Children -- India; India -- Social life and customs; Missions -- India
The story finished, the children were questioned, and they answered with
unwonted gravity. "What did Isaac say to his father as they walked alone
together?" An awed little voice had begun the required answer, when
Chellalu suddenly uncurled, sat up, and said in clear, decided Tamil:
"He said, 'Father! do not kill me!' _Yesh!_ that was what he said."
When first the babies heard about Heaven, they all wanted to go at once,
and with difficulty were restrained from praying to be taken there
immediately. There was one naughty child who, when she was given
medicine, invariably announced, "I will not stay in this village: I am
going to Heaven! I am going now!" But they soon grew wiser. It was our
excitable, merry little Jullanie who summed up all desires with most
simplicity: "Lord Jesus, please take me there or anywhere anytime; only
wherever I am, please stay there too!" Some of the babies are carnal:
"When I go to that village (Heaven), I shall go for a ride on the
cherubim's wings. I will make them take me to all sorts of places, just
wherever I want to go."
The latest pronouncement, however, was for the moment the most
perplexing. "Come-anda-look-ata-well!" said Chellalu yesterday evening,
the sentence in a single long word. The well is being dug in the
Menagerie garden and is surrounded by a trellis, beyond which the babies
may not pass, unless taken by one of ourselves. As we drew near to the
well, Chellalu pointed to it and said: "Amma! That is the way to
Heaven!" This speech, which was in Tamil, considerably surprised me, as
naturally we think of Heaven above the bright blue sky. The yawning gulf
of the unfinished well suggested something different.
But Chellalu was positive. "It is the way to Heaven. _I_ may not go
there, but _you_ may! Yesh! _you_ may go to Heaven, Amma, but _I_ may
not!" She had nothing more to say; and we wondered how she could
possibly have arrived at so extraordinary a conclusion, till we
remembered that it had been explained to the babies that any baby
falling in would probably be drowned and die, and so until it was
finished and made safe no baby must go near it. Chellalu had evidently
argued that as to die meant going to Heaven, the well must be the way to
Heaven; and as only grown-up people might go near it, they, and they
alone apparently, were allowed to go to Heaven.
These babies are nothing if not practical. Arulai had been teaching the
story of the Unmerciful Servant; and to bring it down to nursery life,
supposed the case of a baby who snatched at other babies' toys, and was
unfair and selfish. Such a baby, if not reformed, would grow up and be
like the Unmerciful Servant. The babies looked upon the back of the
offender as shown in the picture. "Bad man! Nasty man!" they said to
each other, pointing to him with aversion. And Arulai closed the class
with a short prayer that none of the babies might ever be like the
Unmerciful Servant.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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