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 "Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto 
 me ; for of such is the kingdom of heaven."— matt. 19 : 14. 
 
Child and God 
 
 BY 
 
 Rev. m. C. Eamb 
 
 Author of' 1 The Mormons and Their Bible ' 
 
 " Every Creature " 
 
 "Success in Soul Winning" 
 
 " Heredity," etc. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA 
 
 American Baptist Publication Society 
 
 1420 Chestnut Street 
 
 ^^^^^^^^^►P 
 
 
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 v<?s 
 
 \Y 
 
 UBRARY Of CONGRESS 
 Two Copies deceived 
 
 APR 15 1905 
 
 Copyngnt tniry 
 
 tiLHSS CC AXc No: 
 
 COPY 6. 
 
 
 Copyright 1905 
 M. T. LAMB 
 
 Published April, 1905 
 
 jfrom tbc ipress of tbe 
 Bmcrican baptist jpublication Society 
 
PREFACE 
 
 WHILE the following treatise was written pri- 
 marily in the interests of the homeless and outcast 
 child, the author has kept constantly in view chil- 
 dren universally, of whom the majority have no 
 Christian training, while the remainder, though in 
 professedly Christian homes, are too seldom re- 
 garded as a sacred trust from God. It is exceedingly 
 sad to contemplate the seeming carelessness of so 
 many Christian parents as to the moral and spiritual 
 surroundings of their children. 
 
 It seems to this writer that if the Christian peo- 
 ple of our country could once get a clear view of 
 the real situation — that every child within their 
 reach is God's child ; that he is intensely interested 
 in its future ; that to rescue and save it is the 
 grandest mission and the highest and the largest and 
 the most sacred that can be committed to any intel- 
 ligent being in God's universe — such a conception 
 would revolutionize all our methods of child-training 
 and speedily transform this wicked, ruined world 
 into a very garden of God. 
 
 To aid the reader in reaching up to this conception 
 is the intent of this little volume. 
 
 THE AUTHOR. 
 Trenton, N. J., March i, 1905. 
 
 iii 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 THE author of these pages has courteously placed 
 his manuscript in my hands for perusal in advance. 
 I have been greatly interested in what he has to 
 say. The subject which he discusses is one of the 
 very greatest importance, both to the individual 
 and to society. It is evident that the writer has the 
 two indispensable qualifications for presenting it. 
 He has enthusiasm and he has experience. With- 
 out the former a perfect system, with the truest of 
 conceptions and the wisest of methods, would prove 
 a flat failure ; while without the latter the most de- 
 voted efforts, with the noblest of impulses and the 
 highest aims, would go wide of the mark. 
 
 It is said that one-half of the world does not know 
 how the other half lives. It might also be added of 
 the upper half that it does not want to. And there 
 is the trouble. Human nature is incarnate selfish- 
 ness. Every one of us is the center of his own 
 little world and he must look out upon the great 
 world without through the green windows of his 
 own little self. We are too easily content to stay 
 within. It is easy to condemn, or to contemn, or to 
 pity, or to patronize ; but it is not so easy to sym- 
 pathize with and to help those who are less favored 
 than we, We quickly turn philosophers and set to 
 
 v 
 
vi INTRODUCTION 
 
 accounting for it all. The submerged tenth is a 
 constant factor in the world, we say, and we must 
 beware of nervous prostration in undertaking to cor- 
 rect what we cannot avoid. We have very good 
 authority for believing that we are to have the poor 
 with us always and we are not obliged to do much 
 in the way of making the sacred doctrine untrue. 
 This is the attitude of callous respectability. It is 
 the complacency of the prospered. It is the selfish- 
 ness of the well-clad, the well-fed, and the safe. 
 
 In this way the Good Samaritan is forced to give 
 way to the haughty Pharisee and, by and by, 
 "willing to justify himself," he hatches out a pre- 
 tentious philosophy of society which is indifferent 
 to the cry of need and coldly unresponsive to the 
 bitter wail which comes up from the poor. It is one 
 of the fine symptoms of the times that there is so 
 much of earnest and organized effort in behalf of 
 the unfavored and the neglected classes in society. 
 I know of no movement which has in it more of the 
 true spirit of humanitarianism, more of the spirit of 
 the Lord Jesus Christ, than this very work for which 
 this little book pleads. It has won its way to recog- 
 nized merit and to signal success. It has reached 
 its ripest form in the approved effort to find open 
 homes for homeless children. The child was made 
 for the home and the home was made for the child ; 
 and each without the other is incomplete, unhappy, 
 and sad. It is a work of priceless worth, in the 
 name of the Seeker and Saviour of the lost, to 
 bring these two hemispheres of home life together. 
 
INTRODUCTION vii 
 
 Experience has brought its lessons to this work, 
 as to many another. The almshouse, the institu- 
 tion, and the boarding-house have all been left be- 
 hind on the way of progress. It is not enough to 
 take the little waif — a bundle of undeveloped, im- 
 mortal possibilities — and make of him a pauper, or 
 a machine, or even a boarder. He must be a child 
 if he is ever to be a man. He must be given a 
 home if he is ever to reach his best. And this is 
 the goal of the child-saving work. It is nature's 
 method ; it is God's method ; of course, then, it is 
 the true method. 
 
 The work of bringing the homeless child into the 
 childless home is thrice blessed ; it blesses the 
 child who is rescued from a career of idleness and 
 aimlessness and vice ; it blesses the home which, 
 without the prattle and the promise of childhood, 
 though it be a grand and gilded palace, is only a 
 house and not a home ; and it blesses the unselfish 
 agency which, like some good angel, reunites those 
 whom God hath joined together but whom some 
 ruthless hand has torn asunder. 
 
 But the problem of the waif is not more important 
 than that of the pampered and petted child in its 
 comfortable home. The very foundations of our 
 domestic life are threatened by some of the forces 
 that are at work to-day. The home is menaced and 
 the integrity of the family circle, with all its hallow- 
 ing bonds of life and love, is imperilled. There are 
 many pretentious, pedagogic ideas which are ex- 
 ploited by crabbed old bachelors and spinsters who 
 
viii INTRODUCTION 
 
 know far more about the laboratory than they do 
 about the nursery, and who are more expert in 
 handling an abstract theory than they are in hand- 
 ling a real flesh and blood child. Our good mothers 
 knew more about the real art of training a child 
 than their whole tribe ! 
 
 The good old ideas and ideals of the Christian 
 family will never be outworn or obsolete. As we 
 go back nearer to them we are making progress 
 of the truest sort. And there are no short cuts to 
 that goal or patent twentieth-century methods of 
 achieving it. It can come only by the recognition 
 of the individuality, the responsibility, and the im- 
 mortality of the child, the father to the man. The 
 thought of what their little child is and of what it 
 may come to be, is the great incentive and inspira- 
 tion through all the years of patient instruction and 
 training. Mr. Lamb's book presents this thought 
 with great clearness and emphasis, and its effect can 
 only be good upon Christian parents generally. 
 
 I am sure that it is well suited to do much good 
 and I trust that it may come into the hands of many 
 a reader who will be led to lend his aid to this work, 
 which is no more a service to humanity than it is to 
 humanity's Saviour and Lord ; for will not he him- 
 self say, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one 
 of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it 
 unto me " ? 
 
 Henry Collin Minton. 
 
 Trenton, N. J., March, 1905. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. The Child Demanding attention u 
 
 II. God's Child 25 
 
 III. What Shall We do with Him? 40 
 
 IV. The Christian Home 59 
 
 V. The Children's home Society 70 
 
 VI. The Great Objection 91 
 
 VII. Some Practical Lessons 108 
 
 IX 
 
THE CHILD AND GOD 
 
 THE CHILD DEMANDING ATTENTION 
 
 THE child is more and more coming to the front, 
 and for two reasons : 
 
 i. Because God is coming to the front. 
 His conclusions, his views of things are securing a 
 recognition to-day as never before in the history of 
 the world, and we are gradually climbing up where 
 we can see the child from God's standpoint, and 
 from his standpoint the child is always to the front. 
 2. Because we are learning better than ever 
 before that the future of the church, of the nation, 
 and of the world depends upon the training we are 
 giving the child of to-day, and very largely upon 
 the first ten years of that child's training. More- 
 over, the child that furnishes the most perplexing 
 problem is the homeless, dependent child, because 
 five-sevenths of the criminals in our country come 
 from this class of children, and the criminal classes 
 are on the increase, especially very young crim- 
 inals. Hence earnest students of sociological prob- 
 lems have come to consider the problem of the 
 
 ii 
 
12 
 
 THE CHILD AND GOD 
 
 child, and especially the dependent and neglected 
 child, as the problem of the hour. While, there- 
 fore, this discussion is designed to be general, and 
 to appeal to all Christian parents, we shall make 
 prominent the cause of the dependent and neg- 
 lected child. God takes a peculiar and tender 
 
 interest in this class of children, as we shall see, 
 and the Christian parent who has in any small 
 degree reached God's thought and God's reason 
 for his thought concerning the homeless and de- 
 pendent child will have found his love and inter- 
 est and his plans for the future of his own child 
 immensely increased. For these reasons we es- 
 pecially consider it. 
 
THE CHILD DEMANDING ATTENTION 13 
 
 God's Interest in the Poor 
 
 At the beginning of this discussion we call spe- 
 cial attention to a very remarkable statement as to 
 God's interest in the poor and unfortunate : 
 
 Blessed is he that considereth the poor ; the 
 Lord will deliver him in time of trouble. 
 
 The Lord will preserve him, and keep him 
 alive ; and he shall be blessed upon the earth ; and 
 thou wilt not deliver him unto the will of his 
 enemies. 
 
 The Lord will strengthen him upon the bed of 
 languishing ; thou wilt make all his bed in his 
 sickness (Ps. 41 : 1-3). 
 
 Here are seven large promises to the one who 
 considers the poor : (1) He will be delivered in time 
 of trouble ; (2) preserved ; (3) kept alive ; (4) 
 blessed upon the earth; (5) not delivered to the 
 will of his enemies ; (6) strengthened upon the bed 
 of languishing ; (7) in sickness his bed made by the 
 Almighty himself. 
 
 Equally strong and seemingly extravagant are 
 the statements in Isa. 58 : 6-12 to the person or 
 persons who shall : 
 
 (1) " Loose the bands of wickedness " ; (2) 
 "undo heavy burdens"; (3) "let the oppressed 
 go free"; (4) " break every yoke"; (5) "deal 
 thy bread to the hungry"; (6) "bring the poor 
 that are cast out to thy house "(note the kind of 
 poor people — "cast out," that is, undesirable people, 
 not wanted, in the way. And note again, bring 
 
14 THE CHILD AND GOD 
 
 them "to thy house/' not send them to the "alms- 
 house/' not provide comfortable quarters in the 
 "orphanage" or the "home for the aged"; a 
 closer fellowship, a deeper interest is suggested — 
 bring them "to thy house"); (7) "cover the 
 naked " ; (8) " draw out thy soul to the hungry " 
 (not simply feed the hungry as in number five, but 
 let your very soul be brought into touch with the 
 needy one. If my Lord and Master were hungry, 
 and I had the unspeakable privilege of feeding him, 
 how would my whole soul be enlisted, "drawn out/' 
 in the blessed service ! But now, in feeding this 
 hungry one, perhaps the Master will say, " Ye have 
 done it unto me") ; (9) " satisfy the afflicted soul." 
 To the one who does these things what wonder- 
 ful promises are made : 
 
 Then shall thy light break forth as the morn- 
 ing, and thine health shall spring forth speedily ; 
 and thy righteousness shall go before thee ; the 
 glory of the Lord shall be thy rearward. 
 
 Then shalt thou call, and the Lord shall answer ; 
 thou shalt cry and he shall say, ' Here I am.' . . 
 
 Then shall thy light rise in obscurity, and thy 
 darkness be as the noonday ; 
 
 And the Lord shall guide thee continually, and 
 satisfy thy soul in drought, and make fat thy bones ; 
 and thou shalt be like a watered garden, and like a 
 spring of water, whose waters fail not. 
 
 And they that be of thee shall build the old waste 
 places ; thou shalt raise up the foundations of many 
 generations ; and thou shalt be called the repairer 
 of the breech, the restorer of paths to dwell in. 
 
THE CHILD DEMANDING ATTENTION 1 5 
 
 Marvelous promises ! Let us read them over 
 again ! Read them carefully. What a world of 
 meaning is pressed into each separate statement ! 
 And all this to the one who cares for the unfor- 
 tunate poor, for the hungry, the naked, the aban- 
 doned ones ! How certainly and completely God 
 takes the side of the needy, and counts everything 
 done for such a one as done for himself ! How 
 strong, for instance, the expression in Prov. 19 : 
 17: "He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth 
 unto the Lord, and that which he hath given will 
 he pay him again." 
 
 The Purpose of this Treatise 
 
 It is purposed in this little treatise to attempt 
 briefly to answer a very interesting and practical 
 question : " Why is God so deeply interested in the 
 poor ? " And because this is a large subject, we 
 will confine the discussion chiefly to one single class 
 of the poor, a poor child. For there is no person 
 on earth so exceedingly poor as a poor child, a little, 
 helpless child that has been "cast out." 
 
 Possibly the reader may wonder that we should 
 even attempt to discuss the whys and wherefores 
 of a question about which everybody is agreed. 
 God loves little children ; we all believe that. 
 There is no difference of opinion upon this point. 
 But if we should ask each one of our readers per- 
 sonally, "Why in your opinion does God love a 
 little child ? " we would probably receive almost as 
 many answers as there are readers. In a general 
 
 B 
 
16 THE CHILD AND GOD 
 
 way we would all say, "God loves all our race, 
 loves the whole world with an infinite love ; and 
 he loves because it is just like him to love. It is 
 his nature to love. Love is the great central at- 
 tribute of his being around which all his other 
 attributes appear to revolve, and to gratify which 
 they all seem to exist." But just why God should 
 select the poor, and make them the objects of his 
 peculiar attention it may not be so easy to discover. 
 For evidently it is not enough to say that God gives 
 special attention to the poor that are "cast out" 
 because they are more in need of such interest and 
 care. This may be true, is undoubtedly true, but 
 there are evidently other reasons, deeper, broader 
 reasons for God's peculiar interest in the needy 
 ones, especially in the little helpless child that is 
 homeless and has been " cast out." 
 
 A Child Introduced 
 
 Let us introduce to our readers a little child and 
 see what we can discover. 
 
 Suppose we bring a dirty little boy that has just 
 been found on the corner of one of our streets. 
 He has evidently met with an accident or some 
 misfortune has come to him, for he is crying bit- 
 terly. His clothes are torn almost into shreds and 
 covered with mud, and his face is so disfigured with 
 his crying and with the dust of the street, through 
 which the hot tears have been plowing furrows,, 
 that it is difficult at first to tell anything about the 
 child, whose it is, whether high bred or low bred. 
 
THE CHILD DEMANDING ATTENTION 
 
 17 
 
 It may perchance be my child that has, unknown 
 to me, gotten out upon the street and met with an 
 accident. Or he may belong to a neighbor's family, 
 perhaps one of the best, the most honored, most 
 wealthy families in the city. It may perchance 
 belong to one of 
 the first families 
 in our country, 
 — has been kid- 
 napped and left 
 here this morn- 
 ing in this sad 
 plight. Or it 
 may be, as it 
 more likely 
 would be, the 
 abandoned, neg- 
 lected child of 
 some worth- 
 less outcast of 
 society. 
 
 Let us briefly 
 investigate the 
 situation and 
 see what we can see. If this crying, disfigured, 
 dirty, and almost naked child shall prove to be my 
 child, it goes without saying it will be immediately 
 taken into my arms and tenderly, passionately em- 
 braced and kissed and soothed, and then hurried 
 home and washed and clothed. "My child in 
 trouble ! My child had an accident ! There is 
 
l8 THE CHiLD AND GOD 
 
 nothing on earth I would not sacrifice for my child, 
 as dear to me as my own life." 
 
 Or suppose we discover that this unfortunate 
 little child belongs to one of the prominent families 
 of the neighborhood. A carriage will immediately 
 be ordered and the child be carefully and tenderly 
 placed in it and carried to his home. Each one of 
 us is ready and eager under such circumstances to 
 lend a helping hand, glad if we can be foremost in 
 the pleasant service of rescue and restoration. 
 
 The President's Boy Kidnapped 
 
 Again, if admissible, for the sake of illustration, 
 let us suppose that the president of the United 
 States has a boy who has been kidnapped and 
 brought here this morning and left upon the street 
 corner in the plight already described, crying 
 piteously, covered with mud, and with clothes torn 
 into shreds. No sooner would the boy's identity 
 be discovered than the whole city would be thrown 
 into the wildest excitement. The telegraph wires 
 would immediately flash the news of his recovery 
 to Washington, and in less than an hour, from 
 Maine to California, the whole country would be 
 apprised of his rescue. All the leading daily papers 
 in New York and Philadelphia and adjacent cities 
 would immediately send their best reporters to 
 gather up for an eager public every possible item 
 of information regarding the matter. All who had 
 anything to do with the boy in any way would find 
 themselves suddenly famous. Their names in large 
 
THE CHILD DEMANDING ATTENTION 19 
 
 headlines would appear upon the front page of thou- 
 sands of newspapers. And not only this country 
 but the whole civilized world would be thrilled 
 with the story of the strange kidnapping and the 
 interesting rescue. 
 
 A More Probable Solution 
 
 But now, to come down to the most probable 
 solution, let us suppose this dirty, crying boy found 
 on the street corner proves to be "only a pauper 
 whom nobody owns." We find out that he is the 
 child of some worthless outcast, perhaps of noto- 
 rious Jimmie Brown, once a bright, promising, and 
 respectable young man with the best of blood run- 
 ning in his veins. Now by excessive drinking and 
 various debaucheries he has sunk to the lowest 
 depths, has dragged his poor wife down into a pre- 
 mature grave, and at last has abandoned this little 
 boy whom we have found upon the street corner, 
 motherless, homeless, heart-broken. 
 
 Under these circumstances what will be said and 
 what disposition will we make of this poor outcast ? 
 
 In the first place, everybody who sees the little 
 fellow crying so bitterly w\\\ pity him. Not one of us 
 but would be willing to stop a moment, say a kind 
 word, and perhaps give him a penny or a nickel to 
 cheer him up. Now and then a big-hearted, moth- 
 erly woman will stop, perhaps take him in her arms, 
 wipe the dust and the tears from his face, and give 
 him a real hearty kiss, while some practically dis- 
 posed person may suggest that the poor boy needs 
 
20 THE CHILD AND GOD 
 
 a suit of clothing and the nickels and dimes and 
 quarters will be forthcoming and a plain but com- 
 fortable new suit secured. But the boy cannot be 
 left upon the street corner. What is the next step ? 
 If the child is old enough to be " handy " about the 
 house or barn some enterprising farmer or farmer's 
 wife who has been on the lookout for additional 
 help will bid for him at once. And then the inci- 
 dent will end. By to-morrow it will have been 
 largely forgotten by the most of us. No newspaper 
 notoriety, no stirring of the public heart or con- 
 science, no click of the telegraph, and perhaps not 
 an individual outside of the few who happened to 
 pass that street corner would ever hear of the affair. 
 
