Peter, the Karen by Robert Bruce Thurber

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Sep 30, 1913

FromThe Signs of the Times, Vol. 40, No. 38

Peter, the Karen

By Robert Bruce Thurber

By Prof. Robert Bruce Thurber

YOU have heard of the Karens, that remarkable people who live chiefly in the hill tracts of Lower Burma; who so bravely fought to help the British restore order during the terrorism of the robber bands after the occupation; who believe that God gave them His word centuries ago, and when they neglected it, took it from them, saying He would send it again in the hands of white men from the West; who are anxiously waiting for this visitation, and give, as a reason for idol-worship, that they must appease the devil till God comes to save them; who, tho fewer in number, and having much less labor bestowed upon them, have accepted Christianity in ten times the number of Burmese accepting it. For seven years urgent calls were sent to America for a man to carry to them the third angel's message. At last he has come, and a work is begun. But it really began long before he arrived, as God's messages so many times precede the human representative.

Thousands of these attractive people have become Christians with the idea that Sunday is the seventh day of the week. The missionaries have so taught them, they say. For some years, they have been traveling and sending long distances to inquire about this matter. No other call for help could be stronger than their need and desire. Three Karens have been baptized into this truth, but I can tell you about only one of them.

Since we started the school at Meiktila, it has been our aim to make it cosmopolitan, especially to get as students a few representatives at least of each nationality in Burma, in order to sow seeds of truth in their hearts, that they might carry it back home. With this in mind, while we were away up among the Karen hills getting a change from the heat of the lowlands, we encouraged several boys to leave their homes and come to the school, two hundred miles away. We had to offer strong inducements, for the hill-born love their hills. The three who finally decided to come are nominal Christians—at least they have Christian names and sing Christian songs, and that means more of Christianity to them than it would be to us.

John, Tom, and Peter, strong, hardy fellows in their teens, walked to the railway,—which wonder they had never seen before,—and arrived the following day at the school. Friends in America to whom we wrote, promised to help them through school. They were good workers, all three, John starting to learn shoemaking, Tom cane-work, and Peter carpentry. A Karen boy has work “in his bones.” He couldn't coax a crop out of the thin soil of his narrow valleys if he hadn't. But besides being industrious and steady, they were fast becoming skilful.

However, those same home hills are in sight from the school. Their blue retreats looked cool on the hot days. O, the lure of them! It is so hard for even the plain-dweller to resist.

Peter was the only one who didn't peter. He went home with the others for a short vacation, and returned alone. Altogether misnamed, he is a plodder, and says little. Something stronger than the beauty of his childhood haunts drew him to us. I can't explain it. If I could, it wouldn't seem so strong.

Up there they asked him if he worked on Sunday. “Yes,” he answered. “Why shouldn't I?” “We don't know why you shouldn't,” came the reply. “It is surely the first working-day according to the words of the Great Book.”

Peter was one of the elect. He was baptized, for there was no other or better way, now that he knew. Again he went home for a few weeks, and returned, bringing three other Karen boys, one of them a quite well-educated boy, older than Peter, and with some skill in carpentry and turning.

This is the first chapter in a bit of current missionary history, and the completed record promises most triumphant and interesting developments. At present we can but say, “Thus far—”