The Mother and the Christ-Child. “Behold the
handmaid of the Lord” 259
CHAPTER I.
THE CHILD IN ITS HELPLESSNESS
“The place where the young Child lay.”
What do the children need?--“The Age of the Child”--All children
to be included--Rights of every child and every
mother--Conservation of human resources--Eugenics and
heredity--Protection of motherhood--Suffering
mothers--Superstitions regarding new-born
infants--Twins--Infanticide--Bathing and clothing
children--Feeding--Hygiene--Starving children--Infant
mortality--Health--Diseases and their treatment--What missions are
doing for the helpless children.
[Sidenote: What do the children need?]
“What do the children of India most need?”
The question was asked of an earnest young teacher, at home on her
first furlough. It was easy to see how quickly her thoughts flew back
to that school for little low-caste children which had so recently
been started, and with a far-away look in her eyes she answered:--
“What the children of India need is _childhood_ itself. They are
little old men and women, and they need to learn what it means to be
happy, care-free children, to play, and to have good times.”
“What do the children of Syria most need?”
This time it was a beautiful, young missionary mother who answered
quickly:--
“The greatest need of the children in Syria is _educated motherhood_.
They are born, carried around, and then turned loose to do as they
please as soon as they are able to toddle. It would mean that they
would be kept clean physically, would be properly fed, taught, and
trained.”
“What is the greatest need of the children in Persia?”
The answer came from a father of little children who had himself been
a missionary’s child in Persia and knew well the country and its
needs.
“What Persian children need is _proper home environment_.” A splendid
Christian teacher was talking with one of the boys of our Moslem
school about personal purity. “That is all very well,” responded the
boy, “but what do you really expect of me with my training and home
life when my father has had one hundred and five wives?”
“What do the children of America need?”
We turn and ask ourselves and one another this question. And lo!--we
find that the needs of childhood are very much the same the world
around. What is being done to meet those needs? Ah! that is a very
different question, and startling, yes, more than startling, are the
contrasts discovered as the thoughtful woman studies the subject of
child life.
[Sidenote: “The Age of the Child.”]
The “unity of childhood” throughout the world makes this a vital
question to all fathers and mothers, to educators, religious and
social workers, to every thinking man and woman. So urgent a question
has it become in many Christian lands that this has been aptly called
“the age of the child.” In our own land the needs and rights of the
child are being discussed on every hand, and through the Public
Schools, Juvenile Courts, Juvenile Commissions, Federal Children’s
Bureau, Playground Movement, Child Welfare Exhibits, Child Labor laws,
and numerous other agencies we are striving to deal with the problem
that involves the whole future of our land for weal or woe.
[Sidenote: _All_ children must be included.]
But just as I cannot care for the interests of my child alone, but
must recognize that his life will be vitally influenced by whatever
concerns his playmates and schoolmates, so I must inevitably be drawn
into consideration of what is due to the children of the community,
the state, the country, the world. What right have I to demand that my
baby be well fed, my child be protected by laws that ensure his
safety, that proper schools be provided for his education, that my
daughter’s purity and girlhood be respected, unless I concede that
right to every mother in the world and _care_ whether she has that
right or not?
One earnest mother heart poured itself out in these words when it was
planned that the women’s missionary societies should take up the study
of the children of non-Christian lands:--
“Sometimes I almost resent the absurd extremes of tenderness and care
for babies here, when I think of the world of neglected children. It
seems to me, our Women’s Missionary Societies are just a great,
beautiful, organized motherhood for the world, and the women don’t
half know or appreciate this or they would be swarming in by
thousands and giving their money by millions.”
If any woman is tempted to feel that the problems of our own land are
so overwhelming and so imperative as to demand all our time and
strength and attention, let her read what is said on this subject by
Edward T. Devine, the eminent writer and professor and social worker,
who is one of the greatest leaders in all lines of child welfare and
general welfare work in America. Dr. Devine links our obligations to
foreign lands inseparably to our duties to our own country.
Our responsibility to foreign peoples,--our responsibility to
immigrants who come to live in America, and to the negroes whom
our own ancestors brought here by force, our responsibility to all
those who for any reason do not fully share in that degree of
prosperity and in that type of civilization which are our
heritage, thus becomes clear and is seen to be at one with our
direct personal responsibility towards those who for any reason
need our sympathy, our fraternal co-operation, and our personal
help.[1]
[Sidenote: Testimony of Alonzo Bunker.]
Couple with the utterances quoted above such words as the following by
Alonzo Bunker, whose faithful labors among the Karens of Burma have
worked wonders in the transformation of a race, and it seems as though
no conscientious, intelligent man or woman would need to go further
for proof that the awakening social conscience regarding the welfare
of children in our own land _must_ include in its study and its
efforts for improvement the children of _all_ lands.
This unity of childhood marks the unity of the human race, and the
saying that “human nature is the same in all the world” gains new
emphasis when studied from the standpoint of the child.
... These characteristics which mark the unity of childhood among
all races, sometimes appear to be accentuated among less
intelligent peoples; so that, before the fogs of sin and
ignorance have blurred the image of God in which they were
created, they show a strength and brightness more marked than in
their more favored brothers and sisters in enlightened lands.
This fact has not received due attention in ethnological
studies.[2]
[Sidenote: The rights of every child.]
_Every child has the inalienable right to be well-born, to be
welcomed, to be properly cared for and trained through the years
of helplessness and development, to follow his instinct for
healthful play, to receive an education sufficient to make him a
self-supporting, useful member of society, to have such moral and
spiritual training as will develop the highest type of character of
which he is capable._
[Sidenote: The rights of every mother.]
_Every mother has the right to accept the duties, responsibilities,
and sufferings of motherhood of her own free will, to be surrounded by
such conditions as will help her to bring her child into the world
with the greatest possible safety to her own life and health and to
those of her child, and to loving care during her days of weakness and
recuperation._
[Sidenote: Conservation of human resources.]
Where the rights of mothers and children are not thus recognized and
guarded, we have a condition that endangers the welfare of the race
and leads to its deterioration. Every nation has looked well to the
conservation of some part of its human resources,--to its royal line,
to its soldiers or sailors, to its wise men and astrologers, to its
priests and religious leaders.
The well-known methods of ancient Sparta, which consisted in
destroying all weak children and submitting all boys of seven years
old and upward to the most rigorous training under state educators,
resulted in producing a race of warriors. Fighting men were what
Sparta wanted, and fighting men she produced. The possible heir to a
throne in modern times must have no drop of common blood in his veins.
Royalty must therefore mate with royalty in order to conserve the
royal line. And so we might go on and prove how one country after
another observes the great law of conservation of human resources
along some favorite line.
[Sidenote: Importance of the children of a nation.]
But a nation to be truly great and to be sure of future development
and success must realize that its greatest wealth lies in its
children, its highest possibilities are wrapped up in all its little
ones, its one hope for the future is in the childhood of the nation.
Many earnest writers of to-day are emphasizing in one way or another
this great truth in relation to children.
Mrs. Frederick Schoff in an address at the National Congress on
Hygiene and Demography makes a most practical application of these
principles, showing some ways in which the desired results may be
attained.
It takes time to battle down the old wall of belief that mother
instinct teaches a woman all she need know about child nurture....
The great functions of fatherhood and motherhood should not be
ignored in the training of children for life. They should be held
up as the highest and most far-reaching functions of human
life....
“One generation, one entire generation of all the world of
children _understood_ as they should be, loved as they ask to be,
and so developed as they might be, would more than begin the
millennium,” has been truly said by that lover of childhood,
Frances Hodgson Burnett.
Child Welfare is at the foundation of world-welfare. Child
nurture is the greatest science of the age. To arouse the whole
world to a realization of its duty to the children ... is the
propaganda in which all who see the infinite possibilities of the
child should unite.[3]
[Sidenote: Eugenics and Heredity.]
In a study of Childhood such as this, undertaken by Christian women in
their missionary societies and mission study classes, it is not enough
to begin with the child at the day of his birth, but we must consider
also the pre-natal influences, the history of his parents, and, in
fact, all those deep and far-reaching subjects which are engrossing
the attention of students in America and England and on the Continent
of Europe. In studying the subjects of eugenics and heredity, in
watching the social investigator as he shows us how from one drunken,
vagabond woman in Germany there were 834 known descendants, the great
majority of whom were prostitutes, tramps, paupers, criminals, and
murderers, let us remember that the principles arrived at apply with
equal significance to the future of the citizens of China and of
Turkey.
A missionary mother from China tells us that Chinese mothers make no
preparation for the coming of their babies because of foolish
superstitions, fearing that, if they prepare, it will bring bad luck
and the baby will die. “So,” she continues, “Chinese mothers miss the
delightful months we American mothers consider the best in our lives,
and the babies are deprived of the right sort of pre-natal influence.”
One missionary draws our attention to the fact of the awful fears and
deadly terror that haunt the lives of so many people in India, and
asks if this may not well be the result of the fact that their mothers
are the little, shrinking, frightened child-wives of India. “The
wrongs of Hindu womanhood in all past ages,” says Edward Payson Tenney
in his volume on “Contrasts in Social Progress,” “have been avenged by
the propagation of a race inferior to that which would have peopled
Hindustan to-day, had the domestic and social status of the mothers of
a great people been of a different character.”
Dr. Charles C. Selden, assistant to Dr. John G. Kerr in the Asylum for
the Insane in Canton, says that there are no statistics that will
allow comparison between the number of insane in China and America.
“If conditions are in any particular worse in China than in America,
it is along the line of imbecility resulting from bad heredity. Under
the social ideals of China every man is anxious to marry, but no man
is permitted to seek a wife for himself. The contract of marriage is
always made by a third party, and often a man finds himself bound to
an imbecile, insane or chronically diseased wife whose father has paid
the marriage broker a high price to get her a husband. There is surely
a great need for the study and practice of eugenics in China.”
[Sidenote: Protection of motherhood.]
It is only within the last few decades that the protection of
motherhood has been recognized in civilized lands as an economic
principle. In the protection of the mother lies the welfare of the
nation. But alas! the light of this knowledge has not yet begun to
penetrate into the darkness of heathen and Mohammedan lands.
Intelligent Christian women will find much food for thought and
material for interesting study in looking up the history of races now
extinct or those that are dying out. Trace to their true source the
reasons for the decadence of a race and try to discover if the
principles of practical, applied Christianity, used betimes in all
their truest and most enlightened methods, would tend to save and
elevate such a race. In Robert H. Milligan’s recent book, “The Fetish
Folk of West Africa,”[4] his fourth chapter is on “A Dying Tribe.” A
few extracts will show some of the reasons for the adjective “Dying.”
[Sidenote: “A Dying Tribe.”]
