“Suffer the little children to come unto Me.”

What wonderful pictures flash before the mind as one repeats the words, “The Child at Worship”! The picture, familiar to childhood, of the boy Samuel, kneeling in the temple with folded hands and uplifted eyes; the picture on the nursery wall of vested choir boys or earnest-faced children singing praises in the sanctuary; the bowed heads of little ones in the primary room at Sunday-School, while with hushed voices they sing their prayer song; the hour far back in childhood when you knelt at your mother’s knee; or the sweet moment when your sleepy baby cuddled in your arms and learned to lisp, “Now I lay me.” All that is sweetest, purest, holiest in childhood seems to find full expression and highest reality as we see the child at worship, for “except ye turn and become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven, ... for their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven.”

The Child at Worship! Far off in distant Thibet today thousands of children are praying morning, noon, and night, joining their parents in the constant repetition of one six-syllabled sentence, “Om mani padme Hum” (“Om! the Jewel in the Lotus! Hum”!) This prayer they are taught from earliest childhood to use as “a panacea for all evils, a compendium of all knowledge, a treasury of all wisdom, a summary of all religion.” It is engraved on the outside of metal cylinders, written on rolls within rolls of paper inserted into the cylinders, which are held in the right hand and whirled round and round like a child’s toy,—each revolution storing up merit to the worshipper. But alack! if the careless boy whirls the prayer cylinder in the wrong direction, i.e., not with the sun, he is adding to the debit side of his account, and the more zealously he “prays,” the less good will his prayers do him.[75] “They think they shall be heard for their much speaking.”

The Child at Worship in India! “All the way up the bank they are killing and skinning their goats. You look to the right and put your hands over your eyes. You look to the left, and do it again. You look straight in front of you and see an extended skinned victim hung from the branch of a tree. Every hanging rootlet of the great banyan-tree is hung with horrors,—all dead most mercifully, but horribly still.... “We see little children watching the process delightedly. There is no intentional cruelty, for the god will not accept the sacrifice unless the head is severed by a single stroke. But it is most disgusting and demoralizing. And to think that these children are being taught to connect it with religion!

“With me is one who used to enjoy it all. She tells me how she twisted the fowls’ heads off with her own hands. I look at the fine little brown hands, and I can hardly believe it. ‘You, you, do such a thing!’ And she says, ‘Yes; when the day came round to sacrifice to our family divinity my little brother held the goat’s head while my father struck it off, and I twisted the chickens’ heads. It was my pleasure.’”[76]

Truly, “the dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of cruelty!”

The Mohammedan Child at Worship! From the minaret of the Sunni Mosque or the roof of the Shi’ite Mosque sounds the call to prayer. Children of seven or older are supposed to join their elders in obeying the summons five times a day,—in the early dawn, at noon, two hours before sunset, at sunset, and two hours later. The religious law, however, provides that no child shall be beaten for neglecting his prayer until he is ten years of age.

Praying, however, is not as easy a task for the Mohammedan lad as for his Thibetan cousin. He must first wash his face, hands, and arms, feet, and legs, learning which side of the face, which hand and foot to wash first, whether the arms should be stroked from the wrist to the elbow or in the opposite direction. His prayer will not count before the great “Allah” if the ablutions are not correct. Then he must learn the words of the prayers, and these are in Arabic, which three-fourths of the Mohammedan children of the world cannot understand. Turning toward Mecca, he must stand, kneel, and bow himself with his forehead to the ground, at just the proper intervals during the prayer. At the age of twelve he begins to observe the month of Ramazan, and his nine-year-old sister must do the same, when from sunrise to sunset no morsel of food or drop of drink may cross their lips. “Is such the fast that I have chosen? wilt thou call this a fast and an acceptable day unto Jehovah?” With deep insight into the truth has Mrs. Malcolm said:—

“Here again we see Mohammed giving his people what we may call ‘nursery rules,’ treating them as children, while our Master expects us to grow up so that we can arrange these matters for ourselves. The very fact that the detailed rules of Mohammedanism are binding through life shows that the Mohammedan is not expected to grow up as we understand growing up.”[77]

Once more the Child at Worship, this time in the African jungle! “Ancestor-worship is the highest form of African Fetishism,—the usual fetish is the skull of the father, which the son keeps in a box. The father occasionally speaks to the son in dreams, and frequently communicates with him by omens. He helps him in all his enterprises, good and evil, and secures his success in love, in hunting, and in war. All those who have skulls are a secret society, which is powerful to rule and to tyrannize over others. Young boys are initiated into this society by rites and ceremonies that are revolting.... In the mild ceremony of the more civilized Fang towns, the boy who is to be initiated is made very drunk and taken blindfolded to the bush, to a place set apart for the use of the society. The ceremony continues several days. In one part of it the bandage is removed from his eyes at midnight, a low fire is burning, which gives a feeble light, and he finds himself surrounded by members of the society with faces and bodies frightfully distorted, and all the skulls of their ancestors exposed to view, together with the heads of persons who have recently died. Some one asks him what he sees. He replies that he sees only spirits, and solemnly declares that these are not men....

