The Child in the Midst / A Comparative Study of Child Welfare in Christian and Non-Christian Lands

QUOTATIONS

PRAYING CHILDREN IN KOREA

Sometimes little children learn about Jesus in some way and become Christians before their parents do. Three years ago, after a meeting in the country at a place called Top Chai, in Korea, two small boys, each nine years old, came up and told me that they were friends and had been believing in Jesus for a year, but that none of their parents had been Christians. They said, “We want you to pray every day with us that our parents may believe in Jesus.” I wrote their names in a little book and did pray as they asked me to, and every time I met the boys after that I would ask if their parents had become Christians yet. “No,” they would say, “not yet, but they are going to.” Last spring, just before I left Korea, I went to Top Chai to say good-bye, and one of the boys came to me with the brightest smile you ever saw and said, “My father has been sick for a long time but is better now, and has promised to come to church just as soon as he is able.” And back of him stood the other boy holding a smaller boy by the hand. “Pastor,” he said, “this is my younger brother, who has become a Christian, and my father has been coming to church all winter.”

A bright, manly little fellow in my church in Pyeng Yang had been a Christian only about a year when he succeeded in getting his mother to come to church with him. Soon after the mother decided to be a Christian, this boy became very sick and his mother was very angry at God about it. “See,” she said, “this is what I get for being a Christian.” He plead with her not to feel that way about it, and tried to get her to pray with him; but she refused, saying, “I will never pray again.” One day, just before he died, he held out his hands to her, saying, “Mother, come pray with me now,” but she turned her face away and sat down in a corner, and he began praying alone in Korean, “Hanale Kai sin, uri abage,” “Our Father who art in Heaven,” and, as he was praying, he died. The next day his poor mother came to our house and told my wife all about it and cried as if her heart would break because she had let him die without praying with him. I think God will let this boy know in some way in heaven that his mother did repent after he went away. (W. N. Blair, The Foreign Post, May, 1910.)

TRAINING THE CHILDREN OF THE PACIFIC ISLANDS

In 1888, Rev. W. Wyatt Gill, in a meeting in London, gave a statement of his work as a missionary in the Hervey Islands since 1851. “He spoke of the former condition of the people, of their love of revenge and of their human sacrifices, of the bloody feuds that existed among them, of the rule, followed by all, of keeping alive only two children in the family, and of the whole aspect of their lives as something fearful; and stated that all this had been changed through the influence of Christianity. He remarked that to see a people who were once cannibals partaking of the Lord’s Supper has been most delightful. Looking around upon the assembly gathered for this purpose he had seen the bread administered by one to a man whose father that man had murdered, or the reverse. He stated that the work of evangelization in many of the South Pacific Islands had been done almost entirely by natives trained in the Avarua School; that hundreds of these natives have sacrificed their lives to carry the Gospel to their brethren, and that sixty of Mr. Gill’s own church have been killed while acting as missionaries.” (Alexander, “Islands of the Pacific,” p. 121. Am. Tract Soc.)

INFLUENCE OF A PICTURE CARD

Once a month we give each girl a picture card. These were sent to us by children in American Sunday-Schools, and each time we explain to the child that the card was sent by a little boy or girl in far-away America. One day on our way home we stopped at a shop, and two of our little girls seeing us drew near with the cards in hand. A man sitting by asked one, a clever little girl, where she got her picture. She didn’t say, “My teacher gave it to me,” but answered, “A little girl in far-away America sent it to me.” His next question, “Why did she send it to you?” To which she replied, “Because she loves me!” Then, as he continued to question her, she began to explain the picture. It happened to be Christ delivering the Sermon on the Mount. It was only a child-like explanation given by a child of seven or eight years, but the man was really interested. As we wended our way I thought of the hundred and twenty-seven cards we had given out that day, and the many hundreds that had been given in days past, and wondered how many real Christian sermons had been preached by little Hindu and Mohammedan girls by means of these small cards. (Woman’s Work, April, 1912, Bessie Lawton, Fatehgarh.)

BIBLE READING

Revealed unto Babes—Expressed by Babes.

Luke 2:41–49. Matt. 11:25, 27. Matt. 21:14–16.

The things that are hidden from the wise and prudent are understood by children. How near a child is to the Heart of the Great Infinite; how naturally he expresses his love and praise. As the twelve-year old Boy in the Temple understood His connection with His Father’s work, as the children in the Temple comforted the sorrowing Saviour with their praise, so the children of today may understand and do for Christ what the wise and prudent cannot.

“We are facing tremendous problems and great contests which our children have got to settle. Can we not educate these men and women of tomorrow in the world brotherhood that goes back through all the centuries and finds its beginning in the heart of the Boy of Twelve?” L. W. Peabody.

PRAYER

We beseech Thee, O most merciful Father, for all Thy little children who dwell in darkness and in the shadow of evil that is in the world; that it may please Thee to have pity on them, and to gather them by the kindly hand of Thy true servants, into the light of the Christian fold, that they may sit at the feet of Jesus and learn of Him. So let Thy truth be manifest from generation to generation, and the whole family of mankind rejoice together in Thy mercy, through Jesus Christ, the Saviour of the world. Amen. (The Book of Common Prayer.)

QUESTIONS

1. What are some of the problems that must in all probability be confronted fifteen years hence in China? in Japan? in India? in Thibet? Turkey? in Central Africa?

2. What agencies, native and foreign, are preparing children to solve these problems?

3. How are the children of your home and church and community being trained along missionary lines?

4. What are you doing to help them?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

A Little Child Shall Lead Them. Wom. Bd. For. Miss. Ref. Ch. in Am.

The Black Bishop, Jesse Page. (Revell.)

The Islands of the Pacific, Alexander. (Am. Tract Soc.)

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