This amiable and attractive people, the Mpongwe tribe, is now but
a dying remnant, hurrying to extinction. It is not long since they
were numbered by tens of thousands; now there are probably not
more than five hundred pure Mpongwe.... The first exterminating
factor was slavery.... The slave traffic was succeeded by the rum
traffic; and it would not be easy to say which of the two has
proved the greater evil for Africa.... Except among the few
Christians, an abundance of rum is used at every marriage and
every funeral and both men and women drink to drunkenness.... I
have known of parents getting their own children to drink to
intoxication for their amusement. It is doubtful whether there is
another tribe in all West Africa so besotted with alcoholism as
the Mpongwe. Physicians agree that it is one of the chief causes
of their increasing sterility.
Another factor in the extermination of the Mpongwe is the
demoralization of domestic life incident to methods of trade....
White traders all along the coast employ the Mpongwe as middlemen
between them and the interior people, who possess the export
products. The white man gives the middleman a certain quantity of
goods on trust. With these he goes to the interior and
establishes a small trading-post in one or several towns.... He
has a wife or wives at Gaboon, and he takes to himself a wife or
two at each of his interior trading-centres....
This demoralization of domestic life is even worse for the
Mpongwe women than for their absent husbands. There is a large
settlement of white men in Gaboon, most of them government
officials.... Nearly all the Mpongwe women become the mistresses
of these men.... The marriage tie in Gaboon has long ceased to be
a “tie.”... The Protestant Christians of Gaboon are a very small
community; but they are the best Christians I have known in
Africa. They alone of the Mpongwe have good-sized families of
healthy children. They are the living remnant of a dying tribe.
[Sidenote: The sufferings of motherhood.]
Two outstanding facts make the experience of motherhood in
non-Christian lands a time of almost intolerable anguish, both
physical and mental. The first of these facts is the absence of
skilful, intelligent care previous to and during childbirth, and the
second is the presence of innumerable superstitions that envelop the
mother and her little one and the whole household.
It is a most interesting study to learn how customs differ in various
lands and swing to extremes, from Persia, where the time of childbirth
is the occasion for a large neighborhood gathering of women and
children, to certain regions of China, where we are told that there is
an absolute interdict on seeing mother or child for forty days after
the birth, and during that time many and many a little one
mysteriously disappears, never to be heard of again. In China the
mother who loses her life before being able to give birth to her
child is consigned by popular opinion to the very lowest hell, which
is said to be reserved for the worst criminals. In a large Buddhist
temple on a hill outside of Ningpo hangs a huge bronze bell, over
which are tied numberless bunches of hair of women who have died in
childbirth. When the bell is rung, the motion is supposed to pull the
poor women out of the place of punishment. Among the Lao a woman dying
in childbirth is not allowed to be cremated, for her death is supposed
to have been caused by evil spirits and the victim is blamed and is
not deemed worthy of cremation wherein is _merit_. These suffering
mothers feel as if an angel from heaven had come to their aid, when
the loving face of a missionary physician stoops over them, and her
skilful hands minister to their needs. A few words by Dr. E. M. Stuart
of the Church Missionary Society, at work in Ispahan, Persia, give a
vivid picture of the need for women physicians and nurses to do this
work,--a need that exists not only in Mohammedan harems, but in the
zenanas of India and in the homes of other lands where women live in
seclusion.
[Illustration: HOW BEDOUIN MOTHERS CARRY THEIR BABIES]
In every Moslem land there are countless lives lost every year
from lack of skilled assistance when it is sorely needed.... This
work calls specially for women-doctors and nurses, for though
Moslem women will consent to see men-doctors for many of their
ailments, and will even crowd out the men-patients at dispensaries
taken by male doctors, very few will allow a man to give them the
assistance they need in difficult labour; were even the women
themselves willing, it is very uncommon for the husbands and other
male relations to consent to it. As a rule they would rather the
women died than allow a man to interfere; the only comfort they
give them is the assurance of the Prophet that women who die in
childbirth go straight to Paradise.
[Sidenote: Superstitions regarding newborn infants.]
There is scarcely a land outside the pale of Christian civilization
where the newborn infant is not surrounded by absurd, painful, or
distressing ceremonies because of superstitions that may not be
ignored, the “Evil Eye” that must be averted, or ceremonies that are
to be observed because handed down from generation to generation. One
of the most astonishing and picturesque of these observances is
described by the Swiss missionary, Henri A. Junod, in his careful
study of “The Life of a South African Tribe.”
The second act is the _rite of the broken pot_.... This is a
medical treatment and a religious ceremony combined. It is
performed by the family doctor on the threshold of the hut in the
following way: He puts into this piece of broken pottery pieces of
skin of all the beasts of the bush: antelopes, wild cats,
elephants, hippopotami, rats, civet cats, hyenas, elands, snakes
of dangerous kinds; and roasts them till they burn. The smoke then
rises, and he exposes the child to it for a long time, the body,
face, nose, mouth. The baby begins to cry; he sneezes, he coughs;
it is just what is wanted; then the doctor takes what remains of
the pieces of skin, grinds them, makes a powder, mixes it with
tihuhlu grease of the year before last, and consequently hard
enough to make an ointment. With this ointment he rubs the whole
body of the child, especially the joints, which he extends gently
in order to assist the baby’s growth.
All this fumigation and manipulation is intended to act as a
preventive. Having been so exposed to all the external dangers,
dangers which are represented by the beasts of the bush, the
child may go out of the hut. He is now able “to cross the
foot-prints of wild beasts” without harm.... This rite of the
broken pot is also the great preventive remedy against the much
dreaded ailment of babies, convulsions.
[Sidenote: The Evil Eye.]
From land to land you may travel, through Africa, Asia, and the
Islands of the Pacific, and all the poor little babies and their older
brothers and sisters will be found to be victims of superstitions that
surround and hamper and often injure their pitiful little lives. The
Evil Eye,--oh! how it is feared and how every possible and impossible
means is used to avert it. You must not think of openly admiring a
Mohammedan baby, or of wearing anything black on your head when making
your first call upon it, for you would certainly cast the Evil Eye on
it. A Maronite woman in the Lebanon mountains, Syria, had lost a baby
three or four weeks old,--her first baby boy. She told a missionary
that the child had died because while he was sick they opened an egg,
and found therein an eye (the life-germ) and that was the Evil Eye
which had killed the child.
[Sidenote: Teething.]
“Children in Nyago, Africa,” we read in a Church Missionary Society
report, “receive the tribal mark by being branded on their foreheads
with a hot iron. Some of the front teeth are extracted as soon as the
child can speak.” The teething period as well as every other part of a
child’s life has to be safe-guarded from malicious influences. For
instance, a child of the Thonga Tribe in South Africa has a white bead
tied to a hair about the forehead as soon as it has cut the two
upper and lower incisors, for, unless this is done, there is no hope
that the child will become intelligent; he would shiver instead of
smiling, and the other teeth would not come out normally.
[Sidenote: Evil spirits “driven out” by the missionary.]
Thank God that there are sometimes missionaries near at hand who have
won the love and confidence of the mothers and who are allowed to
“drive out the evil spirits” by means of applied Christianity, common
sense, and cleverness. Here is an example of all three means used for
a baby on the borders of Pigmy Land.
One morning a woman brought down to the dispensary a wee morsel of
three weeks; it was a pitiful little object of mere skin and bone.
The mother explained that it had been poisoned out of spite, or it
was possessed of an evil spirit. “See,” said she, “I have done all
I could to let out the poison or devil.” Looking at its body I saw
it was covered with a number of small, deep cuts, and the blood
had been left to dry. Low moans and a tired cry came from the
poor, little, helpless mite as the flies tortured its mutilated
body. After questioning the mother the “evil spirit” took the form
of bananas and mushrooms, on which she had been bringing up the
three weeks’ infant! Feeding bottles were an unknown luxury, and,
as no equivalent had been invented, babies were compelled to lap
from the hand, an art they never properly learned and thrived on
very poorly. Some three dozen india rubber “comforters” were sent
out to me, and these I managed to fix on empty ink bottles or
medicine bottles, and so a new fashioned “Allenbury feeder” was
introduced. The demand far exceeded the supply, so they could only
be lent out by the month.[5]
[Sidenote: Superstitions regarding twins.]
Strangely enough the birth of twins seems to be regarded with horror
or disgust, or at least as a misfortune, in almost all lands where
Christ, the Lover of children, is not known. In some parts of Africa
the little twin babies are stuffed into a pot and thrown into the
woods to die, and their mother is considered disgraced for life or
sent into exile. A missionary of the Church Missionary Society of
London tells us that in West Africa the idea is that by the law of God
human births should be single; therefore, if a mother has twins, she
has been degraded to the level of a beast, the children are also
beasts, and their death is necessary in order to preserve the human
race pure and to prevent misfortune. Japanese fathers will not let a
little child look into a mirror and see its double, for fear that when
grown it will be unfortunate enough to have twins!
As there is no phase of life that Christian missions cannot touch and
change, so among some of the African West Coast tribes, as the people
have learned of Christianity, twin murder has been abandoned along
with human sacrifice, though even harder to eradicate.
[Sidenote: Infanticide.]
Were twin murder alone prevalent among non-Christian races, it would
be reason enough for earnest effort and prayer on the part of every
Christian mother in the world until it could be stamped out. But the
crime of infanticide is so frightfully prevalent in China, India, and
the Pacific Islands that it is a loud challenge to Christian parents
to bring into darkened hearts and homes the knowledge of Him who
considered it a capital offense even to “cause one of these little
ones to stumble.”
In very few cases do we read of infanticide being practiced at the
present time on boy babies. Twin murder as mentioned above, the
killing in Central Africa of “monstrosities” who have been born with a
tooth cut, or who cut their upper teeth first, and the putting away of
illegitimate children among some Mohammedans, seem to be almost the
only exceptions to this rule. The poor little girl babies, not wanted,
not welcomed, considered a disgrace and an expense, must again and
again pay the penalty for being girls with their lives.
“Why should the girl live?” the Pacific Islander would say to the
early missionaries, “She cannot poise the spear, she cannot wield the
club.”[6]
[Sidenote: Causes of infanticide in India.]
Rev. E. Storrow has made a careful study of the causes of infanticide
in India, and his conclusions are worthy of our attention.
Our knowledge, at the best imperfect, is confined to the present
century, the period of British supremacy.
Three causes have led to it:--
1. Great moral laxity, combined with indifference to infantine
life, and a desire to conceal wrong doing, which the privacy of
native habits renders comparatively easy.
2. Religious fanaticism has led to the crime in restricted
areas....
3. But infanticide, springing out of disappointment at the birth
of girls, because of their assumed inferiority to boys, the
lowering of the family repute, and the inevitable expense
demanded by usage on their marriage, chiefly requires our
attention; because it grew into a system which was hardly
concealed, and became prevalent in Rajputana, Gujarat, Cutch, and
other great districts in Central and Western India....