“Further up the river, a boy during initiation is usually placed for several days in a house alone, after being made to look so long at the sun that sometimes he faints, and when he is taken into the house he cannot at first see anything. Meantime the door is closed, and they all go away. Gradually he sees things around him, and at length discovers opposite him a corpse, in an early state of decomposition. He is kept there day and night during the ceremony. The men visit him and subject him to all sorts of indignities, in order to impress him with the necessity of absolute obedience to the society.... They believe that the skull of the father or other ancestor, when it has been properly prepared, becomes the residence of the ancestor. The son ... will keep the skull comfortably warm and dry, occasionally rubbing it with oil and red-wood powder, and will feed it bountifully.”[78]

Our hearts are touched by the child in its helplessness, by the suffering and sorrow of neglected little ones, by the agonies of child wives and widows, and the yearning cry for teachers and books, but how can we endure it when all that is sweetest and holiest and best in the beautiful child heart is defiled and polluted in the name of religion; when senseless repetition in an unknown tongue takes the place of the trustful words, “Our Father”; when sticks and stones, ancestral tablets, spirits and devils are worshipped by those to whom the Christ cries out in yearning love, “Suffer the little children to come unto ME”? If our hearts are touched, not to the breaking point, but to the acting point, then these horrors must cease, and the children will be taught to worship aright, and Christ “shall see of the travail of His soul and shall be satisfied.”

“The people in the country from which you have come have a religion of their own, is it not good enough for them? Why should you insult them by trying to foist your religion upon them?” The place of the child in non-Christian religions. These and many similar questions meet the missionary on furlough, and cause her more woe than does many a hard experience on the mission field. The best answer to such questions is to induce the questioners to study carefully what the non-Christian religions have to say regarding children, and the direct result of their systems on child life.

A careful search in the Koran, the sacred book of the Mohammedans, is rewarded by finding several passages strictly enjoining kindness and justice to orphans, and a set of minute regulations regarding inheritance in which children, parents, husbands, and wives shall share, prefaced by these words: “God hath thus commanded you concerning your children,” and followed up later by the remark: “Ye know not whether your parents or your children be of greater use unto you.” (Sura IV.)

“Children,” says Rev. S. M. Zwemer, “are scarcely mentioned in the Koran; of such is not the Kingdom of Islam.”

“The Hindu Vedas enjoin that by a girl, or by a young woman, or by a woman advanced in years, nothing must be done, even in her own dwelling place, according to her mere pleasure; in childhood a female must be dependent on (or subject to) her father; in youth, on her husband; her lord being dead, on her sons; a woman must never seek independence.” (Manu V, 158.)

“The Hindu Shastras have made no provisions of affection and regard for a daughter. She is viewed by them, as far as her parents are concerned, merely as an object to be ‘given away,’ and that as soon as possible. She is declared by them to be marriageable, even in her infancy, to a person of any age; and of course without her own choice or intelligent consent.... According to the letter of the law, the parents are not to sell their daughters, but they may receive valuable gifts, the equivalent of a price, on her behalf.” (Manu III, 51.)[79]

The code of Manu further teaches that by honoring his mother a son gains the terrestrial world, by honoring his father, the ethereal,—intermediate,—and by assiduous attention to his preceptor, even the celestial world of Brahma.[80]

How different are the words of the Apostle Paul regarding the relation between parents and children. “Fathers, provoke not your children that they be not discouraged. Children, obey your parents in the Lord. Honor thy father and thy mother, which is the first commandment with promise.”

The Right Reverend Logan H. Roots, Bishop of Hankow, has illustrated so forcibly the difference in the practical working out of the precepts of Confucianism and Christianity, that it is well worth while to quote him at length.

In conversation with a group of Chinese gentlemen some time ago, I made the remark that outside the Jewish and Christian religions there was no serious recognition of the inherent dignity of children, and that no sage had ever made a statement comparable to that of our Lord.—“Suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid them not, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.” Such a remark as this on my part would have elicited scarcely any interest a few years ago. The warm discussion it aroused this time was a sign of the new life that is now stirring among the Chinese. The keenest of these gentlemen were in sympathy with Christianity, but they were all inclined to look upon Confucianism as a real preparation for Christianity, and one after another brought forth sayings of the Confucian sages which they thought could be reasonably compared to that of Christ.

They quoted the praises of King Wen in the “Great Learning,” where it is said, “As a father he rested in kindness”; the sayings of Confucius himself in the “Analects” as to his own wish: “In regard to the young, treat them tenderly”; the advice to a ruler in “The Great Learning”: “Act as though you were watching over an infant”; and the fine saying of Mencius: “The great man is he who does not lose his child’s heart.”...

The eagerness of these gentlemen in discussing the question with me, to find a place for their worthies in the ample folds of Christian teaching is far from unwholesome or blameworthy, especially when there is such readiness as they showed to appeal to Christian teaching rather than to the sages as their standard, and to prove the greatness of their sages by their agreement with the Christ....

My purpose, however, is not to give an exposition of these classical gems, but rather to contrast them briefly with certain popular Chinese conceptions of childhood which are foolish or cruel, but which these lofty sayings of the sages have been powerless to correct.

Should a child fall ill, his relatives or friends very likely remark, “His spirit has gone seeking another incarnation.” Or some one suggests, “Some ghost has frightened the child to the point of losing its soul.”... Should the child die, the parents will grieve as surely and as sorely as parents any where; but ... they will be told, “Never mind, the child was misguided to your home, and was not intended for you.” Or, “It was only a creditor collecting a debt you owed in a former existence.” Or, “Don’t grieve, it was but one of those demon spirits that always die young.”...

I put these popular sayings beside the exalted sentiments of the Chinese Classics, not to disparage the sages, but to show how utterly dark the popular mind is, in spite of these sayings which seem so full of light. Is not the difficulty that the sages after all could not go to the root of the matter? They knew nothing of God as Father.[81]

What is here illustrated of the failure of Confucianism to influence lives toward righteousness and faith is true of the other non-Christian religions. Even the young Mohammedan girl realized the power and claim of Christianity as she was a chance listener to the Gospel story while a missionary toured in central Persia. “Why, lady,” she exclaimed, “if one understands clearly that Book, there is nothing left but to obey!”

