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.

[Sidenote: 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.”

[Sidenote: 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.”

[Sidenote: The Child at Worship in India.]

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!”

[Sidenote: 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]

[Sidenote: 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....

“Further up the river, a boy during initiation is usually placed for several days in a house alone, after being made to look so long at the sun that sometimes he faints, and when he is taken into the house he cannot at first see anything. Meantime the door is closed, and they all go away. Gradually he sees things around him, and at length discovers opposite him a corpse, in an early state of decomposition. He is kept there day and night during the ceremony. The men visit him and subject him to all sorts of indignities, in order to impress him with the necessity of absolute obedience to the society.... They believe that the skull of the father or other ancestor, when it has been properly prepared, becomes the residence of the ancestor. The son ... will keep the skull comfortably warm and dry, occasionally rubbing it with oil and red-wood powder, and will feed it bountifully.”[78]

[Sidenote: Religious needs greater than all others in non-Christian lands.]

Our hearts are touched by the child in its helplessness, by the suffering and sorrow of neglected little ones, by the agonies of child wives and widows, and the yearning cry for teachers and books, but how can we endure it when all that is sweetest and holiest and best in the beautiful child heart is defiled and polluted in the name of religion; when senseless repetition in an unknown tongue takes the place of the trustful words, “Our Father”; when sticks and stones, ancestral tablets, spirits and devils are worshipped by those to whom the Christ cries out in yearning love, “Suffer the little children to come unto ME”? If our hearts are touched, not to the breaking point, but to the _acting_ point, then these horrors must cease, and the children will be taught to worship aright, and Christ “shall see of the travail of His soul and shall be satisfied.”

[Sidenote: The place of the child in non-Christian religions.]

“The people in the country from which you have come have a religion of their own, is it not good enough for them? Why should you insult them by trying to foist your religion upon them?” These and many similar questions meet the missionary on furlough, and cause her more woe than does many a hard experience on the mission field. The best answer to such questions is to induce the questioners to study carefully what the non-Christian religions have to say regarding children, and the direct result of their systems on child life.

[Sidenote: In the Koran.]

A careful search in the Koran, the sacred book of the Mohammedans, is rewarded by finding several passages strictly enjoining kindness and justice to orphans, and a set of minute regulations regarding inheritance in which children, parents, husbands, and wives shall share, prefaced by these words: “God hath thus commanded you concerning your children,” and followed up later by the remark: “Ye know not whether your parents or your children be of greater use unto you.” (Sura IV.)

“Children,” says Rev. S. M. Zwemer, “are scarcely mentioned in the Koran; of such is not the Kingdom of Islam.”

[Sidenote: In Hindu Vedas.]

“The Hindu Vedas enjoin that by a girl, or by a young woman, or by a woman advanced in years, nothing must be done, even in her own dwelling place, according to her mere pleasure; in childhood a female must be dependent on (or subject to) her father; in youth, on her husband; her lord being dead, on her sons; a woman must never seek independence.” (Manu V, 158.)

[Sidenote: In Hindu Shastras.]

“The Hindu Shastras have made no provisions of affection and regard for a daughter. She is viewed by them, as far as her parents are concerned, merely as an object to be ‘given away,’ and that as soon as possible. She is declared by them to be marriageable, even in her infancy, to a person of any age; and of course without her own choice or intelligent consent.... According to the letter of the law, the parents are not to sell their daughters, but they may receive valuable gifts, the equivalent of a price, on her behalf.” (Manu III, 51.)[79]

The code of Manu further teaches that by honoring his mother a son gains the terrestrial world, by honoring his father, the ethereal,--intermediate,--and by assiduous attention to his preceptor, even the celestial world of Brahma.[80]

How different are the words of the Apostle Paul regarding the relation between parents and children. “Fathers, provoke not your children that they be not discouraged. Children, obey your parents _in the Lord_. Honor thy father _and thy mother_, which is the first commandment with promise.”

[Sidenote: Confucianism and Christianity.]

The Right Reverend Logan H. Roots, Bishop of Hankow, has illustrated so forcibly the difference in the practical working out of the precepts of Confucianism and Christianity, that it is well worth while to quote him at length.