 But if the boy is not old enough to be of use and 
 must be cared for by the municipality or by private 
 benevolence, before deciding what disposition shall 
 be made of him — whether to bundle him into the 
 first cab that comes along and send him to the alms- 
 house or place him in the nearest orphanage or out 
 to board at the expense of the county — let us draw 
 a little closer to this boy and with a Christian's 
 Bible in our hands and the Christian's hope as an 
 eyeglass to aid us in our search for hidden treas- 
 ures, combined with a little knowledge of the human 
 soul and its destiny, let us look this little fellow 
 over more carefully. 
 
 And at the very threshold of our investigation we 
 will find something that for want of a better name 
 we will call an interesting " tag " attached to this 
 boy, not tied to him with a string but written down 
 
THE CHILD DEMANDING ATTENTION 21 
 
 plain and deep, as with the finger of God, and it 
 reads after this fashion : 
 
 " When my father and my mother forsake me, 
 then the Lord will take me up," and before we 
 have fully fathomed the meaning of these strange 
 words we find another tag upon which is written, 
 11 The Father of the fatherless." 
 
 And we begin to open our eyes and say, " What 
 do these words mean ? Is this child related to 
 God ? Has he adopted it or is he wanting to adopt 
 it ? Has he ' taken it up ' and is he willing to call 
 himself its father ? Was that abandoned boy created 
 in God's image ? " We thought him the offspring 
 of the degraded Jimmie Brown, but we have dis- 
 covered suggestions of a higher origin, of heredities 
 that possibly may link him to the throne of the 
 Eternal. Can it be that this dirty, ragged little 
 urchin is, after all, the child of a King ? 
 
 Let us continue our search for hidden treasures 
 and see if we cannot obtain further light upon the 
 profound mystery already suspected. 
 
 Yes, that little abandoned, homeless outcast will 
 be found written all over with the most astounding 
 prophecies or suggestions. Here is another one : 
 " It is not the will of your Father which is in heaven 
 that one of these little ones shall perish." These 
 words suggest deep interest on the part of God. His 
 heart evidently has taken large stock in the future 
 of that child. But there is also an intimation of 
 anxiety lest after all this little child shall be allowed 
 to perish. And if it goes to the almshouse or is 
 
22 THE CHILD AND GOD 
 
 otherwise neglected it will certainly perish. Five- 
 sevenths of all the criminals in our country have 
 come from homeless children, from just such neg- 
 lected little boys as this one. The president's boy 
 would go to the bad just as easily and surely as this 
 one if neglected or put in this boy's place. Notwith- 
 standing all his noble inherited traits and qualities, 
 there is nothing can save him from absolute ruin or 
 fit him for the high position his birthright offers him 
 but constant watchcare, persistent training, and the 
 best and the highest environments. And this boy 
 on the street corner is no exception to this rule, 
 though the child of a king and prospective heir to 
 a throne. Only persistent effort, Christian train- 
 ing, and the lifelong environment of the highest 
 type can fit that boy for the high place to which his 
 divine birthright entitles him. 
 
 And so we are prepared for another of those 
 strange messages from the throne found stamped 
 upon this little boy : 
 
 " Whosoever will receive one of these little ones 
 . — this little boy — in my name, receiveth me." 
 
 That is to say, Jesus places himself by the side 
 of this little boy and says to each one of his dis- 
 ciples, "If you will take this boy into your home 
 for my sake, or because he is dear to me, I will come 
 with him and abide in your home ; he is my boy, 
 my heart is bound up in the bundle of life with that 
 boy. I go where he goes and will stay where he 
 stays." God's unspeakable gift, the richest prize 
 in God's universe, the "pearl of great price," offers 
 
THE CHILD DEMANDING ATTENTION 
 
 23 
 
 himself to the person or family who will take this 
 little boy in. The Lord of lords and the King of 
 kings will come into the home that opens to this 
 ragged urchin. 
 
 But there is one other message from heaven that 
 is written all over the dust and rags and unfortunate 
 heredities 
 that, to a 
 super ficial 
 observer, 
 stamp this 
 boy as "only 
 a pauper 
 whom no- 
 body owns." 
 And this 
 message 
 from above 
 contains a 
 note of warn- 
 ing combined 
 with strange 
 suggestions of wondrous import : " Take heed — be 
 exceedingly careful — that ye despise not, neglect 
 not, this little boy, for I say unto you that in heaven 
 his angels do always behold the face of my Father 
 which is in heaven. " 
 
 The president's boy, if kidnapped and discovered 
 here on our street corner, would command at once 
 the telegraph wires and the newspaper reporters and 
 the front page all over our land, but this abandoned 
 
24 THE CHILD AND GOD 
 
 son of Jimmie Brown has a cohort of angels, known 
 and recognized as "his angels," and these angels 
 have constant access to the throne. And they 
 report up there everything that is done down here 
 for this boy or against him, and the Father of this 
 fatherless boy hears, and hears with absorbing 
 interest, and it is recorded up there, and by and by 
 it will be announced before an assembled universe ; 
 " inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of the least of 
 these " — to this poor boy — " ye did it not to me." 
 
 God the Father therefore loves this poor boy and 
 is intensely interested in him because he is his boy, 
 his own child, born in his image, and therefore the 
 inheritor of a wonderful future that only sin and 
 Satan and depraving environments can cheat him 
 out of. 
 
II 
 
 GOD'S CHILD 
 
 LET us give special attention to the last state- 
 ment made, that because this boy is God's 
 child, therefore a wonderful future is planned 
 for him, pro- 
 vided he can be 
 placed in such 
 surroundings as 
 will lead him to 
 Christ. 
 
 In Matthew, 
 the twenty -fifth 
 chapter, Jesus 
 says to those on 
 his right hand, 
 * ' C o m e ye 
 blessed of my 
 Father, inherit 
 the kingdom 
 prepared for 
 you from the 
 foundation of 
 
 the world." We call the reader's attention to the 
 word "inherit." To inherit a kingdom means vastly 
 more than to be simply the subject of a kingdom. It 
 
 25 
 
26 THE CHILD AND GOD 
 
 means to inherit the throne, to become the rightful 
 owner and controller of the kingdom. And hence 
 we find in many wonderful passages that reveal the 
 future of the saved, they are represented as kings, 
 not as subjects. "I have appointed unto you a 
 kingdom, and ye shall sit on thrones," Jesus says. 
 
 We have counted not less than seven particulars 
 wherein the redeemed from this world are, appar- 
 ently, to have the advantage of the highest angels 
 or archangels : 
 
 i. They are to be the bride, the recognized wife 
 of the great King : 
 
 For the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his 
 wife hath made herself ready (Rev. 19 : 7 ; see also 
 Isa. 54 : 5 ; Rev. 19 : 9 ; 21 : 9). 
 
 2. They are counted as brothers and sisters and 
 therefore on a social equality with Jesus : 
 
 For both he that sanctifieth and they who are 
 sanctified are all of one ; for which cause he is not 
 ashamed to call them brethren (Heb. 2:11). 
 
 . . . the first-born among many brethren (Rom. 
 8 : 29 ; see also Mark 3 : 35 ; John 15 : 15). 
 
 3. They are to have bodies like his glorious body : 
 
 Who shall change our vile body, that it may be 
 fashioned like unto his glorious body (Phil. 3:21; 
 see also 1 Cor. 15 : 47, 49). 
 
 4. They will bear his image and appear like him 
 in every particular ; 
 
god's child 27 
 
 Partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter 1 : 4). 
 
 Begotten of God (1 John 5 : 1). 
 
 But we know that when he shall appear, we 
 shall be like him (1 John 3:2; see also Rev. 22 : 
 4; Eph. 1 : 23). 
 
 5. They will share with him all his infinite 
 wealth as to material possessions : 
 
 He that overcometh shall inherit all things ; and 
 I will be his God and he shall be my son (Rev. 
 
 21 : 7). 
 
 And if children, then heirs ; heirs of God and 
 joint-heirs with Christ (Rom. 8:17; see also Gal. 
 4 : 1, 7 ; 1 Cor. 3 : 21, 22). 
 
 6. They will share with him his royal prerogatives, 
 sit with him upon his throne, reign with him, etc. : 
 
 To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with 
 me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am 
 set down with my Father in his throne (Rev. 
 3 : 21). 
 
 And hath made us kings and priests unto God 
 (Rev. 1 : 6). 
 
 And they shall reign forever and ever (Rev. 
 
 22 : 5). 
 
 7. They will forever enjoy the distinction of 
 priests, men who stand nearest to God and become 
 his representatives to the people — teachers, God's 
 ambassadors, ministers plenipotentiary, in a certain 
 sense revealers of God : 
 
28 THE CHILD AND GOD 
 
 Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual 
 house, a holy priesthood. . . 
 
 But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priest- 
 hood, a holy nation, a peculiar people (i Peter 
 2 : 5, 9). 
 
 And hath made us kings and priests unto God 
 and his Father (Rev. i : 6). 
 
 But they shall be priests of God and of Christ 
 (Rev. 20 : 6). 
 
 Now, shall I venture to say that not one of all 
 these royal prerogatives is enjoyed by the angels ? 
 They do not have material bodies like unto his 
 glorious body. They were not begotten in his 
 image, hence they are not reckoned as children, 
 for " he took not upon him the nature of angels." 
 They do not belong to the private family of the 
 great King ; high lords, mighty princes they may 
 be, but not blood relatives, members of the royal 
 family. Neither do they sit with the King upon 
 the throne ; they stand around the throne as wait- 
 ing servants. They do not wear crowns, nor reign 
 as kings, nor perform the office of priests ; nor are 
 they counted as the bride of the great King, heav- 
 en's queen ; neither are they heirs of the material 
 universe ; nor counted as sharing with the Lord of 
 lords and King of kings his honor and glory and an 
 equal place with him in the tender love of the 
 Father (John 15:9; 17 : 22, 23). 
 
 Well, now, if God can see such a future in store 
 for this boy, such a central place, so important to 
 all the universe, on condition that the boy can be 
 
god's child 29 
 
 rescued and saved, do you wonder that he is deeply, 
 intensely interested in that boy ? And interested 
 not simply because he is his boy and as such may 
 be a member of the royal family forever, but be- 
 cause he loves all the other intelligent beings who 
 might be touched and helped and blessed by this 
 boy while occupying the position of a king and a 
 priest and an own brother to the great King during 
 all the endless ages. For God can measure up and 
 tabulate in his mind and thought all the glorious 
 outcome, the sum of all the gracious influences 
 going out from this boy during the ages to come, if 
 only he can be rescued. 
 
 But keeping this thought still in mind, let us 
 come back to earthly things and estimate results 
 that we are more capable of measuring. 
 
 This little boy, the son of Jimmie Brown, we will 
 say, is a fairly promising boy. He inherits from 
 both his parents, born before the father had shat- 
 tered his constitution by excesses, a healthy, robust 
 body and an average brain. If that boy can have 
 a first-class chance, can be led to Christ while very 
 young and filled up with Bible truth, then given a 
 good education and the very best of social and 
 Christian influences, he will make his mark, some- 
 thing of a mark, and be rated as among the very 
 best in society. 
 
 And have our readers tried to estimate how much 
 that means ? It is said that each individual who is 
 vigorous and healthy and lives to middle life or old 
 age stands as the representative of one million souls 
 
30 
 
 THE CHILD AND GOD 
 
 within five hundred years. And this is easily fig- 
 ured out. We have only to suppose that each 
 individual life doubles itself every twenty-five 
 
 years ; that is, 
 in twenty-five 
 years the one 
 has become 
 two, in fifty 
 years the two 
 have become 
 four, in seven- 
 ty-five years 
 the four have in- 
 creased to eight, 
 and in one hun- 
 dred years to 
 sixteen. At this 
 rate of increase, 
 in two hundred 
 and fifty years 
 the one has be- 
 come one thou- 
 sand, and in two 
 hundred and 
 fifty years more 
 each individual 
 of these one 
 thousand has become a thousand, and a thousand 
 thousands make one million. 
 
 An old man captured for God at the end of life 
 stands alone without a successor. But that little 
 
 William Bryan McKinley 
 
GOD'S CHILD 31 
 
 child captured for God means twenty-five years 
 later a Christian family, and in five hundred years 
 a million human beings, the large majority of whom 
 we may confidently believe saved eternally. So 
 far as the purpose and force of this argument 
 is concerned, it matters not whether a million 
 descendants be reached in five hundred years or in 
 one thousand years ; the lesson is the same. 
 
 On the other hand, that little child left in the 
 almshouse or in the slums without a home and a 
 Christian training may mean in twenty-five years 
 a family of roughs. 
 
 Mr. R. L. Dugdale, in his little book entitled 
 "The Jukes," traces through many generations 
 the descendants of one neglected and vicious girl. 
 The facts are simply terrible. He shows : 
 
 That a very large proportion o % f the descendants of this 
 woman became licentious, in the course of six generations 
 52.40 per cent, of the females being harlots and 23.50 per cent. 
 of the children illegitimate ; that there were seven and a half 
 times more paupers among the women than among the aver- 
 age women of the State, and nine times more paupers among 
 the male descendants than among the average men of the 
 State. Of seven hundred cases examined, two hundred and 
 eighty became pauperized adults, and this study covered but 
 about one-third of the family. Moreover, of these seven hun- 
 dred only twenty-two had acquired property and eight of 
 those had lost what they had gained. Seventy-six are known 
 to have been convicted of crimes and punished, while it is 
 scarcely to be doubted that more than double that number 
 were really criminals. 1 
 
 1 Quoted from a very valuable work on "Heredity and Christian Prob- 
 lems," by Rev. Dr. A. H. Bradford. 
 
 c 31 
 
32 THE CHILD AND GOD 
 
 Now, over against this terrible history, place an- 
 other, that of a Christian boy who, about two hun- 
 dred years ago, came over from the old country and 
 
 Ten years later became a deacon in a Baptist church. Seven 
 generations since have counted a great host of Christian 
 families, with at least a dozen ministers of the gospel, scores 
 of deacons and Sunday-school superintendents, with teachers 
 by the hundreds. One of these descendants, a great-grand- 
 son, himself a minister of the gospel, became the father of 
 sixteen children, every one of whom who lived to be old 
 enough became an earnest Christian, four of them ministers 
 of the gospel, one a Christian physician ; the ten who lived 
 to mature life had large families of their own, averaging eight 
 children each, among whom can be counted ministers, teach- 
 ers, physicians, lawyers, authors, and Sunday-school workers 
 by the score. 
 
 One of these ministers is known to have been 
 directly instrumental in leading at least half a 
 thousand persons to Christ, nine-tenths of whom 
 remained in the church, many of them becom- 
 ing faithful workers, several of them successful 
 ministers of the gospel. 
 
 One million souls in five hundred years. And 
 the character of every individual of that one million, 
 with all the possibilities for good or for evil that lie 
 in the path of each, may be influenced somewhat 
 at least, possibly decided, by the character which 
 we give or fail to give to this poor child we have 
 found on the street corner. Tremendous thought ! 
 
 Oh, how inconceivable are the interests that are 
 packed into the chance we now give this boy. May 
 God give wisdom and understanding and grace. 
 
GOD'S CHILD 
 
 33 
 
 If we could only climb up where we could see 
 things as God can see them, how terribly in ear- 
 nest would we become to secure for this ragged, 
 dirty boy a first-class chance. We have found that 
 God can see unspeakably important results to his 
 kingdom by having this boy rescued, because of the 
 important place 
 he shall occupy 
 during the eter- 
 nal ages as a king 
 and a priest unto 
 God. But now, 
 we have learned 
 that not only this 
 boy, but a great 
 multitude of his 
 natural descend- 
 ants, possibly a 
 million within 
 fi v e hundred 
 years, and who 
 can tell how 
 many more millions ere time shall end ? are also 
 interested directly or indirectly in the chance we 
 now give this boy. When we consider that each 
 one of these million or millions of persons is just 
 as important in the sight of God as this boy, each 
 one of them may be lifted up as high and be- 
 come as valuable to the universe, if he can be 
 rescued and brought to Christ; and when we con- 
 sider still further that the eternal destiny of a 
 
34 THE CHILD AND GOD 
 
 great many of these descendants, possibly a large 
 majority of them, is wrapped up to a certain extent 
 in the character and the training that this ragged 
 boy shall receive, how many thousand times is 
 God's interest in this poor boy increased. For 
 God can easily count up the sum total of all the 
 influences either for good or for ill that each separate 
 individual of these million descendants shall exert. 
 But we are only just beginning to step out a little 
 from the shore into the mighty ocean of influence. 
 For God can see not only the influence that this 
 one life may have upon the character and the 
 eternal destiny of each one of his natural descend- 
 ants to the end of time, but God can see even more 
 astounding things than these. For this boy, if now 
 given the very best chance, that is, if he is led to 
 Christ in his boyhood, given a good education, filled 
 with Bible truth, and placed under the best possible 
 environment, will exert a saving and uplifting 
 influence not only upon his own children, and 
 through them his children's children, but he may 
 exert a direct and saving influence upon hundreds 
 and possibly thousands of those immediately around 
 him. For every day of his life he is coming in 
 contact with other people, and during forty or fifty 
 years of Christian activities, no one can tell how 
 many he may or might touch for good or inspire to 
 a better life, if he is only taught how to do it. And 
 each one of these persons will become a center of 
 influence, as this boy ; each one of them possibly 
 the head of a great multitude who shall also in their 
 
GOD'S CHILD 35 
 
 turn become centers of influence more or less potent 
 upon those around them. 
 
 Now, if we are lost in the attempt to master so 
 mighty a problem as this and find out how much 
 God can see in this little ragged boy, if he can 
 induce some one to receive him in his name and do 
 for him all that love and wisdom and money can do 
 to fit him for the largest possible destiny, we may 
 have our conceptions still further enlarged and 
 intensified as to God's interest in this boy by con- 
 sidering the awfully tremendous fact that all these, 
 to us immeasurable sums of influence, are to be 
 decided in the majority of cases during the next ten 
 years of that boy's life. 
 
 "In all the history of a redeemed soul either in 
 time or in eternity, his childhood period is by far 
 the most important." 
 