The direct results of the way children are taught to worship in non-Christian lands deserve careful, unprejudiced study, with the question constantly in mind, “Is this religion good enough for my children, or for those in whom I am interested?” If the study results in a negative answer to the question, it is fair to ask further, “Is it good enough for any children in the whole wide world?”

What should be the results, physical, mental, moral, and spiritual, of a child’s religious acts? Which of all the world religions produces these results? Study Mohammedanism, for instance, of which we have already noted some of the religious acts expected of the child. These must necessarily inculcate formalism, thoughtless repetition, deep-rooted superstition, and the idea that God can be appeased and sin can be forgiven through certain acts unconnected with life and character.

“When I die,” said a poor, blind Mohammedan girl, “I shall be visited by two angels, the chief of whom will make an examination of my deeds, and remind me of everything I have done, and left undone; he will then cut off a piece of my shroud and record upon it my good and bad deeds, and attach it firmly to my neck with a piece of rope. If my good deeds outweigh my bad ones, I shall go straight into heaven. If my bad deeds outweigh my good deeds, my intercessor Mohammed will easily get permission for me to enter heaven, so it does not much matter how I live.”[82]

The annual month of mourning of the Shi’ite Mohammedans is observed by children as well as by adults, and little ones with their heads covered with straw or ashes, or wearing chains, are borne on horseback in the processions that close the series of passion plays. A missionary in Persia saw a mother carrying her boy of five or six years in the bloody procession, cutting his head with a curved sword, while blood streamed from five or six gashes. Poor, eager, zealous mother, trying to store up merit for her baby boy against the day of wrath!

Fear, dread, and horror are inseparably associated in the minds of thousands of children with the worship of their gods. From earliest childhood others grow so naturally into the forms of ancestor, idol, and spirit worship that this becomes one of the most difficult factors in leading them into Christianity. From the Mission Day Spring we quote a few words about “how Chinese children worship.”

We must go up a flight of wide stone steps at the entrance of the temple, and as we enter we shall see two tall images with very ugly faces and brilliantly painted coats, which are called “Guardians of the Gate.” The mothers bring their little children forward, and teach them to clasp their hands and bow down, knocking their heads to the ground as they worship the image. If it is the first time, the children are afraid and often say, “Oh, I can’t do it, I never can do it!” Then they have to watch closely while their mothers once more show them how to worship. Afterwards they are sometimes rewarded with little presents, which they are told have been given them by the idol. If they are still too afraid to worship, stories of the terrible things that happen to people who do not ask the protection of the idols are repeated to them.

Up on the mountain slopes of the Hakone District in Japan, is the great children’s god, Jizo, carved centuries ago out of the solid rock. The heathen mother has been taught that, when the souls of her little children pass over the sullen stream of death, they must be saved from the clutches of a cruel hag residing on the banks. She steals their clothes and forces them to the endless task of piling stones at the river side. In order to induce Jizo to save them from the hag, the weary heathen mother climbs the steep paths leading to the children’s god, and there makes her supplication. And the little one tied to her back or led by the hand, with highly strung nerves and weary limbs, shrinks in terror at the sight of the ugly idol, and at the stories of dire vengeance which will befall her unless she worships properly.

Many children die from the effects of fright and exposure connected with religious rites, as in the case of some of the African boys whose initiation into ancestor worship was described above.

Worse than all the results yet mentioned are the deep soul-stains, the utter ruin of all moral and spiritual character, which fall to the lot of countless thousands of innocent children through the direct influence of their religion. One longs to turn away from scenes like these, but we mothers, sisters, and daughters of Christian homes cannot be honest with ourselves and with our God, unless we are willing to know things as they really are, in order to help to make them as they really ought to be. Such conditions exist to a larger or smaller degree in many lands, but to be really understood in their baldest, most revolting form, it is only necessary to visit India. Bishop Caldwell says that “the stories related of the life of the god Krishna do more than anything to destroy the morals and corrupt the imaginations of Hindu youth.” Temple girls. The temple girls, nautch girls, and muralis are living witnesses to India’s need of a pure and holy religion.

The nautch-girl often begins her career of training under teachers as early as five years of age. She is taught to read, dance, and sing, and instructed in every seductive art. Her songs are usually amorous; and while she is yet a mere girl, before she can realize fully the moral bearings of her choice of life, she makes her debut as a nautch-girl in the community.

Khandoba is the deity of the Marathi country and is popularly believed to be an avator, or incarnation of Shiva. Muralis are girls devoted to him by their parents in infancy or early childhood. Outside the main entrance of the temple court, a stone column stands on the wall on the left side. It is about three feet high, and on the head of it is cut a filthy design. The column is called by the name of Yeshwantrao.... He it is who gives children to barren women.... It is to this image the poor deluded women promise to sacrifice their first-born daughters if Khandoba will make them mothers of many children. Then after the vow, the first-born girl is offered to Khandoba and set apart for him by tying a necklace of seven cowries around the little girl’s neck. When she becomes of marriageable age she is formally married to the Khanda or daggar of Khandoba, and becomes his nominal wife. Henceforth she is forbidden to become the wedded wife of man, and the result is that she usually leads an infamous life, earning a livelihood by sin.[83]

The stories told by Amy Wilson Carmichael and many others corroborate and emphasize the facts stated by Mrs. Fuller, and tell of what the British Government and Christian missions are trying to do to counteract and stop the monstrous evil. From the Missionary Review of the World for February, 1913, we quote:—

“A bill lately introduced into the viceroy’s legislative council by Mr. Dadabhai, the Parsee member of that body, touches upon some of oldest and darkest social evils of India. It proposes to make it criminal for a parent or other lawful guardian to dedicate a girl under sixteen years of age to ‘the service of a deity,’ which always means dedicating her to a life of infamy, and to make the crime punishable with ten years penal servitude. It prohibits under very severe penalties, the practice which obtains whereby priests enter into temporary alliance with young girls thus dedicated, in order to initiate them into the life of professional profligacy.” To this we may add from an authoritative source that in 1913 the native state of Mysore had already abolished dancing girls from all its temples.

