A Serious Situation by M. Bessie De Graw

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 31, 1903

A Serious Situation

By M. Bessie De Graw

M. BESSIE DE GRAW

WHEN a mother forsakes her child, the orphan appeals keenly to our sympathies. I have just read of a church in a Western village which gathered its children from the public schools, and employed a teacher to train them for the Lord’s service. The work was started well, but for some reason or other, when the school year was only half finished, those little children who had been gathered together, for whom prayers had been offered, and who had been taught to believe that God’s hand was in the starting of that school, were turned out, literally without a home.

The teacher writes: “A few of us strained every nerve to carry on the school. I was teaching for twenty-three dollars a month, and gave four dollars of that to the support of the school. Another brother gave five dollars a month. The rest of the church were to raise the remaining fourteen or sixteen dollars necessary to keep up the teacher’s wages and the small incidental expenses.”

What is wrong in this church?

“Yea, they may forget,” says the Father, “yet will I not forget. . . . Behold, I have graven thee [those children] upon the palms of my hands.”

Then every time Christ looks at his hands, he sees that little group of neglected children. I do not say that he condemns those parents, but I do say that he longs for them, and pities them because they do not know what they are doing.

If the Christian school snatches the children from a stream of pollution, if it is the means of bringing salvation to many hearts, what should be done in a case like this? Are there not other fathers and mothers, possibly some whose hearts are bereft because of the loss of their natural children, who will volunteer to provide a training for those who are now neglected?

This story, which is the record of an actual occurrence, has been too often repeated. It is the result of an imperfect system of support for Christian schools. Take heed, every father and mother, and study intelligently to ascertain God’s plan of caring for the little ones. There is ample means for the training of every child. No parent should be so bitterly oppressed by this responsibility that the support of a church school keeps him in slavery. No one will be in this condition when all respond to the God-given plan for the support of schools.

God provides a liberal support for every gospel laborer. Why should a church school teacher be obliged to labor hard for a mere pittance, to devote over a sixth of his wages to the support of the school which he himself is teaching, and then be obliged to give it up altogether because there is not money to buy fuel or books? Answer, ye who are parents.