 Men do not easily assent to this proposition. It 
 is natural to brush the child aside for more important 
 matters. A dozen inquisitive little fellows will very 
 likely be frowned out of the way, while we pay 
 
 our respects to the Rev. Dr. C , to millionaire 
 
 D , to Hon. Mr. G , or Judge H . Even 
 
 in our home life Susan's little wants and heart 
 troubles must take second place to the great matters 
 of to-day's business. The sitting room must be 
 tidied, and the dinner precisely on time, even 
 though Charlie's lesson be neglected ; or, per- 
 chance, though he is outside with a mischievous 
 companion, taking another lesson that will soil his 
 character possibly for life, perhaps for eternity. 
 
36 THE CHILD AND GOD 
 
 It is difficult for us to fathom the full meaning of 
 the Master's statement already briefly considered : 
 " In heaven their angels do always behold the face 
 of my Father, " indicating that up yonder children 
 have the right of way, are objects of special interest 
 and solicitude ; far more so than either Rev. Dr. 
 
 C , or millionaire D , or Hon. Mr. G , 
 
 or Judge H , and for the double reason that this 
 
 child may yet occupy as wide a place, become as 
 grand a man as either of these noted gentlemen ; 
 and for the still more important reason that all its 
 infinite possibilities are now at stake, and are 
 crowded into the few brief years of its childhood. . 
 The future of all these honorable gentlemen is 
 already decided ; their place in time and in eternity 
 is substantially fixed ; the next ten years of their 
 life will make very little change in their position or 
 prospects either here or hereafter. But how dif- 
 ferent with the little child ; the next ten years ot 
 its life practically determine everything as to its 
 future ; its destiny for time and for eternity, whether 
 it shall be saved or lost, and whether if saved, or if 
 lost, it shall become a man or woman of influence 
 and power to pull down or lift up a multitude ot 
 other souls. All this will be largely decided during 
 the next ten years. 
 
 For the character is formed in childhood, the 
 impressions made then are the ineffaceable ones. 
 When a boy about fourteen or fifteen years of age, 
 I committed the book of Matthew to memory one 
 summer while employed on the home farm driving 
 
GOD'S CHILD 37 
 
 two yoke of oxen on a plow. The feat was 
 accomplished so that I could repeat the book from 
 beginning to end. And that book is mine to-day, 
 substantially so, at least. Though I cannot now 
 repeat it as I could then, yet it is mine as no other 
 portion of the sacred volume is mine. I have 
 attempted since to commit various other portions 
 of the Bible to memory, but I cannot remember 
 them as I remember Matthew. And that book has 
 entered into the formation of my character and life 
 as no other portion of the holy Scriptures has been 
 able to do. But so have the dirty, nasty stories 
 that the hired man used to tell us boys while at 
 work on the farm, in the same way entered into 
 my life and helped to tone my character. I have 
 wished a thousand times that I could banish those 
 miserable stories from my memory and life ; but 
 every little while they come up unbidden, as fresh 
 and real almost as the day I heard them. A source 
 of bitterest regret; a dreaded "octopus" that 1 
 cannot shake off, whose tentacles are fastened way 
 down on the foundations of my being and character 
 these stories are. 
 
 The statement that a boy reared in an almshouse 
 until fourteen years old will almost certainly be a 
 pauper for life 1 is only a confirmation of each one's 
 personal experience. We are all very largely what 
 we were made in childhood. We cannot get away 
 from the memories and the habits and the impres- 
 sions of our early days. 
 
 1 See page 40. 
 
38 THE CHILD AND GOD 
 
 " The president of a great university said he would 
 give years of his life if he could forget the scenes 
 and thoughts which came to him from his youth." 
 
 O Christian parent, be careful what sort of hired 
 man or hired woman, or what class of wild street 
 arabs you allow to come in contact with your boy 
 or girl. Do not cloud an entire life and handicap 
 your child for eternity by allowing its young and 
 tenacious memory to be filled up with thoughts and 
 impressions that can only degrade and defile, and 
 yet can never be effaced. 
 
 But why discuss this even for a moment ; the 
 thought is familiar to every thoughtful person. 
 "As the twig is bent, the tree is inclined." The 
 clay when soft can be molded as you please ; in the 
 hands of the potter it can be fashioned into this or 
 that vessel, as suits the potter's taste ; every little 
 indentation or figure is easily made, whether of 
 hideous look or beautiful contour. But once made 
 it remains forever. A day's drying and a few 
 hours' heat in the furnace renders those little 
 finger marks fixed and unchangeable, except by 
 immense and persevering effort. 
 
 God evidently understands, as we cannot, this 
 peculiar characteristic of childhood ; hence his 
 intense interest to capture that child for heaven 
 when its capture is easy ; to have the molding of 
 that pliable clay before it becomes kiln-dried and 
 heated in the furnace ; to have the direction of the 
 little twig when every little bend and twist shall 
 help to shape the beauty of the tree. 
 
GOD'S CHILD 39 
 
 No wonder therefore that God is deeply interested 
 in this ragged boy we have put before us ; that he 
 can afford to appoint a cohort of angels to attend 
 him ; that Jesus himself comes down by his side 
 and offers the richest prize in God's universe to the 
 one who will receive and care for him. 
 
 What, then, shall we venture to do with this boy 
 found to be the child of a King, presumptive heir 
 to the throne, and containing in himself the seed 
 germs of a possible million other kings ? 
 
Ill 
 
 WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH HIM ? 
 
 A BRIEF glance at what we have been doing 
 with him in the past may be suggestive 
 reading, and possibly pave the way for a 
 wiser answer to this question. 
 
 In the working out of the great problem what to 
 do with a homeless, outcast child, there have been 
 at least four well-defined stages, each A great ad- 
 vance over its predecessors — the almshouse, the 
 orphanage or children's home, the boarding family, 
 and the Christian home. 
 
 THE ALMSHOUSE 
 
 i. The almshouse was the first attempt to care 
 for this class of children. But its utter inadequacy 
 to meet the needs very soon became apparent for 
 two special reasons : 
 
 (i) The child is the father of the man. A pauper 
 child means a pauper man, and probably a genera- 
 tion of paupers. An intelligent man who had spent 
 his life in the care of almshouses told the writer 
 that " A boy reared in an almshouse until fourteen 
 years of age will almost certainly be a pauper for 
 life. Place him out in the best of families and he 
 will drift back to the almshouse, If he remains out 
 40 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH HIM ? 
 
 41 
 
 until married, and has a family of children, he will 
 work his way back to the almshouse before he dies, 
 taking his children with him." To rear a child, then, 
 
 As Rescued from a County Poorhouse 
 
 I was 
 
 " For I was an hungered, and ye gave me meat 
 a stranger and ye took me in." 
 " Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of 
 these my brethren ye have done it unto me." 
 
42 THE CHILD AND GOD 
 
 in an almshouse means a lifelong pauper, a genera- 
 tion of paupers, very likely generations of paupers. 
 (2) But still worse, the criminal instincts are 
 easily developed in a child. The tendency with al) 
 of us is to the bad ; the natural drift is with the cur- 
 rent downward. It requires a struggle, an ener- 
 getic effort to go up stream. Without the strongest 
 kind of restraint and uplifting influences the average 
 child will be a failure morally. How groundless then 
 the hope that anything valuable, or even moder- 
 ately respectable, can come from the child whose 
 daily association is with all sorts of the shiftless 
 and worthless and semi-criminals to be found in 
 the average almshouse. A child reared in an alms- 
 house means a wrecked manhood, as a rule, and a 
 degenerate progeny. 
 
 THE ORPHANAGE 
 
 2. The natural step out of the almshouse was the 
 institution, the orphanage without the almshouse 
 drawbacks, A vast step in advance this, especially 
 when the institution was founded, and is conducted 
 by thoroughly Christian people, as they usually 
 are. The up-to-date institution furnishes good, 
 wholesome, moral restraint, a fairly good intellec- 
 tual training, systematic and helpful physical cul- 
 ture, etc. But the institutional life is not the nor- 
 mal or natural one for the child. And the consensus 
 of opinion by the best sociological experts is against 
 it. While the child is guarded against a multitude 
 of evil influences its development is abnormal, a 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH HIM ? 
 
 43 
 
 sort of hotbed growth. The plant reared in the 
 hothouse lacks the strong, sturdy, hardy character 
 of the plant grown out in the sun and exposed to 
 
 Our Future Citizens. This Promising Group 
 Received at the Same Time 
 
 " Save the children and you save this country ; save 
 this country and you save this world." 
 
 the winds and the storms, and the sudden and some- 
 times severe atmospherical changes. 
 
 God did not put children into institutions, in 
 groups, to be reared like flocks of sheep or herds of 
 
44 THE CHILD AND GOD 
 
 cattle or schools of fish. He puts them in families, 
 and usually one at a time. God places emphasis, 
 an immense value upon each individual child, be- 
 cause he has a vastly important and a unique place 
 for each one to occupy during the future ages. 
 Just as he creates each separate world by itself, 
 with a distinct personality, a form and design and 
 destiny peculiarly its own in the building up of his 
 mighty universe, so he has arranged in the family 
 life that each child shall be a unit, a unit too that 
 is complete in itself, having a personality of its 
 own, and destined both here and in the future life 
 to a career that will require self-poise and independ- 
 ence and strength, qualities not so likely to be 
 developed in the institutional life. Not only does 
 each child come alone into the world, but after its 
 birth how speedily it succeeds in centering the life 
 and thought and interest of the family circle upon 
 itself. It becomes a little tyrant, a real despot, 
 whose every want must be carefully and speedily 
 met or there is trouble. Its very first instincts are 
 thus a sort of prophecy of what it is destined to 
 become in the amazing plan of God — a "king" 
 and a "priest unto God." The family life rather 
 than the institutional life furnishes the normal con- 
 ditions for the nurture and the development of the 
 child for its life here as well as for its life hereafter. 
 But we had to reach this thought by gradual 
 approaches, one step at a time. The institution 
 was the logical and natural escape from the alms- 
 house, and has proved of inestimable value to a vast 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH HIM ? 45 
 
 number of children who would otherwise have be- 
 come criminals or paupers. It has proved of value 
 also as an object-lesson for earnest philanthropists 
 and students of sociology and lovers of children. It 
 has helped immensely in the study of the child prob- 
 lem, and if it has itself furnished the clear evidence 
 that institutional life is not the normal life for a child, 
 it has nevertheless earned a title to the lasting grati- 
 tude of the Christian world. It has proved a half- 
 way house between the almshouse and the family, 
 and the distance between these two is so great that 
 it is questionable whether the social conscience or 
 the Christian conscience could ever have spanned 
 it without the help of this half-way halting-place. 
 
 THE BOARDING FAMILY 
 
 3. The third step has therefore already been 
 reached, the family life, the natural, normal life for 
 every child. These poor children have been de- 
 prived of this blessed boon, a real home. The 
 parents have died or they have abandoned their 
 children, or remorseless poverty or sheer shiftless- 
 ness has unfitted them for this sacred trust, and 
 these children are without a home. What shall be 
 done for them ? The public conscience will no 
 longer consent to their committal to the almshouse, 
 except possibly for a few days ; and the best minds 
 and largest hearts of to-day have decided against the 
 institution as a permanent home for their education 
 and training. A real home, family life is the life these 
 children need and the life their own natures ardently 
 
 45 
 
46 
 
 THE CHILD AND GOD 
 
 crave. But there are obstacles in the way, grave, 
 and some of them apparently insurmountable. 
 
 In the first place, families that perhaps are most 
 in need of a child, and have the means in abun- 
 dance for providing a good home for one, do not 
 
 
 pr*^ w ■■*" 
 
 
 -v. 
 
 MJTmKM 
 
 1 \ii-3 
 
 
 
 
 if 
 
 Hwva 
 
 bHL * ''&fc~ 
 
 
 ipsP 
 
 
 Hi 
 
 r^^^^^^^ 
 
 
 'The Soul's Awakening" 
 
 A White Child Rescued 
 
 from Negroes 
 
 in December, 1901 
 
 Same Child a Few Weeks Later 
 
 as Adopted in 
 
 a Christian Home 
 
 want it. A " gilt-edged " child they might take; 
 the child of some respectable relative, or of a family 
 whose social standing was on a par with their own, 
 but they could never think of taking such children 
 as these unfortunates from the lower classes ! This 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH HIM ? 47 
 
 has been one of the most difficult things to over- 
 come, especially here in the East. Misconceptions 
 as to heredity are almost universal. Indeed, false 
 ideas of caste seem to be natural ; they are inbred. 
 "We are the people/' "Our blood is A No. 1 
 blood/' is a conceit not confined to the " Four 
 Hundred " by any manner of means. Aristocracy 
 is in all our veins. The world was made and re- 
 volves chiefly for us, and those persons are simply 
 unfortunate who are not closely related to us either 
 by blood or marriage or business relation, or who 
 happen not to be wealthy. Of course plenty of 
 money usually atones for almost all kinds of bad 
 heredities ! It is exceedingly hard to get rid of the 
 idea that the poor classes, especially the children 
 of misfortune, belong to an inferior race, second- 
 grade people whose birthright and inheritance is a 
 menial life, a life of servitude. 
 
 The idea that the child from the lowest and most 
 degraded surroundings may have fairly good blood 
 in its veins, and at all events should be placed in a 
 first-class Christian family, not as a servant, but 
 given all the exalted opportunities of an own child, 
 appears simply "awful" in the estimation of a 
 multitude of very wise people ! The agents of the 
 Children's Home Society have even been accused 
 of imposition when they place a child of unknown 
 or of known bad heredities in a nice family ! And 
 the suggestion has been made that such outrageous 
 proceedings should be stopped by statutory laws if 
 they could not otherwise be prevented ! 
 
 D 
 
48 THE CHILD AND GOD 
 
 This caste prejudice is more prevalent in the 
 Eastern than in the Western States, perhaps be- 
 cause we have studied the subject of heredity more 
 thoroughly ! 
 
 At all events, after the revolt against institu- 
 tional life, there appeared no other way of getting 
 these unfortunate children into family homes here in 
 the East, except to pay for their board. It was found 
 that by paying an amount equivalent to the average 
 cost of keeping the child in the institution, one dol- 
 lar and fifty cents to two dollars per week, with the 
 cost of clothing and medical attendance added, 
 a sufficient number of respectable families would 
 open their doors. And because families in some 
 instances would become so much attached to their 
 boarders as to decide to take them as their own, 
 and thus relieve the municipality of their further 
 support, advocates of this boarding-out system have 
 become very positive in their convictions that it 
 is the system and answers the puzzling problem 
 "What shall be done with the dependent chil- 
 dren ? " more satisfactorily than any other system 
 yet devised. This boarding-out system has grown 
 into such favor that it has become the prevailing 
 method in the States of Massachusetts, Rhode 
 Island, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, and four years 
 ago was adopted in New Jersey by legal enactment, 
 and partially adopted in other States, in a modified 
 form in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. 
 
 This boarding-out system has some desirable 
 considerations in its favor as compared with the 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH HIM ? 49 
 
 institutional life that it is designed to supersede. 
 But there are objections to the system that are ab- 
 solutely fatal to its claim as the ideal system. I 
 have in hand the annual reports of the Children's 
 Aid Society of Pennsylvania for eight years. This 
 is one of the largest and most reputable of the older 
 child-saving agencies in this country. During these 
 eight years two thousand one hundred and twenty- 
 three dependent children were under their control. 
 Seven hundred of these were pauper children, that 
 is children who had been committed to various alms- 
 houses in the State and by the almshouse authorities 
 placed under the control of this Aid Society. 
 
 A careful study of these eight annual reports sug- 
 gests some weaknesses in the system. 
 
 It is an expensive system ; not expensive as com- 
 pared with the two older systems, the almshouse 
 and the orphanage. But as compared with the 
 new plan, the ideal or God's plan, the boarding-out 
 system is exceedingly expensive. The money con- 
 sideration, however, is not the matter of most im- 
 portance. The boarding-out system fails to secure 
 a teal home for the child. Even when most effi- 
 ciently administered, as in Pennsylvania, where 
 great wisdom has for the most part been displayed 
 in the selection of the best available homes, fol- 
 lowed too by a very admirable system of oversight, 
 with rigid rules as to the child's attendance upon 
 the day-school, the Sabbath-school, and the church, 
 it has failed in that respect. The best boarding- 
 house in the world, even though located in the 
 
50 THE CHILD AND GOD 
 
 country with ideal surroundings, can never take 
 the place of a real home in the thought and the 
 heart and the life of a child. 
 
 In the first place, it is unfortunate that the appeal 
 must be made to the mercenary side of our nature 
 to induce the family to take a child. The pay for 
 its board was the inducement held out and ac- 
 cepted. In our opinion there are only two motives 
 in the human heart that are sufficiently strong and 
 sufficiently God-like to insure the highest interests 
 of a child — real parental affection, and love for 
 God. That person who can see in the child his 
 own flesh and blood, or learns to recognize the 
 new-comer as such, and love it as though it were 
 his very own ; and that other person who loves 
 God supremely and gets a clear view of God's in- 
 terest in a homeless child, his great yearning for 
 its rescue, and why he is interested, and then takes 
 that child to his home and his heart, with an intel-' 
 ligent purpose to aid in accomplishing God's wish 
 and plan — these two persons can be safely trusted 1 
 with the raising of a child, a young immortal. Any 
 lower motive, especially the mercenary one, may 
 mean neglect or disaster. For the child is regarded 
 as a boarder. The neighbors and the neighbors' 
 children all know that this child is simply a boarder, 
 and a charity boarder at that ; the chief factor in 
 the acceptance and in the retaining of this child by 
 the family being the pay received from the State or 
 from a large benevolent organization. And this 
 
 1 For an exception to the first of these persons see pp. 108, 109. 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH HIM ? 5 1 
 
 mercenary spirit naturally grows stronger. If the 
 child remains in the family for years, it will at first 
 be received with much affection. Its helplessness 
 and its innocency will appeal irresistibly to the 
 heart of those who have it in charge. But as the 
 child grows into independence and becomes self- 
 willed and perhaps saucy, and difficult to manage, 
 and begins to exhibit unmistakable traits of un- 
 fortunate heredities, it will require a deeper interest 
 than the paltry sum received for the child's board 
 to make that family willing to grapple with the 
 situation with a firm hand and a strong purpose. 
 
 A practical illustration of this statement was 
 given the writer several years ago by a prominent 
 Presbyterian pastor who had previously been a 
 pastor in Pennsylvania, and was personally ac- 
 quainted with the incident. A little boy named 
 Tommy was taken by a family with the full inten- 
 tion of adopting him, but it finally concluded "as 
 that course would cut off the money received from 
 the county for his board, amounting to one hun- 
 dred dollars a year, not to do so." The outcome 
 was very unfortunate : " I saw Tommy last Sum- 
 mer and he is a specimen of humanity of which 
 very few people would be proud. For the last few 
 years he has been cast out to the tender mercies 
 of mankind to make his own way." 
 
