Part 1. The Camel.
IT is great fun going for a ride in the train or on a horse, isn’t it? But I don’t suppose you have ever taken a ride on a camel! It feels a little like being on a rocking horse, only the camel rocks from side to side, and gives you such funny little jogs, sometimes. He is a wonderful animal, with his big, soft feet and his queer-shaped body and neck. When he has only one hump, you can tell that he comes from Arabia.
In Arabia, there are deserts—great bare pieces of land covered with hot yellow sand; it is bare because nothing nice will grow there. The biggest desert is seven thousand miles long, and seven thousand miles wide. I don’t think you would like to try to cross it, it would be such a terrible journey, oh! so long and dangerous. No horse could carry you across, for there is no nice green grass there for it to eat. But God, who made the deserts, made also an animal to live there, and that animal is our friend, the camel. Sometimes it is very hard to get water there; but the camel has a sort of bag inside him, where he can keep water for many days, and then just take one big drink at the end of ever so many pailfuls. Do you remember how Rebekah drew water for all the camels when Abraham sent his servant to get a wife for Isaac? What a kind girl she was to do all that work for the tired animals! Then, too, God has made the camel’s mouth hard inside, so that he can eat the thorns that grow in the desert, and even bits of wood, too, if he likes. Sometimes there are great storms in the desert. Guess what kind of storms. Rain? No. Snow? O, no, there is never snow in the desert. I don’t think you will ever guess, so I must tell you. Storms of sand! The hot, dry sand comes rushing along in a big cloud, and very often horses and people, too, are killed in these storms, because they don’t know what to do. But the clever old camel buries his head in the sand when he sees the cloud coming, and pulls it out again after the storm is over. God taught him to do that when He made him on purpose to live in the desert, isn’t it wonderful?
But what is most important in Arabia? Why, the people, of course. The people who live in Arabia are called Arabs. We can’t talk about them all, but I should like to tell you about one. He lived a great many years ago, and his name was Mohammed. In one way he was right, for he did not like the idols other. Arabs prayed to, but he was very proud, and he wouldn’t take the Lord Jesus for his Saviour, so he said to himself, “I will start a new religion.” The new religion was called “Mohammedanism.” Mohammed told the people that he was a great prophet, greater than the Lord Jesus, and numbers of them believed him. Was not that terrible, and if ever you see a Mohammedan, you must tell hint, that God has told us in His Book about the Lord Jesus, that “there is none other name under heaven, given among men, whereby we must be saved.” Well, Mohammed grew worse and worse; he said that everybody who didn’t believe him must be killed. No wonder the poor, frightened Arabs all promised to be Mohammedans; not because they loved Mohammed, but because they were afraid of him. And so the new religion spread and spread over many countries besides Arabia, even into the land where Jesus used to live when He was on the earth. Mohammed’s religion was not quite all bad. He wanted the people to be good, but then you see he couldn’t show them the way, because he was not good himself. You know you could not find a single good person in the world, for God has said, “There is none righteous, no not one.” Mohammed began to write a big book called the Koran. There are some good things in the Koran, but ever so many bad ones, too, so it can’t make people better. The Bible is the only book which really teaches us how to be good, because it is God’s book; and Jesus is the only One who can take away sin, because He is God’s Son, who died to save you and me, and also the poor Arabs. But the poor Mohammedans did not know this.
Are there any Mohammedans today? O, yes, more than there are Christians. Numbers of them have never heard of our Lord Jesus, and many more have shut up their hearts so that He can’t get in. It is very, very hard to preach to the Mohammedans and there are not very many people who try to teach them about Jesus. The missionaries, who are there, trying to teach the little children, and to care for the sick people in hospitals, where the nurses can teach them about the true Saviour, say that the camel’s country must be called “Neglected Arabia,” because so few people think of the poor heathen there. Will you not pray for those people, that they may believe that Jesus died for their sins? And pray, too, that God will help the missionaries, who are trying so hard to teach them about our dear Saviour.
ML 05/07/1916