I REMEMBER calling upon some boys’ parents, in order to get the boys to the class, and the parents turned the boys out of the house, and bade them go to school; but when the boys came to the school door, they only peeped in, and when the teacher peeped out after them, off they ran as fast as they could.
Can you tell me the happy way of getting children to the Sunday School? How do you think the Lord Jesus drew the children around Himself? Surely it was by showing His love to them.
A little girl was looking at a picture of the Lord with the mothers bringing their children to Him; one of the mothers had her hand upon the back of a little child, as if she was gently pushing it near to Jesus.
“Mother, I would go without the pushing,” said the little girl. The way to draw the children is by love—by the love of
Christ. No children are too young to be the lambs of Jesus, none too small for the Good Shepherd to love. I asked a child, the other day:
“Who is Jesus?”
“I don’t know,” she answered.
“Who goes to Heaven—what sort of children?” I said.
“I don’t know,” was her answer. It was some time ago, but I can still hear the strange little voice saying, “I don’t know.” I trust that the readers of “Messages of Love” would all be able to answer these questions.
It is the “I don’t know” children — and there are, alas, thousands of them—whom we wish to get to our Sunday School. I have noticed a man put out his hand to a horse, and the animal immediately go up to him, and why? —because the horse knew the man loved him. But the Bible tells us that in some things, animals and birds are wiser than men. Man does not believe that God loves him, and will not come to God. “Ye will not come to Me, that ye might have life,” Jesus says.
If love will bring the children from the street into the school, love will, I trust, keep them there. For when a child finds that his teacher loves him, the child loves the teacher, so the power pulls very strong. But listen to me. There is something in everyone’s heart which loves evil. A wicked boy or girl does wicked things because of the pleasure which doing wickedly gives, and the Old Serpent, the Devil, knows this very well. He knows the evil thing which every boy and girl likes the best, and when God sends persons to bid the children to come to Jesus, Satan at once tries to keep them away. And even if the children do come to the school, Satan comes too. God says, when he comes thus into the Sunday School, that Satan is like a bird. If you will watch the sower this spring, casting abroad the seed in the fields, and notice the birds following him, you will understand how Satan is like the bird. The birds do not come near to the sower because they love him, or because they wish to help him, but because they wish to catch away the seed which he sows. Whenever God’s Word does not enter into the heart, you may be sure that “the fowls of the air came and devoured it.”
“Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” “We love Him, because He first loved us.” (1 John 4:10:19.)
ML 12/16/1917