 That this is not an exceptional case becomes 
 very apparent as we study the eight annual reports 
 of the Children's Aid Society of Pennsylvania. 
 During these eight years, with two thousand one 
 
52 THE CHILD AND GOD 
 
 hundred and twenty-three children under its care, 
 only seventeen are reported as adopted. In 1894 and 
 
 1897, four were adopted each year ; in 1896 and 
 
 1898, three each year ; in 1895, 1900, and 1901, one 
 each year ; and in 1899, not one was adopted. In 
 the report for 1897, we learn that of the four adopted 
 that year, one of them had been kept by the 
 family nine years before papers of adoption were 
 taken out, and the child was then thirteen years 
 old. That is to say, the family put off adoption 
 for nine years in order to secure the one hundred 
 dollars each year for its board. And when the 
 child reached the age of thirteen, and they could no 
 longer receive pay for its board (under the rules of the 
 Society), then they took out papers of adoption. Two 
 of the other children were boarded for five years 
 each, and the fourth one three years before adop- 
 tion papers were called for. Here are four cases 
 only during an entire year where love for the child 
 survived the onslaught of mammon. The society 
 during that year had eight hundred and seventy- 
 three children under its care, and at the close of 
 the year had four hundred and thirty for whom it 
 was still paying board. 
 
 Of course, it was not altogether the sop of one 
 hundred dollars a year board money that prevented 
 all these other four hundred and thirty children, 
 or any considerable portion of them from being 
 adopted. In many cases, it was the " caste prej- 
 udice " already alluded to, and the fact that these 
 were known to be "charity children " by the 
 
Twelve of These Unfortunates 
 
54 THE CHILD AND GOD 
 
 neighbors and the friends of these various families. 
 Fastidious and hypercritical people would laugh at 
 them, or possibly sneer at the very suggestion that 
 a "family of the social standing of Mr. and Mrs. 
 
 H could be willing to take a * charity ' child as 
 
 its own child ; a child of unfortunate antecedents, 
 as the most of them are, and who probably has hid 
 in its blood all sorts of mischievous and dangerous 
 tendencies. " These families will not adopt these 
 children as their own, but for the consideration of 
 one hundred dollars per year, they will keep them 
 in their own families just the same ; in constant 
 touch and most familiar intercourse with their own 
 children ; helping to mold the characters and dis- 
 tribute their poison — if there be poison in their 
 blood — to every young and tender member of the 
 household. This is all right in the estimation of 
 these fastidious and hypercritical people. They can 
 discover no objection to having these children in the 
 family, provided the family does not adopt them. 
 
 But whatever may be the reason, the fact re- 
 mains that the boarding-out system appears to be 
 fatal to the dearest interest of the child in the 
 matter of adoption. Here in Pennsylvania is a large 
 society equipped with the best possible facilities 
 and with large wisdom and long years of experience, 
 having two thousand one hundred and twenty-three 
 children pass through its hand, and at least one-half 
 of this number boarded in the country in plain, sub- 
 stantial, respectable homes for a period averaging 
 from one to ten or twelve years each, and only 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH HIM ? 
 
 55 
 
 seventeen out of them all have succeeded in so 
 winning their way into the hearts of these families 
 as to secure the blessings of a real, true home by 
 legal adoption. 1 This is certainly not encouraging. 
 Something is evidently wrong somewhere. Lit- 
 tle innocent children are wonderfully winsome. It 
 would require a mighty counter current to success- 
 
 As Received Through 
 the Court 
 
 Eighteen Months Later 
 
 Adoptel as an Only Child 
 
 in a Christian Family 
 
 fully resist the magnet of their eloquent appeals for 
 true love and a real home. But caste prejudice 
 and the love of money are well-nigh irresistible ; 
 and if these do not account for the turning down 
 and the blighting of so many of these precious 
 
 1 The experience of the State Board of Children's Guardians in New 
 Jersey is much the same. During- the first three years, one thousand two 
 hundred and seventy-nine children came under their control, and four hun- 
 dred and twenty-three of these were still in their hands at the end of the 
 third year— but only eight had been adopted. See Report for 1902. 
 
56 THE CHILD AND GOD 
 
 lives ana precious souls, then let the friends of the 
 boarding-out system explain. 
 
 And for a brief moment let us consider what it 
 means to a child to be deprived of this great privi- 
 lege, legal adoption. Not to be adopted but treated as 
 a public charge, the child is denied many privileges 
 that an own child secures. The following letter from 
 a ward of the New Jersey Children's Home Society 
 who has been adopted is very suggestive : 
 
 I am getting to be a very big girl, and 1 will be thirteen 
 
 years old on May . Mamma is going to give me a silver 
 
 watch for my birthday, and papa is going to give me a gold 
 ring. I got an organ for Christmas. I am taking music 
 lessons every week. I have a wheel which I got when I was 
 twelve years old, and I like it very much. Mamma and papa 
 are as kind to me as they can be, and I almost get everything 
 that I want. 
 
 A child boarded out would hardly be provided 
 with watches, rings, organs, music lessons, wheels, 
 and a multitude of other pleasant and desirable 
 things that love furnishes. 
 
 An adopted child has a great many other advan- 
 tages over a ward of the State. He is not turned 
 loose at fifteen years of age to look out for himself, 
 but tenderly cared for until of age, taught a lucra- 
 tive trade, perhaps is admitted into partnership 
 with his father, and at the father's death becomes 
 his heir. All these special privileges of a son and 
 a multitude more that will readily occur to the 
 reader are not enjoyed by the child boarded out, or 
 by a ward of the State, however cared for. 
 
WHAT SHALL WE DO WITH HIM ? 
 
 57 
 
 We believe fully in the statement of our fore- 
 fathers that "All men are created free and equal/' 
 and among other inalienable rights are "life, liberty. 
 
 Drifting 
 
 As Rescued from 
 the Slua\s 
 
 Anchored 
 
 After Five Months in a 
 Christian Family 
 
 and the pursuit of happiness. " That little innocent 
 child is not to blame because its father was unfor- 
 tunate, and it ought not to be punished for life be- 
 cause of that fact. But if the old ideas of caste are 
 
58 THE CHILD AND GOD 
 
 correct, then the institutional life or the boarding- 
 out system is the proper method for the training of 
 this class of children. Either system will do well 
 enough all that is needed to be done for these chil- 
 dren. That is, it will fit them for a life of servi- 
 tude, and perhaps make them content with a second- 
 rate station for life. At least, by years of persistent 
 drilling, they are taught to look on resignedly and 
 see happy children all around them receive all sorts 
 of tender love tokens, valuable presents, special 
 school privileges, business opportunities, an heir- 
 ship to valuable estates, or other perquisites forever 
 denied to them. 
 
 But if our contention is correct, then these old 
 systems are awkward blunders, the rude attempts 
 of beginners in the science of sociology. They are 
 worse than blunders because they are dealing with 
 young immortals ; pardonable perhaps, because 
 done in our ignorance, but nevertheless real rob- 
 beries. They rob the child, they rob society, they 
 rob God, and rob God's universe of immeasurable 
 good that might accrue had those children secured 
 another kind of training and environment. We 
 show to you, therefore, a more excellent way. 
 
IV 
 THE CHRISTIAN HOME 
 
 WE are prepared, then, for the fourth stage in 
 the development of the child-saving prob- 
 lem, the Christian home. First, the alms- 
 house ; second, the orphanage ; third, the boarding 
 family ; and fourth, the Christian home. The last 
 two terms are used relatively. They are not in- 
 tended to describe character, but motive. By the 
 boarding family is meant the family that takes the 
 child without a Christian motive in the taking; 
 takes it for the pay offered for its board, or for the 
 service it is expected to get out of the child in the 
 form of work. In this class is a multitude of the 
 very best Christian families, but their Christian 
 principles and motives take second place in the re- 
 ception of this child. They have been governed 
 chiefly by pecuniary considerations, perhaps be- 
 cause they have not yet learned how to bring 
 Christ prominently into their daily life and their 
 business plans ; more likely, however, because 
 they have never stopped to consider what an im- 
 mensely important matter it is, this assuming charge 
 of a priceless soul, educating and training a future 
 king and priest unto God. 
 
 By the term " Christian home " is simply meant 
 
 59 
 
6o 
 
 THE CHILD AND GOD 
 
 a family that takes a child for Christ's sake, takes 
 it to help save it. This is God's plan, and there- 
 fore the highest, the ideal plan, and is plainly and 
 
 fully set forth in 
 the words al- 
 ready consider- 
 ed : "Whoso- 
 ever will receive 
 one such little 
 child in my 
 name." 
 
 And the point 
 we desire to im- 
 press is that 
 every child, no 
 matter what its 
 antecedents, has 
 such unspeak- 
 able interests 
 depending upon 
 the disposition 
 now made of it, 
 and the circum- 
 stances that for 
 the next few 
 years shall sur- 
 round it, that we 
 cannot, we dare not, be careless or thoughtless. We 
 are treading on holy ground, and should therefore 
 "walk softly before God." 
 If the president's boy were actually found on the 
 
 X "% 
 
 
 ' 
 
 - - ■■..:, 
 
 ■ is* 
 
 
 ft^^i . 
 
 »*M^ 
 
 
 
 I ■ **• 
 
 S "**^^ 
 
THE CHRISTIAN HOME 6l 
 
 street corner in the plight we have described, and 
 the president, for reasons of his own, should de- 
 cide to let one of us take this boy for a period of 
 years, to be trained and fitted for some high and 
 noble position, would he esteem it a matter of small 
 importance whether the family had a clear sense of 
 the responsibilities it was assuming, and some con- 
 ception of the kind of care and training the boy 
 needed to fit him in the best possible way for his 
 future life, and that would therefore devote time 
 and thought and heart just as far as possible to the 
 attainment of this object ? To cherish any low con- 
 ceptions of the obligations assumed, or allow any 
 mercenary considerations to hide from view the real 
 purpose of the father in committing his beloved child 
 to its care would at once prove such family to be 
 unfit to be entrusted with so important a charge. 
 
 It is clearly not sufficient that the family be a 
 Christian family, or that it take the child free of 
 charge. An institutional life, even an almshouse 
 might be a safer place in which to rear a boy than 
 many a good Christian family, if the persons in 
 charge have a clearer and higher conception of 
 what they are undertaking. And the family best 
 fitted to train that boy and that would do it most 
 carefully and conscientiously might very likely ac- 
 cept and expect liberal pay for the services ren- 
 dered. The mere fact of receiving pay for services 
 rendered does not necessarily unfit a person for the 
 highest and holiest service. 
 
 The conclusion reached by the best sociologists 
 
62 THE CHILD AND GOD 
 
 of the present day is that, other things being equal, 
 the Christian family is by far the best place be- 
 cause it is the natural place for the completest all- 
 around development of a child ; and the point we 
 desire to impress is that this best place is not an 
 ideal place unless the family has reached up in 
 some degree to God's conception of the value of 
 the child, and has also grasped in a measure God's 
 conception of the kind of training and environment 
 best calculated to fit that child for its high destiny. 
 
 And if the greatest care and wisdom would be 
 exercised in the selection of a home for the train- 
 ing of the son of our president, how much more 
 need of carefulness and of wisdom in the disposi- 
 tion we make of this ragged boy whom we have 
 discovered to be a child of a king, and that king 
 the "King of kings" and "Lord of lords," and 
 whose Father has a very large place for him to oc- 
 cupy by and by, and has now providentially thrown 
 him into our hands in this strange way to give us 
 the opportunity of aiding him in the boy's rescue 
 from the grasp of the destroyer, and to fit him in 
 the best possible way for the priesthood and the 
 kingdom, both here and hereafter, that he has 
 prepared for him. 
 
 i. If God has really adopted this child as his 
 own, and has entrusted me with its care, then a 
 strange sacredness at once attaches to such a trust 
 — the consciousness of an exalted mission. It is 
 God's child ; he, therefore, is a party to everything 
 I do for that child ; not an interested spectator 
 
THE CHRISTIAN HOME 
 
 63 
 
 simply, but a vitally interested party. He owns 
 that child, and everything I do for it or neglect to 
 do is done for Him or against Him. He sees a jewel 
 of incalculable value in that child. Let me there- 
 fore beware 
 how I esteem 
 it lightly or 
 despise it. 
 He has a 
 wonderfully 
 exalted mis- 
 sion, a king- 
 d m pre- 
 pared for 
 that child 
 from the 
 foundation of 
 the world, 
 and is there- 
 fore deeply, 
 personal ly 
 interested in 
 every word 
 and act by 
 
 which I may influence him. He not only has large 
 things in store for this child, but as already learned, 
 He can count up the ten thousand streams of influ- 
 ence whose measure and power over others are to be 
 determined chiefly by the thoroughness of the training 
 that I may be able to give him. Let me therefore trem- 
 ble lest by any neglect of mine God's plans shall be 
 
64 THE CHILD AND GOD 
 
 frustrated and that child miss of his kingdom, and the 
 whole universe be forever the poorer for my care- 
 lessness and sin. Of course, this kind of careful 
 and thorough oversight might be exercised in an in- 
 stitution or a boarding house. Naturally, however, 
 it belongs rather to the privacy of the home life, 
 and grows out of the tender and loving ties that 
 bind parent and child together, especially in that 
 home that has come to recognize God as its center. 
 
 2. It is God's child, and therefore an exalted 
 honor to be permitted to receive and care for it. 
 Instead of such a child being beneath my grade, I 
 am exceedingly exalted by the privilege of receiv- 
 ing it. I have become the debtor instead of the 
 child, because that child is no longer counted the 
 lowly, degraded offspring of some outcast from so- 
 ciety. We have discovered that it is a very near 
 and dear relative of the great King, and therefore 
 worthy of being received and held in honor by the 
 most refined and noblest family on earth. 
 
 Suppose this child does by and by begin to ex- 
 hibit bad heredities, as very likely he will, what will 
 we do with him ? If it was our president's boy, 
 what would we do ? For his boy will be found filled 
 full of the most mischievous tendencies, and some 
 of them very depraving, unless he differs from your 
 boy or mine. Will we immediately return him to 
 his father with our tale of woe ? Rather will we not 
 begin at once with energy and wisdom to wrestle 
 with these new problems and seek to overcome 
 them ? This little waif, filled full of unfortunate 
 
THE CHRISTIAN HOME 65 
 
 heredities, has yet been adopted by the great King. 
 Because he can see wonderful possibilities in him 
 he has conferred upon me the distinguished honor 
 of helping him to secure for that little child all 
 these possibilities. And that there may be no 
 chance of failure in my mission, he has put that 
 child into my keeping while very young and tender 
 and easily molded. He has withal placed in my 
 hands for the capture and control of that child, 
 agencies and instruments that are absolutely irre- 
 sistible, if wisely and faithfully used, his wonderful 
 word, quick and powerful, assisted by the Holy 
 Spirit, and by his own gracious presence in my 
 home and in my heart. Under such circumstances, 
 to refuse to receive the child, or to return it in dis- 
 gust after it has been received because it begins to 
 develop depraved appetites or passions, is to reveal 
 an utter misconception of the true situation, a lack 
 of high motive in the reception of the child, or a 
 want of faith in God's real love and interest in it. 
 
 We do not claim that the discovery of God's rela- 
 tion to these outcast children can put into them 
 what nature may in some instances have denied 
 them. That is, it will not give them natural talent, 
 if they do not inherit it. It will not make a dull 
 and unpromising child bright. It will not make a 
 homely child beautiful, or change red hair to brown, 
 or hazel eyes to blue. It will not transform the 
 fault-finding, or ugly, or fretful, or selfish, or sinister 
 natures into models of innocence and sweetness. 
 To receive a child in the name of Christ does not 
 
66 THE CHILD AND GOD 
 
 mean that such a child will be made over to order, 
 and have all its crookedness straightened out. No 
 good thing is cheap, nor can be procured for a song. 
 " There is no excellence without great labor." 
 
 Naturally we all shrink from hard work, espe- 
 cially if it involves sacrifice or suffering or large 
 responsibility. If we could take one of these home- 
 less ones into our family, and have only a play 
 spell, balmy breezes and a smooth sea, or an easy 
 down grade, we would not hesitate a moment. But 
 when there stares us in the face the practical hu- 
 man side, an up-hill tug, great care and trouble, and 
 anxiety, and patience, and time, and money, and a 
 weight of responsibility, then we shrink back. 
 
 But this is our supreme mistake. The largest 
 reward comes through the greatest suffering, exal- 
 tation through humiliation ; the crown lies beneath 
 the cross ; the sweetest scent comes from the 
 crushed flower ; the most beautiful rose is plucked 
 from the thorn bush ; the hotter the furnace the 
 purer the gold ; crucifixion before exaltation. 
 
 But how difficult for us to realize this, one of 
 God's greatest thoughts, and himself the grandest 
 illustration of it. We have already learned that 
 the saved are to occupy the very highest place. 
 But see what it costs ! A mere word of command 
 could bring an angel into being, or create a world 
 of beauty and people it with intelligences. But to 
 lift a soul out of its ruin and up into childhood, oh, 
 what an infinite sacrifice on the part of God ! A 
 mighty universe could be brought into being and 
 
THE CHRISTIAN HOME 67 
 
 filled with beauty and divinity at a cheaper price 
 than it costs to bring one son unto glory. 
 
 It costs us comparatively nothing to secure a 
 servant — the payment of a little coin, a paltry pit- 
 tance. But to secure a son, a child, oh, what anx- 
 ious hours and days and months and years ! What 
 travail of soul and body before the child is born 
 into the world ! And then what years of care, of 
 mingled joy and sorrow ; what anxiety, what yearn- 
 ing of soul, what suspense, what hopes and fears ! 
 Think of the time bestowed in the rearing and train- 
 ing of one child, and the money spent. Oh, it costs 
 something to secure a child ! 
 
 But what is the cost of the sowing compared with 
 the final harvest, if your child is saved ? What are 
 a few years of suffering compared with an eternity 
 of bliss and honor and glory ? 
 
 In this little treatise, we are trying to take God's 
 side, and ask families to receive the homeless little 
 one as their own child, not as a servant. They, 
 perhaps, are in need of a servant, and have gone 
 to the almshouse, or some "orphanage," or "chil- 
 dren's aid society," and asked for a boy or girl old 
 enough to serve them. And what have they se- 
 cured ? Just what they asked for ; a servant, a 
 temporary good, possibly. But their soul has not 
 been enriched by the process, heaven has not been 
 consulted, the future not considered ; they have 
 given nothing to God, have made no sacrifice. 
 
 We come to urge that such families make a great 
 mistake in asking for a servant. We come to say 
 
68 
 
 THE CHILD AND GOD 
 
 that there is a jewel in that abandoned child, a rare 
 opportunity of securing riches and glory and honor 
 and joy unending. 
 
