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
CHAPTER VI.
THE CHILD AT WORK FOR CHRIST
“I must be about my Father’s business.”
Christ needs all the children of the world—Work for the children in awakening lands, Japan, China, India—Work for the children in lands convulsed by war and revolution, Turkey, Persia—Work for the children in lands asleep—The world’s tragedies—What a slave boy accomplished—Need for trained workers—How Bishop Selwyn obtained and trained them—Children at work for Christ—Children from mission lands helping to save America—Missionary children at work—American children have a share in the working and giving and going—The world needs the Holy Child.
The Children of the World need Christ.
Christ needs the Children,—all the Children of the World.
Christ needs the children.
Unless the children of today are brought to the Master and trained for His service, the outlook is dark indeed for coming generations. If every child now living could be brought under Christian influences, receive a Christian education, and be sent out to live and work for Christ, what a marvelous transformation this world would experience! In a conspicuous place on the wall at a recent Sunday-School convention hung a banner with the words “Childhood is the Hope of the World,”—the same thought that was embodied in the remark of a prominent Japanese Christian, who said to a missionary, “The grown-up people are so ignorant and set in their ways, they will not become Christians, but the hope is in the children.”[95]
“He who helps a child,” says Phillips Brooks, “helps humanity with a distinctness, with an immediateness, which no other help given to human creatures in any other stage of their human life, can possibly give again.” Here is a challenge to all who believe that the world needs hope, that humanity needs help, that God needs human agents to carry out His plans, that Christ needs the child!
Work for the children in awakening lands.
What is there for the child of today,—the man and woman of tomorrow,—to do in countries that are awaking out of age-long sleep?
Changes in Japan.
Sixty years ago Japan was in darkness. What great transformations have taken place since Commodore Perry sailed for Yedo Bay in November, 1852! As a commercial, military, and naval power Japan has been taking her place with the important nations of the earth. We have already learned that her educational system contains much that might well be copied in Western lands. The manner in which Japan is “catching up” with nations that have had centuries of advantage over her reminds one of the educational experimenters who claim that a child need not be bothered with mathematics until he is ten or twelve years old, and that he will then speedily “catch up” with children who have toiled over their mathematics since they were of kindergarten age. During the serious outbreak of bitter feeling in Japan regarding the proposed Alien Land Holding Bill pending in the California Legislature, a large reception was tendered in Tokyo to Dr. John R. Mott, Hamilton Wright Mabie and Dr. Peabody. In the course of his address, Count Okuma, who is not in any sense a Christian, remarked that diplomacy, the courts, and commercial interests were alike helpless to maintain peace on earth and good will among men. “The only hope,” he said, “is in the power of Christianity and in the influence of Christians to maintain peace and righteousness in the spirit of brotherly love.”[96]
Religious census in Imperial University.
Not only from a political point of view, but far more from an intellectual and religious point of view, is Japan in great, urgent need of what Christianity can give her. “It seems from the figures of a religious census recently taken in the Imperial University of Japan at Tokyo, that of the students in attendance, three-fourths of them declare themselves agnostics, while fifteen hundred are content to be registered as atheists. That leaves only five hundred of the whole student body to be accounted for: and of these, sixty are Christian, fifty Buddhist, and eight Shinto.... The educated classes of Japan have practically broken with Shintoism and Buddhism, and are looking around for some better basis for ethics and faith. The issue in Japan is no longer between Christianity and Buddhism, but between Christianity and nothing.”[97]
Kindergarten children in after-life.
Side by side with this pregnant statement we place a few sentences from the Sixth Annual Report of the Kindergarten Union of Japan.
“What influence has the kindergarten on the lives of its graduates in later years? From many churches we hear of them as church members doing active service, like one young man who has a class of twenty-five boys in Sunday-School. As teachers, as mothers, in many walks of life, they are showing the power of Christ in their lives, and all, whether Christians or not, are better men and women for their training in Christian schools.”
The inference is so obvious that we need not comment upon it. Rather let us do our share to multiply the agencies that can embody in their reports such incidents as the following from the American Church Mission Kindergarten at Sendai:—
“More than ever before have we emphasized Christianity as the center of our thought and life, and feel much encouraged to go much farther next year. Yearning over our graduates, who, when they leave us, may be separated for a long time from Christian teaching, we earnestly desired to see Christianity move definitely forward in their hearts, so far as may be for little children. So we based the last month’s work on Phil. 2:6–11. This seems deep, but was found helpful by the teachers.... Just before graduation, in the free talk at luncheon hour one day, a boy whose parents were about to move to Akita said most disconsolately, ‘There won’t be any God to take care of me when I go to Akita!’ ‘Oh, yes, there will,’ said Taguchi San, who, seeing his need of a broader understanding of the Omnipotent God, told of the God of all the earth, and that He cared for us wherever we go, even when farther than Akita.”[98]
China’s awakening.
