Every person is believed to have thirty-two good spirits pervading his body, called kwan. As long as these kwan all remain as guardian spirits within, no sickness or mishap can befall the person. But alas! these kwan are freaky, vacillating spirits, and may leave the body without a moment’s warning, and at once sickness or accident befalls. Much time and money are spent trying to keep these kwan in a good humor, so that they will not desert the body.... The folk-lore of this people is pregnant with this belief in magic and spirit-worship, and so the children at the knee learn to reverence and fear both, and in after years when the saner reason of maturity would assert itself, this belief has become a habit too deeply ingrained in the mind to be cast aside. (Lillian Johnson Curtis in “The Laos of North Siam,” Westminster Press.) SUNDAY-SCHOOL--NINGPO, CHINA I wish some of you might be here tomorrow to go with me to my Sunday-School for heathen children. This is a school which had to be discontinued for some time, and I re-opened it on Easter Sunday, with the assistance of nine of our older girls and pupil teachers. One hundred were present last Sunday, including some girls from our two mission schools, and a few visitors. The majority of the children are very poor and dirty, and they are learning to sing “Jesus loves me, this I know,” with as much gusto as though they were as clean as pinks, and they carry away with them a lesson leaf and a picture card, to try to tell at home what they have learned that day. I quite forget they are Chinese children, for their human nature is very like that of the children at home. One Sunday, two little girls from our mission school, clean and comfortably dressed, were sitting on the front seat, when I brought in three little heathen girls, soiled and untidy, to sit beside them. Whereupon one of the clean little girls drew herself off in one corner, gathering her clothes close about her for fear of touching the others; while the second clean little girl moved toward the soiled children and shared her hymnbook with them, pointing out each character as we sang. Did you ever know any little children at home who acted as did these two Chinese children? (Edith C. Dickie in _The Foreign Post_.) BIBLE READING “Suffer the little children.” Mark 10:13-16. Various ways in which Christ’s disciples hinder the children,--consider them too young,--too irresponsible,--feel that adults have the first claim to Christ’s time and attention. How different was Christ’s attitude! “In His words over the little children, Christ has lifted childhood into a type of character, and has given children their share in the Kingdom of God.” (Shailer Mathews.) The touch of Christ on a little child’s life brings blessing. Are we bringing the children to Him or forbidding them? “The place for the lambs is in the fold.” (Woelfkin.) A CHILDREN’S LITANY