The Child at Worship in India! “All the way up the bank they are killing and skinning their goats. You look to the right and put your hands over your eyes. You look to the left, and do it again. You look straight in front of you and see an extended skinned victim hung from the branch of a tree. Every hanging rootlet of the great banyan-tree is hung with horrors,—all dead most mercifully, but horribly still....
“We see little children watching the process delightedly. There is no intentional cruelty, for the god will not accept the sacrifice unless the head is severed by a single stroke. But it is most disgusting and demoralizing. And to think that these children are being taught to connect it with religion!
“With me is one who used to enjoy it all. She tells me how she twisted the fowls’ heads off with her own hands. I look at the fine little brown hands, and I can hardly believe it. ‘You, you, do such a thing!’ And she says, ‘Yes; when the day came round to sacrifice to our family divinity my little brother held the goat’s head while my father struck it off, and I twisted the chickens’ heads. It was my pleasure.’”[76]
Truly, “the dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of cruelty!”
The Mohammedan Child at Worship.
The Mohammedan Child at Worship! From the minaret of the Sunni Mosque or the roof of the Shi’ite Mosque sounds the call to prayer. Children of seven or older are supposed to join their elders in obeying the summons five times a day,—in the early dawn, at noon, two hours before sunset, at sunset, and two hours later. The religious law, however, provides that no child shall be beaten for neglecting his prayer until he is ten years of age.
Praying, however, is not as easy a task for the Mohammedan lad as for his Thibetan cousin. He must first wash his face, hands, and arms, feet, and legs, learning which side of the face, which hand and foot to wash first, whether the arms should be stroked from the wrist to the elbow or in the opposite direction. His prayer will not count before the great “Allah” if the ablutions are not correct. Then he must learn the words of the prayers, and these are in Arabic, which three-fourths of the Mohammedan children of the world cannot understand. Turning toward Mecca, he must stand, kneel, and bow himself with his forehead to the ground, at just the proper intervals during the prayer. At the age of twelve he begins to observe the month of Ramazan, and his nine-year-old sister must do the same, when from sunrise to sunset no morsel of food or drop of drink may cross their lips. “Is such the fast that I have chosen? wilt thou call this a fast and an acceptable day unto Jehovah?” With deep insight into the truth has Mrs. Malcolm said:—
“Here again we see Mohammed giving his people what we may call ‘nursery rules,’ treating them as children, while our Master expects us to grow up so that we can arrange these matters for ourselves. The very fact that the detailed rules of Mohammedanism are binding through life shows that the Mohammedan is not expected to grow up as we understand growing up.”[77]
The African Child at Worship.
Once more the Child at Worship, this time in the African jungle! “Ancestor-worship is the highest form of African Fetishism,—the usual fetish is the skull of the father, which the son keeps in a box. The father occasionally speaks to the son in dreams, and frequently communicates with him by omens. He helps him in all his enterprises, good and evil, and secures his success in love, in hunting, and in war. All those who have skulls are a secret society, which is powerful to rule and to tyrannize over others. Young boys are initiated into this society by rites and ceremonies that are revolting.... In the mild ceremony of the more civilized Fang towns, the boy who is to be initiated is made very drunk and taken blindfolded to the bush, to a place set apart for the use of the society. The ceremony continues several days. In one part of it the bandage is removed from his eyes at midnight, a low fire is burning, which gives a feeble light, and he finds himself surrounded by members of the society with faces and bodies frightfully distorted, and all the skulls of their ancestors exposed to view, together with the heads of persons who have recently died. Some one asks him what he sees. He replies that he sees only spirits, and solemnly declares that these are not men....