I SUPPOSE all the children who read this paper have seen a tiger, but I expect it was safely behind iron bars, and not able to get at them. Out in China there are plenty of tigers, living on the mountains, which are very lonely places, and have caves, and ravines, which make good hiding places for wild beasts; yes and for wild robbers too, but my story today is not about robbers, but tigers.
The hills all around the cities are covered with graves, sometimes up to the very top. It makes one feel very sad to see all these graves, and think of the hundreds and thousands of people who are buried there, who never heard of God, and died without hope. Between the graves, and all over the hills, long grass often grows and women go up to cut it, and then sell it for fuel, for wood is scarce and dear, and the people are mostly very poor. Sometimes you meet six or eight women coming down from the hills, each carrying two great bundles of dry grass; the bundles are fastened at each end of a pole, and carried on their shoulder. As they come towards you, there is not much to be seen, but a big hat, and big bundles of grass.
One day, some years ago now, a poor woman went up to the hills to cut grass. She had a baby tied on her back, and another little child by the hand; in the other hand she carried a sharp little sickle, to cut with. Just as she reached the top of the hill, she heard a roar. O! how it frightened her, and a mother tiger sprang at her, followed by two little cubs. I daresay the tiger thought the woman was going to hurt her babies, and I am quite sure the woman was afraid the tiger would hurt hers, so as the tiger sprang, the woman slashed at it with her little sharp sickle.
Now this poor Chinese mother was very ignorant, she had never been to a church, or a meeting, or a Sunday School in her life. She had never seen a Bible, and she could not have read it if she had, but one day as she was walking on the street, she heard a white lady talking to a few women about someone called Jesus, who was able to help you if you were in trouble, and as the tiger tore her arm and shoulder with her great claws, she remembered this wonderful story, and as she cut at the tiger with her little weapon, she kept crying out,
“O! Jesus help me,”
Do you think He heard her cry? Yes, indeed, for His ears are always open to our cry, and His promise is,
“Call upon Me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver thee.”
We sometimes make promises and break them, perhaps we forget, or perhaps we find we cannot do what we said we would. But the Lord Jesus Christ is not like that. It is said of Abraham in Rom. 4. that he was “fully persuaded, that what He had promised He was able also to perform,” and we may also be fully persuaded of the same thing. And so this poor woman found out.
She went on hitting at the tiger, and crying each time, “O! Jesus help me,” and in a few minutes the answer came. The great beast, who could so easily have killed her, turned and ran away, and the woman turned also and managed to crawl back to her village. She was a good deal hurt, but her friends carried her to a missionary hospital, where she was cared for, and got quite well.
But best of all, she there learned to know more about that Jesus, who had saved her from, death, and she found that He could also save her from eternal death which is banishment from God. David said in the 103rd, Psalm,
“Who forgiveth all thine iniquities, who healeth all thy diseases.”
How glad this poor Chinese woman must have been to find such a wonderful Saviour, who could do so much for her.
ML 03/23/1924