IN the great city of Canton, in China, are many idol temples, and I would like to tell you about one of them.
It is called “The Hall of Medicine,” and it is entirely for the use of mothers and children. It is one good sized room connected with another large temple. There is some very beautiful carving in it, but that was not what attracted my attention, when I paid it a visit some years ago. All round the room is a broad shelf, and on the shelf are idols, each one perhaps two feet high. No two are alike, and each one is equally ugly, and repulsive. Now these idols are intended for the use of the children, —one for every year. If a mother wishes her child of two years old to worship, she draws out the second idol, and it is stood upon a square block of wood. Then the little child is taught to bow down to this image of wood covered with gold, and richly dressed. It has to knock its little forehead three times on the ground, and then the mother puts some sticks of incense in a small vase in front of the idol, and sets fire to them, and helps the little one to present food or flowers to it. Now she feels she has done all she can to preserve her child, to keep it from evil, and to ensure its health and wellbeing.
Do you think that poor woman imagines the false god loves her child, and she is thanking it for its care? O no, she feels that the evil spirits want to do it harm, and she is trying to propitiate them.
But oftentimes, it is a sick child, a very sick child, that is brought to this “Hall of Medicine,” and the mother wildly prays to the idol, corresponding to its age, to spare her loved one. She has spent every penny she has on incense and good things to give to the idol, and she fears the god she worships may forget her trouble, so she cuts out a little paper figure of a child, and ties it on to the idol. There were several such tied on to the different idols when I was there, and many mothers, with little black-eyed children in their arms, waiting to fall down before their false gods.
Only a short time ago, a young woman, 28 years old, came to our house. Her story was a sad one. She had lost four children, and had only one left.
“The last one died two months ago,” she said. “He was two years old. I did everything I could; I sold everything I possessed to have money for the priests and witches, I called in to help him, but they could do nothing. My little boy died.”
Then she went on to say that she heard someone speaking about Jesus, and it sounded good and comforting, and she longed to hear more. Then someone told her to go to the Christian School, and she would learn all about it.
“So I came a week ago,” she added, “and now I do believe in Jesus, and I am comforted.”
I think I need hardly ask anyone who will read this to draw a comparison between the gaudy images these poor Chinese mothers bring their children to, and the gentle loving Jesus, to whom the mothers of old, led their little ones. Could there be a greater difference?
One, the Son of the living God, and yet a humble Man upon earth, who “took them up in His arms.”
“But I cannot go to Him in this way now,” you say.
No, He is not here in a bodily form, but He is just as ready to listen to the voice of a little child. He is a living Man, though at God’s right hand in glory, and now, as then, He is saying,
“Suffer the little children to come unto Me.”
If a broken-hearted mother or child should chance to read this, do as the young Chinese woman did, come to Jesus for comfort. His word to you is,
ML 06/15/1924