While the British Government is trying to prevent any of India’s daughters from being hereafter ruined, body and soul, in the name of religion, what is being done for the thousands who through no fault of their own have already become “the servants of the gods”? Is it possible to do anything to redeem the lives of these children whose earliest memories cluster about the most hideous forms of evil?

Another picture. A group of women lounging within the temple enclosure in the cool shade of the fragrant cork trees. A beautiful little girl of five years is running up and down the great stone steps of the tank, laughing and playing. Now and then one of the women calls the child to her and tries the effect of some article of jewelry against the bright little face. Little Moothi, the Pearl of the Temple, as she is called, is full of life and happiness. Too young to understand the sin and wrong about her, she loves the bright jewels and silken garments, the excitement of the dancing and singing. The daily exercise on the whirling wheel is only fun for her. She never grows dizzy and falls off as do her stupid companions, to be beaten by cross old Ramana, their teacher. “She will bring plenty of money by and by,” said one of the women to Moothi’s mother. “You had better let her go to the Christian school in the village. She will be taught to read and sing without any expense to you, and there is no danger of her remembering what she hears of that foolish religion.” But the mother’s face did not light up in response. Sitting in her little hut she has listened to the Gospel as it was told to a group of outcast women who had gathered weekly in the village palim on the other side of the wall. The wonderful story had penetrated her dark heart. But it is too late for her. She is too old to change, but oh, that her little Moothi, her beautiful one, might be spared the life of sin and shame to which she is doomed as a dancing girl devoted to the service of the temple. What can she do? Through the long nights she thought and thought, until finally she came to the decision to part with the little one though her heart break. One night she took the child with a little bundle of clothing and stole away. After weary miles of travel she appeared at the home of a missionary and begged her to take the little girl. “I give her to you,” she said, “to be taught your religion, and to be your child, but she must never know who her mother was.” She laid down twenty rupees which she had saved toward her support, and disappeared, leaving no clue to her name and village.

There was consternation among the women of the temple when it was discovered that Moothi was gone, but the mother gave no sign, and it was finally concluded that some one had stolen her because of her beauty, and such things are too common in a heathen land to cause a disturbance. As Moothi grew and developed into a beautiful Christian woman and earnest worker, the missionary often wondered whence came the God-given trust so strangely sent. Now and then, but less frequently as the years pass on, a woman, growing increasingly old and bent, was seen near the school, whom they associated with Moothi, but no one knew until upon her deathbed she sent for the missionary and told her story. Only a heathen mother, degraded and heart-broken, parted from her only joy in life, watching hungrily in the distance for a sight of the loved face. Can we not believe that the Christ of love was revealed to her heart also?[84]

What Christian mother will make it possible that some other heart-broken heathen mother may hear the Gospel message, and may find a place of refuge for her sweet, innocent child?

While our hearts go out in tenderness to the heathen mother deprived of her living child, what can we do or say to comfort the mother whose little one is cold in death? Our statistics of infant mortality in Chapter I give some slight idea of the vast multitudes of mourning mothers for whom there is no hope, no knowledge that,—“around the throne of God in heaven, thousands of children stand;” no vision of Him who “shall gather the lambs with His arm and carry them in His bosom.” Nowhere but among Christians do hope and faith and self-control and comfort abide in the house where death has come, and none but the Christian cemetery is a place of order and beauty and peace. Among the Thonga Tribe of South Africa, the mother who loses a baby is considered deeply contaminated with the defilement of death. She must bury the child alone, not even her husband helping her. Mrs. George Heber Jones said recently that in all her many years of life in Korea she had never seen any funeral service for a child of non-Christians. The baby is buried anywhere at the back of the house as a dog would be, or put up in the branches of a tree for the vultures to find. Do the mothers have hearts and feelings? Listen to the experience of Mrs. U. S. G. Jones of India, and answer the question for yourselves.

“I went into a Brahmin home where several widows were gathered. One old woman with eyes that were dimmed from much weeping said, peering into my face, ‘Yes, it is the same, I was sure of it. You came here some ten or twelve years ago, and told us how when your beloved were taken from you, you did not mourn and wail as we did. When my daughter died, I tried to recall what you had said about another life and hope beyond the grave, but I could not remember. Tell it all again now.’ So I told her again of our glorious hope and of the resurrection. How earnestly they all listened! Poor, poor things!”[85]

“The Child for Christ” must be the watchword of our “organized motherhood for the children of the world.” The Bible is the only sacred book that gives the child a place of importance. Christ was the only founder of a religion who raised childhood into a type of those who were fit to enter His Kingdom. As E. G. Romanes says, “Tenderness toward child life, appreciation of the simplicity and the helplessness of children, affection of parents for their children, and children for their parents;—all these are features of the Bible which the most superficial reader cannot fail to observe.”[86]

In his “Challenge to Christian Missions,” R. E. Welsh utters these significant words,—

“Why is it a matter of urgent duty and concern on a parent’s part to teach his child the story of Christ and train him in Christian truth and life?... What is the parent’s motive?... Simply the sharp sense of the value of Christ to every human being, young or old—the perception of the child’s need and peril if he does not get the saving power of Christ upon him; the sense of the native worth and value of being a Christian in soul and character; the desire to lift him out of ‘the natural man’ to ‘the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.’ If that motive be not strong enough to inspire us with zeal for taking the blessing of Christ to the heathen, then Christ has still much work to do upon us to make us Christian in mind and spiritual sympathy.”

