The Child at work for Christ! Would that it were possible to give to the women of our American Missionary Societies and to the young women of our schools and colleges a vision of the children of many lands who are today at work,—realizing as did the Christ Child that they must be about their Father’s business. In Korea, we shall find that a question asked of each man, woman, and child who wishes to become a church member is,—“Have you tried to win a soul for Jesus Christ?” Not long ago the children in one section of Korea demanded a half holiday, and in the leisure time thus obtained the five hundred children won eight hundred others into the church.[111]

Away up in the Karen Hills of Burma the first mission tour of exploration to a certain point was made with a company which included a number of school boys, among whom were some sweet singers. On associating with the Red Karen children, they quickly made acquaintance and were valuable workers. Great was the enthusiasm among the little Red Karens when classes were formed in reading and singing, and with surprising quickness they learned from their eager young teachers, who were glad to pass on to other children what they had so recently acquired themselves.[112]

Not only are the children under missionary influence trained to work, but they are also taught the joy and privilege of giving. Here is the method employed by Mrs. McCauley of Japan.

The Sunday-School children in Keimo No. 1 and No. 2, Tokyo, under Mrs. McCauley, take up a collection every Sabbath.... The children coming from heathen homes cannot ask their parents for money to put into this collection, so must practice self-denial to be able to give. The money for a boiled sweet potato purchased near the school building from a vendor, two rin, is saved by taking a smaller potato, and the lunch is none the less palatable because the child has made a little sacrifice, and these two rin, as they rattle in the collection box, are music in his ears and joy—the joy of giving,—in his heart. I happen to be one of the Auditors of the accounts at the Leper Home, and this year we closed the books with deficit,—a debt of two hundred and sixteen yen,—and we were troubled, having no resources. I looked over the Sunday-School collections, and found we had in the treasury nearly twenty-five yen, and I told the scholars about the dear little girl just thirteen, who is a leper and can never again be well, but is the light of the Home. When the women get discouraged and cry, this little angel puts her arms about them and says, “Auntie, dear Auntie, don’t cry; we will soon, all of us, have new bodies.” Two boys of fifteen are there—their companions like themselves are lepers. “Now, children, we need money; you have some; will you give it there, all or some part of it? How many say all? Let us see the hands”: and every little hand, kindergarten and all, went up, and we made it twenty-five yen to send to the Treasurer of our Leper Home. I then told them to tell their parents of how we spend the money given by the little ones, and we reviewed the places we had helped from our mite: For five years an Ainu School; Red Cross Society, two years; Charity Hospital, two years; Okayama Orphanage, two years; destitute soldiers, one year; comfort bags during war; famine sufferers, one year; flood sufferers, one year; earthquake sufferers, one year; Lepers’ Home, this year; medicine for sick pupils, often; help at funerals for poor families of school.

These children when they grow up and enter the church will be systematic givers and know what benevolence is.[113]

It brings tears to the eyes and joy to the heart to see how eagerly children of one mission land devote their little gifts to sending the Gospel to children of some other land. It seems the most natural thing in the world to lead them into missionary giving, and many a children’s band in America might be put to shame by the joy and spontaneity of those who are themselves objects of missionary giving.

“One day early in the fall,” writes Miss Alice B. Caldwell of Marsovan, Turkey, “while walking in the school garden I noticed two little girls strolling up and down the path arm in arm. They were chattering in their vivacious way, and one of them was making her crochet needle fly as fast as her tongue. On my inquiring what she was making, she held up a dainty bag, and several little interpreters informed me that it was for the Christian Endeavor Bazaar. After that day I saw many busy fingers on the playground making the most of the hours out of doors.

“The Junior Endeavorers help to support a little girl in a Chinese school, and they were getting ready for a bazaar to help make the money for their adopted child.”[114]

If we are touched by such stories as the above, which can be multiplied many times over, what is our feeling about those who are serving and helping our own Christian land because they were won to Christ in childhood on the mission field? We are thinking of one young woman whose parents became Christians under missionary influence, and who grew up in a Christian home among many persecutions and adverse circumstances from without. When, in the course of time, her widowed mother immigrated to America, the girl, already a devoted Christian, entered a training school in this country. Today she is working in six languages for thousands of immigrants in a New England city,—doing a work that few Americans could ever hope to accomplish. Merely as a business investment or a patriotic effort, the money contributed to the Mission Board, which brought about this result, has been more than profitable.

