THE K I N G ’ S BUS I NESS
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Children For Hitler or For Christ?
By W . TALBOT HINDLEY Mt. Royal, Que., Canada
E MPHASIS UPON the importance of the child was long forgotten, but today men are awakening to it The most precious pos session of any community is its young life, fraught as it is with immeasur able potentialities. No wonder the master, who taught the class which Martin Luther attended, said as he entered in the morning, “I take off my hat to you, not for what you are, but for what you might be.” In all youth there are fruitful possibilities of unending good, or growing candidates for disgraceful crime.. Looking at a child, >no one knows how great rhay be the scope of his influence when adulthood has been reached. Consider three instances. In a country squire’s mansion in Eng land in the middle of the seventeenth . century, a large chimpanzee was kept as a pet. One day the nurse was sit ting in the nursery, sewing. She was horrified to see the chimpanzee, no longer in a playful mood, come, in: at the window, seize the child on the cot, and disappear with it onto the drain pipe and up to the roof. She called frantically to the master. He came quickly with his gun and watched, horror-stricken, as the beast played with the child, throwing it up and catching it. IThis address, in amplified form, was a Sun day morning message delivered in the Church of the Open Door, Los Angeles . The author, the Rep. W. Talbot Hindleg, M, A.', K. C. H. S., was formerly of Cambridge, England, where he was active—as he is also today—in youth worki—EDlTQRJ
on the cot, unharmed. Were the fa ther’s patience and presence of mind worth while? Yes, a thousand times, yes; for that baby boy was Oliver Cromwell, and when that baby’s life was saved, the British Constitution was saved as well. Years later, a fire broke out in a country village. A child’s bed was in flames. At great risk to themselves, people rescued the child. That little onq. was Charles Wesley, and when they saved the child, they saved the country. Thomas Carlyle said, “It was the revival of religion under Wesley’s preaching that saved England from the revolution that d e v a s t a t e d France.” Think of one more instance—that of a boy condemned by the cruel edict of an impossible fuehrer. His parents, at the command of God, fled to Egypt to save the boy’s life. Was it worth while? Yes, a million times, yes. For that Boy was the Lord Jesus, and in the saving of that Child the salvation of the world was embraced. Satan's Counterfeits Now Satan always has his counter feits for God’s movements. One of the most wicked and far-reaching of his plans has its center and scene in Ger many. Hitler’s perverted, clever, but crazy mind saw the value of a world wide youth movement. He sent agents to study England’s popular school sys-
“Shall I shoot?” he asked himself. “No, I might frighten the chimpanzee who would drop the child, or I might even kill the child." He waited. Presently the chimpanzee took the babe back down the drain pipe, through the window, and laid it
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