WOULD you like to spend the afternoon with me in my Sunday school class? I think you would; and as it is now quite three o’clock, let us enter the pleasant old village schoolhouse. Mine is the infant class. It is large in number, and small in size. After prayer, and singing a sweet hymn, we go to one of the classrooms upstairs, where we can be all by ourselves.
A pleasant room this classroom is, with its pictured walls and its window, from which there is a beautiful view of hill, and wood, and meadow land; and from which, during these autumn months, we can see the sun set, often in such glory that the children are unable while it lasts to attend to me. “Is it like heaven!” they say; and I, seeing that God is causing their young hearts to think of Himself—and of heaven by the sight of His own beautiful works, do not find it in my heart to be angry with them for their little heed to my poor words. But there is little danger of our being diverted from our work of teaching and learning today by a glorious sunset, the sky is far too dull and gray for that.
There are seventeen of my thirty infants present, I see, and all fidgeting being stilled, and all whispering hushed, they begin to say their little lessons. The first thing they say is, “The Lord is my Shepherd.” Some of the elder ones can say the whole of this, and two or three other psalms, without a mistake; the younger ones say it after me, and the very wee ones, like little Bella, here, who is just learning to speak, say after me only the first sentence, “The Lord is my Shepherd.” That is enough at a time for such a little mouth—and heart, too.
“But who is that little fellow next to Bella? Is it a new little boy? I don’t seem to know him, and yet feel that I ought to. Why it is Harry, Lily’s brother; and I see now why I couldn’t make out who he was. Besides being seated in the dark corner of the room, he is in trousers today, for the first time!”
“Come here, Harry,” I say, presently, “and let me see you;” and Harry, very red in the face, walks over to me in the most awkward manner possible. Poor little fellow!
“Why, I didn’t know you with these new clothes on! You look so big in them! What a nice suit it is! Who gave it you, Harry?”
“Moder,” is the prompt answer.
“It were God as did give it him,” puts in another boy, a little older, anxious to show his superior knowledge.
“Yes, it was God, and it is God who has made him grow so big, too. But what ought you to be growing as well as big, Harry?” I ask, thinking he will be sure to say “Good,” and intending to go on to show him and the others how children can become good. But Harry gives neither that nor any other answer. Little Mary, however, between whom and myself Harry is standing, starts up with pretty eagerness from her seat, and in her grave little manner, says, “He ought to be growing a boy of God, gov’ness.”
“Do you hear that, Harry? Mary says you ought to be growing a boy of God. Then you don’t think he is one, Mary?”
“Oh, no, gov’ness,” says Mary, “he’s often naughty.”
“And how is he to become a boy of God, Mary?”
“He must come to Jesus,” she says, while another adds: “He must believe,” and another, “He must be washed in Jesus’ blood.”
“Very good answers; and now, Harry, instead of saying ‘The Lord is my Shepherd,’ today, you will say, “Lord, look upon a little child,” and he says after me this verse—
“Lord, look upon a little child,
By nature sinful, rude, and wild;
Oh, put Thy gracious hands on me,
And make me all I ought to be.”
“Very nicely said, Harry; and I hope you will say the line— ‘Make me Thy child, a child of God’ in your own heart to God. Say it like this: ‘Make me Thy boy, a boy of God,’” and, having said it over two or three times, Harry goes to his seat.
“And now,” I say, addressing the class, “can you tell me the names of any of God’s boys, of whom we read in the Bible?”
No one answers.
“Do you not remember the name of the boy God spoke to in the night?”
“Samuel! Samuel!” say several, at once, and we go over the old, yet ever fresh story of the boy who “grew before the Lord;” we talk, too, of Joseph, of whom it is said so often, “the Lord was with him,” and Moses, who was “a proper child;” and David, the shepherd boy who killed a lion, and a bear, and a giant; and Obadiah, who “feared the Lord from his youth up;” and Josiah, whose heart was tender; and Timothy, who “from a child had known the Holy Scriptures.”
“But there is yet another one, different from any of these, whose name you haven’t told me.”
They look thoughtful; yet no one thinks of the holy child, Jesus of Nazareth, except little Charlie, who, in his small voice, says, “Jesus.”
It is only by chance that he is right, I fear. He looks very pleased, however, at finding he has given the right answer for once, and listens quite attentively as I tell them of the wonderful Child “who did no sin,” who was never naughty—neither when He was four years old, like Harry, nor when He was five, like Charlie; and how, when He was twelve years old, when Mary, His mother, was forgetting that He belonged to God more than to her, He said to her, “Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?” And how, when He became a man He died for us that we might become the children of God, through faith in Him.
But they are knocking for us to come downstairs, and we must go. “Harry, just say that line once more.”
“Make me Thy boy, a boy of God.”
“Dear boy! Now don’t forget to say it in your heart to God.”
E.B.