If it is our duty and privilege to win the children of the world to Christ, how is it to be done? What special means are our missionaries using to bring about this result? All missionary work for children, in the homes, in day school and boarding school, in church and Sunday-School, in hospital and orphanage, must have the great two-fold aim ever in view,—to win the child to Christ, to train the child for Christ. It remains for us to study briefly several agencies not yet touched upon, that have been greatly blessed in their effect upon children of many lands.

First in the list of these child-winning agencies stands the Sunday-School. From a series of statistics appearing in the January, 1913, number of the Missionary Review of the World, we take the following figures, concerning Sunday-Schools conducted by the Protestant Missionary Societies of the world.

Would that every Christian woman who glances at these figures could dimly realize what they stand for,—the efforts, the time and energy and love expended, the disappointments and trials, the encouragements and victories. One must never be discouraged, one must never lose faith and hope, one may never stop sowing seeds in little hearts, even though the work seems as small and insignificant as it did in the Japanese Sunday-School at Kawazoe.

Every Sunday at twelve o’clock the children begin to clatter up on their wooden shoes to a Sunday-School which does not begin till two o’clock.... When it begins they sing hymns vigorously if not tunefully, and listen as patiently as any children of the same age. The nurse girls, aged ten or eleven, come with babies on their backs, and, if the babies remonstrate too vigorously, they are trotted out in the sunshine for a breathing space. An average of forty children come every Sunday to hear the Christian stories, and often, passing on the street, one hears the familiar tune and unfamiliar words of “Jesus loves me.” One, two, or more Sunday-Schools seem like but a drop in the bucket in a town of twenty thousand people, but we can only hope that through hymn, or story, or picture, or card, the good news of the love of God may be spread more widely.[87]

But many “drops” fill a bucket, and some day Japan is going to feel the mighty power of the children who have been taught in mission Sunday-Schools. Here is a prophetic instance:—

The teachings which produce the sweetest and most beautiful things in the lives of children, and will make them the truest and best “soldiers and servants” are those given in the Sunday-Schools which are multiplying in Japan. Therefore there is no work better worth doing than that in the Sunday-Schools, and no service more valuable than that of the missionaries who teach the children of Japan.... On the Campus of the Reformed Church College, Sendai, there was held last summer a union gathering of the Sunday-Schools of the city. Some of them were Saturday Sunday-Schools, as there were not hours enough on Sunday for the Christian teachers to instruct all those who are eager to learn, and it is not unprecedented for two or three Sunday-Schools to be taught by the same persons. When the pupils in the Christian schools of Sendai came together they were one thousand seven hundred strong. An eye-witness says:—

“I wish you could have seen them! Our own four Sunday-Schools furnished one hundred and fifty of the number. It did my heart good! Do missions pay? Oh, my, no! One of our students in the training school is the direct result of the Sendai Sunday-School, and another from that Sunday-School enters next year. And to hear those one thousand seven hundred children sing! And back of that great gathering was the story of long and patient labor, days of constant effort, and nights of discouragement.”[88]

With such a view of the value of the Sunday-School to Japan, it is interesting to note that in May, 1913, there were one thousand seven hundred Protestant Sunday-Schools in Japan, with an enrollment of about 100,000 pupils. If the question is asked, Do the Sunday-Schools have any effect on the lives of the children? it is a pleasure to answer with a brief extract from the personal letter of a new missionary to Japan:—

“This afternoon a lady called whose mother belongs to the nobility and has older ideals, but her father is American. She is a most earnest Christian and has done a great deal. She has access to the nobility’s children and is forming a Sunday-School, but she has many discouragements. At one village they had started a school of two hundred, and the children were showing its influence, but the schoolmaster feared just this and so managed to frighten the parents that all were withdrawn. This village was built in terraces with a long flight of stairs, down which many blind people went. The boys used to hang cords across so as to trip them. But now they have begun to take these poor people by the hand, and lead them down.” A Sunday-School that can teach such practical Christianity to mischievous boys must be a power in the community.

In October, 1911, the city of Peking, China, witnessed a Sunday-School parade in which two thousand children took part. With banners flying, and led by the Methodists with six hundred children and a band, the parade passed through the most important streets of the city to a large church where a children’s mass meeting was held.

A noteworthy “forward movement” was undertaken by the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1913, when the Rev. Wallace H. Miner, son of a missionary, sailed for China, to become a Sunday-School worker and organizer in that new republic. His work will be to assist the missionaries in promoting the work of the Sunday-Schools, to instruct native preachers in methods of Sunday-School organization and administration, and to train local teachers and native field workers, introducing modern methods into Chinese Sunday-Schools as far as they are adapted to Chinese conditions.

Would that India had more men like the rich coffee planter who gives his services to Christian work, and who travels from end to end of India organizing Sunday-Schools. The statistics of the Sunday-School Union of India are deeply significant, as is also the fact that there is such a Union. “The Sunday-School Union of India has a membership of 458,945, being an increase of 37,866 on the previous year. The Union stands for the very best in Bible instruction, equipment, and management. It publishes 10,000,000 English and vernacular pages of Scripture illustrated expositions, nearly all of which are based on the international syllabus. To meet the needs of Sunday-Schools in fifty languages, there are about fifty editions of ‘helps’ in twenty languages. A prominent feature of the Union is that it stands for salvation through Jesus Christ, and membership in the church to which it belongs.”[89]

It would be fascinating to visit the Sunday-Schools in various lands, and to hear the same dear children’s hymns sung in many languages by black children and white, red, and brown. We have time for only a peep at an Egyptian Sunday-School, but even this glimpse shows how naturally and inevitably the love and power of Jesus Christ can change the heart and life of a little child.

