Mrs. J. C. Worley of Matsuyama, Japan, writes: “One woman whom Mr. Worley baptized a year ago walked thirty-five miles over the mountains and carried a baby on her back to get to us so she could learn foreign cooking in a week. I could not do too much after she had made such an effort. She came over every morning into our kitchen, and we proceeded to cook; she with paper and pencil in hand and watching with both eyes. I am wondering what I shall be expected to eat next time we go there. I taught her some new songs for the Sunday School she and her husband hold in their little mountain village. I just wanted to fill her up with good thoughts and helps to take home, as she had made such an effort to get here.”[27]
The baby who made her smile.
Even the little missionary children may have their unconscious share in kindling a new light that shall shine in palace and hovel, and be reflected in the faces of parents and children who have long since lost the radiant look they were meant to wear. A woman of high position was making a very formal call in the missionary home, accompanied by many retainers. Every effort was made by the ladies of the station to entertain her fittingly and to bring some gleam of interest to the weary, hopeless face. The piano, beautiful pictures, the wonderful writing machine (typewriter), dainty refreshments,—all were acknowledged courteously, but, neither interest nor heart was touched. At last in desperation the tiny baby in her dainty, long dress was brought out from the bedroom, and, as the visitor’s arms were stretched out eagerly for the cunning form, so different from any baby she had ever seen, the little face looked up into the sad, wondering eyes, and a beautiful smile crept into the baby eyes and hovered about the rosebud mouth. “Oh, see,” whispered the servants in eager watchfulness, “our lady is smiling,—smiling for the first time since her brother died. God bless the little baby who made her smile!”
Ah yes! God bless the missionary babies, and the missionary fathers and mothers, and every one of the men and women whose hearts glow with the love of the great Father whose supreme will it is that “not one of these little ones should perish!”
QUOTATIONS—CHAPTER II.
CHRISTIANITY AND THE HOME
Christianity will call into existence a sympathy between parents and children hitherto unknown, and one of the greatest needs of the Chinese home. It will teach parents to govern their children, an accomplishment which in four millenniums they have never made an approach to acquiring. This it will do, not as at present by the mere iterative insistence upon the duty of subjection to parents, but by showing parents how first to govern themselves, teaching them the completion of the first relations by the addition of that chiefest one hitherto unknown, expressed in the words Our Father. It will redeem many years during the first decade of childhood, of what is now a mere animal existence, filling it with fruitfulness for a future intellectual and spiritual harvest.
It will show Chinese parents how to train as well as how to govern their children—a divine art of which they have at present no more conception than of the chemistry of soils. (Dr. Arthur H. Smith, “Village Life in China.” Revell.)