Little Helpers

by Margaret Vandegrift

Tiny and Johnny were standing by the library window, waiting for their mother and Jim, for it was Sunday evening, and time for the “talk.” The lesson was about the leading of the star, and it seemed to the children unusually beautiful, although there was never any lack of interest in these talks. They were growing impatient, when Jim came in sight, walking fast, as if he were afraid of being late, but they hastily agreed not to question him; for Johnny had found that this always annoyed him as nothing else did. He had a keen eye for “chances” to help his less fortunate neighbors, and more than once, Johnny had accidentally caught him giving time, and thought, and even money, although, industrious as he was, he seldom made more in a day than sufficed his actual needs. But he seemed so thoroughly disconcerted when anything of this kind was discovered, that Johnny tried hard to resist the temptation to tease him which was offered by his sensitiveness on this point.

Mrs. Leslie came down a few minutes after Jim arrived, and a beautiful talk followed. She had brought an old book about the Holy Land, which she had recently found at a second-hand book store, and it described in such good, clear language the state of affairs throughout the world, and the manners and customs of the people at the time of the birth of our Saviour, that the children, deeply interested, felt as if they had never before so clearly realized it all.

And Johnny spoke once more of the happiness of the wise men, in being the bearers of this great news back to their own country.

“I think it must have been much more interesting to be alive then, than it is now,” he said, with a little discontent in his voice, “for don’t you believe, mamma, that it seemed a great deal more wonderful about the Saviour then, when it was all happening, than it seems now, after so many, many years?”

“Perhaps it did,” said Mrs. Leslie, “but you know how it was when the apostles began to tell the good news. Besides being disbelieved, and persecuted, and imprisoned, and banished, they had to endure something which, to some people, would be hardest of all—we are told that they were ‘mocked’; that is what you would call at school, being made fun of.”

“I never thought of that before,” said Johnny, “I do believe that must have been the hardest of all! You see, a person can screw himself up to something pretty bad, like having a tooth out, or being killed, or anything; but to see a whole lot of people making faces and laughing at you—do you believe you could ever stand that, mamma?”

“It would be very hard, and yet it is part of their daily work for some of our missionaries, at this very day,” said Mrs. Leslie, “I have heard a missionary who had been preaching and teaching in India say that nothing delighted some of the natives more than to bait and worry a teacher until it was next to impossible for him to keep his temper. And no doubt the wise men had that very thing to contend with, when they went back to their own country. I think every one has, at some time or other. And then is, above all other times, the time to ‘let our light so shine before men that they may glorify our Father which is in Heaven.’ When people see that the power of God is a power, it nearly always makes some impression on them. So here is a chance for every one to ‘make manifest,’ and how beautiful the blessing is! ‘That which doth make manifest is light.’ We are allowed to carry to others the Light of the World.”

This was the end of the talk, for that time, and it made more impression upon Jim and Johnny than it did upon Tiny, for Jim, as we have said, carried his sensitiveness too far, often—as in the case of little Taffy—allowing it to hinder him from asking for help for others, when he had come to the end of his own ability, but not the needs of the case, and when such help would have been most gladly and efficiently given; as for Johnny, he was foolishly alive to ridicule, and many of the slips of temper which he afterwards lamented were due solely to this cause. A jeering laugh or a mocking speech always had power to make his face flush and his hands clinch, and the effect did not always stop there—he often said things for which he was bitterly sorry as soon as the rush of angry feeling was past. And somehow it seemed to him that the attacks upon his temper always took place when he was unusually off his guard, and open to them.