At 2 P. M. the beating of the bell has the desired effect, and presently there rises up from the edge of the river a crowd of some of the dirtiest and yet some of the prettiest little boys and girls you ever saw. Nearly every little girl carries perched on her shoulder a baby brother or sister. They rush without ceremony into the compound, but there they are intercepted, and made to walk quietly and orderly into the classes provided for them. A kind Syrian nurse from the Hospital takes her place in a class of some thirty or forty girls, and, if only you could peep behind the scenes, you would hear such sad stories connected with the lives of several of her girls. Some have been married and cast aside by their husbands for some trivial fault, and then how glad they are once more to find their way back to school, where they know they are loved and cared for.

A blind girl sits among a class of the very naughtiest but sweetest little folk, who try her patience to the utmost. A kind missionary takes another class, and I am sure that, although she is accustomed to teaching all through the week, she has never taught such pieces of humanity as those before her. Still another class of mischievous little boys is taught by one of the day-school boys, who sometimes has to appeal to the superintendent to restore order.... Now the bell has to be beaten, gently too, and, after much noise, all shaggy heads are bent in prayer, then sentence by sentence, the Lord’s Prayer is said, and a very elongated “Amen” comes in at the end. Now three rooms are occupied instead of one, for if all the classes were kept in one room the noise would be deafening. What are all those dirty little bags hung around the children’s necks? Ah! those bags contain the most precious thing the children have, viz., an old Christmas card which serves as a register. If by some unfortunate chance that ticket gets lost, genuine tears form a streamlet down the troubled little face of the owner, for he or she knows it is just a mere chance if the superintendent will relent so far as to provide another, and yet without it admittance to the yearly Christmas tree is a thing impossible.

These registers are marked and a tiny box handed around to receive many little widows’ mites, for although the children are of the poorest, we try to teach them that it is more blessed to give than to receive. And now we are all in the room again, and a time is spent in catechising the whole school so as to make sure they have been listening to their lesson. The story had been told of the ten lepers, and the ingratitude of the nine, who went away without saying “thank you.” Z., a very regular member, looked up with glowing eyes, and said, “I would very much like to say thank you to Jesus for all He has done for me, but I am afraid He would not care to bend His hand from heaven to let a little girl like me kiss it.”... Another little girl is all eagerness to speak. Her name means “Cast Out,” and when her turn comes she says, “I love pickles, oh! so much, and when my mother said, ‘Go to the market and bring back pickles in vinegar,’ I used to dip my fingers into the vinegar all the way home,—they would creep into the basin in spite of myself,—but now since my teacher has told me it is like stealing, I try not even to look at the basin, but run all the way home with it to my mother.”[90]

It would take pages to tell what Junior Christian Endeavor Societies, Epworth Leagues, and similar organizations are doing for the children of Asia and Africa, and how through them the children of Christian households are being trained to live and work for Christ,—a training which most of their parents lacked in childhood. A missionary from Japan tells how a little fellow prayed at the Christian Endeavor meeting, “Oh God, I just want to thank you for the good time we had last Saturday, I can taste it yet; help us not to forget what we promised then.”

A Junior Endeavor Society in the Madura District in India helps to support a Sunday-School in a near-by village, the children bringing their offerings of one pie each (one sixth of a cent) with noble regularity. In one boarding-school in Persia, four or five Endeavor Societies flourished some years ago, and, when the girls went home for their vacations, they led the singing in the village churches, teaching the congregations new hymns learned at school. Each girl saw to it that a Christian Endeavor Society was formed in her village during the long summer vacation. Often the school girl would be the only member of the Society who could read, but she gathered the village children about her, and taught them to repeat Bible verses, sing hymns, and offer simple prayers, and a great deal of training and teaching can be accomplished in one summer vacation!

What marvelous power there is in the Word of God! A Mohammedan boy in a fanatical Persian city, which had often been visited by colporteurs and missionaries, went one day to the bazaar where he saw a New Testament being torn up to serve as wrapping paper. He remonstrated with the shopkeeper, and finally bought what was left of the Book. Through its influence both he and his mother were led to Christ. In another Persian city, the missionary holds a Bible lesson for boys under fifteen every Friday, when they do not have to be at work. Picture cards sent by thoughtful friends in America are earned by boys learning the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments, or verses from the Sermon on the Mount. Some of the boys always repeat the lesson at home to their mothers, and some say openly, “If what the Bible says is true, the Mohammedan religion is vain and useless.” Truly, “the entrance of Thy word giveth light.”

Do American children prize their Bibles as does this Korean boy?

Every day in the village of Nulmok there is an exodus of small boys to the mountain for fuel. Wood being scarce, it becomes necessary for each household to furnish a fuel gatherer. This army of boys is winding its way to the mountains some five miles off. Each boy has tied to his jikcey, or rack carried on his back, a small package of rice. This is his dinner, for it is an all-day job. As they make their way up the well-nigh barren slopes, one boy notices that his friend Kaiby has a second little bundle tied to his jikcey, and so he hails him to know why he is carrying two dinners.

“Oh, one is for my body, and the other is dinner for my soul,” he replies.

After a morning spent in raking over a small area of the mountain, each boy has succeeded in getting together his bundle of dried grass, and all sit down beside a mountain brook to eat of their dinner of cold rice and a relish of greens or pickled cabbage in season. Soon Kaiby has finished his meal and is untying his second bundle; taking out a book he begins to read aloud, slowly, while the other boys gather around to hear. It is about a great Man, who, when the people wanted to make him king, went to the mountain to pray.

