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.
A heathen baby,—that is all;—
A woman’s lips that wildly plead;
Poor lips that never learned to call
On Christ, in woman’s time of need!
Poor lips, that never did repeat
Through quiet tears, “Thy will be done,”
That never knew the story sweet
Of Mary, and the Infant Son.
An emptied cradle, and a grave—
A little grave—cut through the sod;
O Jesus, pitiful to save,
Make known to her the mother’s God.
O Spirit of the heavenly Love,
Stir some dear heart at home today,
An earnest thought to lift above,
For mother-hearts so far away.
That all may know the mercy mild
Of Him who did the nurselings bless:
The heathen and the homeborn child
Are one in that great tenderness.
(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.)