May 1932
204
T h e
K i n g ’ s
B u s i n e s s
THAT GREW By W AD E C. SM ITH Greensboro, l&fC.
o ne lesson taught me by the Little Jetts will remain; that is, to go slow about calling anything a trifle; and to go especially slow about calling it a trifle if it serves God’s Word— even just a little bit. It seemed by an accident that the Little Jetts came into being, and still more an accident that they arrived as preachers of the gospel at the very start; but I have long since ceased to think of them as ac cidental, for God has honored them in a most remarkable way, permitting them to become real exponents of His truth. It was on a Sunday afternoon about seventeen years ago, while thinking to introduce some new angle to the Bible story I was telling my two little girls, that I began to make some crude marks on the back of an envelope with a fountain pen. I had never had an art lesson, but won dered if they might guess what those cryptic little figures meant— if they might know what Bible characters I was trying to indicate. They promptly told me these first Little Jetts were Cain and Abel, standing by their respective al tars of sacrifice. This was correct, and I saw with much sat isfaction that we had entered a new and fascinating field for our Sunday afternoon Bible hour. All the old stories became new stories; they got a new dress, so to speak. The tale o f how, from that very incidental beginning, the Little Jetts got into Junior Life, a denominational weekly for children, and from that into a book which, when it came under the eye of Charles G. Trumbull, editor of the Sunday School Times, led him to invite the Little Jetts to occupy a “ pulpit” in that world-wide journal, reads like a romance. T h e L it t l e J e t t s B e c o m e M is s io n a r ie s The reactions which have come back to the pseudo artist have been very surprising, to say the least. Repro ductions of the Little Jetts as they were seen in the Sun day School Times have come with letters from the child ren of nearly every country on the globe. A missionary in Calcutta writes that she reproduces the Little Jetts from
the Times each week to other missionaries, both native and foreign, who come to her home from a twenty-mile radius around Calcutta. She puts figures (enlarged) on a board before them, while they copy them on their tablets, to re produce in the same manner upon returning to their sta tions. The Little Jetts never thought they would become missionaries in that way. A Chinese student in a mission high school in Hash ing worked for eight months, making a complete repro duction of the Little Jetts book, giving on each alternate page his own version of the Bible story illustrated; then he had his foreign teacher send it to me with his compliments. A coolie in Korea, who could neither read nor write, made an enlarged reproduction of the same book, and sent it to the author by the hands of a returning missionary. A n E n l a r g e d M in is t r y Similar “ come-backs” could be multiplied by the score, but perhaps they do not tell the most significant develop ment of the Little Jetts’ ministry. Invitations began to come to “ Father Jett” to bring his crude etchings to the platform, so he learned to draw them on white paper, thumb-pinned to a blackboard, using black and colored crayons, and thus to illustrate while telling the gospel story to audiences. The inevitable happened: he was a layman, but even while yet a layman, a church called him to be its pastor. Then he was licensed and ordained— “ by' extraor dinary process,” as the church court calls it. The little black figures, so incidental, so apparently inconsequential, had led their designer into the ministry of the gospel! Recently, I have had the great pleasure of “ Jetting” Pilgrim’s Progress, after rewriting Bunyan’s story and abridging it considerably. The Little Jetts simply romped up and down with this wonderful allegory. Christian with his burden, slipping into the Slough of Despond, and pom pous Mr. Worldly-Wiseman made easy marks for the little silhouettes. They chuckled with glee in the portrayal of
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