Mrs. Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters, Volume 3Various
Religion
Mrs. Whittelsey's Magazine for Mothers and Daughters, Volume 3
Various
Christian life -- Periodicals
One pleasant Sunday morning, the two little girls went together to
school, and after all the children had recited their lessons, the
superintendent rose and said that a good missionary was about to leave
his home, and go to preach the Gospel to the heathens far over the sea,
and that they wanted to raise a subscription and purchase Bibles to send
out with him, that he might distribute them among those poor people who
had never heard God's holy word.
He told them how the poor little children were taught to lie and steal
by their parents, and how they worshiped images of carved wood, and
stone, and sometimes killed themselves and drowned the infants, thinking
thus to please the senseless things they called their gods. He said that
children who could read and write, and go to church, ought to be
grateful to God for placing them in a Christian country, and they should
pray for the poor little heathen children, and do all they could to
provide instruction for them.
"I do not expect you to do much, my dear children," he said, "but all I
ask is, to do what you can; some of you have money given you to buy toys
or cakes; would you not rather know that it had helped a little heathen
child to come to God, than to spend it in anything so soon destroyed and
forgotten? And to those who have no money, let me ask, can you not earn
it? There are very many ways in which children may be useful, and God
will most graciously accept a gift which has cost you labor or
self-denial. You remember Jesus himself said that the poor widow's two
mites were of more value than all that the rich cast into the treasury,
because they gave of their abundance, but she cast in all that she had;
will you not, therefore, endeavor to win the Savior's blessing by
following the widow's example, and 'Go and do likewise?'"
The children listened very attentively to all the superintendent said,
and after school there was much talking among the scholars as to the
amount to be given, and how to obtain it. The following Sunday was
appointed to receive the collection, and all seemed animated with a
generous feeling, and anxious to do what they could.
"I have a bright new penny," cried little Patty Green, who was scarcely
six years old. "I didn't like to spend it, because it was so pretty,
but I will send it to the little heathen children to buy Bibles with!"
"And I," added James Blair, "have a tenpence that Mr. Jones gave me for
holding his horse; I was saving it to buy a knife, but I can wait a
while for that; uncle has promised me one next Christmas."
"You may add my sixpence to it, brother," said his sister Lucy. "I did
want a pair of woolen gloves, but it is long until winter, and I do not
need them now."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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