“The Child for Christ” must be the watchword of our “organized motherhood for the children of the world.” The Bible is the only sacred book that gives the child a place of importance. Christ was the only founder of a religion who raised childhood into a type of those who were fit to enter His Kingdom. As E. G. Romanes says, “Tenderness toward child life, appreciation of the simplicity and the helplessness of children, affection of parents for their children, and children for their parents;—all these are features of the Bible which the most superficial reader cannot fail to observe.”[86]

In his “Challenge to Christian Missions,” R. E. Welsh utters these significant words,—

“Why is it a matter of urgent duty and concern on a parent’s part to teach his child the story of Christ and train him in Christian truth and life?... What is the parent’s motive?... Simply the sharp sense of the value of Christ to every human being, young or old—the perception of the child’s need and peril if he does not get the saving power of Christ upon him; the sense of the native worth and value of being a Christian in soul and character; the desire to lift him out of ‘the natural man’ to ‘the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.’ If that motive be not strong enough to inspire us with zeal for taking the blessing of Christ to the heathen, then Christ has still much work to do upon us to make us Christian in mind and spiritual sympathy.”

If it is our duty and privilege to win the children of the world to Christ, how is it to be done? What special means are our missionaries using to bring about this result? All missionary work for children, in the homes, in day school and boarding school, in church and Sunday-School, in hospital and orphanage, must have the great two-fold aim ever in view,—to win the child to Christ, to train the child for Christ. It remains for us to study briefly several agencies not yet touched upon, that have been greatly blessed in their effect upon children of many lands.

First in the list of these child-winning agencies stands the Sunday-School. From a series of statistics appearing in the January, 1913, number of the Missionary Review of the World, we take the following figures, concerning Sunday-Schools conducted by the Protestant Missionary Societies of the world.

Would that every Christian woman who glances at these figures could dimly realize what they stand for,—the efforts, the time and energy and love expended, the disappointments and trials, the encouragements and victories. One must never be discouraged, one must never lose faith and hope, one may never stop sowing seeds in little hearts, even though the work seems as small and insignificant as it did in the Japanese Sunday-School at Kawazoe.

Every Sunday at twelve o’clock the children begin to clatter up on their wooden shoes to a Sunday-School which does not begin till two o’clock.... When it begins they sing hymns vigorously if not tunefully, and listen as patiently as any children of the same age. The nurse girls, aged ten or eleven, come with babies on their backs, and, if the babies remonstrate too vigorously, they are trotted out in the sunshine for a breathing space. An average of forty children come every Sunday to hear the Christian stories, and often, passing on the street, one hears the familiar tune and unfamiliar words of “Jesus loves me.” One, two, or more Sunday-Schools seem like but a drop in the bucket in a town of twenty thousand people, but we can only hope that through hymn, or story, or picture, or card, the good news of the love of God may be spread more widely.[87]

But many “drops” fill a bucket, and some day Japan is going to feel the mighty power of the children who have been taught in mission Sunday-Schools. Here is a prophetic instance:—

The teachings which produce the sweetest and most beautiful things in the lives of children, and will make them the truest and best “soldiers and servants” are those given in the Sunday-Schools which are multiplying in Japan. Therefore there is no work better worth doing than that in the Sunday-Schools, and no service more valuable than that of the missionaries who teach the children of Japan.... On the Campus of the Reformed Church College, Sendai, there was held last summer a union gathering of the Sunday-Schools of the city. Some of them were Saturday Sunday-Schools, as there were not hours enough on Sunday for the Christian teachers to instruct all those who are eager to learn, and it is not unprecedented for two or three Sunday-Schools to be taught by the same persons. When the pupils in the Christian schools of Sendai came together they were one thousand seven hundred strong. An eye-witness says:—

“I wish you could have seen them! Our own four Sunday-Schools furnished one hundred and fifty of the number. It did my heart good! Do missions pay? Oh, my, no! One of our students in the training school is the direct result of the Sendai Sunday-School, and another from that Sunday-School enters next year. And to hear those one thousand seven hundred children sing! And back of that great gathering was the story of long and patient labor, days of constant effort, and nights of discouragement.”[88]

With such a view of the value of the Sunday-School to Japan, it is interesting to note that in May, 1913, there were one thousand seven hundred Protestant Sunday-Schools in Japan, with an enrollment of about 100,000 pupils. If the question is asked, Do the Sunday-Schools have any effect on the lives of the children? it is a pleasure to answer with a brief extract from the personal letter of a new missionary to Japan:—

“This afternoon a lady called whose mother belongs to the nobility and has older ideals, but her father is American. She is a most earnest Christian and has done a great deal. She has access to the nobility’s children and is forming a Sunday-School, but she has many discouragements. At one village they had started a school of two hundred, and the children were showing its influence, but the schoolmaster feared just this and so managed to frighten the parents that all were withdrawn. This village was built in terraces with a long flight of stairs, down which many blind people went. The boys used to hang cords across so as to trip them. But now they have begun to take these poor people by the hand, and lead them down.” A Sunday-School that can teach such practical Christianity to mischievous boys must be a power in the community.

