“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]