THE CRY OF THE CHILDREN

In Jeremiah - a lonely man amid terrible judgments; a burning light amid gross apostasy; and a spirit so tender and sympathetic as to be heart-broken over it all we have a supreme model for our darkening days; and in his Lamentations we hear the secret sobbings of his heart. Not least is his sob over the children. “THEY FAINT FOR HUNGER,” he cries, “AT THE TOP OF EVERY STREET” (Lam. 2: 19). There are three hundred and fifty thousand Sunday Schools in the world, with thirty-five million scholars: nevertheless, the child-life of the world is now in appalling peril, ere the day comes of which Mrs. Luke has so sweetly written:-

I long for the joy of that glorious time,

The sweetest, and brightest, and best,

When the dear little children of every clime

Shall crowd to His arms and be blest.

RUSSIA

The Prophet’s picture is a Russian photograph. “Pour out thine heart like water before the face of the Lord; lift up thy hands toward Him for the life of thy young children, that faint for hunger at the top of every street.” According to the latest official Soviet census (Times, Aug. 28, 1923), the number of waifs and strays in the Ukraine is 1,656,290; eighty-six per cent. of whom, that is, a million and a half, are uncared-for vagabonds, gaining a living as best they can by begging and thieving. Twenty-nine thousand three hundred and seventeen crimes committed by waifs under thirteen were registered in the first half of last year, including murder. Epidemics rage among the children. The police, on their daily rounds are constantly discovering the corpses of children dead of starvation or disease. Jeremiah had seen it:- “The youth and the old man lie on the ground in the streets : Thou hast slain them in the day of Thine anger.” And what awful spiritual cancer lies behind this open sore of the world? Such utterances of Tolstoy as this, scattered through Russia in millions, and now the settled principle of the great Soviet Government:- “The teaching to children of this so-called religion [the Christian Faith], which is taking place among us, is the most dreadful crime we can possibly imagine: torture, murder, the violation of children, are nothing in comparison with this crime.”*

[* Count Tolstoy’s “Religious Education of the Young,” p. 2.]

RED SUNDAY SCHOOLS

Now this virulent poison, with its awful tragedy for child-life, is crossing to the Christ-soaked soil of Anglo-Saxondom. Red Sunday Schools - some Socialist, some Proletarian, some Communist - are springing up all over England. The hymn-book used in these schools has such hymns as this:-

Hold fast the morals of your class,

Heed not the Gospel-grinding band,

For “truths” they preach are seldom true,

And truth they do not understand.

There is a Red Catechism; a Decalogue, one of the Ten Commandments of which begins, - “Thou shalt teach Revolution”; a Calendar of Saints, which includes murderers; and a Doxology beginning, - “No Saviours from on high deliver.” At a Red baptism in Coventry (Daily Express, Peb. 5, 1912), the service began with Hymn No. 5 in the Socialist Sunday School Hymn-Book, and children’s treble voices could be heard above the others in the following words:-

O ye rich men I hear and tremble,

For with words the sound is rife,

Once for you and death we laboured,

Changed henceforward is the strife.

We are men, and we shall battle

For the world of men and life;

And our host is marching on.

Next, Mr. J. A. Tayler, a prominent Socialist, who officiated, took the child in his arms, and after stating that there would not be any ritual about the ceremony, and that they did not want priests there - a sentiment which was loudly applauded - welcomed the child into the Socialist movement, and pinned a Red token, the symbol of the social revolution, on her breast. “I name the child Gladys Rose Wood,” said Tayler, “and I am glad to welcome it into the ranks of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity.” “What do other people do when they want their children baptized?” he asked. “Why, they take them to the parish pump - I mean the church - where an old gentleman in his nightshirt sprinkles water over the kid. We have none of that nonsense here. We want our children to grow up into free-thinking men and women, untrammelled by priests or the church.” Jeremiah may well say: “On account of the soul of thy young children,” “give thyself no respite, let not the apple of thine eye cease” - that is, from weeping: “arise” - shake off apathy – “cry out in the night, at the beginning of the watches.”