 But it will cost something, some fellowship with 
 Christ's sufferings and death ; it will cost time and 
 
 As Received 
 
 In His Adopted Home 
 a Little Later 
 
 money and patience, and wisdom and grace ; it will 
 cost many a " heartache " ; it will cost periods of 
 disappointment and discouragement and almost of 
 despair. But, oh, what has been secured ? A child, 
 a child for time and for eternity ! More, a prince of 
 the realm, and that realm the mighty universe ! A 
 
THE CHRISTIAN HOME 69 
 
 king and a priest unto God ! What has been se- 
 cured ? The Master's presence in the heart and 
 life. "For whosoever shall receive one such little 
 child in my name, receiveth me." And the Master's 
 final benediction, "Ye have done it unto me." 
 
 3. But let us note a third consideration, the wages 
 God offers me if I receive this little waif : " receiv- 
 eth me," I get the Christ ! The highest wages in 
 the gift of the universe ! He does not offer me two 
 dollars per week board money. He does not hold 
 out as an inducement the little service this child 
 can render me as a servant. He simply offers me 
 himself ! And suggests that in the final account- 
 ing, he will say to me, " Inasmuch as ye did it unto 
 one of the least of these, ye did it unto me." And 
 he offers me a star in my crown ! 
 
V 
 
 THE CHILDREN'S HOME SOCIETY 
 
 LET it not be imagined that the writer, because 
 personally interested in the Children's Home 
 
 Society, is filled with the conceit that this 
 society has discovered God's secrets or is the cus- 
 todian of this ideal method in child rescue. We 
 frankly confess that we believe this is God's plan 
 and therefore the ideal plan, but just as frankly 
 confess that the Children's Home Society falls far 
 short of it in its practical, everyday experiences. 
 The large majority of the families that receive its 
 children are as yet evidently governed chiefly by 
 selfish and mercenary motives, so much so that the 
 agents of this society have to be constantly on the 
 alert lest the best interests of the children be neg- 
 lected. And this is one reason why this booklet 
 is written and is needed — to lift the standard higher, 
 educate the people by holding up God's ideal. 
 
 Nevertheless, the Children's Home Society has 
 a most remarkable history, a history that very 
 clearly stamps it as from God. It originated in 
 Illinois twenty-two years ago with the rescue of 
 one beautiful baby girl from an almshouse and 
 placing it in a Christian family for adoption. It 
 now has twenty-six separate State organizations 
 
 70 
 
THE CHILDREN'S HOME SOCIETY 
 
 71 
 
 that are doing work in thirty different States of the 
 Union. It has already cared for more than twenty- 
 five thousand children and is receiving at the rate 
 of about five thousand homeless children each year, 
 
 making it the largest child-saving agency in our 
 country if not in the world. And these twenty- 
 five thousand children have been placed in care- 
 fully selected Christian homes, not as boarders or 
 as servants but as members of the household and 
 
72 THE CHILD AND GOD 
 
 enjoying all the social, educational, and religious 
 privileges granted to an own child. In fact, nearly 
 one-half of them all have been legally adopted, 
 while those not adopted are under the constant 
 watchcare of the society by means of a very simple 
 and yet very complete and efficient system, a local 
 advisory board in every town and separate com- 
 munity in each State where organized, and district 
 superintendents, from two to ten of them in each 
 State, according to the size of the State, who give 
 their whole time to the work, first, of investigating 
 personally and thoroughly each family in their dis- 
 trict who make application for a child, and then 
 regularly visiting each child placed in their district, 
 removing the child if a mistake is discovered in its 
 placement or encouraging and helping with kindly 
 advice, etc. 
 
 And while our plans and methods are yet in their 
 formative state and a large proportion of the appli- 
 cations that come to us for children are still prompted 
 by narrow and selfish and in too many cases by 
 sordid and mercenary motives, yet with great grati- 
 tude to God we are able to point to a few genuine 
 examples. 
 
 The following incident, picture and all, is clipped 
 from our little paper, " Homes for the Homeless, " 
 under date of October, 1900 : 
 
 One of the most interesting items of the summer has been 
 the apparently genuine conversion of one of our little girls, 
 only nine years old, and who has been in the care of the society 
 over four years, giving us an immense amount of anxiety. 
 
THE CHILDREN'S HOME SOCIETY 
 
 73 
 
 We have placed her in five different families, three of these 
 during the past year, but in every case she was returned as 
 unmanageable. She had grown to be saucy and independent 
 and apparently reckless of the consequences of her unruly 
 ways. It would be impossible to give in a few words any 
 idea of the variety and character or the problems an earnest 
 Christian mother 
 would find herself 
 facing in the man- 
 age m e n t of that 
 child. 
 
 On the very day 
 that the word came 
 from the fifth family 
 to come and take her 
 away we received a 
 letter from a conse- 
 crated Christian 
 woman who four 
 years ago had taken 
 this girl's next older 
 brother and has led 
 him to Christ and 
 made out of him a 
 boy that almost any 
 family in the State 
 could be proud of. 
 The substance of 
 the letter was that, 
 
 after thinking about the matter for some time, she had de- 
 cided to consecrate her life to the work of leading that refractory 
 girl to Christ. 
 
 Our eyes moistened upon reading that letter. We lost no 
 time in getting this perplexing problem into her new home, 
 little dreaming that the Lord would so speedily show his ap- 
 proval. A work that this earnest woman had figured on re- 
 quiring years of patience and great heart burden has suddenly 
 
74 THE CHILD AND GOD 
 
 (in about one month) been crowned with so marvelous a 
 transformation that the child has become the joy of the 
 whole household. Instead of a burden and a care, a " pest ,; 
 to be endured for Christ's sake, she has become a blessing 
 and a joy. How speedily, sometimes, the Lord turns our 
 hardest crosses into our greatest treasures ! 
 
 And already the Lord is using this interesting incident in 
 encouraging other families to receive incorrigible boys and 
 girls for the purpose of leading them to Christ. When this 
 class of Christian families is multiplied throughout the 
 country one of the most difficult social problems of the age 
 will be in a fair way of settlement, the disposition to be made 
 of the hundreds and thousands of our youth who are on the 
 way or already in the reform school. 
 
 This was over four years ago. It may be in 
 place to say that while this girl is still a child with 
 all the buoyancy and life and sometimes thought- 
 lessness of the child nature, she is regarded as a 
 genuine Christian, a thoroughly transformed child, 
 with a promising future if the foster mother, in 
 her poverty, can give the child the training and 
 schooling necessary to secure best results. 
 
 The following is clipped from a recent number 
 of '• The Children's Friend," the organ of the 
 Children's Home Society of South Dakota : 
 
 Some years ago a lady with children of her own came to 
 the home after one of our little ones and her heart went out 
 toward a little blind child. After she was in her home for a 
 time she took her East for treatment. This she did three 
 times, and at last had the gratification of seeing her restored 
 to sight, so that she is able now to attend the public school. 
 This, of course, was a heavy expense, but she did it for 
 Christ's sake, who said, " Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of 
 
THE CHILDREN'S HOME SOCIETY 75 
 
 the least of these ye did it unto me." But that is not all. 
 The foster parents now write for adoption papers so that the 
 child may have equal property rights with their other chil- 
 dren. And yet blatant demagogues will say that putting 
 children in such homes is farming them out to make serfs of 
 them. In this connection we want you to read the following 
 letter from a foster parent addressed to Brother Slingerland, 
 our Iowa superintendent, and published in the organ of his 
 society, the " Children's Home Herald " : 
 
 DEAR SIR : Thinking it might be of interest to the society 
 and the public in general to know that all children taken into 
 adoptive homes are not disappointing (as the mercenary and 
 unthinking would have us believe), we write to tell you of 
 our experience now after seven years with one of the little 
 souls that was adrift on the vast sea of humanity. 
 
 He came to us after you had placed him three times in other 
 homes. He was six years old, small and delicate, with a 
 well-developed case of chronic catarrh. Well, we sized him 
 up and said, " We will raise him to maturity and then he will 
 die of tuberculosis." Not much encouragement from a money- 
 making standpoint, and we were only in ordinary circum- 
 stances. But humanity said, " Here is a little soul dependent 
 in every sense of the word," and if there ever was a case of 
 humanity that blended into real religion this was one of them, 
 and, as we had experienced and observed only theoretical 
 religion, we had a curiosity to tackle the real thing. 
 
 We took the boy, placed him on a bread and milk diet (not 
 skim milk), and allowed him whatever else he wanted pro- 
 vided it was digestible, but he seemed to desire more than 
 anything else bread and milk. This agreed with him and he 
 grew. We dressed him in flannels winter and summer and 
 still do now. After seven years we have practically cured 
 his catarrh and he still uses a milk diet to a great extent. No 
 patent on this recipe. Milk diet, patience, and time are the 
 ingredients. So much for the physical. 
 
 The child being delicate, we did not start him to school 
 until he was seven years old. He showed in the beginning a 
 desire for tools. When he was given a nickel he bought nails 
 and by degrees we bought him tools as he demanded them. 
 This is his recreation. Of course he skates in the winter time 
 and goes swimming in the summer time, like other boys. He 
 goes to school, likes the school, reads the daily paper, the 
 
76 THE CHILD AND GOD 
 
 44 Scientific American " (which is bought for him exclusively), 
 the " Youth's Companion " (which is for all children), and 
 books from the public library. 
 
 He can tell you the relative strength of the world's navies, 
 he knows their ships by name, he knows the special mechan- 
 ism of the latest built gunboats, has wrecked old sewing 
 machines and clocks, knows how they run and why they run, 
 knows a stationary steam engine and can name its parts ; 
 understands steam, its force, and how it is made ; knows the 
 chemical analysis of water, air, and several gases, and is 
 studying the elementary chemistry. These, of course, are not 
 school studies ; they are studies on the side. They were left 
 in his way. If he had an appetite for them the affinity would 
 assert itself. He would read trash novels too, but he and his 
 mother discuss them, and they have already left a bad taste 
 in his mouth. He does not find that class of literature at 
 home. He is very musical, has tune and time well developed, 
 and has an unusually sweet voice. He is now thirteen years 
 of age, is strong and healthy, and if he lives he wiH^he a 
 graduate of Armour's School of Technology. 
 
 To say we are privately and silently enjoying or receiving 
 our reward does not express it. We put our money in a 
 44 prospect hole " of humanity and are so far getting diamonds 
 
 Yours truly, A FOSTER PARENT. 
 
 This is, of course, an exceptional case, and yet 
 who can tell how many diamonds of exquisite 
 beauty and inestimable value may be lying around 
 in the slums or at the bottom of the great sea of 
 humanity only awaiting some skillful diver to bring 
 them to the surface and an artist who knows how 
 to cleanse and polish them into beauty and glory ? 
 
 And may we suggest still further that, while 
 every child thus received will not develop such 
 special talent and so speedily prove a diamond 
 from the " prospect hole," yet if the reasonings 
 of this treatise are correct you have only to wait a 
 little longer and be gifted a little with the vision of 
 
THE CHILDREN'S HOME SOCIETY 
 
 77 
 
 God to see more than diamonds in every child taken 
 out of the " deeps " of sin and depravity and trans- 
 formed into a child of God and an heir of glory. 
 
 We will venture for the sake of the lesson to give 
 another incident not quite so promising as the 
 foregoing. 
 
 A boy of four- 
 teen years had 
 been in the care 
 of the New Jer- 
 s e y Children's 
 Home Society for 
 a year and a half, 
 and been re- 
 placed again and 
 again until we 
 were discouraged 
 and had decided 
 that the reform 
 school at James- 
 burg was the 
 only alternative. 
 He was bad in so many ways that we had al- 
 most reached the conclusion that he was beyond 
 the reach of the grace of God, at least so far as 
 our weak faith and our facilities as a society were 
 concerned. All the workers of our society, includ- 
 ing the matron of our Receiving Home and the force 
 in the central office, had come to agree with the 
 different families that had him on trial, that the 
 reform school was the only place. The superin- 
 
78 THE CHILD AND GOD 
 
 tendent alone hesitated. It occurred to him that 
 the boy had never yet had a first-class chance to be- 
 come a Christian. As his surroundings had all been 
 unfortunate before he came under the care of the 
 society, and the families that had since been 
 intrusted with his care had asked for a boy old 
 enough to be of service ; and while they were all 
 good Christian families, it was apparent that the 
 thought uppermost in their minds was the service 
 he could render them ; and because he was not 
 used to work, nor very reliable, had certain bad 
 habits, and was otherwise more trouble and expense 
 than he was worth, they returned him to the society. 
 Not one of them made a special effort to lead the poor 
 boy to Christ y and not one of them had thought of 
 sacrificing their work or their financial interests in 
 order to reform and save him. 
 
 So before consenting to place the boy in the 
 reform school, the superintendent went up into 
 the northern section of the State and spent a Sab- 
 bath with a consecrated farmer who had already 
 led one wild boy to the Master's feet. The family 
 had no use for the extra boy, at least for the 
 winter ; but after a full statement of the case they 
 decided to receive him, and did, just to help save him. 
 
 The boy began to improve right away. In three 
 weeks the report was "the boy is all right"; later, 
 "doing finely"; two months later, "improving 
 every day." The superintendent from the very 
 first felt a confidence that the boy would be rescued 
 and would develop into a valuable manhood. The 
 
THE CHILDREN'S HOME SOCIETY 79 
 
 reader can therefore imagine his sore disappoint- 
 ment when, after six months of improvement the 
 boy took it into his head to run away, and succeeded 
 in covering up his tracks so completely that we have 
 never learned his whereabouts. A great many 
 earnest prayers have been offered for that boy and 
 some good seed was sown that may yet take root 
 and bear fruit in the years to come, though for the 
 present we are disappointed. 
 
 This is an ideal case in theory, and though its 
 practical results have not yet developed, we have 
 given it because it presents so clearly the central 
 thought of this treatise, receiving an outcast, un- 
 promising child in the name of Christ. We could 
 give instances far more promising, for though our 
 experience in child rescue is as yet quite brief, the 
 cases are increasing. In fact, we are persuaded 
 that this ideal conception is slowly but surely get- 
 ting into the thought of a constantly increasing 
 number of Christian families who ask for children. 
 The facility with which the Children's Home 
 Society in the different States finds free homes for 
 all classes and all ages of children, without offer- 
 ing board money or other mercenary inducements, 
 is simply marvelous, considering the conditions, 
 especially here in the East. It cannot be satis- 
 factorily accounted for by the fact that there is a 
 large number of families without children, many of 
 them longing for a child to love ; for this fact has 
 existed all along in the past. Years before the 
 Children's Home Society came into existence there 
 
 F 
 
80 THE CHILD AND GOD 
 
 were empty hearts, thousands of them, longing for 
 a child to love, and there were hundreds and thou- 
 sands of children thrust into almshouses, or left 
 without care to drift into the reform school or into 
 the criminal ranks ; or if earnest Christian hearts 
 were moved to place these children in Christian 
 orphanages, they had to be kept there until old 
 enough to be of service before these empty-hearted 
 and desolate family homes were willing to receive 
 them. What was the matter ? The answer has 
 already been given ; it was the bugbear of heredity, 
 or the caste prejudice. These children from the 
 almshouse and from the slums were not counted as 
 the grade of children to be received into intelligent 
 and refined family circles as an own child. It is the 
 discovery of God's relation to such a child, his 
 deep interest in it and its exceeding worth in his 
 estimation that is rapidly changing the whole aspect 
 of the child-saving problem. It is lifting the ban 
 that has so long prohibited such unfortunate chil- 
 dren from the social privileges of the average child, 
 undermining the caste prejudice, and pulling down 
 every wall of separation. Now, not only homeless 
 children, but real outcasts, children filled with 
 unfortunate heredities, are taken by parties who a 
 few years ago would not have entertained the 
 thought for any consideration. God's view of the 
 child is gradually gaining a foothold, not through 
 the agency of the Children's Home Society alone 
 or chiefly, but a thousand things have conspired 
 together to bring about this triumph of the truth. 
 
THE CHILDREN'S HOME SOCIETY 
 
 81 
 
 God himself is coming to the front, and this is one 
 of the many evidences of his stately steppings. 
 
 At the annual conference of the National Chil- 
 dren's Home 
 Society re- 
 cently held in 
 St. Louis, Rev. 
 Dr. Hastings 
 H. Hart, the 
 super intend- 
 ent of the 
 Children's 
 Home Society 
 in Illinois, and 
 the recognized 
 leader" of this 
 form of child- 
 rescue in our 
 country, stated 
 in a public ad- 
 dress that the 
 whole history 
 of child-rescue 
 for the past 
 fifty years and 
 more reveals 
 God's hand with unmistakable distinctness — a 
 constant evolution, a gradual progression from the 
 lowest ideals to the highest. Especially from the 
 day over fifty years ago when Mr. Brace, now 
 of sainted memory, became possessed with the 
 
82 THE CHILD AND GOD 
 
 idea that family life instead of institutional life 
 was God's plan for every child, and through great 
 opposition and bitter criticism at first, began to ship 
 in carload lots the homeless children rescued from 
 the slums in New York City out to the Western 
 States to be placed there in family homes, without 
 much thought at the beginning as to the character 
 of the family that received the child, only so that 
 it was a family, the work and the ideals have been 
 gradually developing up to the present hour. One 
 man or one society or institution has developed one 
 thought, another man or institution another thought, 
 until we have apparently reached the perfect ideal 
 so far as methods and machinery are concerned. 
 Our great need now is not an improvement of 
 methods or increase of machinery, but the breath 
 of God imparting spiritual life and spiritual vision 
 and motive, so that Christian families in need of a 
 child can take God's view and be controlled by his 
 high and holy motives. And we fondly believe this 
 is coming. Our God is marching on. His views 
 are bound to come to the front and completely 
 triumph sooner or later. And even now God has 
 evidently undertaken to encourage and to honor 
 any and every child-saving agency that will raise a 
 high standard. Our experience has been uniformly 
 this : That the more careful and exacting we have 
 become in insisting upon thoroughly Christian 
 homes and Christian motives in the reception of 
 the child, the more God opens homes and hearts 
 for the children we have to place. 
 
THE CHILDREN'S HOME SOCIETY 83 
 
 Of course, we are all human, and God does not 
 ask nor expect us to throttle our natural appetites 
 and cravings. He gave John the Baptist to the old 
 couple who had never had a child, and because they 
 recognized that boy as God-given and as having a 
 very high and glorious mission, and because they 
 had a keen sense of grave responsibilities in the 
 training of that boy for his high mission ; yet that 
 did not interfere in any way, or lessen their natural 
 love for their boy, rather they loved him the more. 
 The higher his mission and the more completely he 
 belonged to God and to the entire nation, the prouder 
 they must have been of him, and the more careful in 
 their training for his high and holy mission. 
 
