_Brave Christians._ Numbers of the immigrants who become Christians
are real heroes. The story of the persecutions they suffer would be a
surprise to most Christian Americans. The Jewish daily papers sometimes
publish the names of the Jewish attendants at Christian meetings that
they may incite their Jewish neighbors against them, and the tenement
has so bitter a tongue that it often drives the family out of the
neighborhood.
Young people who are baptized are mourned for as dead, cast out of their
homes, and made practically orphans, and Christian workers must find
homes for them. Spies are sent into Christian meetings to secure the
names and addresses of Hebrews present, and then letters, or visits, or
both, follow. Bibles of young converts are taken from them and burned.
While the streets are filled with children with no religious instruction,
the whole Ghetto is stirred over one convert to Christ.
One leading Russian revolutionist told me that if he were to come out
openly in favor of the Christian church his business would be ruined.
The country founded by men who sought it for liberty of conscience is not
a free country to every one and men who have found an asylum here from
the oppressor of Europe become in turn oppressors themselves.
The greatest need of all these people is Christ.
_The Need of Christ._ The non-Christian Chinese are at times cruel and
merciless beyond description. Slavery is common among them, women being
bought and sold like merchandise. The treatment of little “servant” girls
is sometimes so inhuman that they commit suicide. These little girls are
bought by the Chinese and then frequently sold by them when 12 or 15
years of age. The picture of two of these little “servant” girls, rescued
by the Church of All Nations, appears opposite this page.
[Illustration: How Chinese Babies Ride
Copyright by Underwood & Underwood, New York City]
[Illustration: Rescued Slave-Girls (New York City)]
One Christmas night a great company of Chinese and their friends had
gathered to celebrate the birth of Christ. Chinese women were there who
had never before been in a public gathering; bound-feet women were there
who are never seen on the streets. The platform was thronged with Chinese
children in their quaint, beautiful, and becoming Oriental costumes. The
first Christmas was long, long ago. Scripture tells us that on that night
a song so full of joy that it startled the shepherds rang through the
wintry sky. Poets and other people say that as Christmas time comes round
again they can still catch faint echoes of the angels’ song. Perhaps the
angels still sing it each glad Christmas Eve; anyway, at no other time
does a child seem so beautiful and so holy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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