BIBLIOGRAPHY. CHAPTERS I & II.

LEAFLETS

Home Life in China	Women’s Foreign Missionary Society of the Presbyterian Church.
Home Life in Syria
Home Life in Siam
Home Life in Persia
Home Life in Hainan
Home Life in Korea
Home Life in Africa
Home Life in India
Home Life in Japan
Child Life among the Lao
Other Children
Being a Boy in Korea	Woman’s Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church.
Selma (Beirut)
A Faithful Follower
Auntie’s Explanation
Child Life in China	Woman’s Presbyterian Board of Missions of the Northwest.
Story of Satabia
Child Life in Burma	Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church.
Foot Binding in China
Little Daughters of Islam
Motherhood in Heathen Lands
Young Ladies here, Young Ladies there
Childhood in Heathen Lands
Child Life in Turkey	Woman’s Board of Missions of the Congregational Church.
Chih, the little Chinese Girl
Sister May’s Impressions	Woman’s Board of Foreign Missions of the Reformed Church in America.
Village of the Milky River
Sorrows of Heathen Motherhood	Woman’s Baptist Foreign Missionary Society.

CHILDREN’S MISSIONARY MAGAZINES

World Wide	American Baptist Publication Society, Ford Bldg., Boston, Mass.
Over Sea and Land	Pres. Bd. For. Miss., 156 Fifth Ave., New York City.
Day Star	Woman’s Bd. of For. Miss. Ref. Ch. in Am., 25 E. 22d St., N. Y.
Lutheran Boys and Girls	Lutheran Board, 1424 Arch St., Phila.
Children’s Missionary Friend	Woman’s For. Miss. Soc. of the M. E. Church, 581 Boylston St., Boston, Mass.
Everyland	Everyland Publishing Co., 156 Fifth Ave., New York, N. Y.