In October, 1911, the city of Peking, China, witnessed a Sunday-School parade in which two thousand children took part. With banners flying, and led by the Methodists with six hundred children and a band, the parade passed through the most important streets of the city to a large church where a children’s mass meeting was held.

A noteworthy “forward movement” was undertaken by the Methodist Episcopal Church in 1913, when the Rev. Wallace H. Miner, son of a missionary, sailed for China, to become a Sunday-School worker and organizer in that new republic. His work will be to assist the missionaries in promoting the work of the Sunday-Schools, to instruct native preachers in methods of Sunday-School organization and administration, and to train local teachers and native field workers, introducing modern methods into Chinese Sunday-Schools as far as they are adapted to Chinese conditions.

Would that India had more men like the rich coffee planter who gives his services to Christian work, and who travels from end to end of India organizing Sunday-Schools. The statistics of the Sunday-School Union of India are deeply significant, as is also the fact that there is such a Union. “The Sunday-School Union of India has a membership of 458,945, being an increase of 37,866 on the previous year. The Union stands for the very best in Bible instruction, equipment, and management. It publishes 10,000,000 English and vernacular pages of Scripture illustrated expositions, nearly all of which are based on the international syllabus. To meet the needs of Sunday-Schools in fifty languages, there are about fifty editions of ‘helps’ in twenty languages. A prominent feature of the Union is that it stands for salvation through Jesus Christ, and membership in the church to which it belongs.”[89]

It would be fascinating to visit the Sunday-Schools in various lands, and to hear the same dear children’s hymns sung in many languages by black children and white, red, and brown. We have time for only a peep at an Egyptian Sunday-School, but even this glimpse shows how naturally and inevitably the love and power of Jesus Christ can change the heart and life of a little child.

At 2 P. M. the beating of the bell has the desired effect, and presently there rises up from the edge of the river a crowd of some of the dirtiest and yet some of the prettiest little boys and girls you ever saw. Nearly every little girl carries perched on her shoulder a baby brother or sister. They rush without ceremony into the compound, but there they are intercepted, and made to walk quietly and orderly into the classes provided for them.

A kind Syrian nurse from the Hospital takes her place in a class of some thirty or forty girls, and, if only you could peep behind the scenes, you would hear such sad stories connected with the lives of several of her girls. Some have been married and cast aside by their husbands for some trivial fault, and then how glad they are once more to find their way back to school, where they know they are loved and cared for.

A blind girl sits among a class of the very naughtiest but sweetest little folk, who try her patience to the utmost. A kind missionary takes another class, and I am sure that, although she is accustomed to teaching all through the week, she has never taught such pieces of humanity as those before her. Still another class of mischievous little boys is taught by one of the day-school boys, who sometimes has to appeal to the superintendent to restore order.... Now the bell has to be beaten, gently too, and, after much noise, all shaggy heads are bent in prayer, then sentence by sentence, the Lord’s Prayer is said, and a very elongated “Amen” comes in at the end. Now three rooms are occupied instead of one, for if all the classes were kept in one room the noise would be deafening. What are all those dirty little bags hung around the children’s necks? Ah! those bags contain the most precious thing the children have, viz., an old Christmas card which serves as a register. If by some unfortunate chance that ticket gets lost, genuine tears form a streamlet down the troubled little face of the owner, for he or she knows it is just a mere chance if the superintendent will relent so far as to provide another, and yet without it admittance to the yearly Christmas tree is a thing impossible.