The little ones were usually destroyed immediately after
birth.... The reasons for such a usage, widely established among
such people, and perpetuated through many generations, are worthy
of close attention.
Cruelty is not a Hindu characteristic.... But the people are
callous and apathetic. They would not deliberately inflict
suffering and take pleasure in it, but they would not move hand
or foot to rescue such as were greatly suffering.... This goes
far to explain the unchallenged prevalence for ages of such
atrocities as suttee and infanticide....
“A mother of sons” is one of the highest compliments that can be
paid to a wife; “a mother of daughters” is one of the most
contemptuous and scornful of all terms of reproach. This explains
the gladness with which the birth of sons is welcomed, the
disappointment manifest at the birth of daughters, and the
disposition to put them away....
But whilst these were the causes generally operative, there were
two special ones, which were influential among the haughty,
high-caste Rajputs and kindred tribes--the difficulty of
procuring suitable husbands for their daughters, when the
customary age for marriage arrived; with the supposed disgrace of
having unmarried daughters, and the difficulty of defraying the
heavy expenses which usage demands....
Happily, the crime is abating through the persistent action of
the government, and yet more because of that great wave of
renewed opinion and sentiment passing over the people. But that
this crime is yet frequent, and the law evaded, is evident.[7]
Was there a dry eye in the auditorium at Northfield when Mrs. James
Cochran, only a few weeks before her death, told of the little girl
babies in China who are thrown out to die? All could feel the
throbbing love of her mother heart as she told the story in such
simple words to the hundreds of young women gathered before her. Who
among them could ever again be guiltless if she did not do her share
towards saving the baby girls of China? Listen to her words:[8]
Confucianism wants no little girls, for they are of no use. It is
very nice to have one or two, but in the part of China from which
I come it is absolutely a custom, if there are more than two or
three, to murder the others in some horrible way. One night one of
my pupils came to my class very soberly. At first she whispered to
the women about her and then they began to whisper to each other.
Finally I inquired the reason. One of the women replied, “She is
feeling badly because they are killing a little baby down at her
house.”
“Killing a little baby!”
“Yes,” the girl replied, “they have three little girls and
another girl has just come. I feel so badly because she is a
dear, fat, little baby. I did not want to see her die, but my
sister is determined to kill her.”
“Oh,” I said, “you go and bring that baby to me. I can take care
of her.”
So she went, but before she arrived the baby had been murdered in
a way too dreadful to tell.
[Sidenote: Bathing of children.]
It is rather entertaining to pick up, one after another, books and
magazine articles written for children about the children of
missionary lands, and to find them all starting out with the
proposition, “Children are very much the same the world around.” How
are we going to reconcile this statement with the fact that some
children survive and even thrive upon treatment that would mean
certain death to others? What would happen to the little American baby
first opening his eyes on the world, if he were taken out of doors as
the babies are in Central Africa between four and five o’clock in the
morning, when the cold night winds are still abroad, and cold water
were dashed over him, and he were left naked out there to dry? The
cold water treatment of the Africans and the Lao differs widely from
the baths of little ones in Japan where the water must be nearly
boiling hot to be of the proper temperature. But in Persia it would be
sure death to a newborn baby to be bathed at all,--he must be
carefully rubbed with salt as were the properly-cared-for infants of
Ezekiel’s time! (Ez. 16:4.) Then into a cradle he is not laid, but
strapped, wound round and round until his little legs and arms are
rigid and immovable, and the soft bones of the back of his head are
flattened as he lies there day after day. Oh, how we long to pick him
up and let him change places occasionally with one of the imperial
babies of Japan, who must be held in some one’s arms day and night
from the time of his birth until he can walk. But no, there he must
lie, and, in order that he may not take cold and fall a victim to that
dangerous enemy, fresh air, over the ridgepole of the cradle are
thrown various coverings, most of which hang to the floor. A
missionary told me that once when she wanted to look at a Syrian baby,
she took off four blankets which had been thrown over the whole
cradle, and then removed a Turkish towel folded double over the
child’s face.
[Sidenote: Clothing of children.]
It is strange to learn in how many lands the mothers feel that they
must wrap and tie and bind and swathe their babies until they are
deprived of all power of motion, and lives and health are sadly
endangered by too much rather than too little clothing. The Chinese
mother dresses her baby in a tiny wadded jacket, then another, then
another, saying perhaps, “It is five jackets cold to-day.” He is
wrapped and tied up until the bundle with a baby at the centre can be
rolled on the floor without hurting him, or may perchance act as a
life-preserver if he falls off the houseboat into the canal. It is
pretty sure to keep afloat until it can be pulled in with a boat hook.
[Illustration: A PERSIAN BABY IN HIS CRADLE]
Very differently clad are the “Coral Island Brownies” or the babies of
Africa, who are not hampered with any clothes at all, and as they grow
older simply wear a fringe of grass or a strip of calico about their
waists.
It is easy to trace many of the cases of terrible eye disease among
children in Egypt, Syria, and other warm countries to the utter lack
of any protection to the eyes from the glaring sunlight. Often boat
women are seen rowing in the bright sunlight in China with babies
asleep on their backs, and nothing over the sensitive little eyes as
their heads bob up and down in time with the oars.
It is often a great shock to the American missionary mother to see
little heads wrapped and swathed in numerous cloths and kerchiefs,
while the little feet are blue with cold. But then, the shock is
reciprocal, and, while the mother is off conducting a meeting, her
nurse is carefully making up for her negligence by wrapping up the
head of the missionary baby until he is bathed in perspiration!
[Sidenote: Infant mortality.]
The study of Infant Mortality is now engrossing the thought and
attention of many earnest men and women. It is most difficult to get
vital statistics from any non-Christian lands in order to give
comparative tables. In comparing the mortality statistics of the
United States for 1890 and 1909 we find marked improvement in the
“opportunity for life and health” granted to American children. If
George B. Mangold is right in saying that “the infant and child
mortality of a people is a barometer of their social progress,” then
we have reason to believe that our land is making real advance in this
respect.
In 1890 the total number of deaths of children under five years was
307,562; in 1909 the total number of deaths of children under five
years was 196,534.
From the first mortality table of the principal cities of the world in
1912 that has been made public we learn that--
Stockholm has 82 deaths per 1,000 births.
London „ 90 „ „ „ „
New York „ 105 „ „ „ „
Contrast with these figures the following, based upon careful study
and research by high authorities:--
“It is by no means improbable that more than half the whole number of
Chinese children die before they are two years old.” (Arthur H.
Smith.)
In Syria the infant mortality is 75% of the births.
In Persia the infant mortality is 85% of the births.
At a meeting of the National Association for the Prevention of Infant
Mortality in Great Britain, the Right Honorable John Burns, P. C., M.
P., speaking on “Infant Life Protection” gave many interesting facts
and figures to show how infant mortality is being decreased in Great
Britain through scientific and systematic efforts along many lines.
One sentence is significant:
“Let me decide the food, the home, and the condition of life of every
child from birth to seven years of age, and the rest of mankind can
do with the children after seven years of age what they like.”
[Sidenote: Feeding of children.]
Constant and increasing attention is being paid in these days to the
proper feeding of children, to the study of dietetics, to the
preparation of suitable food for infants, and to the proper intervals
for administering the food. Any mother of average intelligence in our
land may secure one of the carefully prepared books such as Dr. Holt’s
on “The Care and Feeding of Children,” or the smaller leaflets such as
“What Children Should Eat,” and by making a study of them and of her
child may hope to see that it is well and properly nourished. But what
chance is there for the mother in Asia or Africa who, even if she
cares to learn, has no means of knowing how to feed her child
properly?
[Sidenote: Ignorant mothers.]
I was making a call of condolence on a neighbor in Persia who had just
buried a dearly loved baby, the fourth or fifth she had lost. With
such a pathetic look she said, “It seems as if we did not know how to
care for our babies. You missionaries take such beautiful care of
yours.” A wonderful opening, by the way, for starting a mothers’
meeting at which we used to discuss the care and training of our
little ones. A mother arrived early one meeting day to tell me, “I
tried on my children what you suggested last week, _and it worked_.”
Quite different was this set of mothers who had long been in contact
with the missionaries, from the mother in a Persian village who begged
a missionary to put a cent on her baby’s head and write a prayer that
it might not die as six others had done in that family. The missionary
replied with some severity that it was much more to the purpose to
have the mother learn to take proper care of it, for the baby was not
yet a year old and she was feeding it with meat and fruit.
In most if not all of the non-Christian lands whose child life we are
studying there seems to be the tendency to two extremes. The children
are often nursed by the mother for two, three, five, or even more
years, and at the same time they are allowed to eat anything that
their fancy dictates or that they can get hold of. Mrs. Noyes of China
says that if the mother has no milk she cannot afford to buy canned
milk, and of course fresh milk is entirely out of her reach. So she
chews rice most carefully until it is soft and mushy, then takes it
from her own mouth and puts it, germs and all, into the baby’s mouth.
This diet is supplemented with rich cakes and the inevitable tea.
Another missionary tells us that, if a child in China is ill, his
appetite is tempted by rich, heavy food or fruit, and adds, “the
mortality of children is frightful.”
[Sidenote: An unwholesome diet.]
Mrs. Underwood, an experienced mother and physician who has lived and
worked many years in Korea, says:
Every imaginable practice which comes under the definition of
unhygienic or unsanitary is common. Even young children in arms
eat raw and green cucumbers, unpeeled, acrid berries, and heavy,
soggy bread. They bolt quantities of hot or cold rice, with a
tough, indigestible cabbage, washed in ditch water, prepared with
turnips, and flavored with salt and red pepper. Green fruit of
every kind is eaten with perfect recklessness of all the laws of
nature, and with impunity....
But even these, so to speak, galvanized-iron interiors are not
always proof. It takes time, but every five or six years, by
great care and industry, a bacillus develops itself ... and then
there is an epidemic of cholera.[9]
It is one of the most difficult lessons to impress on those who have
become Christians that true Christianity, lived out to its logical
conclusion, includes all that proper physical care of the child which,
with the right mental and spiritual training, shall prepare it to take
its place in the world.
Dr. Exner, recently in physical educational work in the Y. M. C. A. at
Shanghai, says:--
[Sidenote: Hygiene and the child problem.]
“The need of the knowledge of hygiene has a very definite bearing on
the child problem. Thousands upon thousands of children are killed
simply for the lack of knowledge of the simplest elements of feeding
and care. To illustrate: A well educated Chinese teacher, graduate of
a mission school, fed his five months’ old daughter a piece of rich
cake. It developed intestinal trouble from which it died in spite of
expert medical care. When I expressed my sympathy, he said, ‘Well, it
is the Lord’s will.’ I added to myself, ‘You should know better!’”
