Thank God, there is a brighter side to the story. In the name of the little Child of Bethlehem the little children of sorrow and darkness and suffering are being reached and helped and cured and loved. In many a mission hospital and many a humble home the blind are receiving sight, the crooked limbs are being straightened, the burning fever is checked, the hollow cheeks are growing round and rosy. The last word picture of this chapter shall be from the pen of Mrs. Gerald F. Dale, the mother-saint who presides over the women’s and children’s hospitals in Beirut, Syria.
Children’s Pavilion, Beirut.
The Children’s Pavilion is the arena which calls into play the whole gamut of one’s emotions. Such poor, wasted faces; such robust, jolly faces; so much pain; so much fun; twisted limbs before operation, straight ones after; noses and mouths cobbled and mended, a stitch here, a fold there, and what a change! It requires the standpoint of the East to unravel the full meaning of little Hindiyeh’s exclamation, who, gazing in admiration at her straightened legs, looked up with a merry laugh and said: “Curse the religion of the father of my legs as they used to be!” A baby-boy was to have no say in the matter of his poor crumpled-up little club-feet, for the mother begged that only one might be straightened, in order to save him from military service in the future.... The children’s favorite game is “operations,” the patient being in turn a real child or a doll. Everything is reproduced to the life. A pin stuck into the doll’s mouth is a thermometer; sawdust stuffing makes a most realistic draining wound; bits of wire and gauze are twisted into a mask, and chloroform is poured from an empty spool. The scientific bandaging of head, legs, and arms shows how intently the little brains have observed. They are busy with other things too; hymn after hymn is learned, the commandments, verses, psalms.
Everything that is dropped into these receptive minds stays, and once there will be shared, who can tell by how many? It is the little child who shall lead, and it is the handful of corn whose fruit shall shake like Lebanon.[14]
The Christ-Child and these little ones.
“The place where the young Child lay” was the place where the brooding mother love shining from the tender mother eyes hovered over the little One to guard and protect and care for Him in His appealing helplessness. And from those lips, once cooing in sweet babyhood, come down to us the words,—“Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these little ones, ye did it unto Me.”
Little Abraham found living alone in a ruined house, and brought to the door of the Mission Hospital in Persia
Abraham 18 months later, ready to be dismissed from the Hospital