In conversation with a group of Chinese gentlemen some time ago, I made the remark that outside the Jewish and Christian religions there was no serious recognition of the inherent dignity of children, and that no sage had ever made a statement comparable to that of our Lord.--“Suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid them not, for of such is the Kingdom of Heaven.” Such a remark as this on my part would have elicited scarcely any interest a few years ago. The warm discussion it aroused this time was a sign of the new life that is now stirring among the Chinese. The keenest of these gentlemen were in sympathy with Christianity, but they were all inclined to look upon Confucianism as a real preparation for Christianity, and one after another brought forth sayings of the Confucian sages which they thought could be reasonably compared to that of Christ.

They quoted the praises of King Wen in the “Great Learning,” where it is said, “As a father he rested in kindness”; the sayings of Confucius himself in the “Analects” as to his own wish: “In regard to the young, treat them tenderly”; the advice to a ruler in “The Great Learning”: “Act as though you were watching over an infant”; and the fine saying of Mencius: “The great man is he who does not lose his child’s heart.”...

The eagerness of these gentlemen in discussing the question with me, to find a place for their worthies in the ample folds of Christian teaching is far from unwholesome or blameworthy, especially when there is such readiness as they showed to appeal to Christian teaching rather than to the sages as their standard, and to prove the greatness of their sages by their agreement with the Christ....

My purpose, however, is not to give an exposition of these classical gems, but rather to contrast them briefly with certain popular Chinese conceptions of childhood which are foolish or cruel, but which these lofty sayings of the sages have been powerless to correct.

Should a child fall ill, his relatives or friends very likely remark, “His spirit has gone seeking another incarnation.” Or some one suggests, “Some ghost has frightened the child to the point of losing its soul.”... Should the child die, the parents will grieve as surely and as sorely as parents any where; but ... they will be told, “Never mind, the child was misguided to your home, and was not intended for you.” Or, “It was only a creditor collecting a debt you owed in a former existence.” Or, “Don’t grieve, it was but one of those demon spirits that always die young.”...

I put these popular sayings beside the exalted sentiments of the Chinese Classics, not to disparage the sages, but to show how utterly dark the popular mind is, in spite of these sayings which seem so full of light. Is not the difficulty that the sages after all could not go to the root of the matter? They knew nothing of God as Father.[81]

[Sidenote: Failure to influence lives for righteousness.]

What is here illustrated of the failure of Confucianism to influence lives toward righteousness and faith is true of the other non-Christian religions. Even the young Mohammedan girl realized the power and claim of Christianity as she was a chance listener to the Gospel story while a missionary toured in central Persia. “Why, lady,” she exclaimed, “if one understands clearly that Book, there is nothing left but to obey!”

The direct results of the way children are taught to worship in non-Christian lands deserve careful, unprejudiced study, with the question constantly in mind, “Is this religion good enough for _my_ children, or for those in whom I am interested?” If the study results in a negative answer to the question, it is fair to ask further, “Is it good enough for _any_ children in the whole wide world?”

[Sidenote: Result to the child of religious acts.]

What should be the results, physical, mental, moral, and spiritual, of a child’s religious acts? Which of all the world religions produces these results? Study Mohammedanism, for instance, of which we have already noted some of the religious acts expected of the child. These must necessarily inculcate formalism, thoughtless repetition, deep-rooted superstition, and the idea that God can be appeased and sin can be forgiven through certain acts unconnected with life and character.

“When I die,” said a poor, blind Mohammedan girl, “I shall be visited by two angels, the chief of whom will make an examination of my deeds, and remind me of everything I have done, and left undone; he will then cut off a piece of my shroud and record upon it my good and bad deeds, and attach it firmly to my neck with a piece of rope. If my good deeds outweigh my bad ones, I shall go straight into heaven. If my bad deeds outweigh my good deeds, my intercessor Mohammed will easily get permission for me to enter heaven, so it does not much matter how I live.”[82]

[Sidenote: Mohammedan month of mourning.]