How much easier it is to say piously, “It is the Lord’s will,” than to
take trouble and bear expense and lay aside age-long custom and
prejudice in order that little ones may live! But we must not judge
too harshly when we remember how long it has taken more enlightened
lands to learn the great value of the lives of the children and how to
care for these lives. Rather should we be all the more ready to send
and carry to them the light and knowledge that have come to us. Then
there will be fewer such scenes as one missionary mother witnessed in
Syria. It was in a Jewish family where there were four little girls.
The baby was a mass of sores from head to foot, and the missionary
physician said that they were merely the result of mal-nutrition. But
the mother said that her husband was utterly unwilling to buy a little
milk each day,--“It is not worth while, for she is only another little
girl.”
[Sidenote: Special work for missionary mothers.]
It is a most legitimate and absolutely essential part of missionary
work,--and not one of the easiest tasks, either,--to teach parents
that “children intelligently fed during infancy, childhood, and youth
may hope for normal health in adult life, with natural physical
strength, endurance, buoyancy.” Here is a special field of labor for
missionary mothers, who have this advantage over physicians and
teachers that they can teach by object lessons which _always_ make a
deeper impression than exhortation or verbal instruction. Of course
the missionary mother often has the great handicap of an adverse
climate in which to bring up her child. But her intelligent
application of the principles she should learn in order to fit _her_
for motherhood, and her willingness to teach these principles to the
ignorant mothers so interested in all that pertains to the little
foreign baby, may be some of the greatest factors in the future
welfare, stamina, and development of great nations such as China and
India.
[Sidenote: Children starving.]
Which is more harmful to a child, reckless, indiscriminate
over-feeding or under-feeding and starvation diet? In lands swept
periodically by famine or flood or devastated by war and massacre,
there are thousands of little children who literally starve to death
while other thousands continue to exist,--but what an existence it is!
How can it but have its evil effect on the mind and morals of a child
as well as on its physical well-being to be deprived of proper or
sufficient nourishment during the years of growth and development? If
child welfare is the legitimate, rightful responsibility of every
Christian woman, then it behooves us to see that such scenes as the
following cease to be possible anywhere in the world.
One mother, a widow with four children dependent on her, told me,
with tears streaming down her face, how she had tried to throw
away the skeleton-like little baby she carried in her arms, but
she said the child always found its way back to her, and she
added, “It is not easy to give one’s own child away.” She said she
felt sometimes she would just have to drink poison, and put an end
to her miserable existence, and one of the others asked her what
would become of her children if she did that, and she said, with
despair in every feature, “Don’t ask me.”[10]
In a later chapter we shall learn of what is being done through
Christian orphanages for many little famine waifs and the orphans of
those killed in battle and massacre, but, when we consider the untold
harm to body and mind that has befallen these children before help
reaches them, we realize that we must hereafter work with heart and
soul at the task of _prevention_ of these great evils if we believe in
the welfare of the human race.
[Sidenote: Health.]
“Health,” we are told by Dr. E. T. Devine, “is influenced by the
occupations and habits of growing children; by their play and their
attendance at school; by the attention given to their eyesight,
hearing, breathing, and digestion, to their spines, and to the arches
of their feet, to their position at the desk, and to the type from
which their text books are printed; by the readiness with which they
make friends and so enter into the natural sports and exercises of
childhood; by the development of their self-control, and their more or
less unconscious acceptance of standards of conduct and principles of
action which will be their ultimate safeguard against those diseases
and weaknesses which come from indulgence of wrong appetites and
desires.”
[Sidenote: Foot-binding.]
Judged by these standards, what chances have the children of Asia and
Africa and the Pacific Islands for being safeguarded against disease
and weakness and death? Consider the one matter of “attention to the
arches of their feet” and compare such a standard of health with the
age-long custom of foot-binding in China, and what hope is there for
perfect, blooming health among the women of China or their children? A
full description of the horrible custom of foot-binding may be found
in Dr. James S. Dennis’s “Christian Missions and Social Progress”
(vol. 1, p. 212). The effects of it upon the little girl victims are
thus described by one who has every right to speak on the subject.
Mrs. Archibald Little, whose position as president of the
Natural-feet Society has given her special reason for
investigating, says in her book, “Intimate China”: “During the
first three years (of foot-binding) the girlhood of China presents
a most melancholy spectacle. Instead of a hop, skip, and a jump,
with rosy cheeks like the little girls of England, the poor little
things are leaning heavily on a stick somewhat taller than
themselves, or carried on a man’s back, or sitting sadly crying.
They have great black lines under their eyes, and a special
curious paleness that I have never seen except in connection
with foot-binding. Their mothers sleep with a big stick by the
bedside, with which to get up and beat the little girl should she
disturb the household by her wails; but not uncommonly she is put
to sleep in an outhouse. The only relief she gets is either from
opium, or from hanging her feet over the edge of her wooden
bedstead, so as to stop the circulation. The Chinese saying is,
“For each pair of bound feet there has been a whole kang, or big
bath, full of tears.” And they say that one girl out of ten dies
of foot-binding or its after-effects.”[11]
Among the changes that are sweeping over China, the Anti-foot-binding
Movement ranks high in importance. It is receiving daily impetus by
reason of all the new things Chinese women and girls want to do, which
are impossible to accomplish unless they can walk instead of hobble.
When this movement has really conquered the custom and “fashion” of
centuries, there will be a better health report from the girls of
China.
Utter carelessness or ignorance of the first principles of cleanliness
is responsible for much ill-health and death. A “swat-the-fly
campaign” would save thousands of unprotected baby faces from being
covered with loathsome disease or disfigured with dangerous eye
trouble, but it would encounter not only hopeless inertia,--it would
arouse serious religious opposition. In some countries the “sacredness
of life” means,--Protect the fly, no matter what happens to the baby.
[Sidenote: Medical practice in non-Christian lands.]
One subject, upon which Dr. Devine has not touched in his list given
above, is the necessity for the protection of well children from
contagious diseases, and of skilful, tender care of the sick. We might
easily fill a chapter with the study of so-called “medical practice”
as conducted in non-Christian lands,--a practice composed largely of
mingled superstition, ignorance, cruelty, and avarice--but a few pages
on the subject in addition to our earlier study of what takes place at
the time of childbirth will suffice, we trust, to make earnest
Christian women desire to study it further. It is easy to shrink from
contemplating the sufferings of innocent children, and many a woman is
tempted to say, “I am too sensitive, I cannot hear about such things.”
But are we more sensitive than the little, shrinking, pitiful children
to whom these things happen daily? Therefore, not to encourage morbid
curiosity, but in order that as Christian mothers and sisters we may
lift the burden from little shoulders unable to bear it, let us
fearlessly face the facts as they are.
[Sidenote: Contagious diseases.]
The frightful ravages made by smallpox, diphtheria, scarlet fever, and
even the milder “children’s diseases,” such as measles and
whooping-cough, often devastate whole towns and carry away the larger
part of the children in a community. Smallpox, for instance, is so
common in Korea that it is not considered worth while to try to escape
it. It is caused by the visit of a very great and honored spirit, and
while he remains the children are addressed in high sounding terms in
honor of their great guest. When he is about ready to return to the
south land, _i.e._, when the child has nearly recovered, a feast is
made in honor of the visitor and he is provided with a wooden horse
for his journey.
On an itinerating journey in Korea Dr. and Mrs. Underwood with their
little boy stopped at a village called Pak Chun and had a rather
disturbing experience.
Just before leaving, I saw a child quite naked, covered with
smallpox pustules in full bloom, standing near our door. I asked
one of the natives if there was much of that disease in the
village at present. “In every house,” was the concise reply. “Why,
there is none in the house we are in,” said I with confidence.
“Oh, no, they took the child out the day you came in order to give
you the room,” was the reassuring answer. We had eaten and slept
in that infected little room, our blankets all spread out there,
our trunks opened, everything we had exposed. We had even used
their cooking utensils and spoons and bowls before our own packs
had arrived. For ourselves we had been often exposed, and believed
ourselves immune. Mr. Underwood had nursed a case of the most
malignant type, and I had been in contact with it among my
patients,--but our child! So we sent a swift messenger with a
despatch to the nearest telegraph station, twenty-four hours away,
to Dr. Wells, in Pyeng Yang. He at once put a tube of virus into
the hands of a speedy runner, who arrived with it a week later.
We found the country full of smallpox, measles, and
whooping-cough, and added to our smallpox experience an exactly
similar one with measles.[12]
The loud death wail goes up from a village home in Persia where a
little life has been snatched away by diphtheria. Instantly every
mother in the village seizes her baby and the next-to-the-youngest
toddles after, and all gather in the family room of the little mud
home, where the body lies, and show their sympathy by adding their
voices to the general din. Fortunately custom decrees that burial take
place as speedily as possible, but the mischief has already been done,
and echoes of the death wail are heard from far and near.
Call over the roll of physicians of your own Board. A wonderful report
it would be if each could respond and give the number of epidemics
through which he or she has worked unflinchingly, bringing hope and
comfort and life to hundreds and thousands stricken down not only by
the diseases already mentioned but by typhus, cholera, and plague.
Call the roll of the countries where no law demands isolation or
precautions of any kind, and one after another would respond, if it
could, in terms of loving gratitude to missionaries who have
introduced or freely used vaccine, anti-toxin, cholera serum, and
other products of medical science. Many lands are now awaking to the
possibility and desirability of using preventive measures, and
vaccination, for instance, is very prevalent in China. It is good to
hear Dr. Estella Perkins of China say, after an epidemic of scarlet
fever, “I must say, however, that these young mothers have been very
obedient to orders. I know by the number of dispensary cases of
sequelae in patients I did not treat, that the careful following of
directions by the mothers of my children must have saved half of them
from bad results of the disease. It is a comfort to be able to do
something more than prescribe a little medicine.”
[Sidenote: Cruel treatment of sick children.]
We spoke above of the ignorance, cruelty, superstition, and avarice
that compose so largely the medical practice of the Orient. Disease is
very frequently considered the work of an evil spirit which must
either be appeased by offerings or driven out by harsh and cruel
treatment. And so the tender little bodies are branded with hot irons,
pierced by needles, or burned with rags dipped in oil and set on fire.
While the little one suffers, a witch doctor may be called in to use
his incantations, or the mother may take a little rag from some
article of the child’s clothing and tie it to a sacred tree already
covered with hundreds of these rags, or the string of beads or the
entrails of a beast are consulted to see if the omen is favorable for
administering medicine. Let me give just one case from Central Africa
which can be duplicated many times over from the records of other
lands.
As an example let me give the case of a lad who was suffering from
tuberculosis. He had consulted the witch doctor, and after having
paid his fee was told that he had been poisoned. Whereupon the
“surgeon” drew his knife out from his belt and made a number of
small incisions. He then declared he could see the poison inside
the youth, and took it away. But the lad was not cured, and so
came down to give the European’s wisdom a trial.[13]
[Sidenote: Christian help for sick children.]