 So people may be expected to ask for children 
 because they want a child to love. A large vacant 
 place in their hearts is demanding an object of 
 affection ; and while that demand is natural and 
 God-given, this treatise is insisting that there is a 
 still higher conception ; that this child they ask for 
 is of high birth, and if led to Christ may become a 
 "greater than John the Baptist"; in fact, is 
 related to God, and therefore to the throne of the 
 universe. And so while they can gratify in the 
 completest possible way their natural instincts and 
 cravings for a child to love, they can at the same 
 time have that natural love intensified and increased 
 a hundred-fold by the knowledge of the high birth 
 and the grand future God has planned for that child, 
 if they can at all rise to the situation and faithfully 
 perform their duty in its training. 
 
84 THE CHILD AND GOD 
 
 We may also expect people to keep on asking for 
 children from mercenary motives, or because they 
 need a child to help them about their work. This 
 too is natural. They have the work ; it has to be 
 done ; and it is not wrong to want a child to help 
 to do it. Nor is it a wrong to the child to be placed 
 where it will be obliged to work and work hard. 
 Hard work and plenty of it is often the salvation of 
 a child. " The devil finds some mischief still for 
 idle hands to do." Far more children are spoiled 
 by idleness than by hard work. It is no valid 
 objection therefore to an applicant for a child that 
 he needs the child's help. We are simply trying 
 to lodge in these good people's heart and thought 
 a far higher conception — that here is a golden 
 opportunity to "kill two birds with one stone"; 
 that while they are securing some needed assistance 
 in their farm work or in their household duties, they 
 at the same time have the high honor of "enter- 
 taining unawares" more than "an angel," and the 
 unspeakable privilege of pleasing God, and accom- 
 plishing an untold good for posterity and for God's 
 whole universe. 
 
 And one happy thing about it is, that the more 
 prominently this higher object is kept to the front 
 in the training and the treatment of this child, the 
 larger returns will be secured in the lower realm. 
 That is to say, the boy that is led to the Lord Jesus 
 Christ as the first and most important move, and 
 then taught the highest conception of obligations to 
 God and to those around him and to the eternal 
 
THE CHILDREN'S HOME SOCIETY 
 
 85 
 
 world, is the boy who will do the best work and 
 become the most satisfactory helper in everyway. 
 
 Jesus himself was trained in his boyhood by 
 parents who had some conception of his exalted 
 mission here on earth. And their training of him 
 was so success- 
 f ul that at 
 twelve years 
 of age he was 
 certainly a prod- 
 igy of wisdom 
 and understand- 
 ing for a boy of 
 his age. But this 
 special training 
 did not interfere 
 at all with his 
 learning the car- 
 penter's trade, 
 and finally be- 
 coming, as we 
 are told, after 
 the death of his 
 reputed father, the support and comfort of his 
 mother and his younger brothers and sisters. 
 
 So, because a Christian farmer needs a boy to 
 assist him about his farmwork, this need not stand 
 in the way of his rising to the sublime conception 
 of God's ideal, and receiving that boy as a sacred 
 trust from the Master, and during all his stay on the 
 farm counting him as a younger brother of the great 
 
 Jesus in the Temple 
 
86 THE CHILD AND GOD 
 
 King, destined to sit with the King upon his throne of 
 universal empire, and therefore making it his supreme 
 care and highest privilege to so educate and train that 
 boy as to fit him for his future high vocation. 
 
 The large majority of our business men, and the 
 men who stand at the head both in the Church and 
 in the State, were raised on farms. Country life, 
 all things considered, is probably the safest and the 
 best in which to rear lawyers and preachers and 
 judges and senators and presidents. And so we 
 can see no reason why a farm shall not prove to be 
 the very best place here on earth to train "kings" 
 and "priests" who, during the future ages, are to 
 occupy the most prominent places in the govern- 
 ment and control of God's mighty universe. 
 
 But if a farmer comes to us for a boy, with evi- 
 dently only the one mercenary thought of help on 
 his farm — no matter how good a Christian he may 
 be, or how high a place he may occupy in the 
 church and in the community — we are becoming 
 more and more reluctant to trust a boy in his hands. 
 For we have had this vision of God, and feel sure 
 he has entrusted this boy to our care to help secure 
 for him his birthright and his crown ; and we do 
 not feel authorized to place him even in the very 
 best of homes, unless we have some assurance 
 that these higher interests of the child will be 
 carefully guarded. 
 
 In saying this, however, for the Children's Home 
 Society and its methods, I confess I can see no spe- 
 cial reason why every other method of child-rescue 
 
THE CHILDREN'S HOME SOCIETY 87 
 
 may not be lifted up to the same high plane and 
 seek only or chiefly the highest interests of the 
 child — and especially the institutions, the orphan- 
 ages that are usually controlled by thoroughly 
 Christian people and are not hampered by State 
 control. Why may not and why should not every 
 Christian organization whose business it is to care 
 for homeless and dependent children, fall into line 
 with this new order of things, and so recognize 
 God's interest in a needy child and God's willing- 
 ness to aid in providing the best thing for it, that 
 it can rise above the "caste prejudice" and the 
 "servant problem," and say to every selfish and 
 mercenary applicant for a child, " Hands off ! This 
 child is altogether too important a personage and 
 has altogether too valuable a future to be entrusted 
 to unholy hands"? From past experience, we 
 feel sure that no orphanage or other institution 
 would be obliged to keep children until old enough 
 to be of service ; for, as a rule, the families that 
 receive a child for Christ's sake are inclined to 
 take it earlier in life, if possible, so as to be sure 
 of a larger outcome and better results. 
 
 The mercenary applicant says: "We want a 
 child not less than twelve years old ; if still older, 
 so much the better." 
 
 The applicant with this higher motive predomi- 
 nant would say : " The older the child is, the more 
 firmly its evil habits are rooted, and therefore the 
 more difficult and uncertain the problem of its sal- 
 vation ; and if saved, its mental and moral, and 
 
88 
 
 THE CHILD AND GOD 
 
 possibly physical life are so far wrecked by sinful 
 associations and indulgences that we could never 
 hope to build up so beautiful and complete and useful 
 a life and character as if the child were younger. " 
 
 The one applicant has as a central thought the 
 amount of work the child will be able to do ; the 
 other applicant, the amount and quality of the 
 character he may be able to put into the child. 
 
 A WOMAN'S MIRACLE 
 
 John Green Brady, the governor of Alaska, has never 
 known the name of his father or mother. Years ago, when 
 
 he was a street gamin in New 
 York City, selling newspapers 
 and blacking shoes, he was 
 just " Brady." So the other 
 street arabs called him. 
 
 One day with a carload of 
 other waifs he was shipped out 
 West. Judge Green, of Indiana, 
 saw the carload of boys and 
 told his wife about the invoice 
 of youngsters. She thought 
 they ought to take one. " Very 
 well," said the judge, "I'll 
 pick out the toughest specimen 
 of the lot." 
 He selected " Brady." 
 Now, in the homely phra- 
 seology of Indiana, " You 
 can't never tell what may be- 
 come of a lousy calf." Mrs. Green got hold of the boy's 
 heart. Her refining influence soon had its effect on the young 
 barbarian. He saw the world would give him a chance. 
 Ambition spoke to him. 
 
 Rev. J. G. Brady 
 Governor of Alaska 
 
THE CHILDREN'S HOME SOCIETY 89 
 
 He clung to the name of " Brady " and left all his old life 
 behind him. Henceforth he was John Green Brady. 
 
 To make a long story short, the boy went through the 
 grades and high school at the head of his class. Partly by 
 his own efforts and aided partly by Judge Green, he went 
 through Yale college. Then he was sent as a missionary to 
 Sitka, Alaska. He became the best-loved man in that country, 
 and was appointed governor. 
 
 FROM THE "FIVE POINTS" 
 
 One Sabbath morning, in the First M. E. Church, of St. 
 Paul, Minn., after an address by the Rev. E. P. Savage, 
 superintendent of the Minne- 
 sota Children's Home Society, r— ™~~ — — 
 
 the pastor of the church stated 
 to his people that when a little 
 boy of five years of age he was 
 brought from the slums of New 
 York City with a carload of 
 other boys and " dumped out on 
 the prairies of Minnesota." He 
 was now the brilliant and much- 
 loved pastor of one of the larg- 
 est churches in the Northwest. 
 When he had finished h i s 
 statement, a fine-looking, well 
 dressed, gentlemanly appearing 
 stranger in the rear of the congre- 
 gation arose and asked the priv- Ex-Governor Burke 
 ilege of making his statement. NoRTH Dakota 
 " I too," he said, " like this 
 
 pastor, when a little boy, was brought from the Five Points in 
 New York City out to the prairies of the West." He was at 
 that time governor of North Dakota, a man of noble character 
 of brilliant mind, and loved and honored by all who knew him 
 
 We insert these two pictures side by side because, as Provi- 
 dence would have it, these two men, when little abandoned 
 
9 o 
 
 GOD AND THE CHILD 
 
 waifs from New York City, were brought West on the same 
 car, and occupied the same car seat together, about forty years ago. 
 They were brought to Noblesville, Indiana, and there placed 
 in separate families to be trained for grandly successful lives — 
 the one through a business career and the law into a governor's 
 chair in North Dakota, and the other through a Presbyterian 
 pulpit and a missionary to the same high position in Alaska. 
 
 President McKinley helped to organize the " Ohio 
 Children's Home Society " in 1893. He was elected 
 its first president and retained the office until his 
 death. He was deeply and personally interested 
 in its humane work, contributing freely both time 
 and money. 
 
VI 
 
 THE GREAT OBJECTION 
 
 BUT you are thinking, if you do not say it, ' ' Oh, 
 if I could only know that the results will be 
 as you say, that the child would certainly 
 be saved ! I would be willing — I know I would — 
 to make almost any sacrifice of time or means or 
 patience. But who can tell what the outcome will 
 be ? Is it not a dangerous experiment to take a 
 child whose antecedents are unknown, or are 
 known to be bad, possibly very bad ? May it not 
 prove the taking of an adder to my bosom ? It is 
 true God loves that child with an infinite love ; 
 but so has he loved every child that has afterward 
 gone to the bad. A multitude of the best Chris- 
 tian parents have failed in leading their own chil- 
 dren to Christ, with all their inherited good qualities 
 in their favor. What, assurance then, can I have. 
 that this child can be certainly saved, with all its 
 inherited tendencies against such a consummation ?" 
 This is an honest question that demands an 
 equally honest and earnest answer. A complete 
 answer, however, would require a careful inquiry 
 into the perplexing problems of heredity, ipuch too 
 large a subject, and quite outside the scope of this 
 little book. 
 
 91 
 
92 
 
 THE CHILD AND GOD 
 
 A few brief suggestions must suffice : 
 i. You who take an outcast child for Christ's 
 sake, that is, for the express purpose of rescuing it, 
 have greatly the advantage of the " multitude of the 
 
 best Christian parents " who have failed to lead 
 their own children to Christ. These " best Chris- 
 tian parents " have sadly failed at two vital points. 
 They did not -"take" their child for Christ's 
 sake. It came to them unsought, very likely un- 
 desired. The Lord Jesus was not consulted or his 
 
THE GREAT OBJECTION 93 
 
 aid invoked in the introduction of that little life 
 into its earthly condition. You, on the contrary, 
 have taken this outcast child for the express pur- 
 pose of leading it to Christ and securing for it a 
 home with him and with yourself in glory. 
 
 As Jesus was not consulted or honored in the in- 
 troduction of those children into their home life, so 
 we fear it is true he has not been consulted, or his 
 word carefully followed and honored in the after- 
 rearing and training of those children. God's word 
 is exceedingly plain and explicit as to how Chris- 
 tian parents should train their children. There is 
 no possibility of misunderstanding its plain and 
 positive requirements. But these explicit instruc- 
 tions have been largely ignored by these Chris- 
 tian families. The probabilities are that they have 
 never so much as read their Bibles once through 
 /or the express purpose of finding out how to train 
 up their children so as to lead them to Christ and 
 fit them for heaven. 
 
 In the education and training of their children, 
 they have probably followed the customs of society 
 around them and left the Bible out of the account. 
 They do, of course, take their children with them 
 to church and send them to Sabbath-school regu- 
 larly ; and perhaps once a year, or once in two or 
 three years, under the excitement of some special 
 evangelistic services, they have exhibited a deep 
 personal interest in the salvation of their children. 
 But all the rest of the year worldly matters have 
 had the right of way, exclusively so, possibly, 
 
94 THE CHILD AND GOD 
 
 except two hours on the Sabbath. The result is 
 the Bible is practically an unknown book to those 
 children, except the brief and scattered lessons se- 
 cured at the Sunday-school ; and the idea that the 
 kingdom of God and his righteousness should be a 
 first consideration and the all-important business of 
 life has never been drilled into their thought and 
 life by anything they can see in the life and the 
 aspirations of their parents. 
 
 You, on the contrary, having first taken this out- 
 cast child for the express purpose of leading him to 
 Christ and fitting him for heaven, will have that 
 purpose constantly before you, and will therefore 
 be looking out for ways and means to accomplish 
 that purpose ; and if you are wise, will be con- 
 stantly and prayerfully consulting your Bible for 
 pointers ; and thus securing wisdom from above, 
 you will be able to " train up your child in the way 
 he should go.'' 
 
 At these two vital points these "best Christian 
 parents" have sadly failed, and therefore furnish 
 reasons enough why their children have not thus 
 far become Christians. We have called these two 
 failures "vital points." We do not mean that those 
 parents have so badly sinned that they can never 
 hope for the salvation of their children. Those 
 children are not at fault for their parents' neglect. 
 And God is so deeply anxious for their salvation, 
 that he stands ready and waiting and anxious for 
 the parents to remove the obstacles that have so far 
 prevented him from stretching out his arm for their 
 
THE GREAT OBJECTION 
 
 95 
 
 rescue. Whenever those parents will humble them- 
 selves before God and repent in dust and ashes for 
 their past neglect of their children, and begin so 
 far as possible to " repair damages," and enter into 
 solemn covenant with God that hereafter they will 
 faithfully perform their duty toward their children, 
 as God's word may point it out to them, God is 
 gracious and ready to forgive, and will remove their 
 sins as far from them as the east is from the west, 
 and save their children. 
 
 But up to the present time you have immensely 
 the advantage of those "best Christian parents," 
 so far as effectually reaching 
 your child with gospel influ- 
 ences is concerned, in that 
 you first received him in the 
 name of Christ, and since 
 receiving him, your great 
 aim has been to secure his 
 salvation. 
 
 2. Our second suggestion 
 is that there may not be so 
 
 much difference as you imagine between the hered- 
 itary endowments of your abandoned child and the 
 children of these "best Christian parents." We 
 cannot enter into this discussion, though exceed- 
 ingly interesting and a wonderful "eye opener." 
 We will briefly suggest : 
 
 That those "best Christian parents," even if 
 they were much better than they are, did not and 
 cannot transmit to their children their regenerated 
 
 G 
 
96 THE CHILD AND GOD 
 
 Christian natures. They can only transmit the " old 
 Adam," not the new creation in Christ Jesus. And 
 the " old Adam " in them may be about as depraved 
 and sensual and devilish as the "old Adam " in the 
 parents of this abandoned child you have received. 
 
 One of the noblest, sweetest-tempered and most 
 thoroughly consecrated ministers of the gospel in 
 the State of New Jersey has a son who is a thor- 
 oughly bad boy, a real reprobate ; and the good 
 man, when asked how it was possible for such an 
 earnest Christian man to be the father of such a 
 son, replied, " Before I was converted I was as bad 
 as they make them. Was called ' the young devil/ 
 and counted the worst boy and young man in the 
 neighborhood. My boy does not inherit his father's 
 renewed, regenerated nature, but the ' old Adam/ " 
 
 But if the inherited tendencies of your child are 
 much more degraded and sensual, he may not be 
 on that account harder to reach and subdue by the 
 grace of God than are these other more favored 
 children. That is to say, if your boy has a natu- 
 ral tendency to lie or steal or be foul-mouthed or 
 saucy, or exhibit other indications of the slum life 
 or the depraved environments of his parents, these 
 other children will probably inherit more of pride 
 and vanity and self-conceit ; very likely also, more 
 stubbornness of will, and more of the grasping, 
 hoarding propensity called in the Bible " covetous- 
 ness." And these hereditary tendencies are really 
 more difficult to reach and restrain than the lower 
 tendencies' in your boy simply because they are 
 
THE GREAT OBJECTION 97 
 
 more respectable in the public eye. The devil can 
 more easily persuade the children of respectable and 
 refined Christian parents that they are good enough 
 already. So that, all in all, this poor outcast boy 
 that you have received in the name of Christ may 
 be no harder to reach and subdue by the grace of 
 God because of his degenerate birthright. But 
 even if he were harder to reach, as we estimate 
 difficulties, it is encouraging to know that there is 
 nothing hard for God. 
 
 While our Lord Jesus was here in the flesh, it did 
 not seem to make any difference to him whether the 
 person in need of healing was just beginning to lose 
 his eyesight, or whether his eyeballs were wholly 
 destroyed and their sockets empty ; whether the 
 patient was sick with a little fever or in the last 
 stages of the loathsome leprosy ; whether possessed 
 of one or a legion of devils — the same omnipotent 
 word easily prevailed. And whether the needy 
 came to Jesus in his own behalf or was brought to 
 him by anxious friends, the results were always 
 the same. So it is not a question of the amount or 
 degree or character of the degraded and sensual 
 tendencies with which your child was born, but a 
 question of the amount and character of your faith 
 in the mighty Deliverer — whether it is an intelligent 
 faith inspired and directed by the conditions plainly 
 set forth in the word of God. In other words, your 
 success in the rescue of your child depends upon your 
 relations with the Lord Jesus Christ and his word, and 
 not upon the character of the child's heredities. 
 
9 8 
 
 THE CHILD AND GOD 
 
 3. A third suggestion is that it is the word of God 
 lodged in the heart of the child by the Holy Spirit 
 that leads to his conversion and salvation. There 
 seem to be two steps in this process : first, the 
 child needs to get acquainted with himself, with 
 his own need, that is, with the situation, the real 
 facts regarding his life and conduct, his relation to 
 God ; and then second, he needs to become ac- 
 quainted with the Lord 
 Jesus Christ as his Sav- 
 iour and friend and 
 helper. And the word 
 of God is the Spirit's 
 chosen instrument for 
 accomplishing these two 
 ends. 
 
 The following is the 
 substance of an article 
 that has twice appeared 
 in our little quarterly, the organ of the New Jersey 
 Children's Home Society, and is placed here for the 
 sake of the lesson so plainly set forth : 
 
 TRY THE BIBLE ON HIM 
 
 We are often asked by anxious foster parents, " What can 
 we do with our boy? He will tell such awful stories. We 
 can't place any dependence whatever upon anything he says. 
 He will make a lie right up out of ' whole cloth,' and face us 
 down in it, and stick to it." 
 
