To the Editor of the "Norra-Curna Datty News."
Sir,-I am in deep sympathy with "Mother" in respect of the letter she has received from her little girl at school.
Allowance must be made, however, for the medium of the child-mind, through which the information come.
It must also be taken into account, in respect of the special nature of the teaching complained of, that many of the plain facts of life and death perforce have to be taught to children by wise parents and teachers. However much we desire to avoid the subject of death itself, for example, in the instruction of children, yet the presence of death in the world and often enough in the child's own environment, and the incidence of that presence upon the child-mind, dgompel some attention to suitable instruction upon it.
But in all teaching, and especially on the subject mentioned, there is a right and a wrong emphasis in the teaching of children. Here we have the problem of teaching to children of tender age just what it is profitable for them to know Helper of little children. He Himself said, "Of such is the Kingdom of Heaven." If that word be true, will he cut them out of the manifested Kingdom of Righteousness now so near? It was mainly for crimes against children, both born and unborn, that He appeared three and a half milleniums ago the Divine General of a -host commissioned to wipe out whole nations, and to effect a moral sterilization of the very ground on which they had lived: Joshua 5: 13-15. The Christ who is coming is the same Christ who rebuked His own disciples for rebuffing children, He who, with lips full of Divine threat against the sinners of His day (Matt. 23), yet raised the child of Jairus with precautions showing the tenderest concern that her recall from the shadows should be withoué shock or undue surprise (witness the exclusion of the crowd from the bedchamber, and His use of the same phrase that her nurse might have used in awakening her from normal sleep every morning (Mark 5:41). Will He be less kind and thoughtful to tender young life when He comes again? And who are the children of whom it is written that \the Millenial Jersualem shall be full of boys and girls about an insistent, inevitable and playing in the streets thereof: irrefutable future event, of uni-(Zech. 8:5 versal and personal significance, That this method of presentation whose imminence is established on can be spiritually wholesome to the the unexceptionable sanctions of child mind is shown by a letter both science and religion. How which I have received from my own shall we teach it? boy, also at a distant school, aged The answer is, I feel, that in 11. He writes tome: "I read your presenting Christ, who is "the same letter im the paper about Christ's yesterday, to-day, and for ever," to Coming again, and it has been a the child-mind, in respect of his great help to me." I had, previous-coming Apocalypse, we should point ly, personally taught him on this to Him as the Friend and Vindicasubject. for of Truth, Virtue and Love on I am, etc., behalf of mankind. In adding that G. H. Coates. word Love, I am not using the term China Inland Mission, in the maudlin sense in which it is in these days so often held to Kiukiang, Nov. 13, 1922. characterize God and His dealings with men, that is, the futile, ineffec-
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.