Thank God, there is a brighter side to the story. In the name of the
little Child of Bethlehem the little children of sorrow and darkness
and suffering are being reached and helped and cured and loved. In
many a mission hospital and many a humble home the blind are receiving
sight, the crooked limbs are being straightened, the burning fever is
checked, the hollow cheeks are growing round and rosy. The last word
picture of this chapter shall be from the pen of Mrs. Gerald F. Dale,
the mother-saint who presides over the women’s and children’s
hospitals in Beirut, Syria.
[Sidenote: Children’s Pavilion, Beirut.]
The Children’s Pavilion is the arena which calls into play the
whole gamut of one’s emotions. Such poor, wasted faces; such
robust, jolly faces; so much pain; so much fun; twisted limbs
before operation, straight ones after; noses and mouths cobbled
and mended, a stitch here, a fold there, and what a change! It
requires the standpoint of the East to unravel the full meaning of
little Hindiyeh’s exclamation, who, gazing in admiration at her
straightened legs, looked up with a merry laugh and said: “Curse
the religion of the father of my legs as they used to be!” A
baby-boy was to have no say in the matter of his poor crumpled-up
little club-feet, for the mother begged that only one might be
straightened, in order to save him from military service in the
future.... The children’s favorite game is “operations,” the
patient being in turn a real child or a doll. Everything is
reproduced to the life. A pin stuck into the doll’s mouth is a
thermometer; sawdust stuffing makes a most realistic draining
wound; bits of wire and gauze are twisted into a mask, and
chloroform is poured from an empty spool. The scientific bandaging
of head, legs, and arms shows how intently the little brains have
observed. They are busy with other things too; hymn after hymn is
learned, the commandments, verses, psalms.
Everything that is dropped into these receptive minds stays, and
once there will be shared, who can tell by how many? It is the
little child who shall lead, and it is the _handful_ of corn
whose fruit shall shake like Lebanon.[14]
[Sidenote: The Christ-Child and these little ones.]
“The place where the young Child lay” was the place where the brooding
mother love shining from the tender mother eyes hovered over the
little One to guard and protect and care for Him in His appealing
helplessness. And from those lips, once cooing in sweet babyhood, come
down to _us_ the words,--“Inasmuch as ye did it unto _one of the least
of these little ones_, ye did it unto Me.”
[Illustration: Little Abraham found living alone in a ruined house,
and brought to the door of the Mission Hospital in Persia]
[Illustration: Abraham 18 months later, ready to be dismissed from the
Hospital]
QUOTATIONS
CHILDBIRTH--CHINA
Mary V. Glenton, Wuchang, China, writes in the _Spirit of Missions_
for July, 1902:
Recently I was called to a case of childbirth away out in the country.
My native assistant had asked for a holiday; she had gone that
morning. After a long ride in the chair through country roads, past
the pagoda, I was ushered into a small house of two rooms and then
into one of these rooms to my patient. When I shut the door to keep
the crowd out, and had thrown water out the window several times for
the same purpose, ineffectually, I found that I must have some light
and also some air; so I stationed one chair coolie at the door and
another at the window, and started in. I had to give chloroform
myself, as well as do the rest of the work. But after four hours’ hard
work, so hard that while my feet were cold on the earth floor (it was
February), the upper part of my body was in profuse perspiration, I
got through, and saved the woman’s life.
Immediately there arose a most tumultuous screaming, shrieking,
stamping, calling, flapping doors back and forth on their hinges, and
any sort of noise that could be made. I had never heard such a din in
my life. What was coming I could not imagine. I was miles away from
home; it was growing dark; I had no one with me, whom I knew or could
reason with, but the chair coolies, one of whom was a mere boy, the
other a perfect goose, who thinks himself unusually intelligent. I
managed to make myself heard after a while, enough to ask what they
were doing, and found that all the din and racket were to frighten
away the spirit of the dead baby that had just been born.
MOHAMMEDAN BABIES AND CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS
During the Balkan War a number of Bulgarian soldiers came into a
village which had been deserted by the Turks, and there they found
eight little Turkish babies who had been left behind,--girls of
course. They were in a dreadful condition, but the tender heart of one
of the soldiers could not bear to leave them so. He found a tub, and
they undressed the babies, bathed them, and, taking some cloth from a
store, bound them all up again in Oriental fashion. The tiny ladies,
being very hungry, continued to cry. The dilemma was how to find food
for these eight babies, all under a year of age. The kind-hearted
Bulgarian was equal to the emergency. Dispatching one of his comrades
to a neighboring village for some milk, he proceeded to kill eight
geese. Removing and cleaning the crops from these, he filled them with
the milk, using goose quills for nipples, and soon the eight babies
were fast asleep. Then they sent them on into Bulgaria to be cared
for, with greetings from Turkey.
(Told by Mrs. E. E. Count of the Methodist Episcopal Mission in
Bulgaria.)
BIBLE READING
“What manner of Child shall this be?” Luke 1:5-14, 57-66, 80.
The little child greatly longed for--promised by God’s
messenger--rejoiced over at birth--named “Jehovah is gracious,” not
according to custom but with peculiar significance--grew in
stature--waxed strong in spirit--God’s hand was with him.
“When I see a child he inspires me with two feelings: tenderness for
what he is now, respect for what he may become hereafter.” Louis
Pasteur.
PRAYER
O Lord Jesus Christ, we beseech Thee, by the innocence and obedience
of Thy Holy childhood, guard the children of this our land and of all
lands; preserve their innocence, strengthen them when ready to slip,
recover the erring, and remove all that may hinder them from being
really brought up in Thy faith and love; Who livest and reignest with
the Father and the Holy Ghost ever, one God, world without end. Amen.
QUESTIONS
1. What do you consider the greatest need of the children of your
community?
2. How does this need compare with the needs of children in the
mission land in which you are most interested?
3. Name the organizations in your community that deal with Child
Welfare (i.e., milk station, children’s hospital ward, etc.). How many
of these exist in non-Christian lands? By whom were they introduced?
4. What can a ruling power like the British Government in India do to
bring about better conservation of motherhood?
5. How would you go to work to eradicate harmful superstitions in a
Mohammedan land?
6. If you were conducting a series of six mothers’ meetings in China,
what topics would you select?
BIBLIOGRAPHY. CHAPTERS I AND II.
Child Problems, George B. Mangold--Macmillan.
“European Institutions for Protection of Motherhood,” etc. Theodore L.
Smith, _Pedagogical Seminary_, Mar., 1912.
The Problem of Race Regeneration, Havelock Ellis.
Parenthood and Race Culture, Saleeby.
The Family and Social Life, E. T. Devine.
Fifteen Years Among the Top-Knots, L. H. Underwood--Am. Tract Soc.
Home Life in Turkey, Lucy M. J. Garnett--Macmillan.
Fetish Folk of West Africa, R. H. Milligan--Revell.
Jungle Days, Arley Munson, M.D.--D. Appleton & Co.
Our Sisters in India, Rev. E. Storrow, Chapter vii--Revell.
“The Unbinding of Bright Blossom’s Feet,” _Everyland_, March, 1913.
The Light of the World, R. E. Speer, Infanticide, pp. 353, 354.
Christian Missions and Social Progress, J. S. Dennis, Infanticide,
vol. i, p. 133.
When I Was a Boy in China, Ian Phon Lee--Y. M. C. A. Press.
Village Life in China, Arthur H. Smith--Revell.
Village Life in Korea, J. R. Moose--M. E. Church, South.
The Chinese at Home, J. Dyer Ball--Revell.
On the Borders of Pigmy Land, Ruth B. Fisher--Revell.
“The Training of a Japanese Child,” Francis Little--_Century_, June,
1913.
For leaflets and Children’s Magazines see Bibliography for Chapter II.
_Much valuable material will be found for this and the following
chapters in all the earlier text-books of the Central Committee on the
United Study of Foreign Missions. These books, studied with special
reference to The Child, will bring new light and interest to their
readers._
FOOTNOTES:
[1] E. T. Devine, “The Family and Social Life,” p. 51.
[2] Alonzo Bunker, “Sketches from the Karen Hills.” Revell.
[3] _Child Welfare Magazine_, Feb., 1913, p. 195.
[4] Fleming H. Revell.
[5] Ruth B. Fisher, “On the Borders of Pigmy Land.” Revell.
[6] Alexander, “The Islands of the Pacific.” Am. Tract Soc.
[7] E. Storrow, “Our Sisters in India.” Revell.
[8] _Record of Christian Work_, Sept., 1912, “How Chinese Religions
Fail.”
[9] L. H. Underwood, “Fifteen Years among the Top-Knots.” Am. Tract
Soc.
[10] _Missionary Review of the World_, June, 1911, W. D. & A. T.
Bostick.
[11] M. E. Ritzman in _Missionary Review of the World_, Feb., 1911.
[12] L. H. Underwood, “Fifteen Years among the Top-Knots.” Am. Tract
Soc.
[13] Ruth B. Fisher, “On the Borders of Pigmy Land.” Revell.
[14] _Woman’s Work_, Dec., 1911, p. 271.
CHAPTER II.
THE CHILD AT HOME
“Train up a child in the way he should go.”
A Mohammedan home in Persia--A heathen home in Africa--A Christian
home in Zululand--The home the centre of a nation’s
life--Christianity’s gift to non-Christian homes--Greatness of the
task--Disorderly homes--Moral influences--Need of teaching the
mothers--Lack of proper discipline--Lack of innocence coupled with
appalling ignorance--Sex knowledge--A missionary mother’s
“dream”--Position of fathers--Fathers transformed by
Christianity--Motherhood--Christian wives and mothers--Child
marriage--Betrothal customs--Dying child-wife--Child widows--Homes
of the world need Christ--Vocation of a missionary
wife--Missionary homes.
Scene One: A Mohammedan home in Persia.
[Sidenote: A Mohammedan home in Persia.]
The women’s apartments opening onto an inner court-yard present an
animated scene, for some ladies from another harem have come with
children and servants to make a call; _i.e._, to spend the afternoon,
drink unlimited quantities of tea and pussy-willow-water, smoke
unnumbered cigarettes alternating with the water pipe, and nibble at
sweetmeats and fruits provided in large abundance. The greetings are
conducted with due decorum by women and children, and then, while the
servants and concubines of the home move to and fro with the proper
refreshments, and while the children dispose of large quantities of
sweets, the gossip of the neighborhood is discussed with animation.
The conversation,--no, it cannot be repeated here, for it is not fit
for the printed page; but little girls sit eagerly drinking it in, and
little boys stop in their play to wink at each other with knowing
looks as they catch the drift of the talk. A mere baby crawls up to
attract his mother’s attention and, not succeeding, slaps her with all
his tiny might as she sits on a cushion on the floor. “Oh brave boy!
oh splendid boy! just see how he hits me when I do not listen to him!”