 This is the one almost universal sin with the larger boys, 
 and the girls too, that come under our care. Stealing, or petty 
 thieving, comes next in its frequency ; then, perhaps, swear- 
 ing ; and the anxious foster parents, after talking, reasoning, 
 
THE GREAT OBJECTION 99 
 
 pleading, and perhaps scolding the unfortunate child until 
 tired and discouraged, finally sit down and write to the super- 
 intendent as above. 
 
 This is a very perplexing problem, and we have often been 
 at our wit's ends to frame an answer that would be of any 
 practical value whatever to the anxious ones who write us. 
 
 The difficulty, of course, lies in the fact that the moral 
 nature of such child has been neglected and remains unde- 
 veloped, and the ordinary methods of educating the moral 
 sense and awakening the conscience along these special lines 
 have been overlooked. 
 
 Evidently, in the plan of God, his word is the irresistible 
 agent for arousing the conscience and quickening the moral 
 sense. It is represented as the " sword of the Spirit," sharper 
 than any two-edged sword, " quick and powerful " " piercing, 
 even to the dividing asunder of the soul and the spirit ; a dis- 
 cerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart." It is called 
 a " hammer," able to break in pieces the flinty heart. Jesus 
 says, "It is the spirit that quickeneth ; the flesh profiteth 
 nothing. The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit 
 and they are life." " The flesh profiteth nothing." Our 
 words fall lifeless and powerless, our appeals and reasonings 
 and pious talks profit nothing ; Jesus' words only are " spirit 
 and life." They take hold with irresistible power. They get 
 down into the depths of our nature, and take hold of hidden 
 forces that are not reached by our platitudes and eloquent 
 appeals. God himself calls our words " chaff," as compared 
 with his, and asks, " What is the chaff to the wheat? " In 
 Isa. 55 : 11 he says, 4t My word . . . shall not return to me void, 
 but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper 
 in the thing whereto I sent it." 
 
 We would suggest, therefore, that instead of talking so 
 much to the boy about the folly and the sin of lying or steal- 
 ing or swearing or whatever his special fault may be, and 
 appealing to his pride or his ambition or his manhood, that 
 you simply, but earnestly, " try the Bible on him." 
 
 Hunt up the passages, a large number of them, all through 
 
 LcrfC. 
 
100 THE CHILD AND GOD 
 
 the Bible, on the subject of lying, for instance, and read them 
 to him, or have him read them carefully over. Perhaps re- 
 quire him to commit some of them to memory, explaining the 
 hard words, if there are such in the passage, and so put the 
 boy face to face with God. 
 
 The following passages are suggested as specimens : 
 
 Lying forbidden : Lev. 19 : 11 ; Prov. 24 : 28 ; Eph. 4 : 25 ; 
 Col. 3 : 9. 
 
 Hateful to God : Prov. 6 : 16-19 > I2 : 22 - 
 
 Threatened with punishment : Ps. 5 : 6 ; 52 : 1-6 ; 55 : 23 ; 
 Prov. 12 : 19 ; 19 : 5, 9 ; Rev. 21 : 8, 27. 
 
 Abominable : Ps. 101 : 7 ; 119 : 163 ; 120 : 2 ; Prov. 13 : 5 ; 
 19 : 22. 
 
 Characteristic of a fool : Ps. 58:3; Prov. 10 : 18 ; 14 : 5, 
 25 ; Isa. 30 : 9. 
 
 Comes from the devil : John 8 : 44 ; Acts 5 : 1-10. 
 
 When the boy finds out that it is God himself speaking 
 directly to him he will feel very differently about the message 
 than when you are speaking upon your own authority or 
 experience to him. 
 
 And precisely the same process for arousing the 
 conscience and quickening the moral sense, if in- 
 stead of lying the bad habit in your child should be 
 swearing or petty thieving or some other habit that 
 is offensive to God and ruinous to the soul. 
 
 But possibly there are no specially bad habits in 
 your child to fight against and eradicate. The chief 
 difficulty may be simply carelessness, neglect, a 
 gay and giddy, self-seeking, pleasure-loving life, 
 thoughtlessness as to spiritual interests, a lack of 
 appreciation of the wonderful personal love of the 
 Lord Jesus Christ. But this attitude of careless- 
 ness about God's claims and the claims of our own 
 spiritual natures is more offensive to God than 
 
THE GREAT OBJECTION 101 
 
 either of the above bad habits. To forget God is 
 an awful crime and is so presented in the Bible. 
 And still a greater crime is unbelief or a refusal to 
 open the door and let Jesus come in. If Jesus is 
 standing at the door and knocking for admittance 
 to your child's heart and life, that child ought to 
 know it and know it thoroughly. He ought to be 
 made to understand how mean and selfish and de- 
 praved a condition of heart that could allow the 
 best and noblest and most loving friend in all the 
 universe to come to his door and knock for admit- 
 tance and be refused ! 
 
 But let all these views of truth, this presentation 
 of the child's needs, his great sins, and the won- 
 derful love of God as exhibited in Christ Jesus 
 come to him through the words of Scripture. Let 
 it be always understood that it is God who is speak- 
 ing, not the parent or the preacher or the Sunday- 
 school teacher. Because God's words are so dif- 
 ferent from our words, as already suggested, God's 
 word proves to be. a sharp sword with two edges, 
 it not only arouses the conscience and quickens the 
 moral sense when backed up by the Holy Spirit, 
 it does vastly more. It gets down into the heart 
 and begins a new life there ; hence is called "seed," 
 living seed (see i Peter i : 23 ; Luke 8:11, etc.). 
 
 And do we readily take in the full meaning of 
 this statement, that God's word is living seed ? If 
 you and I were skillful we might manufacture a 
 kernel of corn that would appear to be an exact 
 copy of one of God's kernels. If we were very 
 
102 THE CHILD AND GOD 
 
 skillful we might make it so exact a copy that the 
 most skillful chemist could not detect any differ- 
 ence. But plant our production in the best possible 
 soil and under the best possible conditions and it 
 would not grow. Why ? Simply because there is 
 no life germ in our kernel. God puts a life germ in 
 every kernel he makes, such that when planted 
 under appropriate conditions it grows and develops 
 a new life. We cannot do that. Omnipotence 
 and omniscience alone can put a life germ in a 
 kernel of corn. 
 
 So God's words are strangely different from our 
 words. He seems to have put life germs in them, 
 life germs of such character that when planted in 
 the heart of a child under appropriate conditions 
 they will grow there and develop a new life, the 
 life of God in the human soul. 
 
 But the devil is wary. He understands the char- 
 acter of God's word, its irresistible and transform- 
 ing power, and so is on the alert, and as soon as 
 the seed is sown he catches it away if possible ; 
 hence the help of the Holy Spirit is needed to do 
 two things for that child : 
 
 Help him to understand clearly the meaning of the 
 message he reads ; 
 
 To prevent the devil from catching it away until 
 it has had time to make its impression and get 
 firmly rooted as seed. 
 
 Do not, therefore, content yourself with simply 
 requiring your child to commit God's word to 
 memory, and then leave it to the Holy Spirit to use 
 
THE GREAT OBJECTION 103 
 
 his own words as a sharp two-edged sword or as 
 living seed. The Holy Spirit expects us to co- 
 operate with him and work with him just as far as 
 we possibly can. Hence it is your privilege as a 
 parent to sit down with your child and carefully go 
 over with him each one of these passages from 
 God's word. Do it very earnestly and thoroughly, 
 pray over each separate passage, pleading with the 
 Holy Spirit in your child's presence to make the 
 meaning of this passage very plain to him, to 
 " show them M to him. This will impress upon the 
 child the great sacredness and the importance of 
 God's words and thus aid the Holy Spirit in fixing 
 them in the memory and getting them down into 
 the heart as living seed. 
 
 The point we are anxious to emphasize is the 
 great importance, the absolute necessity of using 
 God's word with your child instead of your words, 
 God's thoughts instead of your thoughts. One of 
 the most common mistakes of Christian parents is 
 that they talk with their children, talk very ear- 
 nestly perhaps and plead with them very tenderly, 
 and pray for them as earnestly and tenderly, but 
 forget to furnish any material to work upon. It is 
 as if a farmer should plow his ground and harrow it 
 thoroughly and put it in the best possible condition 
 to raise a crop, and then pray God to give him a 
 good harvest, but forget to sow any seed ! 
 
 This is what we do so often. God's word is the 
 living seed. There is no possible genuine con- 
 version apart from God's word. The Holy Spirit 
 
104 THE CHILD AND GOD 
 
 must have his sharp, two-edged sword if he would 
 reach the conscience. He must have his living 
 seed if he would begin a new life in the soul, and 
 it is our province to furnish him that sword and to 
 sow the seed. It is his province to get down into the 
 conscience and make that sword cut ; to find his way 
 into the heart and see that the seed sown is lodged 
 there until it germinates and develops a new life. 
 
 And the beauty of it is that the Holy Spirit can 
 always be relied upon to do his part faithfully 
 and successfully, if we do our part faithfully and 
 thoroughly and ask his help with persevering 
 earnestness. 
 
 Permit us to urge still further that you do not 
 delegate this important duty and privilege to some 
 one else, to the Sunday-school teacher or even to 
 the pastor. Of course, you will gladly accept their 
 assistance, but in reaching your child you have im- 
 mensely the advantage of anybody else, for your 
 child believes in you and loves you and you love 
 your child as no other person can, and love is irre- 
 sistible. You can get closer to your child and be more 
 persistent and intent than any other person can. 
 
 A remarkably suggestive scene is that recorded in 2 Kings 
 4 : 34-36, the restoration of the dead boy to life. The prophet 
 went alone into the room where the dead child lay, and after 
 shutting the door and praying, " He went up and lay upon 
 the child, and put his mouth upon his mouth, and his eyes 
 upon his eyes, and his hands upon his hands : and he 
 stretched himself upon the child, and the flesh of the child 
 waxed warm." 
 
 And this process was repeated until " the child opened his 
 
THE GREAT OBJECTION 105 
 
 eyes" and life was restored. Whether a designed type or 
 not, there is in this strange scene a beautiful suggestion of 
 God's method of bringing dead souls to life, by having a live 
 soul, one full of the Christ life, come into such close and per- 
 sistent contact with a dead soul, as that the warmth and heat 
 of the one shall become contagious, and by and by impart 
 itself to the other. Or to express it in another way, this man 
 whom I wish to reach and save has ears, but he does not hear 
 God's warnings or his gracious promises, and so I put my 
 ears into his ears' place ; I hear for him. He has eyes, but 
 they do not see the dangers that beset him, or the glorious 
 things that are offered him ; but I see these things clearly, 
 and so I become eyes to him. He has a mouth, but it has 
 never been opened in prayer to God, and so I talk to God in 
 his behalf, as he ought to talk for himself. His heart is cold 
 and dead, and so I put my heart in his heart's place and at- 
 tempt to feel for him the burden of soul and the agony of 
 interest that he ought to feel for himself. 
 
 And thus I put my soul in that soul's place so closely, so 
 persistently, that he cannot help but catch my fire and become 
 warm from my heat. 1 
 
 And the point we make is that there is no person 
 on earth who can do this for a child quite as effect- 
 ively and persistently as the parent, because of the 
 natural relations that exist between them. 
 
 As you value your child's soul, therefore, do not 
 delegate this unspeakable privilege to anybody else. 
 
 If you have neglected this duty to your child alto- 
 gether in the past you will very likely shrink from 
 it now. A consciousness of neglect and of guilt 
 before God will arise. And the more you think 
 about it and pray over it the greater and darker 
 that guilt will appear. You have loved your child 
 
 1 " Every Creature," pp. 46, 47. 
 
io6 
 
 THE CHILD AND GOD 
 
 all these years and yet have committed the great 
 crime of overlooking and persistently ignoring its 
 highest interests. You have yourself found a friend 
 
 The Adopted Girl Ahead 
 
 Said a vulgar little girl, who was sneering at another, 
 
 In accents that were very far from mild, 
 'You ain't got no father, you ain't got no mother — 
 You ain't nothin' but a horrid 'dopted child !" 
 
 " I'm quite as good as you," came the answer from the other, 
 " I was carefully selected from a lot ! 
 But only look at you — your father and your mother 
 Had to keep you if they wanted to or not." — Selected 
 
 in the Lord Jesus Christ, better to you, more 
 precious, more valuable and desirable in every 
 way than all other friends together, and yet you 
 
THE GREAT OBJECTION 10J 
 
 have never introduced that dearest friend to your 
 child. On the contrary, the adversary of souls, 
 the devil himself, has gotten possession of your 
 child and is gradually leading him to ruin, and the 
 child is blindfolded and therefore quite unconscious 
 of the situation, but you can see. You understand 
 the situation and yet have remained silent all these 
 months and years past. 
 
 All this consciousness of personal neglect of your 
 child's highest interests will naturally lead you to 
 shrink from the duty and obligation now, and you 
 will be tempted to appeal to the child's Sunday- 
 school teacher or to the pastor or some other person 
 to perform this service for you. But the very fact 
 of past neglect is the reason why you may not and 
 must not shirk. Your own attitude toward your 
 child in the past has very likely been the main 
 reason why God has not been able as yet to save 
 him, and if so, then you are the main obstacle in 
 the way of your child's salvation, and you cannot 
 shirk with safety to the child ; besides, the richest 
 blessing to your own soul lies right under this cross . 
 Try it and see. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 SOME PRACTICAL LESSONS 
 
 1. Advantages of God's Plan 
 
 (i) All other methods may or may not have re- 
 gard to the best interests of the child. They are 
 liable to have most prominent the interests of the 
 other party. God's plan has 
 the future of the child always 
 to the front. 
 
 (2) All other methods are 
 liable to overlook God's rela- 
 tion to the child and his inter- 
 est in it. But this plan never. 
 In it God is exalted and his 
 claims recognized. 
 (3) Applicants for a child, under control of any 
 of these lower motives, may be unfitted to have 
 the care of the child. A few days before last 
 Christmas one of the largest daily papers in Phila- 
 delphia gave quite a unique notice of the work of 
 the New Jersey Children's Home Society by adver- 
 tising the fact that the said society had babies to give 
 away as "Christmas presents." The result was 
 a great flood of applicants, good, bad, and indiffer- 
 ent — for nearly all people love children. However, 
 scarcely one in ten of these applicants measured 
 108 
 
SOME PRACTICAL LESSONS 109 
 
 up to our requirements. We have constantly to 
 refuse applicants who possess one very important 
 recommendation — they love children dearly. 
 
 On the other hand, we have never yet had reason 
 to refuse an application from a person or family 
 able to reach so high a standard as to receive a 
 child for Christ's sake, or for the sake of the child's 
 future. Such families will necessarily be intelligent 
 people, people who have clear views of God's in- 
 terest in that child, and of the child's future. They 
 will be thoroughly consecrated people who can rise 
 above personal and selfish interest and worldly con- 
 siderations, and therefore can always be counted 
 upon as first-class applicants. No second-rate family 
 can reach so exalted a position. 
 
 (4) This plan secures God's presence and aid 
 in the training $p6 -care of the child, and therefore 
 the best reasons .for expecting success and happy 
 results. All other plans have no such promise 
 or assurance, and therefore frequently are most 
 unpleasant failures. 
 
 (5) This plan therefore secures not only the best 
 interests of the child, but the best interests of the 
 family, its spiritual uplift, a consecrated Christian 
 life, clearer views of God and unseen realities. At 
 the same time, as already shown, it insures best 
 financial returns from the child taken. 
 
 (6) It insures a better child in every way. The 
 family's treatment of the child will have more of 
 tenderness and love, as well as more of wisdom 
 and firmness. This will react upon the child in 
 
no 
 
 THE CHILD AND GOD 
 
 returned affection, in more respect and reverence. 
 The child will become a more thoroughly reliable 
 and helpful child, and therefore more a comfort and 
 satisfaction to the family. 
 
 (7) This plan is the only one that lays up treasure 
 
 
 
 
 
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 - :„ ___- -o#55gP^^il 
 
 
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 Four Brothers, of Good Parentage, Made 
 
 Homeless by the Death of 
 
 Their Mother 
 
 in heaven. The child is taken chiefly for the sake 
 of its future, and during the countless ages of eter- 
 nity, the family will be reaping a harvest of joy and 
 happiness, and of gratitude to God that he permitted 
 them while here to aid him in securing one more 
 king and priest for his universal empire- 
 
SOME PRACTICAL LESSONS III 
 
 2. Two Practical Conclusions 
 
 (i) All the considerations and appeals and lessons 
 in this treatise are quite as applicable to own parents 
 as to foster parents ; and if carefully read and pon- 
 dered ought to greatly intensify parental love, and 
 lead to larger plans and more intense anxiety to 
 capture their children for God, and make of them 
 all that it is possible to make. 
 
 It is exceedingly sad to contemplate the seeming 
 carelessness of so many Christian parents as to the 
 moral and spiritual environments of their children. 
 Treading on holy ground — and every step almost 
 leaving a mark upon the character and life of their 
 children that all the after years and ages cannot 
 erase — and yet how thoughtlessly and how care- 
 lessly that step is taken ! 
 
 It does seem to this writer that if a Christian 
 parent could once get a clear view of the real situa- 
 tion — that the child committed to his care furnishes 
 the grandest mission and the highest and the most 
 sacred and the largest that can be committed to 
 any intelligent being in God's universe — such a 
 view would at once give an inspiration and furnish 
 a motive that would control the whole life in the 
 interests of that child's future. 
 
 And what a sacredness would it give to mother- 
 hood and to fatherhood ! A clear conception of God's 
 thought and God's interest in a child will revolu- 
 tionize not only our methods of child training but our 
 views of child bearing, and would speedily transform 
 this wicked, ruined world into a garden of God. 
 
 H 
 
112 THE CHILD AND GOD 
 
 (2) Second practical conclusion. If the consid- 
 erations and arguments in this little treatise are 
 correct, what grander work possible to the church 
 of Christ to-day than a systematic, thorough, and 
 persistent effort to reach every child in the com- 
 munity with the gospel ? 
 
 The Sunday-school as an institution is a noble 
 effort in this direction — the bringing of Bible in- 
 struction within reach of all the children. But it 
 does not quite meet the demands ; in the very 
 nature of the case it cannot. 
 
 As to the children of Christian parents, the Sun- 
 day-school does not reach God's ideal. One hour 
 a week out of one hundred waking hours is not 
 quite God's plan for the capture and control of our 
 children in the interests of their spiritual nature. 
 It gives the devil too long a rope to have the inside 
 track with the child ninety-nine hours out of every 
 one hundred. God's plan seems quite fully set 
 forth in Deut. 6 : 6-9 : 
 
 And these words, which I command thee this 
 day, shall be in thine heart : 
 
 And thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy 
 children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in 
 thine house, and when thou walhest by the way, and 
 when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. 
 
 And thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine 
 hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine 
 eyes. 
 