The annual month of mourning of the Shi’ite Mohammedans is observed by children as well as by adults, and little ones with their heads covered with straw or ashes, or wearing chains, are borne on horseback in the processions that close the series of passion plays. A missionary in Persia saw a mother carrying her boy of five or six years in the bloody procession, cutting his head with a curved sword, while blood streamed from five or six gashes. Poor, eager, zealous mother, trying to store up merit for her baby boy against the day of wrath!

[Sidenote: Fear and horror in idol worship.]

Fear, dread, and horror are inseparably associated in the minds of thousands of children with the worship of their gods. From earliest childhood others grow so naturally into the forms of ancestor, idol, and spirit worship that this becomes one of the most difficult factors in leading them into Christianity. From the _Mission Day Spring_ we quote a few words about “how Chinese children worship.”

We must go up a flight of wide stone steps at the entrance of the temple, and as we enter we shall see two tall images with very ugly faces and brilliantly painted coats, which are called “Guardians of the Gate.” The mothers bring their little children forward, and teach them to clasp their hands and bow down, knocking their heads to the ground as they worship the image. If it is the first time, the children are afraid and often say, “Oh, I can’t do it, I never can do it!” Then they have to watch closely while their mothers once more show them how to worship. Afterwards they are sometimes rewarded with little presents, which they are told have been given them by the idol. If they are still too afraid to worship, stories of the terrible things that happen to people who do not ask the protection of the idols are repeated to them.

Up on the mountain slopes of the Hakone District in Japan, is the great children’s god, Jizo, carved centuries ago out of the solid rock. The heathen mother has been taught that, when the souls of her little children pass over the sullen stream of death, they must be saved from the clutches of a cruel hag residing on the banks. She steals their clothes and forces them to the endless task of piling stones at the river side. In order to induce Jizo to save them from the hag, the weary heathen mother climbs the steep paths leading to the children’s god, and there makes her supplication. And the little one tied to her back or led by the hand, with highly strung nerves and weary limbs, shrinks in terror at the sight of the ugly idol, and at the stories of dire vengeance which will befall her unless she worships properly.

[Sidenote: Death from fright and exposure.]

Many children die from the effects of fright and exposure connected with religious rites, as in the case of some of the African boys whose initiation into ancestor worship was described above.

[Sidenote: Soul-stains.]

[Sidenote: Temple girls.]

Worse than all the results yet mentioned are the deep soul-stains, the utter ruin of all moral and spiritual character, which fall to the lot of countless thousands of innocent children through the direct influence of their religion. One longs to turn away from scenes like these, but we mothers, sisters, and daughters of Christian homes cannot be honest with ourselves and with our God, unless we are willing to know things as they really are, in order to help to make them as they really ought to be. Such conditions exist to a larger or smaller degree in many lands, but to be really understood in their baldest, most revolting form, it is only necessary to visit India. Bishop Caldwell says that “the stories related of the life of the god Krishna do more than anything to destroy the morals and corrupt the imaginations of Hindu youth.” The temple girls, nautch girls, and muralis are living witnesses to India’s need of a pure and holy religion.

The nautch-girl often begins her career of training under teachers as early as five years of age. She is taught to read, dance, and sing, and instructed in every seductive art. Her songs are usually amorous; and while she is yet a mere girl, before she can realize fully the moral bearings of her choice of life, she makes her debut as a nautch-girl in the community.

Khandoba is the deity of the Marathi country and is popularly believed to be an avator, or incarnation of Shiva. Muralis are girls devoted to him by their parents in infancy or early childhood. Outside the main entrance of the temple court, a stone column stands on the wall on the left side. It is about three feet high, and on the head of it is cut a filthy design. The column is called by the name of Yeshwantrao.... He it is who gives children to barren women.... It is to this image the poor deluded women promise to sacrifice their first-born daughters if Khandoba will make them mothers of many children. Then after the vow, the first-born girl is offered to Khandoba and set apart for him by tying a necklace of seven cowries around the little girl’s neck. When she becomes of marriageable age she is formally married to the Khanda or daggar of Khandoba, and becomes his nominal wife. Henceforth she is forbidden to become the wedded wife of man, and the result is that she usually leads an infamous life, earning a livelihood by sin.[83]

The stories told by Amy Wilson Carmichael and many others corroborate and emphasize the facts stated by Mrs. Fuller, and tell of what the British Government and Christian missions are trying to do to counteract and stop the monstrous evil. From the _Missionary Review of the World_ for February, 1913, we quote:--

[Sidenote: Legislation to abolish young temple girls.]