And the little boy is hugged and his wishes are granted while he
learns well his lesson of the inferiority of a woman,--even his
mother. Presently a little girl begins to scream vigorously, having
been pounded and scratched by a small boy in the party. The lad is
rewarded for his manliness with a big piece of saffron candy, but the
girl, being a visitor, must be consoled; and so the delightful promise
is made: “Never mind; stop crying, and we will find you a nice
husband. Now wouldn’t it be fine to arrange a marriage for her with
the son of ----?” and so the whole matter is discussed in the child’s
hearing, and she too learns her lesson,--that the one ambition of a
girl must be to get married as early as possible, and the more
valuable she is, the greater settlement must her prospective husband
make upon her, to be paid in case he wishes to divorce her.
It is evening, the visitors are gone, and the head of the home with
the older boys will take his evening meal in the anderun (women’s
apartment). No cloth is spread for the whole family. The husband and
sons are served on large copper trays by the women of the household,
who eat later what is left. The husband is in a wretched mood and
vents his anger right and left. Even the favorite wife, a young girl
who has recently superseded in his affections the mothers of his
children, trembles for her position when the rice is not to his taste;
and suddenly at some further provocation he turns upon her, and with
the words, “I divorce you,” sends her cowering from him, a divorced
woman of fifteen, amid the sneers and insults of those who served and
fawned on her earlier in the day.
* * * * *
Scene Two: A hut in Central Africa.
[Sidenote: A heathen home in Africa.]
Soon after sunrise a number of women and girls, laden with hoes,
baskets, and babies, start out from the grass hut which is home to
them, and make their way to the field to work all day in the hot sun.
Having leisurely smoked his pipe in preparation for the day’s labors,
the man of the house starts with sons and neighbors on a hunting
expedition, or goes to a neighboring town to exchange his stock for
some coveted article. Towards evening all is bustle and confusion
about the home, as the women have returned and are preparing the
evening meal. All goes merrily, for here comes the head of the house
in an excellent humor. Picking up the nearest baby, he fondles it and
says, “A man in the next town has just bought this baby of me as wife
for his son. Being strong and fat and lusty, she has brought a good
price.” Whereupon a small brother shouts with delight, for this means
that the dowry for _his_ wife is provided and the girl on whom he has
set his affections can be procured without further delay. His mother
is pleased,--the prospect adds to her importance,--but the seventeen
year old mother of the fat, cooing baby turns away to hide her face
and surreptitiously to hug her two other children. “Anyway, they are
boys; _they_ cannot be taken from me.”
The boy who is to profit by the sale of his little sister is not
suited with his evening meal, and, catching a chicken, he cuts off one
leg and demands that it be cooked for him. No thought of the suffering
fowl interferes with his appetite, any more than of the little sister
so soon to be sent out on the forest trail, her little brown body
carefully oiled, to be subjected to the blows and ill-treatment of an
unknown mother-in-law. But even before the little one goes, she has
learned her life lessons,--that a lie is a crime only if it is
discovered,--that if she does not like her husband she may console
herself with some other man so long as she is not found out. And,
after all, the relation may be of short duration, for, if her future
husband is unkind, one of his wives will surely be an adept in the art
of poisoning, and then all of them will be inherited by his brother.
And so the little brown baby, fondled, petted, spoiled today, is sent
out tomorrow with foul words on her tongue and foul thoughts in her
heart, to be a wife and the future mother of little brown babies
whose possibilities are infinite, whose opportunities are to
be,--what?
* * * * *
Scene three: A Christian Home in Zululand.[15]
[Sidenote: A Christian home in Zululand.]
“I have already given you a peep at the life in a heathen kraal. Now
repair to a Christian home. Here we find everything simpler and more
quiet. Here polygamy, with all its attendant sensualities and riot,
has given place to restraint of passions and a purer union. Here is
but one house and one wife. The Christian man’s love is now undivided,
and all his efforts are centred in one objective. The single house is
no longer a stack of grass enclosing a dungeon of darkness, but a
square-walled building, humble indeed, but airy and bright. In place
of being obliged to crawl like animals on our knees into the heathen
hut, we may enter erect as becomes the dignity of man, through
swinging doors. We come not into a smoky darkness, but into a dwelling
flooded with the light of glazed windows. In the kraal we found the
whole family, old and young, male and female, huddled together night
and day in the one small room; here we have a dwelling with separate
rooms, so that parents and children and strangers may each enjoy some
privacy. The air is not only light with sunshine; it is also pure and
clean, for no cooking operations are performed herein, but in a
special kitchen outside. In the heathen hut, whether for sitting or
sleeping, we were accommodated on the floor; now we may sit more
respectably on chairs, eat our meals from a table, and rest our weary
bones on a raised bed.
“At four or five o’clock in the morning, according to season,--for the
Zulu is an early riser,--all are up. We hear a gentle murmur from
within. Ah! it is the familiar sound, so sweet to us, but never heard
in the heathen kraal. It is the hour of morning prayer, when husband
and wife and little ones join their hearts and voices together in a
fervent hymn of praise or hopeful supplication for protection and
aid.”
[Sidenote: The home, the centre of a nation’s life.]
The home is the centre of a nation’s life. More and more emphasis is
being laid in enlightened communities on the need of proper home
environment and on the grave risks and great dangers that accompany
the lack of such environment. If one studies the labors and writings
of the great social and religious workers of today, this note of
emphasis on home life and training will be heard to ring out loud and
clear, above all other sounds of harmony or discord,--a call to meet a
definite need.
Dr. Devine has voiced this thought and enlarged upon it in its various
phases in his recent book, “The Family and Social Work,” in which he
claims that “To maintain normal family life, to restore it when it has
been interfered with, to create conditions more and more favorable to
it, is thus the underlying object of all our social work. Efforts to
relieve distress and to improve general conditions are shaped by our
conception of what constitutes normal family life.”
[Sidenote: Christianity’s gift to non-Christian homes.]
Any candid woman who has studied the “home-scenes” at the beginning of
this chapter and has then proceeded (as it is hoped and expected that
she will) to study home conditions and surroundings in other lands,
will surely be ready to admit that the greatest gift Christianity has
to offer to a non-Christian land is the introduction of the power of
the Christ life into the homes of that land. Dr. Dennis lays great
emphasis on the necessity and opportunity for missionary endeavor
along this line.
The reconstruction of the family, next to the regeneration of
individual character, is the most precious contribution of
missions to heathen society, and we may add that it is one of the
most helpful human influences which can be consecrated to the
service of social elevation. In the effort to hallow and purify
family life we stir the secret yearning of fatherhood and
motherhood; we enter the precincts of the home, and take childhood
by the hand; we restore to its place of power and winsomeness in
the domestic circle the ministry of womanhood; and at the same
time we strike at some of the most despicable evils and desolating
wrongs of our fallen world. Nothing in the history of human
society, except the teaching and example of Jesus Christ, has
wrought with such energy and wisdom in introducing saving power
into social development as a sanctified home life. If parental
training can be made loving, faithful, conscientious, and helpful,
if womanhood can be redeemed and crowned, if childhood can be
guided in tenderness and wisdom, if the home can be made a place
where virtue dwells, and moral goodness is nourished and becomes
strong and brave for the conflicts of life, we can conceive of no
more effective combination of invigorating influences for the
rehabilitation of fallen society than will therein be given.[16]
[Sidenote: Greatness of the task.]
The task fairly staggers us with its greatness and its limitless
scope; but let us be big enough to look even beyond all this, and,
with the glorious capacity for motherhood that lies in every good
woman’s breast, let us see not only the millions of homes that are in
darkness and sorrow and degradation today, but also realize that the
children of today are to be the fathers and mothers of tomorrow. Our
work as a “great, beautiful, organized motherhood for the world” must
include the preparation of these children to assume the duties of
parenthood in the future, and to raise from generation to generation
the standards of individual and home and national life “till we all
attain unto a full grown man, unto the measure of the stature of the
fulness of Christ.”
[Sidenote: Disorderly homes.]
The physical conditions of a home, and the moral and spiritual
characters developed in the home act and re-act on each other with
clock-like precision. Would you expect a neat and orderly housemaid if
you engaged a girl from a home in China which Mrs. S. C. Perkins thus
describes?--
The great mass of the people live in what can only be called
hovels, the family occupying one room, shared with pigs and
chickens; damp, dark, unventilated, and unclean. Even in the
houses of the rich there is a certain cheerlessness owing to the
lack of carpets, the absence of sunlight, and the stiff
arrangement of the furniture. The odor of incense in all houses
renders the atmosphere close and unpleasant. The people will not
use whitewash, because white is an unlucky color; indeed, their
many superstitions interfere with the comfort of the poorer
classes quite as much as does their poverty. In Northern China
every house has its kang, a platform of stone about two feet high,
underneath which a fire is kindled for warmth and for cooking, the
heat being carried through it by a flue into the chimney. Here the
family sleep at night, sit by day, and on it they cook their
food.[17]
How much ambition would one be able to arouse in a school girl coming
from this home in Burma?
The home of one of the mission school girls is described in this
way: “It is a large teakwood house, and we walk right in, for
there is no door bell. The large hall is half filled with piles of
wood, for the family lives on the second floor. A servant tells us
to go up, and we climb the long stairs. At the top we find the
lady of the house sitting on a mat smoking. She motions us to be
seated. In the large room are two mats, two chairs, and two
tables.”[18]
[Sidenote: Absence of innocence.]
Innocent childhood, modesty, purity can hardly be counted on in the
unnumbered homes of Africa, India, Persia, Korea, and other lands
where the whole family lives in one room, where sons bring their
brides to swell the number of those whose every act and word is seen
or heard by the whole patriarchal family. If further evidence is
needed of the inter-relation of the physical home surroundings and the
formation of character, study the history of those savage communities
that have come under the power of the Gospel, as for instance the New
Hebrides Islands, and it will be very evident that “godliness is
profitable for all things,” even for introducing a comfortable, tidy
home in which one can stand upright and enjoy some degree of privacy!
[Sidenote: Moral influences.]
In order to learn what should be done for little children in
non-Christian lands, we must know in addition to their physical needs
something of the moral and spiritual influences that surround them. Of
the spiritual influences we shall speak in a later chapter, and,
though the moral effects on life and character have already been
touched on in various ways, it seems wise to sum up briefly some of
the special home influences that affect child life in the lands of
which we are studying. We must be humble and teachable too, for it is
true that we Americans could well be learners when it comes to the
lessons in filial piety taught to Chinese children, and the careful
attention to etiquette and social graces which form an important part
of the training of Japanese girls.
[Sidenote: The Chinese Mother Ideal.]
