The Awful Peril of the Young

“THE most helpless thing in the whole world is a newborn child. And yet the mother’s arms enfold the casket that contains an immortal soul. We enter the gates of earthly life with a cry upon our lips, eloquent of our sinful birth, and of a need in our lives that meets us upon the very threshold of existence. The sanctuary of a mother’s love is our dwelling-place as the months pass on, and our earliest impressions are of a loving presence about us, that gives us all we need, with tireless patience and ceaseless affection. What do we owe, under God, to our mothers? Can we ever forget the morning smile, and the evening blessing, the sense of home that was ours when we saw our mother’s face? ‘Where is mother?’ is the child’s question every hour of every day. A thousand needs to be met by only one; tears to be wiped away by a mother’s hand; questions from the inquiring mind of things on earth and things in heaven to be answered by mother only. And when pain and weariness are ours, and the brow is hot, what hand is there like hers to cool the fever then!
“Thank God for our mothers; for when our feet are on the desert sands of the hard and stern realities of life, when a thousand demands are made upon our tired minds and bodies as the responsibilities of our being press upon us, how blessed it is to recall as we look back through the years, the oasis of home, where mother lived, and the gentle presence comes to us again, although we have watched her go to heaven, and we are children in the home once more, and mother’s hymns and prayers are sounding in our ears and to our tired hearts the music of those early days is almost like a psalm of heaven.”
These words are from one of my Victoria Hall addresses, and I felt that to remind our hearts of what many of us owe to our mothers would make us feel more deeply perhaps for the boys and girls of today. One part of our work for God has been to supply to many of the Council Schools, Testaments for the boys and girls who attend them. A great number of Sunday School teachers have also been supplied with Testaments for their classes, especially among the very poor in the industrial centers of England. We have sent also to High Schools, Grammar Schools, Colleges, etc., at home and abroad, at the request of the Principals, Vice-Principals and teachers. During the last three years we have sent more than 150,000 Testaments to children through various sources. We have been glad of this service that we bring before you now, as it has brought us in contact with godly teachers and with fathers and mothers who have told us how thankful they were to us for giving their children Testaments, and in many cases this has led to the conversion of the parents.
Have you not heard the cry of the children rising to God from drunken homes, from Communist Sunday Schools and schools of infidelity?