SPIRITUALIST SUNDAY SCHOOLS

But there is an assuult still more daring, and still more deadly, on the child-life of our day. There are at present 13,340 child members of the Lyceum Union, or Spiritualist Sunday Schools, the aim of which is to create mediums among little children. Three handbooks are issued by the Union, in which the child is taught that he has no need of a Redeemer; and he is told that “the essential teaching of the Bible, and therefore of Christianity, is that man was created perfect on the earth; fell; and is redeemed by faith in the death of Christ. Spiritualism repudiates each link of that chain.” The great cities - Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, Sheffield, Liverpool, Bristol - all have these centres, some several; and boys and girls of fourteen are instructed in mediumship-clairvoyance, clairaudience, the trance state, and even possession*; all under a large scroll entitled “Jesus the Psychic,” pictured with a haunted face said to be unforgettable. What wonder that Jeremiah cries: “Pour out thine heart like water before the face of the Lord” - let not the flood of thy tears dry up (Keil).

[*Irene Hernaman’s Child Alediums, P. 15.]

Mr. H. D. Brown, the late secretary of the Christian Colportage Association, said:- “A Sunday School teacher in London recently discovered that some of his boys were always going, directly after morning Sunday School, to some mysterious place of meeting. He learned where this meeting was held, and went one Sunday morning to the place, which was a large room formed by enclosing a railway arch. Knocking at the door, it was opened by one of his own scholars, who looked very much abashed at seeing him, but the teacher followed him in. There he found a number of boys and girls, some from his own Sunday School, and, asking what they were doing, was told they were going to have Sunday School. Presently, a woman came in, who turned out to be their leader or teacher, and who formed them into a ring, after telling them to put on a shelf the Bibles they had brought with them from the Church Sunday School. They then began to sing hymns, one being addressed to Mother Lotus; and presently the visitor observed a gilt serpent hanging from the roof. The children circled round this, each holding up a band, and, pointing with the forefinger to this serpent, called out repeatedly: ‘O glorious Apollo!’ Some of the girls had rings on their fingers, in the form of a serpent with its tail in its mouth. The teacher who found this out called a meeting of the other teachers, and related what he had seen. Inquiries were made, and it was found that many of their scholars went to this place, and these were quite aware that they were being taught to worship the Devil. One girl of fourteen, who was spoken to by the teacher, said quite seriously ‘Oh, Miss, the Devil’s very kind; he’ll give me whatever I want.’ It was discovered that this was only one of a considerable number of similar Sunday Schools in England.”*

[*God and Satan, p. 85.]

EMPTYING SUNDAY SCHOOLS

But incomparably the gravest attack upon the child-soul is the decay and threatened collapse, internal in doctrine and external in attendance, of the Sunday Schools of the Churches. The official programme for the Sunday Schools of Christendom now carefully inculcates that the miracles of the Old Testament are myths, legends, and poetic fictions; and experience shows that the New Testament miracles do not long survive the Old.

Some years ago a mother wrote me: “I have just had a staggering blow. My little boy, aged nine, looks up at me and says: ‘Mother, is the Bible all true? My teacher says that parts are not true.’ Then my infant of eight chimes in: ‘The boys of the third class [aged about ten] all say it is not true.’ I wept.” (It is instructive to know that that mother has since saved the faith of both her boys).

A Bible teacher said recently (American Sunday School Times, April 21, 1923): “On my recent trip I found a Unitarian Theosophical free-thinker teaching the largest Bible class in a Methodist Sunday School, and a New Thoughtist, who denies the Deity of Christ, and the Atonement, teaching a large class of young ladies in a Presbyterian Sunday School. Such cases are not uncommon.” The undermining of belief in the Bible, together with the profound growth of Antichristianity since the War, is decimating the Sunday Schools. The enormous losses in British Sunday Schools - the Church of England alone lost 240,000 scholars between 1913 and 1917, or more than 400,000 during the War - has been more than reflected across the Atlantic, where, if the losses continue at their present rate, all American Sunday School work will be wiped out of existence in a single generation. In the last ten years the British Free Churches have lost between 400,000 and 500.000 scholars, or an equivalent of 700 churches of the future. A recent test made in Brooklyn revealed that out of 1,373 children 499 did not know what the Ten Commandments are, and 351 had never heard of them! Twenty-seven million children are now growing up in the United States without any religious instruction whatever. Still more dread and portentous is the Russian Terror. Not only is all religious instruction to the young forbidden, but all schools whatsoever are now (Times, January 3, 1924) prohibited except the Communist schools, in which the children are carefully instructed in Atheism.