In a most interesting and enlightening study of “The Chinese Mother
Ideal”[19] Mrs. Gammon shows that “even a cursory glance through
Chinese literature reveals teachings which if carried into effect
might transform the whole empire.” But alas! “to the majority of the
women of China the printed page is a sealed book,” and in many of the
moral as well as the spiritual teachings we find minute instructions
for outward observances, but no life-principles upon which true
character may be built.
[Sidenote: Evil influences surrounding the children.]
Immodesty, shocking impurity, dishonesty, lying, disobedience, foul
and abusive language, quarrelsomeness, bad habits, cruelty, anger,
jealousy,--we might go on with the long terrible list of influences
that surround the child from babyhood up, that are a part of his
heritage, and are not treated as evils to be uprooted by careful
training and wholesome example, but as qualities to be emulated. One
of the “Sacred Books” of Burma says, “A statement constitutes a lie
when discovered by the person to whom it is told to be untrue!” In the
same way millions of children are today being taught that sin is sin
only when it is found out or when it inconveniences a superior
avenging power. How to teach the mothers so that their example and
precepts may produce different children, that is our great problem. We
hear of a convert in India who told a missionary that she “often
prays for power to forget the words she heard and the things she saw
and the games she played when she was a little child in her mother’s
room.” I often recall an impromptu mothers’ meeting held on the mud
roof of a village home in Persia, where the text was furnished by a
self-righteous mother whose child had misbehaved at the afternoon
service conducted by my husband. The mother boasted that she had
dragged her child out of the meeting and beaten him on the head till
his nose bled.
[Sidenote: Lack of proper discipline.]
[Sidenote: “No plan.”]
Of real discipline,--punishment administered in love, not in anger,
for the purpose of teaching great life principles, I have yet to
discover a trace in homes untouched by the love of Christ in the lands
of which we are speaking. Love there is, and how often the unexpressed
yearning of the mother heart finds utterance at last when she comes
into contact with a mother who _knows_ of these things. A young
missionary mother from China told me about a pleasant gathering of
women in her parlor after her youngest baby was born. One woman said
to her, “I wish I knew what to do when my children are naughty. I have
no plan.” The poor woman was nursing her fourth baby, and worn by
wakeful nights and constant nursing was in no condition, physically,
mentally, or morally, to rule wisely her mischievous, disobedient,
crying children.
[Sidenote: Miss Holliday on child training in Persia.]
From the vast amount of interesting information which our missionaries
are glad to share with us the moment this subject is broached, it is
difficult to select something for the limited space in this chapter.
In this as in other instances, the intention is rather to whet the
appetite for more, than to make an exhaustive study of the subject.
Miss G. Y. Holliday of Persia says,--
I find children passionately longed for, much loved, though not at
all wisely; often the tyrants of the household. It is a sad
commentary on the depravity of human nature, that no matter what
outrage a child commits or how abominable his conduct may be, it
is considered an all-sufficient excuse to say, “He is a child,” as
if there were no such things as good and well behaved children,
and nothing else was to be expected but disorder and disobedience
from them. The atmosphere of a Moslem home is so bad for them,
with the continual swearing and vile language. I was talking one
day to a small boy, the idol of his grandparents, with whom he
spends most of his time. The subject was family discipline; I
said, “Parents sometimes find it necessary to punish the
children.” He replied with emphasis, his eyes opening wider and
wider, “Yes, parents whip, they kick, they strike.”
[Sidenote: Lack of innocence coupled with appalling ignorance.]
One of the most terrible results to children of the lack of proper
home life and training is loss of innocence coupled with appalling
ignorance. This condition existing also in our own land is being faced
in these days with new purpose and determination by earnest,
conscientious men and women who are seeking in many ways to find and
apply a remedy. From the many strong, true writers and speakers on
this subject we select a few words written by Professor E. P. St.
John of the Hartford School of Religious Pedagogy.
[Sidenote: Prof. St. John on sex knowledge.]
It is unsafe to leave a child ignorant about sex. The writer
firmly believes that a majority of the evils that appear in
connection with this phase of human nature could be avoided by
simple, frank instruction of children and youth. The great trouble
has been that parents who have clean ideas about sex and its
relations have kept their lips sealed on the subject.... Even if
it were desirable, children _cannot_ be kept in ignorance of these
things. _Through the parents’ neglect_ their thoughts of these
matters have too often been perverted and impure from the first.
The aim should be to pre-empt the ground for cleanness and truth.
[Sidenote: A missionary mother’s “dream.”]
All honor and assistance be given to the missionary mother who,
feeling the horrible need of China’s children and youth in this
respect, is spending much of her furlough year in working out a
plan,--a “dream” she calls it. Will you listen to her dream, and then
see if it is not in your power to help the missionary mothers whom
_you_ know to make this dream a great and living reality in many of
the dark habitations of the earth? “A Chinese child knows all there is
to be known about the deep life truths, and knows it without the
beauty of life being impressed on him. I am going to tell you a dream
I have. Perhaps it is not necessary to speak of it, but it will show
how strongly the awfulness of conditions has forced certain truths on
me. I am inquiring among my friends, those who would know, what are
the best books of sex knowledge for men and women, and especially the
books or stories for children. I am already beginning the little
nature stories with my own boys and intend to teach them
scientifically all the truths about themselves so beautifully and so
naturally and so early that they will never know when they weren’t
acquainted with these facts, and will never have aught but the deepest
love for the knowledge I give them. I think I can do it, with plenty
of study and determination. Then as I know Chinese better, I want to
conduct classes for mothers and for children, and also to get hold of
our school boys and talk to them or put literature in their hands that
will make better men of them. If I stayed in this country, I should
push such knowledge at every turn. I expect to keep a library that I
can loan to American sailors and other young men. I thoroughly believe
that the propagation of such information will do more to change the
life of children and the atmosphere of the Chinese home than anything
else. For with this knowledge one learns the beauty and wonder of a
God that could make such a beautiful human body. It is wonderful to
see what Christian homes _are_ doing, but how much more they could do
with _knowledge_, scientific Christian knowledge, in the hearts of the
parents!”
[Sidenote: Position of the father.]
The position of the husband and father in most non-Christian lands is
that of supreme ruler and despot in his home. In many cases he has
the power of life and death over his children, during infancy at
least, and where polygamy exists many a wife has suddenly disappeared,
never to be heard of again; but no one thinks of questioning the
rights of the husband in the matter. His attitude toward the mothers
of his children is the “sample copy” for his boys to imitate, and
right faithfully do they follow his example.
[Sidenote: An Egyptian father.]
In the native quarter of Alexandria, Egypt, I saw a little boy who
was very fond of making mud-pies in front of the house. One
afternoon his mother stepped into the doorway and called:
“Come in, darling; don’t get your clothes so dirty. Come in,
sweet one.” No answer from the four-year-old.
The mother stepped into the road, looking about to see that there
were no men near to watch her, and laid a kind motherly hand on
the child to take him into the house.
“Come, little one. I will give you sweets; come!”
Her husband at that moment came around the next corner, and stood
still to see what would happen. The child turned on his mother,
and, doubling up his little dirty fist, he beat her right in the
face, and snarled, “Bint el kelb!” (Daughter of a dog), tearing
himself loose.
The father stepped up, and, in place of giving the little
scoundrel a thrashing, he patted his son on the back, smiled upon
him, and said: “Brave little fellow! Thou magnificent little
fellow!” Proud of the son who could treat a woman thus![20]
[Sidenote: An African father.]
[Sidenote: Fathers transformed by Christianity.]
Through the jungle of Africa strides the man carrying his pipe and a
big hunting knife; after him comes his wife with a baby slung at her
side, stooping under the great pack on her back, to lighten which he
will not lift his little finger. Oh! it is a sight to make angels
rejoice when the grace of God touches the heart, and manliness and
chivalry are aroused in him who had all his life seemed absolutely
callous to the needs and sufferings of those dependent on him! In a
Persian village where a missionary lady was touring, a man came to
evening prayers and slipped a note into her hand that read, “Receive
M. B. with love,--he is a brother.” Several years later she again
visited the village, but though she had no opportunity to talk with M.
B. she saw something that spoke louder and more forcibly than a dozen
conversations would have done. When he was ready to go home from the
meeting in the missionary’s rooms, he said to his wife, “Give me the
child,” and took the heavy, sleeping boy out of her arms. In all her
long years of work among Mohammedans this missionary had never seen a
Mohammedan man do such a thing.
[Illustration: MOTHER AND CHILD IN EGYPT]
“A Japanese woman whose husband is a Christian,” writes Miss Ransome,
“though she is as yet only an inquirer, said recently that the change
for the better had been so marvelous in her husband that she had
decided to try to rear her boy in such a way that he would eventually
become an evangelist. She wanted others to know of the power of
Christianity which could change a quarrelsome, drinking man to a
kind, sober, industrious father.” That boy’s chance for a happy,
useful life was the direct result of what the knowledge of Christ had
done for his father.
[Sidenote: Motherhood.]
The sacred vocation of motherhood is regarded almost entirely from a
commercial or social standpoint in non-Christian lands. The free woman
who remains unmarried is wellnigh an impossibility,--she has no chance
for winning respect or position in this life, and, according to
Mohammedan belief, has a very inferior place in heaven. The woman who
marries and has no children needs one’s sympathy almost as much as
does her unmarried sister. In many cases she may be divorced after a
certain number of years if no child has been born to her, or she lives
in dread of having another wife brought into the home, who will make
her life miserable with taunts such as Peninnah heaped upon Hannah in
days of old. And there is no hope that her lord and master will
comfort her as Elkanah comforted Hannah, offering her the devotion of
ten sons.
[Sidenote: A mother of girls.]
But the unmarried woman and the childless wife are not alone in their
degradation and distress. Never can I forget my feelings when told of
a neighbor in Persia who had just given birth to her seventh daughter.
Her husband on visiting the room crossed over to where she lay on her
bed on the floor, looked at her with disgust and disapproval, spat
in her face and covered it with a cloth to show that she was a
disgraced wife. To be the mother of sons is the great wish of a
woman’s heart, to have many daughters-in-law brought into the home to
serve her and cower before her tyranny is her fondest ambition, and
when she attains it her influence is indeed great, and in one respect
at least she is queen of her home.
[Sidenote: Foundations of family life.]
Is it a mistake in this study of child life to pay so much attention
to the subjects of fatherhood and motherhood? Nowhere can we find the
real remedy for the evils that degrade and debase and oppress and
crush the sweet innocence and dependence of childhood unless we go
back of the child to the very foundations of family life. Many great
authorities in America and Europe, as well as those who have labored
and studied in Oriental lands, will testify to the truth of this
statement. Rev. J. Sadler of Amoy says, “You would be profoundly
impressed if you could realize how the strength of heathenism is in
the women. From earliest years they teach their children concerning
demons, and to be early eager as to inheritance, and thus inspire
selfish and quarrelsome ideas leading to divisions and life-long
conflicts. The importance of women’s work cannot be estimated. The
destiny of the country is largely in their hands.”[21]
[Sidenote: Training Christian wives and mothers.]