 And thou shalt write them upon the posts of thy 
 house, and on thy gates. 
 
SOME PRACTICAL LESSONS 1 13 
 
 That would certainly give God the first chance 
 with the child, give him instead of the devil the 
 inside track during the ninety-nine waking hours. 
 And this obligation of the parent cannot, of course, 
 be cancelled by sending the child to Sunday-school 
 one hour on the Sabbath day. 
 
 It does not and cannot reach all the children. 
 Less than one-half of the children of school age in 
 our country attend Sunday-school, and these are in 
 the main children of Christian parents. The chil- 
 dren most in need of religious instruction do not go 
 to Sunday-school because their ungodly parents will 
 not consent. If these are reached at all, it must be 
 by individual, hand to hand and heart to heart 
 work. We have to "go out into the highways and 
 hedges and compel them to come in." And in the 
 light of the discussions in the preceding pages, if 
 such inconceivable value attaches to each one of 
 the children in my neighborhood, does it not lay 
 upon me and upon every Christian in the neigh- 
 borhood an obligation that we cannot very well 
 evade, to bring all these children so far as possible 
 under saving influences ? 
 
 And we will venture to suggest that the Chil- 
 dren's Home Society, where thoroughly organized, 
 is already quite well equipped for such an under- 
 taking. We have or are supposed to have a local 
 board, as we term it, a branch of the State organ- 
 ization, in each town or separate community in 
 the state. This local board is made up of a few of 
 the best, most earnest Christian people in the 
 
114 THE CHILD AND GOD 
 
 community who love children. Their business is to 
 report to the State superintendent every case of a 
 child as soon as it comes to need, to look up and 
 report as to the character and standing of every 
 family in their community that applies for a child, 
 and when a child is placed in such family to keep 
 careful watch and report to headquarters, when de- 
 sired, how the child is getting along, how treated, 
 whether sent to day school, to Sunday-school, etc. 
 
 As now constituted, this local board waits until 
 the devil has accomplished all his work of wreck 
 and ruin in a certain household, broken up the 
 family, thrown the children out upon the street ; 
 then it reports the sad facts to the superintendent : 
 "Five bright children are without a home and 
 need the society's care." And the society steps 
 in to gather up the broken fragments and do the 
 very best it can with these outcast children. It 
 finds large-hearted strangers willing to take them 
 in and provide them with good Christian homes. 
 
 Now, suppose this wideawake and consecrated 
 local board could discover the situation in that un- 
 fortunate family before the crisis came, and trip the 
 devil in the very midst of his nefarious scheme and 
 save the household from wreck ? Possibly get hold 
 of the mother and lead her to Christ, or even the 
 father ? It might require a large amount of earnest, 
 persistent, personal effort and a mighty struggle in 
 wrestling prayer. But that kind of exercise would 
 put new life and strength and power into that local 
 board, give it plenty of thoroughly Christian work 
 
SOME PRACTICAL LESSONS 1 1 5 
 
 to do, a work that would be quite in keeping with 
 the spirit of our mission as a society — to get neg- 
 lected children into Christian homes. It would be 
 a work of prevention ; and " an ounce of prevention 
 is worth a pound of cure." 
 
 In this way thousands of homes where sin reigns 
 and where tens of thousands of innocent children 
 are fast going to destruction might be changed into 
 Christian homes, and the parents patiently and lov- 
 ingly helped to train all these children for Christ 
 and for heaven. There would really be no limit to 
 the possibilities of such a work, for it could be ex- 
 tended until it took in every unconverted family in 
 every community in our land. 
 
 And while such evangelizing agency is, of course, 
 outside of the scope and intent of the Children's 
 Home Society as at present constituted, there is 
 certainly nothing in its constitution or in its princi- 
 ples to prevent its local boards from undertaking 
 such a work, if they were willing. 
 
 But the Children's Home Society is as yet only 
 organized in a portion of the States, twenty-six all 
 told with four others as auxiliary, and in these thirty 
 States there are a great many communities where 
 no local boards exist ; whereas the work we have 
 suggested appeals not to any special organization of 
 Christian people ; it appeals to all organizations, 
 to the church universal, and to every individual 
 Christian who loves Christ and loves souls and 
 wants to do the largest possible work in the 
 redemption of this lost world. 
 
n6 
 
 THE CHILD AND GOD 
 
 Let a mothers' club be organized in every com- 
 munity, whose special object shall be to reach 
 every unconverted mother and lead her to Christ, 
 and then aid her by wise counsel and by earnest 
 and persistent prayer in training her children in the 
 way they should go. Let the young people's soci- 
 eties, the Christian Endeavor- 
 ers, the Epworth Leaguers, 
 the Baptist Young People's 
 Unions, the Andrew and Philip 
 organizations, etc., undertake 
 the work of reaching every 
 child in their respective com- 
 munities old enough to be led 
 to Christ, perhaps secure the 
 names of such children and di- 
 vide them up among the work- 
 ers, each Christian worker be- 
 coming responsible for three 
 or five or possibly ten such 
 children, according to the cir- 
 cumstances and the time at his 
 or her disposal. And then hav- 
 ing received such charge, let each worker first of 
 all "size it up," that is, carefully and prayerfully 
 study the problems he has undertaken to solve, the 
 unspeakable value of each one of these young im- 
 mortals committed to his care, God's interest in 
 each one of them, his willingness to aid in any ear- 
 nest effort to reach them, the instrumentalities he 
 has provided, the place of the word, the place of 
 
SOME PRACTICAL LESSONS 117 
 
 the Holy Spirit, the place of individual personal 
 effort, and especially the place of effectual, fervent 
 prayer. Then go about the task with confidence 
 and hope, conferring frequently with the mothers' 
 club, asking the pastor's advice, presenting his bur- 
 dens now and then at the weekly prayer meeting, 
 and persist in this kind of effort until the end is 
 secured and the children reached. 1 
 
 The parents may be rescued with immense and 
 persistent effort ; the children can be reached and 
 with far less effort. This is therefore the grandest, 
 most important work of the present century. And 
 how else shall the world ever be reached ? If the 
 children are led to Christ and filled with Bible 
 truth, it would mean the ushering in of the millen- 
 nium,, the beginning of the end in the redemption 
 of this lost world. 
 
 1 For a somewhat extended presentation of the methods and value of per- 
 sonal, individual work read a little book just published, "Success in Soul- 
 Winning." The Winona Publishing Company, Chicago, 111. Price, in 
 paper, 25 cents. For sale by American Baptist Publication Society. 
 
APPENDIX 
 NOTES ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Page 12. Abandoned by mother. Received when three 
 months old and placed the same day in a Christian home — 
 nine years ago. 
 
 Page 23. A Christian mother dies, leaving four bright little 
 boys in the care of the father who does his very best to keep 
 his family together. But obliged to be absent all day at his 
 work, the boys, without the mother's constant care, easily 
 drift into the street, and after a year's experience the father 
 decides that the best thing for his boys is to place them in 
 Christian families through our agency. The youngest of these 
 four brothers is the little boy at the right in this group of three. 
 
 The little boy at the left, the brightest and most promising 
 of the three, was abandoned by his mother when a little babe, 
 the name " Freddie" being the only asset left him by either 
 parent, whose very name and place and character are unknown. 
 
 Page 25. Of respectable parentage on both sides. Mother 
 died, father unable to care for him. 
 
 Page 30. Born when the political pot was boiling the very 
 hottest during the first race between Mr. McKinley and Mr. 
 Bryan. As the baby had no legal father and was abandoned 
 by his mother, and had possible presidential timber in him, he 
 was named after both the candidates so as to be sure to bear 
 the name of a president. 
 
 Page 53. The most of us take a deal of stock in our knowl- 
 edge of human nature. We would be greatly pleased to see 
 our readers pick out from this group of twelve the children of 
 bad heredities or unfortunate antecedents. The results would 
 probably be amusing at least, if not an "eye-opener," and 
 very likely upset many of our theories of heredity. 
 
 119 
 
120 APPENDIX 
 
 The whole twelve have an unusual development of the moral 
 organs, as the phrenologists locate them — that is, the central 
 and highest group, the middle top of the head. Not one of them 
 looks very dangerous ! And yet they are all illegitimate. 1 
 
 Page 60. Abandoned by father, mother dead, released by 
 grandmother. Now developing into a beautiful and valuable 
 young womanhood. 
 
 Page 63. Once homeless ; now the center and joy of an 
 earnest Christian home. 
 
 Page 71. Released by mother. Now contented and happy 
 in a foster-mother's love. 
 
 Page 81. Abandoned by a drunken father. Released by a 
 mother in poor health. Been now nearly six years in a 
 pleasant country home. 
 
 Page 92. Over nine years ago the superintendent received 
 an earnest letter from a local board in South Jersey, stating 
 that a mother had just lost a baby boy at birth. She had lost 
 two others before in the same way and was now almost over- 
 whelmed with grief. " Can you possibly furnish us with a 
 baby boy for her?" The superintendent was obliged to reply 
 that we had no baby boy in hand. The very next day, how- 
 ever, he visited a prominent town in the northern part of the 
 State, and as he alighted from the train the first man he met 
 was the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, and the very 
 first words he uttered were these : " Say, Brother Lamb, can 
 you find a home for a little baby boy just born here, and 
 whose mother died a few hours after its birth ? ' 
 
 1 Possibly some of our readers have not considered the fact that the 
 majority of the mothers of illegitimate children are young girls of good 
 character and of good parentage, who have been betrayed under promise of 
 marriage or by over-confidence and love, and have spent nine months of the 
 bitterest repentance for their sin. Their whole moral nature has thus been 
 thoroughly aroused, and so far as it is possible for mothers to do so, have 
 stamped an awakened moral sense upon their offspring which reveals itself 
 in an unusual development of the moral organs, as noted above. 
 
 Of course, if the mother is a loose character and conscienceless, these 
 results will not appear. But only a very small proportion of the illegitimate 
 children who come under our care have lewd or characterless mothers, 
 probably not more than one in ten. 
 
APPENDIX 121 
 
 It took but a few days to bring these two strange provi- 
 dences together ; and the reception of that baby boy by that 
 broken-hearted mother is among the memories that can never 
 be forgotten. Perhaps two years afterward the Lord kindly 
 permitted that mother to give birth to a healthy child of her 
 own which appears at the left of the sturdy boy now adopted 
 and installed as the elder brother in that home. 
 
 Page 95. Abandoned by mother ; now adopted in a happy 
 Christian home. 
 
 Page 98. Once homeless ; now a centre of sunshine and joy. 
 
 Page 108. A family had lost the only child, a daughter 
 three years old. The mother was unable to be comforted, and 
 at the end of the year was gradually sinking into a physical 
 decline. Her physician and her husband urged her to accept 
 a substitute. This beautiful child, not quite two years old, 
 filled the vacant place so completely that they were ready to 
 adopt her a week after her reception. 
 
 Page 116. This boy came to us through a Society for the 
 Prevention of Cruelty to Children. He is doing nicely in an 
 earnest Christian home. 
 
 The above taken together will give a very good idea of the 
 character and quality of the work now being done in thirty 
 different States by the Children's Home Society. 
 
 M. T. L. 
 
SUCCESS IN SOUL WINNING 
 
 i6mo. 200 pages. Price, 25 cents net 
 
 With brief introductions bv J. Wilbur Chapman, D. D., and 
 A. C. Dixon, D. D. 
 
 "Success in Soul Winning" is designed as a companion to "Every 
 Creature." " Every Creature " presents chiefly the obligation to reach 
 every unreached soul; "Success in Soul Winning" the HOW to do it, the 
 privilege and power of the individual Christian. 
 
 While perhaps not so original or striking as " Every Creature," it covers 
 a larger field and contains more of a practical and helpful nature. 
 
 "Calvary Baptist Church, 
 
 " Washington, D. C, February 18, 1905. 
 "I have read 'Success in Soul Winning,' by the Rev. M. T.Lamb, with 
 pleasure and profit and commend it to the reading of those who pray for the 
 coming of Christ's kingdom. Saa\uel H. Greene." 
 
 " ' Every Creature,' by the Rev. M. T. Lamb, is now followed by 'Success 
 in Soul Winning,' the latter introduced by Drs. J. Wilbur Chapman and 
 A. C. Dixon. To distribute these little books freely among the people, 
 better still, to use them as texts for reading and comment from night to 
 night, will by the blessing of God be among the most mighty agents for arousing 
 Christians to personal prayer and effort for the unsaved of any helps known to 
 me."— ALBERT G. LAWSON, in The Baptist Commonwealth, Philadelphia, 
 Dec. 15, 1904. 
 
 " Dear Bro. La.wb: Permit me to thank you for your book, ' Success in 
 Soul Winning.' It is a thought starter. The Lord give it wings ! I wish 
 your message to pastors could be read by every pastor in our land. I en- 
 dorse every line of it. Yours in him, James A. FRANCIS." 
 (Successor to Rev. A. J. Gordon, of Boston.) 
 
 The Rev. Dr. Barnes, who has taken so deep an interest in " Every Crea- 
 ture," ordered 500 copies of "Success in Soul Winning " before it was 
 written. Within a month after the 500 copies had been delivered to him he 
 sent his check for 100 additional copies. 
 
 The following are specimens of the letters he is receiving from New York 
 pastors to whom he has sent copies of the book : 
 
 " It is one of the best volumes on soul winning I have read."— Clayton 
 Grinnell, Baptist Pastor, Ossining, N. Y. 
 
 "Fellow pastors are talking about this all-important theme while they 
 read and reread the book."— F. W. Carter, McLean, N. Y. 
 
 " I have read the book with a real interest and profit and must say that it 
 is the best that has come to my notice, and I have at least a half-dozen of 
 the best at my elbow. The author is Scriptural, suggestive with sane, prac- 
 tical suggestions, and alwavs writes in a sweet, helpful spirit." — Chester 
 F. Ralston, Pastor First Baptist Church, Gloversville, New York. 
 
 Published by the WINONA PUBLISHING COMPANY, Chicago, III. 
 For Sale by AMERICAN BAPTIST PUBLICATION SOCIETY, Philadelphia, Pa. 
 
 j&^Any of Mr. Lamb's books can be secured at the office of the New 
 Jersey Children's Home Society, Trenton, N. J. 
 
The Mormons and Their Bible 
 
 By M. T. LAMB 
 
 With Introductory Note by C. B. Landis, Member of Congress 
 from Indiana 
 
 Price, 25 cents net; postpaid, 30 cents 
 
 DERHAPS few Christian men have a more intimate 
 * knowledge of Mormon affairs than Mr. Lamb. Besides 
 spending several years in Utah, traveling all over the territory 
 lecturing daily to great crowds of Mormons against their Bible 
 —the " Book of Mormon "—he spent a year and a half in the 
 East preparing his material, reading and consulting personally 
 with the best authorities. The result was a book bearing the 
 title "The Golden Bible," universally conceded to be the 
 most effective blow ever delivered against the Mormon system. 
 The present volume is a recasting and condensing of the origi- 
 nal book, with a very valuable Introductory Chapter upon 
 " The Mormon Problem." 
 
 " We have examined this work closely and unhesitatingly commend it as 
 the most forceful and useful treatise on Mormonism that has yet appeared." 
 — The Arkansas Baptist. 
 
 " Mormonism has not received so severe a blow as is dealt to it by the 
 Rev. M. T. Lamb in this volume. . . He certainly makes mince-meat of the 
 'Book of Mormon.' "—Julian Hawthorne, in the New York World. 
 
 " This book is a help to the great endeavor . . . and under the blessing 
 of God will help to extirpate the monster."— New York Observer. 
 
 " Against the heart and center of the whole system, its right and title and 
 revelation, he brings an assault whose deadly force must be apparent to the 
 most ordinary Mormon intelligence. Criticism has proved its salutary 
 power before, but it was never before brought to bear on a better subject 
 than when Mr. Lamb set out to apply its principles to the ' Book of Mormon.' 
 He has done his work thoroughly." — New York Independent. 
 
 " It is one of the most convincing exposures that has ever been printed of 
 the clumsy plagiarisms on the Bible with which the Mormon scriptures are 
 filled." — The San Francisco Chronicle. 
 
 AMER. BAPTIST PUBLICATION SOCIETY 
 
 1420 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, Pa. 
 
\ 
 
 Every Creature 
 
 i6mo. 94 pages. Price, 15 cents. 
 
 How to reach the great mass of the unreached in our country 
 is evidently the largest problem now before the church of 
 Christ ; and " Every Creature," though a little book, is evi- 
 dently contributing its mite in helping to solve the problem — 
 hence is awakening unusual and unexpected interest. 
 
 The first edition of 3,000 copies was exhausted in two 
 months. A second and third edition were called for within a 
 year. 
 
 Rev. Dr. H. W. Barnes, Superintendent of Baptist Missions 
 for the State of New York, has purchased and given away, 
 chiefly to the Baptist pastors of the State, 675 copies. Rev. 
 Dr. Crumpton, of Montgomery, Ala., 400 copies. The 
 superintendents of New Hampshire and Vermont have each 
 distributed 100 copies. A goodly number of pastors of various 
 denominations have already ordered from 25 to 100 copies 
 each to be distributed among their own people. 
 
 " I said something of its effect upon my own heart and mind. How that 
 I'd begun it and was so won by it that it refused to let me put it down until 
 I'd finished it, and that I finished it upon mv knees in a flood of tears. Well, 
 God bless it and its faithful author."— W. W. Barker, Pastor, Phillips- 
 burg. N. J. 
 
 " Have read it with intense interest. As a proof of my appreciation of it, 
 I have ordered ioo copies, and will advertise and press the sale of it. It is 
 calculated to do immense good."— J. M. PlKE, editor " The Way of Life," 
 Columbus, S. C. 
 
 " We commend this book and the class of books to which it belongs as 
 about the best kindling for a revival that can be used. Many who read this 
 book will feel first like falling upon their knees and confessing past delin- 
 quencies and calling upon God for grace for personal service, and then 
 going out and doing something."— Sunday School Work, Cumberland Presb., 
 Nashville, Tenn. 
 
 " Please accept my deepest gratitude for ' Every Creature.' I have read 
 it again and again, and the spirit of it is getting hold of me. Oh, how far 
 short I come to it all. I am talking it to mv people everv night this week." — 
 F. H. W atkins, Russellville, Ala. 
 
 "I beg you to read and re-read the little book until you are saturated 
 with the truth it unfolds. Then get a few brethren together, read and dis- 
 cuss it. Then introduce it in the prayer meeting. Ask the Woman's and 
 Young People's Societies to take it up. Then preach about it for six 
 months."— Rev. Dr. Crumpton, to 500 Baptist pastors in Alabama to whom 
 he presented the book. 
 
 AMERICAN BAPTIST PUBLICATION SOCIETY 
 1420 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, Pa. 
 
APR 15 1905 f 
 
< 
 
I 
 
 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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