CHILD CRIMINALS

But there is positive as well as negative declension. Dr. Stanley Hall, a specialist on the subject, says:- “There is a marked increase of crime between the ages of twelve and fourteen, and the proportion of juvenile delinquents seems to be everywhere increasing, and crime is more and more precocious.” We find in the Great War an extraordinary revelation. The number of juvenile convicts in Germany increased fifty per cent. between 1892 and 1895 - that is, among the men who have filled the trenches. The population of Germany is to that of England as 5 to 3: yet the proportion in bigamy is 1 to 2 nearly; in incest, about 13 to 1; in procuring, 264 to 1; in procuring abortions, 29 to 1; in unnatural offences, 7 to 1; in rape and other sexual crimes, about 9 to 1; in murder, manslaughter, and other death-causing crimes, 5 to 1; in arson, about 4 to 1; in divorce, 22 to 1; in illegitimate births, 5 to 1; in suicides, 4 to 1 (Times, April 12, 1916). Now what is the vital secret behind these startlingly disparate figures? It is not education: for university men in Germany are fourteen in every ten thousand; in America ten; in England (apart from Scotland), five. The secret is laid bare when we learn that, though with a population nearly twice the size, Germany has only nine hundred thousand Sunday School scholars against Britain’s over five millions. And alas, this apostasy, percolating from the theological halls of the Higher Criticism into the day school and the nursery, and so blighting a nation at its roots, continues to deepen iniquity in child-life. German child convictions were, in 1914, 585; in 1915, 1,145; in 1916, 2,895; and in 1917, 4,012. “The increase of criminality among the young,” says the Hessian Minister of Justice, “is terrifying” (Times, April 4, 1918.*

[*So also the Freneh figures before the war were appalling. In 1910, 06 per cent. of all the accused who appeared before a jury were minors - that is, under 21 yearsof age. “The maximum of criminality” - so runs the official report to the President – “was found among the prisoners from 18 to 21 years of age, or three times the number of criminals among adults .” (Daily Telegraph, Sept. 18, 1912.).]

CHILD CONVERSION

Thus there is no national service more signal, none more profound or radical in its effects on national character and destiny, than influencing the children for Christ. As Bishop Philips Brookes has said:- “He who helps a child helps humanity with a distinctness, with an immediateness, which no other help given to human creatures in any shape of their human life can possibly give again.” It is said that there is enough electricity in one drop of water to generate two thunder-storms: so there are two latent, antagonistic eternities wrapt up in the heart of a little child. In 1869, in the Higher Local Examinations of the University of Cambridge, religious teaching was taken by all the candidates; in 1879, by little more than 25 per cent.; in 1889, by a little more than 10 per cent.; in 1899, by less than 9 per cent.; and in 1912, by 6 per cent. Ponder what this withdrawing of saying truth from the child-heart means. A recent inquiry addressed to 3,500 children of God yielded this notable result, 75 per cent. of the males and 85 per cent. of the females assigned their conversion to years between 10 and 18, far the greater proportion locating it between 14 and 18; while less than 3 per cent. of the girls, and less than 2 per cent. of the boys, were converted before 10. The child’s Saviour is nearest to the child in childhood, and every year afterwards makes the hope of conversion more remote. Moreover, as a Japanese infidel has recently stated in a fierce attack on the Christian Faith:- “Those who learn Christianity early in life make the best Christians.”

CHILDREN AND THE CHURCH

So it is for us to welcome all saved children, when carefully examined and proved to be saved, into the full fellowship of the Church of Christ. The veteran missionary, Dr. Griffith John, says:- “I was admitted into the Church at the early age of eight. I loved Christ, and felt a strong desire to be identified with His people. When I mentioned the fact to some of the deacons, some of them looked askance, and expressed grave doubts whether I should be allowed to sit at the Lord’s Table. Among them, however, there were wiser men. Their counsels prevailed, and after some months of probation I was admitted. From that day until now, I have never ceased to thank God that I was induced to take the important step at the time I did. Had I not done so, I doubt whether I should have been a missionary - if a member of the Christian Church at all.” For no one in the Bible lays so enormous an emphasis on child-work as our Lord. “It is not the will of your Father which is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish” (Matt. 18: 14): all are salvable, and God desires the salvation of all children as children. The Lord Jesus does not say that they are innocent, therefore guard them but that they are perishing, therefore save them. “Whoso shall cause one of these little ones to stumble” - that is, “little ones that believe on Me,” young believers – “it is profitable for him that he be cast into the depths of the sea.” A nurse that drops a child, and makes it a cripple for life, can never forgive herself, nor can he who blights the soul of the young. An undermined Bible; a hard, un-Christ-like temper in the home; the fostering of worldly pleasures in the young heart; the promotion of a marriage tie with an unbeliever; the stimulating of ambition for worldly careers:- the wilderness is strewn with the carcases of such little ones; and by the. carcase, too often, stands the prophet that lied. “See that ye despise not one of these little ones, for in heaven their angels” - their guardian spirits - “do always behold the face of My Father”: so constant is God’s care, and so grave their need, that, unlike other angels (Job 1: 6), these have constant and immediate access, on their behalf, to the Throne. Their Divine guardianship is more tender and more wonderful than ours. The New Testament speaks of angels of little children: the poorest child-believers may have no earthly goods, yet they can call the host of heaven theirs! “And whoso shall receive one such little child in My name” - on the ascertained ground that he is a disciple of Christ - “receiveth Me.” Would we receive Christ if he were here? We can receive Him in His little child. If God were to hand us a diamond, and bid us engrave upon it a sentence to endure for all eternity, how careful we should be of the sentence, and how joyous over the privilege: even so has he committed to His worker the mind of a little child, whereon to write, in letters that shall never be erased, the saving love of Christ.