This is one side of the picture. The other is equally true. Dr. Daniel
McGilvary, for half a century a missionary among the Siamese and Lao,
tells of the wonderful result of a school for girls that provides
Christian wives and mothers.
Notwithstanding our disappointment in the delay of the school for
boys, it proved a wise arrangement that the girls’ school was
started first. A mission church is sure to be greatly handicapped
whose young men must either remain single,--which they will not
do,--or be compelled to take ignorant non-Christian wives....
After marriage the almost universal custom of the country has been
that the husband lives with the wife’s family.... Where all the
atmosphere of the family is strongly Buddhist, with daily
offerings to the spirits and gala days at the temple, the current
would be too strong for a father, with his secondary place in the
family, to withstand. For a while it was feared that Christian
girls would have difficulty in finding husbands. But, on the
contrary, our educated girls become not only more intelligent, but
more attractive in manners, dress, and character; and therefore,
have been much sought after. The homes become Christian homes, and
the children are reared in a Christian atmosphere. The result is
that, instead of the wife’s dragging the husband down, she
generally raises the husband up; and, as a general rule, the
children early become Christians.[22]
The Mohammedan girl educated in a Christian school, even though she
must marry and live her life according to Mohammedan customs, takes
with her to her father-in-law’s home new ideas and customs that are
going far to break down the old walls of prejudice. Mrs. C. M. Wherry
of India writes:--
One of the most interesting facts that has come to light during
recent years is this: We do not know of any educated Moslem girl
who has spent four or five years in our schools,--and I include
those of the British workers too,--who has ever been subjected to
the indignity of a second wife brought into her home. They seem to
have gained strength of character and graces enough to hold their
own against the bad influences of Mohammedanism. More and more we
hear of Moslem families who practically adopt the Christian idea
of marriage, that is, one woman in the home: these families
frequently in giving away their daughters take pledges from the
bridegroom that she is to be the only wife, while still more
encouraging is the fact that many of these educated girls
absolutely refuse to be given in marriage unless their parents
insist on this single wife.[23]
A little Mohammedan girl had attended for a few months a small day
school on the mission premises. Years afterwards her missionary
teacher found her in a village, and the woman gathering her children
about her led them in the Lord’s Prayer, explaining that she and the
children prayed together every day.
[Sidenote: A Christian mother in Syria.]
Who can foretell the influence that will go on down through the years
because of one mother in Syria who has recently passed to her reward
at the age of ninety years? She was the mother of eight children, two
of whom were ordained pastors, two licensed preachers, one the wife of
a pastor, another a helper in the Sidon Missionary School, one is
employed by the Church Missionary Society in Nazareth, and two more
are teaching and preaching in the German Orphanage in Jerusalem. Think
what the land of our Saviour’s sojourn would have lost had not that
one mother learned to love and follow Him, and to train her children
as a Christian mother should.
[Sidenote: Child marriage.]
Many chapters might easily be devoted to the subjects of child
marriage and child widowhood and their frightful effect on past,
present, and future generations. They have, however, been treated
quite fully in recent mission study books, and so much authoritative
literature on these subjects exists that it does not seem best to
dwell on them at length in this connection.
But every Christian mother should pause and ask of herself earnestly,
“What if it were my daughter, my son, how could I stand it? Would I
not move heaven and earth to see that some remedy were found for this
monstrous evil?” What if your daughter were that widowed teacher in a
missionary school in China who had been married at nineteen to a boy
of twelve, and who every morning after washing his face and combing
his hair had to see that he started off properly to school, often
crying and protesting, and then turn to her weaving, in order to earn
money for his education?
[Sidenote: Testimony of an Egyptian.]
Are we overestimating the evil because of our Occidental customs and
prejudices? Listen to the words of an Egyptian, translated and
re-printed from a Cairo daily paper.
I am an Egyptian, and speak of that which is customary in my land;
yet I wait to be shown that the Moslems of India, of Yemen, of
Syria, or of Persia are in any better case....
The first step in our faulty marriage system is that of marrying
boys of thirteen to girls not more than ten years of age, as is
the custom. This custom is like making a fire of tender green
branches; you benefit not by its warmth, but you suffer much from
its smoke. How many of us have suffered from this cause? The
excuse given for it is that it is to preserve our youth from
impurity. But what a feeble excuse! Silence were better than
such.[24]
[Sidenote: The betrothed boy in Korea.]
Strange customs prevail in different lands regarding betrothal and
marriage. Their effect upon the life and status of the boy seems to be
peculiarly marked in Korea.
The matter of becoming a full-fledged man does not depend upon
years, but is a matter to be decided on its merits by the parents
or guardians of the subject in hand. The badge of manhood is none
other than the topknot, which is made by combing all the hair to
the top of the head and making it into a coil about an inch and a
half in diameter and four or five inches high. From the time the
boy’s hair is long enough, it is plaited into a straight braid and
left hanging down his back. When the time comes for him to be
engaged to marry, his topknot is put up, and from that time forth
he is recognized as a man. This usually takes place between the
ages of ten and twenty, though he is not likely to be so old as
twenty....
[Illustration: IN A KOREAN HOME]
As long as a boy wears his hair plaited and hanging down his
back, he is addressed in low talk. His age has nothing to do with
the form of speech, but the style of his hair settles that. It
sometimes happens that a very poor family will not be able to
contract a marriage for their son, and so we occasionally meet a
man thirty years old with his hair still hanging down his
back.... But the boy who is honored with the precious topknot is
addressed in middle or high talk, though he may be only eight or
ten years old.[25]
[Sidenote: Customs preceding marriage.]
A girl’s hair receives special attention among the Persian
Mohammedans, and must be banged when she is taken to the public bath
on the day preceding her marriage. In one of the islands of the New
Hebrides the struggling girl is held down by several old women while
her two upper front teeth are knocked out as a necessary preparation
for marriage.
Among the Lao, where marriage is much more honored and considered more
sacred than in many other countries, the boys are freer to do their
courting in person, and both boys and girls have far more voice in the
selection of a life partner than in countries where women live in
seclusion and where polygamy abounds.
[Sidenote: The burden of motherhood.]
Through long years there has run in my ears the brief story of a
Christian servant in one of the missionary homes in Persia. “I was
married at twelve years and had a baby when I was thirteen, and, oh!
how glad I was when it died!” Glad? Of course she was glad. What
child of thirteen would want the burden of motherhood?
Who of us who has witnessed the agonies of the little dying
child-mother can ever for a moment think with carelessness or
indifference of the awful custom of child marriage?
[Sidenote: A dying child-wife.]
“A girl of fifteen was dying,” writes a friend from India. “Her
husband, a man of fifty or more, is a man of good position and
considerable means. The girl lay in a bare room with nothing but an
unbaked earthenware vessel near her. Her _second_ baby had been born a
few days or weeks before and something was wrong.... But she was a
purdah woman and could not see the doctor. He had asked a few
questions from outside and had diagnosed the illness as tuberculosis,
was treating it as such,--and had given it as his opinion that she
would die. Our pastor’s wife, dear Mrs. Roy, had somehow gone to see
her. Even her non-professional eye saw that a mistake had been made,
and she tried to persuade the mother to send for a woman doctor. ‘What
was the use? She was doing to die.’
“Mrs. Roy expostulated indignantly with the mother for having married
this child of twelve to a grown-up man, just for money. The poor child
seemed so sad. Mrs. Roy told her of the Christian’s hope and a
Saviour’s love. The child listened with the tears running down her
face. Then she asked, ‘May I touch you?’ (Being a mother of a few days
she was still unclean and no one would touch her). So Mrs. Roy went
to her and held her hands and stroked her face and hair and tried to
give her comfort for the journey for which she was so little prepared.
Thus is the ‘hope of India’ MURDERED by custom and carelessness and
greed. _Oh, India is horrible!_”
[Sidenote: Statistics from India. Child-marriage; Child-widowhood.]
From the _Missionary Review of the World_ (August, 1911) we quote the
following statistics, each word and figure of which cries out to us
Christian women, “How long, oh, how long, shall these things be?”
The figures are appalling in respect of child-marriages. The
census of 1901 showed 121,500 married boys and 243,500 married
girls, whose age was under five: 760,000 boys and 2,030,000 girls
between the ages of five and ten; 2,540,000 and 6,586,000 between
ten and fifteen. Of these, all except a certain number of girls
under the last class were married before they were able to realize
what marriage is. The most deplorable result of such marriages is
seen in the number of widowed children; 6,000 widowers and 96,000
widows were between five and ten; 113,000 widowers and 276,000
widows between ten and fifteen.
[Sidenote: The homes of the world need Christ.]
[Sidenote: Three methods of bringing Christ to needy homes.]
The homes of the world need nothing so much as the presence and
blessing of the Christ who brought cheer to the home in Cana, comfort
to the widow’s home at Nain, resurrection and life to the home at
Bethany, vision to the home in Emmaus. How are _we_ to help to make it
possible that fathers, mothers, and children in homes where He is not
known should hear Him as He stands at the door and knocks, and shall
open to Him that He may sup with them and they with Him? There are at
least three practical methods by which Christian women may help to
bring about this result.
_First_: Through Christian schools which take children and youth in
their impressionable years and train them to be the Christian fathers
and mothers of the future. We have briefly alluded to this method and
shall speak of it more at length in a later chapter.
_Second_: In Zenana work and other forms of visiting in the homes, in
crowded cities, and isolated villages, taking to each individual home
the story of the Christ who gathered the little ones in His arms, and
the practical, homely lessons of efforts that Christian civilization
is making in behalf of home life.
_Third_: Through the great object lesson, the missionary home.
Never again let it be asked in church or missionary society of a young
woman starting for the foreign field, “Are you going out as a
missionary, or only as a missionary’s wife?” At a conference for
outgoing missionaries, a beautiful, talented college graduate, leader
in many activities and full of capacity and consecration, said to a
returned missionary,--“I am to be married, and have listened and
listened at this conference to know what particular work is waiting
for me, but there has been _nothing_ for me as yet.” When it was
pointed out to her that by means of her paramount duties and
obligations as wife and mother in a missionary home she would have an
opportunity of _living_ the missionary message such as few of her
fellow missionaries might have, her beautiful face lighted up with a
look that illumined it. The making of a missionary home was a vocation
indeed to call forth all the highest powers of her consecrated
womanhood.
[Sidenote: E. A. Lawrence on missionary homes.]
Mr. E. A. Lawrence has stated so clearly the possibilities and
opportunities of the missionary home that he is worth quoting at
length.
There is an element of missionary life which is seldom presented,
yet most important. It is the mission home.... It underlies the
whole of the work, and discloses the ideal of Protestant missions
more clearly than any other point....