China’s awakening has been so sudden and so rapid that even while the Christian women of America were studying “China’s New Day,” many facts in that up-to-date text-book became ancient history. A few of the startling contrasts between the Old China and the New were indicated in the Congregationalist of April 24, 1913.
Associated Press despatches from Peking on Thursday of last week reported that the Chinese Government has made an appeal to all the Christian churches in China to set aside April 27—next Sunday—as a day of prayer for the Chinese National Assembly, for the new Government, for the President of the new Republic yet to be elected, for the constitution of the Republic, for the maintenance of peace and for the election of strong and virtuous men to office. Representatives of provincial authorities are instructed to be present at these services....
Thirteen years ago this coming summer the Imperial Government of China hunted and slew her Christian subjects like wild beasts and brought all of the resources at her command to aid in driving the hated religions of the “foreign devils” from her shores. Today the new Republic solemnly and officially sets apart a day and urges all her Christian subjects, as well as foreigners, to assemble and, in the presence of the officials, intercede for those things which Christian nations seek and supremely value.
In 1900 a despatch was sent from the throne to all viceroys of all the provinces to exterminate all foreigners, and the streets of Peking were placarded with posters threatening with death all who provided them refuge. A few weeks ago the President of the Republic, Yuan Shi Kai, addressing in Peking an assembly of delegates to the Annual Convention of the Y. M. C. A., said:
“You, my friends, who are members and delegates to this Christian Association from every province of the Republic, are examples for the men of every class of society. By the help of your guiding light and uplifting influence, millions of young men, well equipped, morally, intellectually, and physically, will be raised up in this nation to render loyal service to the Republic in her time of need, and lift her to a position that shall add to the civilized world an undying luster.”
China is doing her part to make amends for the past and to demonstrate to the entire world the sincerity of her purpose. Undoubtedly this is the first time in history that such an appeal has been made by a non-Christian nation. With commendable promptness both the Federal Council and Committee of Reference and Council of the Foreign Missionary Societies of North America have asked the churches to intercede for China.
Was there ever a more striking proof of the presence of God in the life of the world and of His purposes for men in Jesus Christ the universal Saviour? Was there ever greater encouragement to use the mighty enginery of united prayer for a specific end?
Sun Yat Sen.
Listen to the testimony of the son of a prominent Christian official in China:—
“Where did the Chinese Republic ever come from? You say from the reformers and revolutionists. You don’t go back far enough. Dr. Sun was in a large measure responsible for it all, but where does he come from? Where did he get his principles of freedom and equality? These were instilled into his heart by a missionary, and who was he? He was a follower of Jesus Christ, and in China for the direct purpose of teaching how Jesus came to save the world.... Blot out of China today the education which owes its origin to Jesus Christ, and where will China be? In the depth of deepest ignorance.”[99]
Sun Yat Sen, by many considered “the first citizen in the hearts of his countrymen,” spoke with no uncertain sound of China’s greatest need in this time of her crisis. “Brothers,” he said, when addressing a number of Chinese students, “applied, practical Christianity is our true need. Away with the commentaries and doubts. God asks your obedience, not your patronage. He demands your service, not your criticism.”[100]
Applied Christianity in China.
“Applied, practical Christianity,” is what the missionaries are trying to give China, and can any part of their work be more practical or more important than what they are doing for the children who are soon to be the statesmen and educators, the military and social leaders, the fathers and mothers of the great new Republic of the East?
Dr. Li Bi Cu.
Many pages might be filled with true tales of how Chinese children, won to Christ in early life, have brought blessing and uplift to hundreds in their land. The story of Dr. Li Bi Cu and her mother is a wonderful illustration of what might be multiplied many thousands of times if there were always some one ready to rescue girl babies and to give them a fair chance.
