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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 9

The Children's Page

The Children's Page.

There are many things spoken in the church that are too hard for children to understand. But many of you go to the Sunday School, and your teachers try to make everything very easy for you. Most of you have fathers and mothers who tell you of Jesus in words that you know the meaning of and can remember. In the magazine there are some things that you will not like to read. But I want to write something every month for you, so that you may be glad when the magazine comes. You know that when Jesus was on earth he was kind to children. When the grown up people thought the children would be a trouble to him he said, "Suffer the little dren to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven," and he took them in his arms and blessed them. All Christians ought to love children, and to let them see that they love them. So there is to be always a page in the magazine for you. I hope it will remind you that Jesus loves you, and help you to love him.

You all know what a spy-glass is. There are some spy-glasses made for looking at things that are far off, and when you look through them they seem to bring things near so that you can see them plainly. These glasses are called telescopes. Others are meant to make little things look large. These glasses are called microscopes. The microscope shows us how very beautiful are some of the least things that God has made. If we get some of the very finest sand from the bottom of the deep sea and page 10 look at it through a microscope, we find that what looks like nothing but small dust is really shells of very beautiful shape in which creatures once lived, and there are little flat round things with the most lovely patterns all over them. No man could make such small things half so beautiful in their shape. And when man has made anything very fine and beautiful, if you put it under a microscope, it looks coarse and rough and very badly made.

Think of these beautiful things lying for ages and ages at the bottom of the sea where no man could see them, and so small that until men had learnt to make the microscope their beauty could not be known to us. Why should God make such little things, that for a long time no one could see, so very beautiful? When people build a house or a church they Very often make the front of it very grand, but the back part they take very little pains with, and spend very little money on it, because no one will see it. But God makes things beautiful whether people will see them or not. If men go in a ship to an island where no one lives, and where, perhaps, no man has ever been before, they very likely see the loveliest flowers, and the noblest trees, and hear the sweetest songs of birds covered with the brightest feathers. Why does God put all this beauty where people do not live? We put our best furniture in the rooms that will be most seen, and do not care so much for every little bedroom. Why does God do so differently?

Perhaps there are angels and other spirits that can see the inside of things when we can only see the outside; perhaps they can see things at the bottom of the sea, and in dark caves, and in the heart of rocks. But whether they can or not, God can. He can see always all the beautiful things he has made, and he loves beauty; and this is one reason why the smallest things and the most hidden things are beautiful. He made them for himself, and he loves beauty.

I will tell you one thing that God thinks beautiful. It is beautiful to do what is right. What is right is beautiful in the sight of God, and of all good spirits. What is wrong is ugly and disagreeable to look at. Many people do what seems right only when some one will see. Some children appear obedient till their mother's back is turned, and then they do what she bade them not to do. A really obedient child does just the same whether any one is looking or not. That is like God making things beautiful though they are to lie at the bottom of the sea for countless years. Ask God to make you like him in this, that you may love what is right and beautiful, and do it not because some one is looking, but because you love it. If you are tempted to do anything sly, or to be disobedient, or untruthful, or slovenly, say to yourself, "But if no one else sees it, I shall see it and know how ugly it is; and besides, God will see. I should like him to see nothing but what he loves."W.J.H.