Here is the record of another good investment made in China:—

Some years ago there entered the True Light Seminary a bright little girl of thirteen, who, under the wise and gentle training of Miss Noyes, gave her heart to Christ and united with the church, becoming thereafter one of the best pupils in the school. Her great desire was to become a teacher, but since three years of age she had been betrothed by her father to the son of a heathen family—the betrothal by Chinese law being almost equivalent to a marriage—it became her duty to fulfil the promise made for her, and at the completion of her course of study she married the man of her father’s choice. The marriage did not prove a happy one; the husband’s business took him much away, leaving his wife alone, and at the end of three years he died suddenly of plague. The young wife, thus unexpectedly set free for service, at once took up her desired work, and after teaching for three years in Hongkong was called to a position in a Congregational school in Canton....

In the spring of 1910 it came about that one of the benefactions of Mr. Andrew Carnegie came to the Occidental Home in San Francisco, and when the question arose as to what should be done with the gift it could but seem that the long-sought opportunity had come to secure a Chinese teacher to live with the girls in the Home and to train them in their own tongue.

So it came to pass that Yeung Mo Owen, or Mrs. Yeung, as she is known in America, led in these various ways, became an inmate of the Mission Home in San Francisco, teacher of Chinese to the girls, both in the Home and in the Occidental Board Day School, and incidentally a blessing not only to the Home and to the Chinese Church, but also to Chinatown, and to the Board itself....

“I have never seen such a lovely face, never been so impressed by a Chinese woman,” said one long in the work in California. “Now you see what our native Christian women are like,” quickly responded a missionary who was present.[115]

The story of the Child at Work for Christ would not be complete without making mention of the missionary children who in such large numbers are trying to do their share toward bringing the Kingdom of Christ to this world. “If one life shines, the life next to it must catch the light,” and the joy and privilege of mission service in all its beauty,—and in all its trial and discouragement as well,—are well known to the missionary boy and girl. Even little four year old Annie had her share of discouragement when her parents returned to their field of work after a furlough during which Annie had forgotten all languages but English. When she heard her mother speaking of women’s meetings and various forms of work as she took them up, one by one, Annie decided to do her share also. Picking up her dolly, she trotted down to the gate to be a missionary to the little Turkish girls next door. Sadly she came back again to report, “Mother, the children cannot speak the American language.”

Let no one think that because missionary children are “used to” the country and the language, the climate and food and presence of the “natives,” it is always easy and natural for them to return to their parents’ field of labor. Just because they have been familiar with it all from childhood, the surroundings and opportunities of the homeland,—their own rightful heritage,—seem desirable beyond words and hard to relinquish. To the missionary children who return to the field, the halo of romance surrounding the step is non-existent,—they go with open eyes to what they know about. And yet they go, large numbers of them, and it might be well to ask of your Mission Boards whether their services are valuable to the cause or not. A newspaper clipping a few years ago gave these statistics:—

“Nearly one-third of the missionaries of the American Board of India and Ceylon are the children or grandchildren of missionaries who were sent out by the Board two or three generations ago. In the three India missions, including Ceylon, there are now ninety-five American laborers, nineteen of whom were children and eleven grandchildren of missionaries.”

It would be interesting to get the statistics of other Missions and Boards on this subject and to compare the results of their work with some of the psychological statements quoted in the early chapters of this book regarding heredity and early training.

What part are our own precious children in Christian America to have in this great subject,—the Child at Work for Christ? Are they alone to be left out, or to have but a paltry share in the glorious work of giving the Gospel of Christ to the whole world? If the work is worth doing, if the result justifies the effort, if the children of the world need Christ, then it is unjust, unfair, un-Christian, to deny our children a share in the labor and the reward. Nor may we deny them the training and teaching that will make them realize not only the need, but—the one only adequate way in which that need may be satisfied. A few words from the pen of Dr. William Adams Brown emphasize very practically the need of this “only adequate way.”