Dr. Li Bi Cu is one of China’s new women. A forceful speaker, using perfect English, with a charming personality, Dr. Li Bi Cu never fails to win the hearts of her audiences. Those who heard her at Northfield can never forget the appeal made by the little woman in Chinese dress, to the women of the United States to come to the help of her countrywomen. The mother of Dr. Li Bi Cu was rescued from the street, where she had been thrown to die, when only a day or two old, and taken to a mission school, where she was cared for, educated, and trained as a Bible woman. She married a Methodist minister, Mr. Li, and her daughter, Li Bi Cu, grew up in a Christian home. One of the missionaries, seeing unusual ability in the young girl, brought her to America for a more thorough education than China afforded. She studied in Folts Institute, and later entered the Women’s Medical College in Philadelphia. Graduating with honor, she returned to China after eight years’ residence in the United States and was sent to the Fukien Province, where the Woman’s Foreign Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church had opened a hospital, and where she has cared for the souls and bodies of thousands of patients.[101]
A charming sequel to the story shows how this splendid Chinese woman is ready at a moment’s notice to do her duty as a Christian citizen of the world. She was passing on her return to China a point not far from Chicago, when the train struck a track laborer and suddenly stopped. The injured man, a Russian by birth, was brought aboard, and Dr. Li, hearing of the accident, volunteered her help. Then was seen the curious combination of a Chinese Christian woman physician caring for a wounded Slav in an American baggage car![102]
Chinese mothers in council.
“Applied, practical Christianity” is being taught to the mothers of China, and some of them are responding in a way that augurs well for the future of their children and their land. Mrs. T. N. Thompson of Tsining writes of a recent women’s convention to which Christians came from far and near, some from a distance of sixty miles. Women spoke from the platform with ease, spirit, and eloquence. Some of the subjects discussed were:—Equal authority of husbands and wives—Partiality between sons and daughters—Duty of sending girls to school—Cleanliness and order of the home as taught in mission schools—Dedication of children to the Lord. The subject of marriage engagements was thoroughly canvassed, and many laughed heartily at reminiscences of old heathen days when children were betrothed in [babyhood].”[103] “Old heathen days!” And yet it is but one hundred years since Robert Morrison baptized his first Christian convert, and but fourteen years since the great Boxer uprising tried to rid the land of all Christians. Thus it was ordained long centuries ago when God “appointed a law in Israel, when He commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children; that the generation to come might know them, even the children that should be born, who should arise and tell them to their children.” (Psalm 78:5, 6.) From father to son, from mother to daughter, the knowledge of God’s love and Christ’s salvation is to be transmitted, and those who gain that knowledge in early childhood are the ones on whom China can surely depend in the important years to come.
Work for the children in India.
“The children born of Christian parents in India,” says Rev. E. A. Arnett in the Sunday School Times, “are probably not more than half a million, but upon the thorough and systematic character of the religious work done among these depends the hope of the future of the church of India. These are to be the army for India’s conquest. The day of opportunity is soon to come to India as it has come to Japan and to China. A great crisis is approaching when there will be a death-grapple in the open between Christianity and the opposing forces. Then will be needed as never before an Indian church, rich in men and women able and fit for the fight.”
An Indian girl redeemed.
That India’s children with all their handicaps are capable of being made “fit for the fight” can be abundantly proven. A letter from a missionary friend tells of a little Indian protege, now a grown woman, who was the child of a drunken father and a half crazy, evil-tempered mother, who, in a brawl, lamed her poor baby for life. The child was sent away to school after her father’s death, and it seemed as if it were to prove her salvation. But at the age of fourteen the old evil propensities broke forth. She became foul-tongued, irreverent, disobedient, and diseased. She was sent to visit her mother, then an inmate of an insane asylum, where the girl was placed under observation and declared to be a moral degenerate. The fact that she was perfectly satisfied to stay at the asylum was a cause of great distress to her missionary friend, and soon a number of earnest workers banded themselves to pray for her “literally night and day.” A wonderful change came over the girl; the seed sown in earlier years sprang up and bore fruit. She asked to be allowed to leave the asylum, and soon after taking a position she gave her heart to Christ. Far out on the western frontier of India, a woman, growing in grace and character, is compounding medicines, and otherwise helping in a mission hospital, occupying a difficult and trying position. Oh! was she not worth saving,—that little, lame, degenerate baby, born in the degradation of darkest India, and accomplishing a work today that you or I could not do?
Work for the children of Turkey and Persia.
What is there for the children to do in lands that have lately been convulsed with war and revolution? Who will fill the places of able-bodied men, maimed and slain in battle? Who is to reconstruct and upbuild and guide through long years to come the countries that have been shaken to their very foundations? The only hope of Turkey and Persia is in their children, and what is done by Christians for these children today will determine very largely the course of history in the “near East.”
Persian school boys.