Day after day at rest time Kaiby got out his book and read from it, and the other boys were interested. About this time, Ki Mun Ju, the Bible Society agent, came again to the village with Bibles. After supper, Kaiby, accompanied by several other boys, asked if there was not a smaller copy of the New Testament, as a number of the boys wanted to buy a Bible, but their only opportunity to read was at rest time on the mountain, and a smaller copy would be more easily carried. Needless to say, the colporteur did not fail to bring some on his next trip, and now many of the boys have their own, and frequently the hymnbook which they treasure next is tied up with it.[91]

Korean boys are not the only ones who treasure the hymnbook and love to learn and to sing Christian hymns. The missionary who can play and sing, and the one who knows enough about music to translate hymns and adapt tunes, has marvelous opportunities to work effectively among children. Miss Ford’s experiences in Palestine illustrate the truth of this:—

“I should like to say a word about the use of the organ. We are able sometimes to have very large Moslem audiences in the villages. Scores of boys will gather around to hear. When we propose to teach them a hymn or chorus they eagerly agree to learn. The subject of the song is always salvation in Jesus Christ, and the way of life is pointed out. We often hear the children afterward singing these hymns in the streets.... God has given us large numbers of little children to bring to Him. They learn hymns and psalms, chapters of the Gospels, and verses from the Bible with great facility, and they love to sing the hymns. Now also we can use with profit, large, illustrated, highly colored pictures of the life and teachings of our Lord, as well as Old Testament stories.”[92]

Lest anyone be tempted to think that the work is always easy, that one has but to sow the seed in order without further work and prayer to reap a bountiful harvest, it is but fair to mention a few of the obstacles that missionaries must constantly meet while trying to win children to Christ. Heredity, age-long custom, superstition, fatalism, the shackles of caste and prejudice, the home influences that so quickly counteract what a child learns during a few brief hours at a mission compound,—all these and many other hindrances must be reckoned with and overcome. Miss Carmichael graphically describes some of these experiences of effort and disappointment in India.

“Often we hear people say how excellent it is, and how they never worship idols now, but only the true God; and even a heathen mother will make her child repeat its texts to you, and a father will tell you how it tells him Bible stories; and, if you are quite new to the work, you put it in the Magazine, and at home it sounds like conversion. All this goes on most peacefully; there is not the slightest stir, till something happens to show the people that the doctrine is not just a creed, but contains a living Power. And then, and not until then, there is opposition. In one village there was a little Brahmin child who often tried to speak to us, but was never allowed. One day she risked capture and its consequences, and ran across the narrow stream which divides the Brahmin street from the village, and spoke to one of our band in a hurried little whisper, ‘Oh, I do want to hear about Jesus!’ And she told how she had learned at school in her own town, and then she had been sent to her mother-in-law’s house in this jungle village, ‘that one,’ pointing to a house where they never had smiles for us; but her mother-in-law objected to the preaching, and had threatened to throw her down the well if she listened to us. Just then a hard voice called her and she flew. Next time we went to that village she was shut up somewhere inside.”[93]

Sometimes God grants that bread cast on the waters with loving, lavish hand, is found again after many, many days. Often a Bible verse or the words of a hymn, or the recollection of what was seen and heard in a missionary home, has not been forgotten, and has borne fruit in after life. “A rich Japanese silk merchant sent for the missionaries in his town, and entertained them most hospitably. He told how as a child he had attended a Sunday-School. ‘Very often,’ he said, ‘right in the midst of my business the words of the hymn, “Jesus loves me, this I know,” come to me, and, try as I may, I can’t get them out of my mind.’ He then repeated the hymn from beginning to end, and added, ‘Though I have lived my life without religion, I feel that it is the most important thing there is, and I want my little girl to be a Christian; and it is for that purpose,’ he added emphatically, ‘that I have placed her in the mission school, that she may become a Christian.’”

Do we realize the privilege and opportunity that is ours to pray and give and go, to send our money and our sons and daughters, that the children of many Christless lands may learn to know and love and serve the children’s Friend while they are young, and hearts and minds are plastic and teachable? Have we as keen an insight into the great truths of Christian privilege as had the little Chinese girl, who, after being publicly baptized, was asked by her teacher, “Are you glad of the privilege of attending a school where you can hear of the Lord Jesus?” Quickly she responded, “Are you not glad, teacher, that you are in China, where you can teach of the Lord Jesus?”[94] Yes, ours is the greater privilege, and we must see to it carefully that we do not miss any part of the joy that the Master has in store for us. Our own children are so cunning and lovable, so full of wonderful possibilities, and in need of so much care and watchfulness, that it is easy to forget the other children who also need our love and help. In the Saviour’s eyes there is no difference,—He loves and cares for all children. Shall we imitate Him in this respect?

A weary missionary fell asleep, and as she slept she dreamed a dream. A message had arrived that the Master was coming, and to her was appointed the task of getting all the little children ready for His arrival. So she arranged them on the benches, tier on tier, putting the little white children on the first benches, nearest to where the Master would stand, and then came the little yellow and red and brown children and far back on the farthest benches sat the black children. When they were all arranged, she looked, and it did not seem quite right to her. Why should the black children be so far away? They ought perhaps to be on the front benches. She started to rearrange them, but just as all was in confusion, the children stirring around, and each trying to find his proper place, footsteps were heard, and lo! it was the Master’s tread, and He was coming before the children were ready. Overcome with shame and confusion she hung her head. To think that the task entrusted to her had not been accomplished in time! So she stood while the footsteps drew nearer and nearer, till finally they paused beside her, and she was obliged to look up. And lo! as she did so, and her eyes rested on the children, all shades of color and difference had vanished,—the little children in the Master’s presence were all alike!

QUOTATIONS

A HEATHEN BABY

An English missionary in Swatow, China, heard sounds of bitter weeping by the wayside one night. Looking for its source, he found a heathen woman bowed over a child’s grave, upon which, according to the local custom, lay an overturned cradle.

(Clara A. Lindsay in Woman’s Work.)

