CHAPTER V.
THE CHILD AT WORSHIP
“Suffer the little children to come unto Me.”
Children worshiping—The child at worship in Thibet—In India—In Mohammedan Lands—In Africa—Religious needs greater than all others—The place of the child in non-Christian religions—In the Koran—In the Hindu Vedas and Shastras—Confucianism and Christianity—Failure of non-Christian religions to influence lives for righteousness—Religious acts and their results to children—Temple girls of India—Heathen mothers and their dead children—Only the Bible gives the child a place—The motive for teaching the children about Christ—The means to be used—Sunday-Schools—Christian Endeavor Societies—The power of God’s Word—Christian hymns—Obstacles to bringing children to Christ—“After many days”—Our great privilege.
Children worshiping.
What wonderful pictures flash before the mind as one repeats the words, “The Child at Worship”! The picture, familiar to childhood, of the boy Samuel, kneeling in the temple with folded hands and uplifted eyes; the picture on the nursery wall of vested choir boys or earnest-faced children singing praises in the sanctuary; the bowed heads of little ones in the primary room at Sunday-School, while with hushed voices they sing their prayer song; the hour far back in childhood when you knelt at your mother’s knee; or the sweet moment when your sleepy baby cuddled in your arms and learned to lisp, “Now I lay me.” All that is sweetest, purest, holiest in childhood seems to find full expression and highest reality as we see the child at worship, for “except ye turn and become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven, ... for their angels do always behold the face of my Father which is in heaven.”
The Child at Worship in Thibet.
The Child at Worship! Far off in distant Thibet today thousands of children are praying morning, noon, and night, joining their parents in the constant repetition of one six-syllabled sentence, “Om mani padme Hum” (“Om! the Jewel in the Lotus! Hum”!) This prayer they are taught from earliest childhood to use as “a panacea for all evils, a compendium of all knowledge, a treasury of all wisdom, a summary of all religion.” It is engraved on the outside of metal cylinders, written on rolls within rolls of paper inserted into the cylinders, which are held in the right hand and whirled round and round like a child’s toy,—each revolution storing up merit to the worshipper. But alack! if the careless boy whirls the prayer cylinder in the wrong direction, i.e., not with the sun, he is adding to the debit side of his account, and the more zealously he “prays,” the less good will his prayers do him.[75] “They think they shall be heard for their much speaking.”
The Child at Worship in India.