CHILD MARTYRS

Nor let us ever forget that a child can even be a martyr. A little Armenian maid six year old, one of 400,000 orphans now being aided by American missionaries, deserted and almost starved, was taken by Turkish officers, who told her they would make a Mohammedan of her. She answered emphatically, “I will never be a Moharnmedan.” They told her she would die where she was, but that if she would become a Mohammedan they would give her a good home. “I won’t be a Moharnmedan,” she answered. Growing angry, they took her to a stable where wild, half-starved dogs were kept, to which Armenian children were habitually tossed to be devoured. As they approached, the dogs leaped to their feet, and snarled and growled. The little maid, neither hesitating nor shrinking, said through her tears, “I can’t, I won’t be a Mohammedan.” So they pitched her in, and locked the door. Next morning, when they came all was silent; and when they opened the door, with her curly head resting on one shaggy brute, they found Anistiana - for that is her name - sound asleep, bearing on one arm the marks where one of the dogs had seized her. As they lifted her, and she rubbed her sleepy eyes, she exclaimed, “I won’t be a Mohammedan.” She was sold, and has finally fallen into the hands of a Christian woman. “Their angels do always behold the face of My Father which is in heaven."

THE CHILDREN’S CRY

What a tremendous summons it is to us all to do all we can for child-life, while we may! Because children can be saved as soon as they are conscious of sin; because enormously the larger proportion of conversions takes place in childhood; because (as Mr. Spurgeon says) the earliest conversions make the strongest disciples; because, as iniquity hardens, still tender childhood will become our main, if not our only, hope; because our parents felt no sacrifice too great to bring us to God, and He charges us to repay the debt, and to transmit the blessing (Psa. 78: 3-8); above all, because the Saviour loves them, and says that it is not our heavenly Father’s will that one of these little ones should perish (Matt. 18: 14), let us “pour out our hearts as water” for the little people who (as Lord Beaconsfield said) are the trustees of posterity.

“Mother,” a little girl once said, “where is your soul?” “Well, I don’t know, exactly, daughter.” “Can I hear your soul?” “No, I think not,” said mother. “Can I see your soul, mother?” Mother said, “Well, you see if you can see my soul. Come, climb up in my lap and look deep down in my eyes, and see if you can see my soul.” So the little girl climbed up in her mother’s lap, took her two cheeks in her hands, and looked deep into her eyes. When she had given a deep searching look, she said: “Well, mother, away down in your soul there is a little girl.” She had seen herself mirrored in her mother’s eyes. The mother’s or teacher’s soul is the only true home of a little child: one lad’s grave at Gaza has it thus,- “Here lies the heart of a mother.”

So the cry of the children is in our ears. In famine lands it is literally true, but in all lands spiritually:-.

And well may the children weep before you!

They are weary ere they run;

They have never seen the sunshine, nor the glory

Which is brighter than the sun.

They know the grief of man, without its wisdom;

They sink in man’s despair, without its calm;

Are slaves, without the liberty in Christdom,

Are martyrs, by the pang without the palm:

Are worn as if with age, yet unretrievingly

The harvest of its memories cannot reap,-

Are orphans of the earthly love and heavenly:

And they weep! and they weep!

- E. B. BROWNING.