The boys’ school at Teheran, Persia, has won the name of a “factory”! Among the Mohammedan boys brought here, is a little fellow whose father said to the missionary, “I hear this is a factory where you manufacture men. Do you think you can turn out a man from my boy?”[104] Such “factories” are needed throughout Turkey and Persia, and those who know the boys of these countries will assure you that they are capable of turning out to be men if they have the proper opportunities. When the self-supporting Christian boarding school for Mohammedan boys was started in Teheran, the missionaries naturally felt a good deal of concern as to the results of such an experiment. The actual results are thus reported,—
“Not only has it been somewhat more than self-supporting financially, but, thanks to the co-operative plan initiated from the beginning, into which the boys entered with enthusiasm, and in which they showed a most admirable spirit throughout the year, a good share of the management and government was taken by the boys themselves in a most efficient manner,—of course under the close supervision of my wife and myself.”[105]
Testimony of Wm. E. Curtiss.
The following testimony of William E. Curtiss, the world-famous correspondent of the Chicago Record Herald, written after an extended visit to the Orient, would seem to be convincing proof that missionaries can give and Turkish children can profit by that which will re-mould and upbuild the remnants of the Turkish Empire.
“The influence of the American schools has been carried to every corner of the Empire. Every student leaving these American schools has carried the germ of progress to his sleeping town. He has become a force for the new order wherever he has gone. This influence has been working for a half century or more, and has been preparing the minds of the people for the great change that has recently come over them. The missionaries do not teach revolution, they do not encourage revolutionary methods; but they have always preached and taught liberty, equality, fraternity, and the rights of man.”[106]
Syrian girls at work in summer.
It is well to remember that the children under missionary influence are being trained not only for what they can be and do in the future, when they are grown up, but are being taught to use now what they have learned, for the benefit of others. Listen to the report of what some Syrian girls did during a summer vacation.
“An hour ago I came home from Sunday-School which we are having this summer. We began it the first summer we came to K. ... and twenty children attend. We are teaching them lessons from the Old Testament, and I think I can say that our school is a real success this year.”
“I am teaching some children Bible stories and have given one of the boys two papers to make a study of some chapters which I have appointed for him.”
“I brought a new Bible with me, and I try to teach our servant to read it.”
These few extracts are from letters which I have received this summer showing how Beirut school-girls are trying to give expression to the pass-it-on spirit. All over the country they are busy according to their opportunities. I know of one little girl who last year was in the lowest class of our Preparatory Department, but this year has a school of seventeen every Sunday afternoon during the vacation. One of her older brothers and a boy cousin taught classes, but she was both organizer and superintendent.
One of the pleasantest gatherings we shall have this fall will be the Report Meeting, when we shall hear from all the pupils about results of their summer efforts for others. Fourteen took certain Bibles home with them, promising to use them in teaching others to read.[107]
Is there anything for children to do in countries where as yet no great awakening or startling political upheaval has taken place, but where missionary influence has been quietly, steadily at work? What about those “unoccupied mission fields” where not even a beginning has been made toward giving the Gospel message? Does Christ need the children of these lands to be at work for Him?
The World’s Tragedies.
“Some one thus summarizes ‘The World’s Tragedies’:—
207,000,000 bound by caste—from Hinduism.
147,000,000 permeated with atheism—from Buddhism.
256,000,000 chained to a dead past—from Confucianism.
175,000,000 under the spell of Fatalism—from Mohammedanism.
200,000,000 sitting in darkness—from Paganism.”[108]
Let us try to realize that each unit of these vast figures stands for a life that was once an innocent little child, born into conditions or surroundings similar to those of which we have been studying in this book. Think of the future tragedies that may be averted if each little child today is redeemed and begins to work for Christ. What a slave boy accomplished. Why should there not be thousands of averted or transformed tragedies like those surrounding the life of the little black boy, born in 1806 on the West Coast of Africa? Because of certain peculiar circumstances at his birth it was prophesied that he was not to be a devotee of any idol, but one “celebrated and distinguished to serve the great and highest God.” At one time when the house of his prosperous father caught fire, the little boy rushed in and saved the idols. Whereupon it was commonly said,—“This child will be a great worshiper of the gods; he will one day restore the gods to our nation.”
When the child was about fifteen, a raid was made upon the village by Mohammedans, and a large number of women and children were led away captive with ropes around their necks, young Ajayi and his mother and grandmother among the number. Sold from one person to another, often bartered for rum or tobacco, he finally fell into the hands of Portuguese traders. He and his fellow slaves were rescued by an English man-of-war from the Portuguese vessel, and he was educated by the Church Missionary Society. He became a school-master, then preacher, and finally Bishop of the native Church on the Niger. Fourah Bay College, where he pursued a part of his studies, was founded as a result of the conviction forced upon the Church Missionary Society that, if Africa were to be evangelized, it must be done chiefly through native agency, because of the devastating effects of the climate on foreigners. In other words, Christ needs the children of Africa, to be trained for Him in places where no one else in the wide world can accomplish the task.