These registers are marked and a tiny box handed around to receive many little widows’ mites, for although the children are of the poorest, we try to teach them that it is more blessed to give than to receive. And now we are all in the room again, and a time is spent in catechising the whole school so as to make sure they have been listening to their lesson. The story had been told of the ten lepers, and the ingratitude of the nine, who went away without saying “thank you.” Z., a very regular member, looked up with glowing eyes, and said, “I would very much like to say thank you to Jesus for all He has done for me, but I am afraid He would not care to bend His hand from heaven to let a little girl like me kiss it.”... Another little girl is all eagerness to speak. Her name means “Cast Out,” and when her turn comes she says, “I love pickles, oh! so much, and when my mother said, ‘Go to the market and bring back pickles in vinegar,’ I used to dip my fingers into the vinegar all the way home,—they would creep into the basin in spite of myself,—but now since my teacher has told me it is like stealing, I try not even to look at the basin, but run all the way home with it to my mother.”[90]

It would take pages to tell what Junior Christian Endeavor Societies, Epworth Leagues, and similar organizations are doing for the children of Asia and Africa, and how through them the children of Christian households are being trained to live and work for Christ,—a training which most of their parents lacked in childhood. A missionary from Japan tells how a little fellow prayed at the Christian Endeavor meeting, “Oh God, I just want to thank you for the good time we had last Saturday, I can taste it yet; help us not to forget what we promised then.”

A Junior Endeavor Society in the Madura District in India helps to support a Sunday-School in a near-by village, the children bringing their offerings of one pie each (one sixth of a cent) with noble regularity. In one boarding-school in Persia, four or five Endeavor Societies flourished some years ago, and, when the girls went home for their vacations, they led the singing in the village churches, teaching the congregations new hymns learned at school. Each girl saw to it that a Christian Endeavor Society was formed in her village during the long summer vacation. Often the school girl would be the only member of the Society who could read, but she gathered the village children about her, and taught them to repeat Bible verses, sing hymns, and offer simple prayers, and a great deal of training and teaching can be accomplished in one summer vacation!

What marvelous power there is in the Word of God! A Mohammedan boy in a fanatical Persian city, which had often been visited by colporteurs and missionaries, went one day to the bazaar where he saw a New Testament being torn up to serve as wrapping paper. He remonstrated with the shopkeeper, and finally bought what was left of the Book. Through its influence both he and his mother were led to Christ. In another Persian city, the missionary holds a Bible lesson for boys under fifteen every Friday, when they do not have to be at work. Picture cards sent by thoughtful friends in America are earned by boys learning the Lord’s Prayer, the Ten Commandments, or verses from the Sermon on the Mount. Some of the boys always repeat the lesson at home to their mothers, and some say openly, “If what the Bible says is true, the Mohammedan religion is vain and useless.” Truly, “the entrance of Thy word giveth light.”

Do American children prize their Bibles as does this Korean boy?

Every day in the village of Nulmok there is an exodus of small boys to the mountain for fuel. Wood being scarce, it becomes necessary for each household to furnish a fuel gatherer. This army of boys is winding its way to the mountains some five miles off. Each boy has tied to his jikcey, or rack carried on his back, a small package of rice. This is his dinner, for it is an all-day job. As they make their way up the well-nigh barren slopes, one boy notices that his friend Kaiby has a second little bundle tied to his jikcey, and so he hails him to know why he is carrying two dinners.

“Oh, one is for my body, and the other is dinner for my soul,” he replies.

After a morning spent in raking over a small area of the mountain, each boy has succeeded in getting together his bundle of dried grass, and all sit down beside a mountain brook to eat of their dinner of cold rice and a relish of greens or pickled cabbage in season. Soon Kaiby has finished his meal and is untying his second bundle; taking out a book he begins to read aloud, slowly, while the other boys gather around to hear. It is about a great Man, who, when the people wanted to make him king, went to the mountain to pray.

Day after day at rest time Kaiby got out his book and read from it, and the other boys were interested. About this time, Ki Mun Ju, the Bible Society agent, came again to the village with Bibles. After supper, Kaiby, accompanied by several other boys, asked if there was not a smaller copy of the New Testament, as a number of the boys wanted to buy a Bible, but their only opportunity to read was at rest time on the mountain, and a smaller copy would be more easily carried. Needless to say, the colporteur did not fail to bring some on his next trip, and now many of the boys have their own, and frequently the hymnbook which they treasure next is tied up with it.[91]

Korean boys are not the only ones who treasure the hymnbook and love to learn and to sing Christian hymns. The missionary who can play and sing, and the one who knows enough about music to translate hymns and adapt tunes, has marvelous opportunities to work effectively among children. Miss Ford’s experiences in Palestine illustrate the truth of this:—

“I should like to say a word about the use of the organ. We are able sometimes to have very large Moslem audiences in the villages. Scores of boys will gather around to hear. When we propose to teach them a hymn or chorus they eagerly agree to learn. The subject of the song is always salvation in Jesus Christ, and the way of life is pointed out. We often hear the children afterward singing these hymns in the streets.... God has given us large numbers of little children to bring to Him. They learn hymns and psalms, chapters of the Gospels, and verses from the Bible with great facility, and they love to sing the hymns. Now also we can use with profit, large, illustrated, highly colored pictures of the life and teachings of our Lord, as well as Old Testament stories.”[92]

Lest anyone be tempted to think that the work is always easy, that one has but to sow the seed in order without further work and prayer to reap a bountiful harvest, it is but fair to mention a few of the obstacles that missionaries must constantly meet while trying to win children to Christ. Heredity, age-long custom, superstition, fatalism, the shackles of caste and prejudice, the home influences that so quickly counteract what a child learns during a few brief hours at a mission compound,—all these and many other hindrances must be reckoned with and overcome. Miss Carmichael graphically describes some of these experiences of effort and disappointment in India.

“Often we hear people say how excellent it is, and how they never worship idols now, but only the true God; and even a heathen mother will make her child repeat its texts to you, and a father will tell you how it tells him Bible stories; and, if you are quite new to the work, you put it in the Magazine, and at home it sounds like conversion. All this goes on most peacefully; there is not the slightest stir, till something happens to show the people that the doctrine is not just a creed, but contains a living Power. And then, and not until then, there is opposition. In one village there was a little Brahmin child who often tried to speak to us, but was never allowed. One day she risked capture and its consequences, and ran across the narrow stream which divides the Brahmin street from the village, and spoke to one of our band in a hurried little whisper, ‘Oh, I do want to hear about Jesus!’ And she told how she had learned at school in her own town, and then she had been sent to her mother-in-law’s house in this jungle village, ‘that one,’ pointing to a house where they never had smiles for us; but her mother-in-law objected to the preaching, and had threatened to throw her down the well if she listened to us. Just then a hard voice called her and she flew. Next time we went to that village she was shut up somewhere inside.”[93]

Sometimes God grants that bread cast on the waters with loving, lavish hand, is found again after many, many days. Often a Bible verse or the words of a hymn, or the recollection of what was seen and heard in a missionary home, has not been forgotten, and has borne fruit in after life. “A rich Japanese silk merchant sent for the missionaries in his town, and entertained them most hospitably. He told how as a child he had attended a Sunday-School. ‘Very often,’ he said, ‘right in the midst of my business the words of the hymn, “Jesus loves me, this I know,” come to me, and, try as I may, I can’t get them out of my mind.’ He then repeated the hymn from beginning to end, and added, ‘Though I have lived my life without religion, I feel that it is the most important thing there is, and I want my little girl to be a Christian; and it is for that purpose,’ he added emphatically, ‘that I have placed her in the mission school, that she may become a Christian.’”

Do we realize the privilege and opportunity that is ours to pray and give and go, to send our money and our sons and daughters, that the children of many Christless lands may learn to know and love and serve the children’s Friend while they are young, and hearts and minds are plastic and teachable? Have we as keen an insight into the great truths of Christian privilege as had the little Chinese girl, who, after being publicly baptized, was asked by her teacher, “Are you glad of the privilege of attending a school where you can hear of the Lord Jesus?” Quickly she responded, “Are you not glad, teacher, that you are in China, where you can teach of the Lord Jesus?”[94] Yes, ours is the greater privilege, and we must see to it carefully that we do not miss any part of the joy that the Master has in store for us. Our own children are so cunning and lovable, so full of wonderful possibilities, and in need of so much care and watchfulness, that it is easy to forget the other children who also need our love and help. In the Saviour’s eyes there is no difference,—He loves and cares for all children. Shall we imitate Him in this respect?

A weary missionary fell asleep, and as she slept she dreamed a dream. A message had arrived that the Master was coming, and to her was appointed the task of getting all the little children ready for His arrival. So she arranged them on the benches, tier on tier, putting the little white children on the first benches, nearest to where the Master would stand, and then came the little yellow and red and brown children and far back on the farthest benches sat the black children. When they were all arranged, she looked, and it did not seem quite right to her. Why should the black children be so far away? They ought perhaps to be on the front benches. She started to rearrange them, but just as all was in confusion, the children stirring around, and each trying to find his proper place, footsteps were heard, and lo! it was the Master’s tread, and He was coming before the children were ready. Overcome with shame and confusion she hung her head. To think that the task entrusted to her had not been accomplished in time! So she stood while the footsteps drew nearer and nearer, till finally they paused beside her, and she was obliged to look up. And lo! as she did so, and her eyes rested on the children, all shades of color and difference had vanished,—the little children in the Master’s presence were all alike!