There are many persons today who are ready to recognize the beneficent work done by foreign missionaries for the social welfare of the peoples among whom they have been working, who have no sympathy with the religious motives which animate them. Why, they ask, can we not have the hospital and the school without the doctrines that go with them? They forget that it is faith in the realities which the doctrines express which alone has made the missionary enterprise possible. Had it not been for the belief that man is an immortal spirit capable of communion with God, and meant for fellowship with Him throughout all eternity, we should have had no Livingstone or Moffatt or Paton. James Russell Lowell saw this clearly when he spoke the striking sentences which have often been quoted, but which will bear quoting again:—

“When the keen scrutiny of skeptics has found a place on this planet where a decent man may live in decency, comfort, and security, supporting and educating his children unspoiled and unpolluted, a place where age is reverenced, infancy protected, womanhood honored, and human life held in due regard,—when skeptics can find such a place ten miles square on this globe, where the Gospel of Christ has not gone before and cleared the way and laid foundations that made decency and security possible, it will then be in order for these skeptical literati to move thither and there ventilate their views. But so long as these men are dependent on the very religion which they discard for every privilege they enjoy, they may well hesitate to rob the Christian of his hope and humanity of its faith in the Saviour who alone has given to men that hope of eternal life which makes life tolerable and society possible, and robs death of its terrors and the grave of its gloom.”[116]

Is there anything more beautiful and spontaneous than the generosity of a child who has learned to give to others because of its love for Christ? The churches that are systematically training their children to give have a great future before them.

Says The Spirit of Missions: “There is an old Scotch proverb that ‘Mony a mickle maks a muckle.’ Nowhere is this more effectively demonstrated than in the Lenten offering given each year by the Sunday-Schools of the church. This movement was begun thirty-five years ago in the diocese of Pennsylvania, and almost at once it spread throughout the church. Year by year the volume of gifts has grown, until for the whole period they have reached the amazing sum of $2,618,290.86. The gifts which have produced this result have come from all quarters of the earth and from all manner of children. Youngsters in Alaska have shovelled snow and others in California have raised flowers to earn their money for this purpose. The negro boys and girls of Africa, the peons of Mexico, the Igorotes of the Philippines, and the brown and yellow children of Japan and China have gathered the odd coins of their several countries in common with the children of the mountains and prairies, the small towns and the great cities of the United States.”[117]

One who had spent some years in India tells of an experience in Chicago that brings the quick tears to one’s eyes.

“I had been telling the children at Olivet Institute in Chicago of the little girls in Fatehgarh who called Christmas the Great Day and who had never had any Great Day to look forward to at all until they had come to the mission school; of Gunga De, who had worked so hard to deserve a doll on the Great Day and learned the Beatitudes and her psalms and prayers, only to have her Hindu father take her away to bathe in the Ganges so that she would miss the prize giving, and of her joy when she found the doll waiting for her the next day. Afterwards as I stood waiting for the car on a dreary sordid Halstead Street corner, a little stranger who had wandered into the meeting came and stood beside me. A thin shawl was over her head, and the hand that held it together under her chin was thin and blue with the cold. There were dark circles under her eyes, and the little face had no look of childhood about it.

“‘Say, missus,’ she began, ‘you forgot something.’

“‘What did I forget?’ I asked, puzzled.

“‘You forgot to tell us how we could send things to those children out in India. I’ve got a doll—she has no head—but I like her—and two picture cards. Maybe I will get some more, so I would like to send those.’”[118]

We can almost hear the Master say of the little, pitiful, weary-eyed child, “Whosoever shall humble himself as this little child, the same is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven.”

Perhaps some mother may fear that if she trains her child to feel a personal responsibility for the children of far-off lands the day may come when the dear one will look into her face and say, “Mother, I must go. I hear the call to tell others of the Christ whom I love!” Blessed is that mother who can answer, though there may be a sharp catch of the breath and a tightening of the heart strings, “If He call thee, thou shalt say, ‘Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth.’” A mother can never afford to let her child lose out of its life the very best and highest possibility, and when God calls to a service, there is nothing greater that can come to a life than the blessing found in the pathway of obedience.

In the name of the little Child of Bethlehem let every Christian woman answer these questions honestly and prayerfully, opening wide her heart of hearts to love and care and work for The Child in the Midst.

A traveller was visiting several missionary lands, and while in Korea had the joy of training twenty-four missionary children for an exercise in the Gospel of Luke. She says, “As one little boy stood before an audience to repeat the lines quoted below, it seemed a call to the Christian world for the children: