February, 1937
T H E K I N G ' S B U S I N E S S
53
Junior
King's Business M A R T H A S. H O O K E R
By
OLD HUMPEDBACK By H elen G ailey
O ld Humpedback used to sit against the wall near a rich man’s gate. He was a Chinese beggar. Whenever the gate opened, he would get up and hobble over, and whine out his beggar’s song: “You old honorable one, have pity, have pity! I am a poor, no money person. My rice bowl is empty. I have no coats to keep me warm, no bed to sleep on. I eat much bitterness. Ancient, honorable one, do a good deed! Lay up a little merit 1 Give to a poor need-rice per son. Buddha will reward you.” He would go on and on with his coaxing and whin ing until he would get his coin. On bright, warm days, Old Humpedback would go off down the street to the big shops. He would step inside and beg from the owner. He would always get a coin. The shopkeepers knew Old Humpedback, arid they were afraid of him. If a shop keeper didn’t pay him, Old Humpedback had been known to stand in the doorway and call the shopkeeper bad names until all of the people passing by would hear. If the shopkeeper still refused to pay him, Old Humpedback would go off and find some beggar friends. They would all,come back to the doorway and call out names to any who might hear. They would call something like this: “ Here is the shop of a prosperous person. He is so stingy that he won’t even toss a coin to a poor hunchback beggar who has no rice to fill his bowl, no bed to sleep on, no coat to wear I” They would go on and on until the shop keeper had “no face”—as the Chinese say when a man loses the good opinion of other people. " His customers would not come in past this crowd of howling beg gars. The shopkeeper would have to pay Old Humpedback after all. There was no other way. He must throw money, also, to all of Old Humpedback’s beggar friends. And when this happened, the shop keeper’s troubles had just begun. Old Humpedback would come again to this shop to beg. His beggar frierids would come often, too. They knew that the shop keeper would never dare refuse them again I Children used to be afraid of Old Humpedback. He was dirty, and his clothes were torn and his back very crooked. “ Don’t be afraid of him,” their parents would say. “ He will not touch you. He only thinks of begging for money.” “Why does he wear such old, torn clothes?” the children would want to know. “ Oh, he is a beggar,” the parents would say. “ That is his business. If he wore fine clothes, who would give him money? Who would feel sorry for him?
here that the foreigners told of their strange foreign religion. The doors were open. Old Humpedback climbed up the wood en stairs. He had never been in a Chris tian church before. He paused at the door. He saw rows and rows of Chinese people listening to a Chinese man who was talk ing from a platform in front. Old Humped back wanted to see and hear better. He pushed his way up to the platform. There in the front row was a seat. He took it. Just then the people stood up to sing again. They sang from books. A Chinese man behind Old Humpedback opened a book to the right page and handed it to the beggar. The man knew that a beggar could not read, but it was polite to hand a stranger a book. Old Humpedback took the book in surprise. No one had ever been polite to him before I Where were the foreigners who owned this place? He looked for them on the platform, but only the Chinese man was there, fie looked around among the peo ple. There the foreigners were, a few of them, and they were sitting with the lis teners, just as he was doing. The singing was ended, and the Chinese man on the platform stood up to speak. He opened a book and read these lines: “Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought also to love one another” (1 John 4:11). The large crowd of people listened in silence as the speaker talked to them quiet ly about “ love.” He spoke of the love of God, whom he called “our Father.” The beggar had never heard of God as a heavenly Father. He only knew of the heathen gods in the temples, who were said to bring you bad luck if you did not wor ship them. The speaker said that this true God could forgive sins. “How do you get Him to do this?” the beggar wondered. He had many sins. Perhaps he had better try this God. Did one pay Him money? He would find out. The speaker finished talking. Next he prayed to this God. He told Him how much the people gathered here loved Him, how they thanked Him for what He had done for them, because He had sent His only begotten Srin into this world to die for their sins, that they, believing in this Son, might be brought back to God and go to dwell with Him forever. The beggar had never heard of this kind of God before. He would come back and hear some more. People came up and spoke to him when the speaker had fin ished. They asked him to come again. Every seventh day they held this worship meeting, they said. The beggar promised to come. All week he remembered about it, and
Doesn’t this stone lion seem to be laughing at the poor old Chinese woman and saying, “ How foolish you are! as if that could do you any good— ■” ? And indeed she is pitifully mistaken. The woman has this tiny stand at the at the gate of a Chinese school where she sells peanuts, melon seeds, and matches. While she waits for some one to come to buy her wares, she is very busy opening the folded paper tnat you see on the ground beside her. She be lieves that if as she burns it she says the name of Buddha, whom she wor ships, this paper will change into money for her to use after she dies and is in the next life. She thinks that if she does not say this name, the paper will be come fuel for the next world. What a difference it would make to this peddler if she knew that the Lord Jesus Christ died for her and that He lives again to give her everlasting life with Him! This story of Old Humpedback will introduce you to a very different “ Seller of Candies.’’ These are his begging clothes. But, let me tell, we have seen this same beggar when he was dressed as fine as any merchant from whom he begs I “But Old, Humpedback is to be pitied,” the children’s parents would continue. “What work could a poor cripple find to do?” One day Old Humpedback was walking along North Gate Straight Street. He passed the tall building which the for eigners had built. He knew that it was
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