“A bill lately introduced into the viceroy’s legislative council by Mr. Dadabhai, the Parsee member of that body, touches upon some of oldest and darkest social evils of India. It proposes to make it criminal for a parent or other lawful guardian to dedicate a girl under sixteen years of age to ‘the service of a deity,’ which always means dedicating her to a life of infamy, and to make the crime punishable with ten years penal servitude. It prohibits under very severe penalties, the practice which obtains whereby priests enter into temporary alliance with young girls thus dedicated, in order to initiate them into the life of professional profligacy.” To this we may add from an authoritative source that in 1913 the native state of Mysore had already abolished dancing girls from all its temples.

While the British Government is trying to prevent any of India’s daughters from being hereafter ruined, body and soul, in the name of religion, what is being done for the thousands who through no fault of their own have already become “the servants of the gods”? Is it possible to do anything to redeem the lives of these children whose earliest memories cluster about the most hideous forms of evil?

[Sidenote: Rescuing the servant of the gods.]

Another picture. A group of women lounging within the temple enclosure in the cool shade of the fragrant cork trees. A beautiful little girl of five years is running up and down the great stone steps of the tank, laughing and playing. Now and then one of the women calls the child to her and tries the effect of some article of jewelry against the bright little face. Little Moothi, the Pearl of the Temple, as she is called, is full of life and happiness. Too young to understand the sin and wrong about her, she loves the bright jewels and silken garments, the excitement of the dancing and singing. The daily exercise on the whirling wheel is only fun for her. She never grows dizzy and falls off as do her stupid companions, to be beaten by cross old Ramana, their teacher. “She will bring plenty of money by and by,” said one of the women to Moothi’s mother. “You had better let her go to the Christian school in the village. She will be taught to read and sing without any expense to you, and there is no danger of her remembering what she hears of that foolish religion.” But the mother’s face did not light up in response. Sitting in her little hut she has listened to the Gospel as it was told to a group of outcast women who had gathered weekly in the village palim on the other side of the wall. The wonderful story had penetrated her dark heart. But it is too late for her. She is too old to change, but oh, that her little Moothi, her beautiful one, might be spared the life of sin and shame to which she is doomed as a dancing girl devoted to the service of the temple. What can she do? Through the long nights she thought and thought, until finally she came to the decision to part with the little one though her heart break. One night she took the child with a little bundle of clothing and stole away. After weary miles of travel she appeared at the home of a missionary and begged her to take the little girl. “I give her to you,” she said, “to be taught your religion, and to be your child, but she must never know who her mother was.” She laid down twenty rupees which she had saved toward her support, and disappeared, leaving no clue to her name and village.

There was consternation among the women of the temple when it was discovered that Moothi was gone, but the mother gave no sign, and it was finally concluded that some one had stolen her because of her beauty, and such things are too common in a heathen land to cause a disturbance. As Moothi grew and developed into a beautiful Christian woman and earnest worker, the missionary often wondered whence came the God-given trust so strangely sent. Now and then, but less frequently as the years pass on, a woman, growing increasingly old and bent, was seen near the school, whom they associated with Moothi, but no one knew until upon her deathbed she sent for the missionary and told her story. Only a heathen mother, degraded and heart-broken, parted from her only joy in life, watching hungrily in the distance for a sight of the loved face. Can we not believe that the Christ of love was revealed to her heart also?[84]

What Christian mother will make it possible that some other heart-broken heathen mother may hear the Gospel message, and may find a place of refuge for her sweet, innocent child?

[Sidenote: Heathen mothers and their dead children.]

While our hearts go out in tenderness to the heathen mother deprived of her living child, what can we do or say to comfort the mother whose little one is cold in death? Our statistics of infant mortality in