The Hope of Africa
A West African Baby
A Group of Fang Boys, Africa
On the beautiful white monument, erected over the grave in Lagos, Sierra Leone, can be read these words that give a brief outline of the noble life work of the little slave boy whom some one thought worth saving and training for Christian service.
Sacred to the memory of
THE RIGHT REV. SAMUEL AJAYI CROWTHER, D.D.
A Native of Osogun, in the Yoruba Country;
A Recaptured and Liberated Slave;
The First Student in the Church Missionary Society’s College,
At Fourah Bay, Sierra Leone;
Ordained in England by the Bishop of London, June 11th, 1843;
The First Native Clergyman of the Church of England in West Africa,
Consecrated Bishop, June 29th, 1864.
A Faithful, Earnest, and Devoted Missionary in Connection
With the Church Missionary Society for 62 Years,
At Sierra Leone, in the Timini and Yoruba Countries
And in the Niger Territory;
He Accompanied the First Royal Niger Expedition in 1841;
Was a joint founder with others of the Yoruba Mission in 1845,
And Founder of the Niger Mission in 1857;
And of the Self-Supporting Niger Delta Pastorale in 1891.
He fell asleep in Jesus at Lagos, on the 31st December, 1891,
Aged about 89 Years.
“Well done, thou good and faithful servant, ... Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.” Matt. 25:5.
“Redeemed by His Blood.”[109]
Trained native workers necessary.
Our story of The Child will not be complete unless we pay close attention to one of the great fundamental policies of Christian missions,—alluded to above,—that the work of world evangelization must be accomplished chiefly through trained natives of the countries where the Gospel is not known. And these agents, in order to be most efficient and successful should be won to Christ in early life. The methods used by Bishop Selwyn in the New Hebrides were so successful and interesting and illustrate this point so thoroughly that it will pay us to study them.
Methods of Bishop Selwyn in the Pacific Islands.
Bishop Augustus Selwyn, of the Episcopalian Church of New Zealand, proposed to secure children of the natives in the new fields, educate these children in schools of a Christian country, and send them as pioneer missionaries to their own peoples. He proposed, also, that, after these children had overcome the pagan opposition, white missionaries should be introduced for co-operating with them. “The white corks,” he said, “were for floating the black net.”
With this in view, in 1848, he made a voyage of exploration in H. M. S. Dido as far as to the Loyalty Islands. Observing that the Fijis, the Southern Hebrides, and several other groups were occupied by other religious denominations which were doing successful work, he chose for his field the groups not thus occupied. These were the Northern Hebrides, Banks, Santa Cruz, Torres, Reef, and Solomon Groups....
Over these islands the trail of the Serpent has extended. A wilder, more besotted, and fiercer people than their inhabitants it would be hard to find. With the exception of the natives of the Santa Cruz and Reef Islands, they all were formerly cannibals, and those of them in the Solomon Group were also head-hunters....
The work of procuring boys proved to be difficult and perilous. By great tact and a kind and courteous manner the Bishop secured in his first trip five. In process of time he was able to employ the boys, who had been some time in his school, to do the soliciting, and then he was more successful. Each succeeding year the natives received him with greater cordiality, and more readily supplied his vessel with stores of taro, yams, and fruit. The number of boys in the school has been one hundred and fifty to two hundred.
On Norfold Island a thousand acres of land were purchased for the school at a cost of ten thousand dollars. In this tract a beautiful chapel was built, and around it houses for the teachers and pupils. The land was very fertile, and was easily made to produce almost all the food the school needed. The boys were taught the gospel of work. They were trained in the mechanic trades, the cultivation of the ground, and the care of livestock; and to each of them was committed a small garden for him to cultivate for himself. They were kept in the school six to ten years, and then taken, as teachers, to their homes or to other islands.
In 1854 Rev. John Coleridge Patteson joined the mission. He had been moved when fourteen years of age, by a sermon of Bishop Selwyn, to devote himself to the missionary cause. In 1861 he was consecrated as the First Bishop of Milanesia....
The Milanesians who have embraced Christianity have ceased from their cannibalism, their head-hunting, and their warfare, and have become an humble, upright, and peace-loving people. In 1905 the number of baptized persons in the groups of the mission was 2,811, of white missionaries, 41, of native teachers, 689, of mission stations, 200.[110]
Children at work for Christ in Korea.