CASTE IN INDIA

In the village of the Wind a young girl became known as an enquirer. Her Caste passed the word along from village to village wherever its members were found, and all these relations and connections were speedily leagued in a compact to keep her from hearing more. When we went to see her, we found she had been posted off somewhere else. When we went to the somewhere else (always freely mentioned to us, with invitation to go), we found she had been there, but had been forwarded elsewhere. For weeks she was tossed about like this; then we traced her and found her. But she was thoroughly cowed, and dared not show the least interest in us.... Take a child of four or five, ask it a question concerning its Caste, and you will see how that baby tree has begun to drop branch rootlets....

The young girls belonging to the higher Castes are kept in strict seclusion. During these formative years they are shut up within the courtyard walls to the dwarfing life within, and as a result they get dwarfed, and lose in resourcefulness and independence of mind, and above all in courage; and this tells terribly in our work, making it so difficult to persuade such a one to think for herself. It is this custom which makes work among girls exceedingly slow and unresultful.

A few months ago a boy of twelve resolved to become a Christian. His clan, eight thousand strong, were enraged. There was a riot in the streets; in the house the poison cup was ready. Better death than loss of Caste. In another town a boy took his stand and was baptized, thus crossing the line that divided secret belief from open confession. His Caste men got hold of him afterwards; next time he was seen he was a raving lunatic. The Caste was avenged! (Amy Wilson Carmichael in “Things as They Are.”)

SPIRIT-WORSHIP AMONG THE LAO

Spirit-worship, as existing among the Lao, is not reduced to a system as is Buddhism. It has no temple, but it is enshrined in the heart of every man, woman, and child in the country.... Children are seen with soot marks upon their foreheads. These are placed there by spirit-doctors and are to ward off evil. They also wear around their wrists charm-strings. This belief is by no means confined to the peasantry.

Every person is believed to have thirty-two good spirits pervading his body, called kwan. As long as these kwan all remain as guardian spirits within, no sickness or mishap can befall the person. But alas! these kwan are freaky, vacillating spirits, and may leave the body without a moment’s warning, and at once sickness or accident befalls. Much time and money are spent trying to keep these kwan in a good humor, so that they will not desert the body....

The folk-lore of this people is pregnant with this belief in magic and spirit-worship, and so the children at the knee learn to reverence and fear both, and in after years when the saner reason of maturity would assert itself, this belief has become a habit too deeply ingrained in the mind to be cast aside. (Lillian Johnson Curtis in “The Laos of North Siam,” Westminster Press.)

SUNDAY-SCHOOL—NINGPO, CHINA

I wish some of you might be here tomorrow to go with me to my Sunday-School for heathen children. This is a school which had to be discontinued for some time, and I re-opened it on Easter Sunday, with the assistance of nine of our older girls and pupil teachers. One hundred were present last Sunday, including some girls from our two mission schools, and a few visitors. The majority of the children are very poor and dirty, and they are learning to sing “Jesus loves me, this I know,” with as much gusto as though they were as clean as pinks, and they carry away with them a lesson leaf and a picture card, to try to tell at home what they have learned that day. I quite forget they are Chinese children, for their human nature is very like that of the children at home. One Sunday, two little girls from our mission school, clean and comfortably dressed, were sitting on the front seat, when I brought in three little heathen girls, soiled and untidy, to sit beside them. Whereupon one of the clean little girls drew herself off in one corner, gathering her clothes close about her for fear of touching the others; while the second clean little girl moved toward the soiled children and shared her hymnbook with them, pointing out each character as we sang. Did you ever know any little children at home who acted as did these two Chinese children? (Edith C. Dickie in The Foreign Post.)

BIBLE READING

“Suffer the little children.” Mark 10:13–16.

Various ways in which Christ’s disciples hinder the children,—consider them too young,—too irresponsible,—feel that adults have the first claim to Christ’s time and attention.

How different was Christ’s attitude! “In His words over the little children, Christ has lifted childhood into a type of character, and has given children their share in the Kingdom of God.” (Shailer Mathews.)

The touch of Christ on a little child’s life brings blessing. Are we bringing the children to Him or forbidding them? “The place for the lambs is in the fold.” (Woelfkin.)

A CHILDREN’S LITANY

(Spirit of Missions.)

QUESTIONS

1. What would be the moral and physical effects on a boy, of the religious rites of ancestor worship as practiced among the Fang tribe of Africa?

2. What can we learn from Mohammedan methods in teaching their children the Koran, and establishing them in the doctrines and usages of their faith?

3. What are the principal difficulties met by representatives of Christianity in efforts to come in contact with and influence Mohammedan children?

4. Suggest methods best adapted for overcoming these difficulties.

5. What methods have been most successful in reaching the children in the missions of your denomination?

6. What estimate should be placed on the Sunday-School as a factor in the evangelization of mission lands? 7. What are the greatest needs for better equipment in Sunday-School work in the lands where your Board is at work?

8. What can American children be trained to do in meeting these needs?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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

Children of Egypt, Miss L. Crowther, (Oliphant, Anderson & Ferrier.)

“Little Wednesday,” Everyland, June, 1913.

“A Social Settlement in the Slums of Okayama,” Missionary Review of the World, Dec., 1912.

Sketches from the Karen Hills, Alonzo Bunker, (Revell.)

On the Borders of Pigmy Land, Chaps. 9, 10, 19–25, Ruth B. Fisher, (Revell.)

The Light of the World, Chap. 6, R. E. Speer, (Mission Study Series.)

Lotus Buds, Amy Wilson Carmichael, (Geo. H. Doran Co.)

Things as They Are, Amy Wilson Carmichael, (Revell.)

Overweights of Joy, Amy Wilson Carmichael, (Revell.)

The Call of Moslem Children, Missionary Review of the World, Oct., 1913.

LEAFLETS