By the Editor
ONE of the dearest memories of my childhood is the memory of my mother’s prayers and hymns. Every child was prayed over, and as she moved about in the heme among her children, her sweet voice was often heard singing the hymns she loved so well.
“How sweet the name of Jesus sounds” has echoed and re-echoed through our home, and “O, Lord, Thy love’s unbounded,” made its music in childhood’s days. The cradle hymns were not forgotten, for amid a mother’s ministries of dressing and undressing, the melodies were heard, “There is a happy land,” and “When mothers of Salem their children brought to Jesus,” etc., etc. We were rocked to sleep by these and other children’s hymns, and our infant minds received impressions that grew with our growing years, and are remembered still, although the dear voice of the “mother” is singing in heaven now, and we are nearing the time when we shall join her in that blessed praising.
To show how God blessed my mother’s singing and answered her prayers, what I am about to tell will show. I had a little sister Lucy, who died before she was two years old. The Lord Jesus had taken her in His arms and blessed her, and the child-flower that faded from earth, watered with a mother’s tears, left a beautiful fragrance behind of what her mother had done for her.
The night Lucy died, I, a young lad, went to wish her “good night,” as I always did. I did not realize how ill she was, or how near she was to the heavenly shores, but I saw how frail and beautiful she looked with the shining eyes, and the softly waving hair, and the winsome grace that clothes with spiritual beauty the frail tenement of clay that seems to be shining with the glory of the departing spirit. As I bent to kiss her, she put her tender arms about my neck and lifting her little lips to mine for the last kiss I was ever to give her or receive from her, she said with her baby face close to mine, “Heyme,” this was her name for me, “Heyme, sing happy land.” Her little feet were close to the golden shores, her baby perceptions had grasped the infinite love, and the infinite life. “Sing happy land.” She had heard it from her mother’s lips, over and over again, and of the “Gentle Jesus meek and mild, who looked upon a little child.”
Now I am old and gray I often wonder what little Lucy will be like when I see my “baby” sister again. That night I left her with the benediction of my tears, and many a time since then have my eyes filled, as I have recalled the tender sweetness of her last request to me, “Heyme, sing happy land.” Oh! to be like little children till we see His face, “Where their angels do always behold the face of my Father, which is in heaven.”
How tender and pathetic are the words, “Jesus took a little child and set him in the midst.” A poem from the life of Christ to make the glory of childhood the wonder of the world. A child “set in the midst” of the home, to tell us that unless we “become as little children ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” In the midst of your home, dear reader, this little child may be to bring the message of the Lord Jesus to you. “Except ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.”
Has your little child preached the sermon of its life to you? We are told “Jesus took them in His arms and blessed them.” Oh! “mothers of Salem,” what wondrous days were those when your little ones wreathed their unquestioning arms about the neck of Jesus, and kissed His face, Who was once a child among the children of the world!
Jesus may have taken your little one to heaven. Shall you see your child again? Parents, a wondrous heritage is yours; the child that Jesus has set in the midst of your home may be a “bird of passage,” as little Lucy was, or may abide to receive from your life and teaching what may mar the beauty of the little life, and trail its glory in the dust.
To damage a child’s life and to cloud its glad horizons with unhallowed imaginings, is one of the foulest sins for which God will bring men and women to justice.
To soil a child’s life is like tearing the opening buds of the spring-time of life to pieces―it is like making the stars of love and light and joy that shed their luster on earthly homes fall from the heaven of wondrous promise. It is like poisoning the waters of life, and blighting the flowers that grow in beautiful luxuriance around the footsteps of the children of the world. God help us if we sin against the little ones that believe in Jesus. He says, “But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in Me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depths of the sea.” Oh! parents, bring up your children for God and Christ, and remember, He lives and loves, who when on earth said “Suffer little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven.”
We are sending a circular this month on behalf of the children of the world, which we trust will be used by God to enable us to place into their little hands the story of the children’s Saviour as told in the Word of God. Please help us.