The Child at work for Christ! Would that it were possible to give to the women of our American Missionary Societies and to the young women of our schools and colleges a vision of the children of many lands who are today at work,—realizing as did the Christ Child that they must be about their Father’s business. In Korea, we shall find that a question asked of each man, woman, and child who wishes to become a church member is,—“Have you tried to win a soul for Jesus Christ?” Not long ago the children in one section of Korea demanded a half holiday, and in the leisure time thus obtained the five hundred children won eight hundred others into the church.[111]
In Burma.
Away up in the Karen Hills of Burma the first mission tour of exploration to a certain point was made with a company which included a number of school boys, among whom were some sweet singers. On associating with the Red Karen children, they quickly made acquaintance and were valuable workers. Great was the enthusiasm among the little Red Karens when classes were formed in reading and singing, and with surprising quickness they learned from their eager young teachers, who were glad to pass on to other children what they had so recently acquired themselves.[112]
Generous givers in Japan.
Not only are the children under missionary influence trained to work, but they are also taught the joy and privilege of giving. Here is the method employed by Mrs. McCauley of Japan.
The Sunday-School children in Keimo No. 1 and No. 2, Tokyo, under Mrs. McCauley, take up a collection every Sabbath.... The children coming from heathen homes cannot ask their parents for money to put into this collection, so must practice self-denial to be able to give. The money for a boiled sweet potato purchased near the school building from a vendor, two rin, is saved by taking a smaller potato, and the lunch is none the less palatable because the child has made a little sacrifice, and these two rin, as they rattle in the collection box, are music in his ears and joy—the joy of giving,—in his heart. I happen to be one of the Auditors of the accounts at the Leper Home, and this year we closed the books with deficit,—a debt of two hundred and sixteen yen,—and we were troubled, having no resources. I looked over the Sunday-School collections, and found we had in the treasury nearly twenty-five yen, and I told the scholars about the dear little girl just thirteen, who is a leper and can never again be well, but is the light of the Home. When the women get discouraged and cry, this little angel puts her arms about them and says, “Auntie, dear Auntie, don’t cry; we will soon, all of us, have new bodies.” Two boys of fifteen are there—their companions like themselves are lepers. “Now, children, we need money; you have some; will you give it there, all or some part of it? How many say all? Let us see the hands”: and every little hand, kindergarten and all, went up, and we made it twenty-five yen to send to the Treasurer of our Leper Home. I then told them to tell their parents of how we spend the money given by the little ones, and we reviewed the places we had helped from our mite: For five years an Ainu School; Red Cross Society, two years; Charity Hospital, two years; Okayama Orphanage, two years; destitute soldiers, one year; comfort bags during war; famine sufferers, one year; flood sufferers, one year; earthquake sufferers, one year; Lepers’ Home, this year; medicine for sick pupils, often; help at funerals for poor families of school.
These children when they grow up and enter the church will be systematic givers and know what benevolence is.[113]
Missionary gifts in mission lands.
It brings tears to the eyes and joy to the heart to see how eagerly children of one mission land devote their little gifts to sending the Gospel to children of some other land. It seems the most natural thing in the world to lead them into missionary giving, and many a children’s band in America might be put to shame by the joy and spontaneity of those who are themselves objects of missionary giving.
“One day early in the fall,” writes Miss Alice B. Caldwell of Marsovan, Turkey, “while walking in the school garden I noticed two little girls strolling up and down the path arm in arm. They were chattering in their vivacious way, and one of them was making her crochet needle fly as fast as her tongue. On my inquiring what she was making, she held up a dainty bag, and several little interpreters informed me that it was for the Christian Endeavor Bazaar. After that day I saw many busy fingers on the playground making the most of the hours out of doors.
“The Junior Endeavorers help to support a little girl in a Chinese school, and they were getting ready for a bazaar to help make the money for their adopted child.”[114]
Children from missions fields helping to save America.
If we are touched by such stories as the above, which can be multiplied many times over, what is our feeling about those who are serving and helping our own Christian land because they were won to Christ in childhood on the mission field? We are thinking of one young woman whose parents became Christians under missionary influence, and who grew up in a Christian home among many persecutions and adverse circumstances from without. When, in the course of time, her widowed mother immigrated to America, the girl, already a devoted Christian, entered a training school in this country. Today she is working in six languages for thousands of immigrants in a New England city,—doing a work that few Americans could ever hope to accomplish. Merely as a business investment or a patriotic effort, the money contributed to the Mission Board, which brought about this result, has been more than profitable.
Here is the record of another good investment made in China:—
Some years ago there entered the True Light Seminary a bright little girl of thirteen, who, under the wise and gentle training of Miss Noyes, gave her heart to Christ and united with the church, becoming thereafter one of the best pupils in the school. Her great desire was to become a teacher, but since three years of age she had been betrothed by her father to the son of a heathen family—the betrothal by Chinese law being almost equivalent to a marriage—it became her duty to fulfil the promise made for her, and at the completion of her course of study she married the man of her father’s choice. The marriage did not prove a happy one; the husband’s business took him much away, leaving his wife alone, and at the end of three years he died suddenly of plague. The young wife, thus unexpectedly set free for service, at once took up her desired work, and after teaching for three years in Hongkong was called to a position in a Congregational school in Canton....
In the spring of 1910 it came about that one of the benefactions of Mr. Andrew Carnegie came to the Occidental Home in San Francisco, and when the question arose as to what should be done with the gift it could but seem that the long-sought opportunity had come to secure a Chinese teacher to live with the girls in the Home and to train them in their own tongue.
So it came to pass that Yeung Mo Owen, or Mrs. Yeung, as she is known in America, led in these various ways, became an inmate of the Mission Home in San Francisco, teacher of Chinese to the girls, both in the Home and in the Occidental Board Day School, and incidentally a blessing not only to the Home and to the Chinese Church, but also to Chinatown, and to the Board itself....
“I have never seen such a lovely face, never been so impressed by a Chinese woman,” said one long in the work in California. “Now you see what our native Christian women are like,” quickly responded a missionary who was present.[115]
Missionary children at work.
The story of the Child at Work for Christ would not be complete without making mention of the missionary children who in such large numbers are trying to do their share toward bringing the Kingdom of Christ to this world. “If one life shines, the life next to it must catch the light,” and the joy and privilege of mission service in all its beauty,—and in all its trial and discouragement as well,—are well known to the missionary boy and girl. Even little four year old Annie had her share of discouragement when her parents returned to their field of work after a furlough during which Annie had forgotten all languages but English. When she heard her mother speaking of women’s meetings and various forms of work as she took them up, one by one, Annie decided to do her share also. Picking up her dolly, she trotted down to the gate to be a missionary to the little Turkish girls next door. Sadly she came back again to report, “Mother, the children cannot speak the American language.”
Let no one think that because missionary children are “used to” the country and the language, the climate and food and presence of the “natives,” it is always easy and natural for them to return to their parents’ field of labor. Just because they have been familiar with it all from childhood, the surroundings and opportunities of the homeland,—their own rightful heritage,—seem desirable beyond words and hard to relinquish. To the missionary children who return to the field, the halo of romance surrounding the step is non-existent,—they go with open eyes to what they know about. And yet they go, large numbers of them, and it might be well to ask of your Mission Boards whether their services are valuable to the cause or not. A newspaper clipping a few years ago gave these statistics:—
“Nearly one-third of the missionaries of the American Board of India and Ceylon are the children or grandchildren of missionaries who were sent out by the Board two or three generations ago. In the three India missions, including Ceylon, there are now ninety-five American laborers, nineteen of whom were children and eleven grandchildren of missionaries.”
It would be interesting to get the statistics of other Missions and Boards on this subject and to compare the results of their work with some of the psychological statements quoted in the early chapters of this book regarding heredity and early training.
American children at work for Christ.
What part are our own precious children in Christian America to have in this great subject,—the Child at Work for Christ? Are they alone to be left out, or to have but a paltry share in the glorious work of giving the Gospel of Christ to the whole world? If the work is worth doing, if the result justifies the effort, if the children of the world need Christ, then it is unjust, unfair, un-Christian, to deny our children a share in the labor and the reward. Nor may we deny them the training and teaching that will make them realize not only the need, but—the one only adequate way in which that need may be satisfied. A few words from the pen of Dr. William Adams Brown emphasize very practically the need of this “only adequate way.”
The one great need of the world.
There are many persons today who are ready to recognize the beneficent work done by foreign missionaries for the social welfare of the peoples among whom they have been working, who have no sympathy with the religious motives which animate them. Why, they ask, can we not have the hospital and the school without the doctrines that go with them? They forget that it is faith in the realities which the doctrines express which alone has made the missionary enterprise possible. Had it not been for the belief that man is an immortal spirit capable of communion with God, and meant for fellowship with Him throughout all eternity, we should have had no Livingstone or Moffatt or Paton. James Russell Lowell saw this clearly when he spoke the striking sentences which have often been quoted, but which will bear quoting again:—
“When the keen scrutiny of skeptics has found a place on this planet where a decent man may live in decency, comfort, and security, supporting and educating his children unspoiled and unpolluted, a place where age is reverenced, infancy protected, womanhood honored, and human life held in due regard,—when skeptics can find such a place ten miles square on this globe, where the Gospel of Christ has not gone before and cleared the way and laid foundations that made decency and security possible, it will then be in order for these skeptical literati to move thither and there ventilate their views. But so long as these men are dependent on the very religion which they discard for every privilege they enjoy, they may well hesitate to rob the Christian of his hope and humanity of its faith in the Saviour who alone has given to men that hope of eternal life which makes life tolerable and society possible, and robs death of its terrors and the grave of its gloom.”[116]
Children trained to systematic giving.
Is there anything more beautiful and spontaneous than the generosity of a child who has learned to give to others because of its love for Christ? The churches that are systematically training their children to give have a great future before them.
Says The Spirit of Missions: “There is an old Scotch proverb that ‘Mony a mickle maks a muckle.’ Nowhere is this more effectively demonstrated than in the Lenten offering given each year by the Sunday-Schools of the church. This movement was begun thirty-five years ago in the diocese of Pennsylvania, and almost at once it spread throughout the church. Year by year the volume of gifts has grown, until for the whole period they have reached the amazing sum of $2,618,290.86. The gifts which have produced this result have come from all quarters of the earth and from all manner of children. Youngsters in Alaska have shovelled snow and others in California have raised flowers to earn their money for this purpose. The negro boys and girls of Africa, the peons of Mexico, the Igorotes of the Philippines, and the brown and yellow children of Japan and China have gathered the odd coins of their several countries in common with the children of the mountains and prairies, the small towns and the great cities of the United States.”[117]
One who had spent some years in India tells of an experience in Chicago that brings the quick tears to one’s eyes.
From Chicago to India.
“I had been telling the children at Olivet Institute in Chicago of the little girls in Fatehgarh who called Christmas the Great Day and who had never had any Great Day to look forward to at all until they had come to the mission school; of Gunga De, who had worked so hard to deserve a doll on the Great Day and learned the Beatitudes and her psalms and prayers, only to have her Hindu father take her away to bathe in the Ganges so that she would miss the prize giving, and of her joy when she found the doll waiting for her the next day. Afterwards as I stood waiting for the car on a dreary sordid Halstead Street corner, a little stranger who had wandered into the meeting came and stood beside me. A thin shawl was over her head, and the hand that held it together under her chin was thin and blue with the cold. There were dark circles under her eyes, and the little face had no look of childhood about it.
“‘Say, missus,’ she began, ‘you forgot something.’
“‘What did I forget?’ I asked, puzzled.
“‘You forgot to tell us how we could send things to those children out in India. I’ve got a doll—she has no head—but I like her—and two picture cards. Maybe I will get some more, so I would like to send those.’”[118]
We can almost hear the Master say of the little, pitiful, weary-eyed child, “Whosoever shall humble himself as this little child, the same is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven.”
Giving our children.
Perhaps some mother may fear that if she trains her child to feel a personal responsibility for the children of far-off lands the day may come when the dear one will look into her face and say, “Mother, I must go. I hear the call to tell others of the Christ whom I love!” Blessed is that mother who can answer, though there may be a sharp catch of the breath and a tightening of the heart strings, “If He call thee, thou shalt say, ‘Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth.’” A mother can never afford to let her child lose out of its life the very best and highest possibility, and when God calls to a service, there is nothing greater that can come to a life than the blessing found in the pathway of obedience.
What do the children of the world most need?
Who is going to supply that need?
How is it to be accomplished?
How quickly shall it be done?
In the name of the little Child of Bethlehem let every Christian woman answer these questions honestly and prayerfully, opening wide her heart of hearts to love and care and work for The Child in the Midst.
The world needs the Holy Child.
A traveller was visiting several missionary lands, and while in Korea had the joy of training twenty-four missionary children for an exercise in the Gospel of Luke. She says, “As one little boy stood before an audience to repeat the lines quoted below, it seemed a call to the Christian world for the children:
“The world was dark with care and woe,
With brawl and pleasure wild;
When in the midst, His love to show,
God set a Child.
“The sages frowned, their heads they shook,
For pride their heart beguiled.
They said, each looking on his book,
‘We want no Child.’
“The merchants turned toward their scales,
Around their wealth they piled;
Said they, ‘‘Tis gold alone prevails;
‘We want no Child.’
“The soldiers rose in noisy sport;
Disdainfully they smiled;
And said, ‘Can babes the shield support?
‘We want no Child.’
“Then said the Lord, ‘O world of care,
So blinded and beguiled,
Thou must receive for thy repair
A Holy Child.’”[119]
The Children of Tunis are Worth Helping