MANY years ago God put it into the hearts of some of His servants to go as missionaries to Persia. Among them was a lady who joyfully left her pleasant home in America, her mother, and all she held dear, that she might carry the message of God’s wonderful love, in giving His beloved Son to be their Saviour, to the poor little girls in that desolate land.
When the lady first arrived and began her school, it seemed as if she would have no scholars. The people were not only very ignorant, they were quite willing to remain so, and everyone laughed at the notion of girls needing any teaching.
“Would you not like to learn to read?” she asked a little girl one day. The child looked at her and burst into a loud laugh, saying, “I am a girl, do you want to make a priest of me?”
It was very discouraging, and many a time the lady’s heart sank within her; but when she remembered that each of these poor degraded children had a history of her own, known only to God, and as she thought of the words of the Lord Jesus, how He said, “The Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost,” she took comfort. She felt sure that He was even then “seeking” His own, and that many stray lambs would yet be gathered to rest in the arms of the Good Shepherd from the wild hill-sides of Persia.
By-and-by, the parents saw how gentle and patient the stranger was. They found that she was willing, not only to take their children into her own house and change their dirty, ragged clothes for nice dresses made by her own hands, but also to teach them to sew, and knit, and cook. Then they were glad to let her have their little girls, though they always made a great favor of their coming, and took them away again, new clothes and all, whenever they pleased.
You, English girls, who have always had someone to care for you and love you, can hardly imagine the degraded state of these poor children and the trouble they gave their teacher. Only the love of Christ constraining her could have made her strong for all she had to do and bear.
To wash them, and comb out their matted hair, was only the beginning; they were as wild as young colts, and often as restive. If anything made them angry, they flew at each other like furies, fighting, and calling names; they talked and shouted in school, clambered over the seats, and played all sorts of tricks; and they stole everything they could hide. Poor wild things, no one had ever taught them better ways.
By degrees these unruly scholars were tamed and they learned to read the Bible in their native language, Syriac. Still their teacher waited and prayed, for she knew that, although she might teach them God’s Word in their heads, He alone could cause it to bring forth fruit in their hearts unto life eternal.
The lady had asked her friends in America to think of her and her school, particularly on the first day of the new year; so on that morning she told the children many friends far away were praying for them. Presently Sarra and another girl came to her with tears in their eyes. “Have you had bad news?” the lady asked. They did not answer at first, but coming nearer whispered, “May we have this day to care for our souls? Perhaps next year,” added Sarra, “I shall not be here.”
There was no quiet room where they could go, but the children went to the place where the wood was kept, and, taking sticks, built a little shed each, where they spent all that cold winter day telling the Lord about their sins and their naughty hearts, and crying to Him to save them.
Sarra was the first to find the Lord as her Saviour, and the first to go to be with Him, just five months after that New Year’s Day on which she said, “Perhaps next year I shall not be here.”
She lived long enough to tell many girls, and women too, of Jesus and His love. As early as March it was plain to all who saw Sarra that she was very ill, and in May she left the school and went home to her father’s house. He was a Christian, so Sarra had not the trials to bear which were the lot of so many of the school-children when they left their kind teacher and went back to their poor, ignorant parents. The sad words of one little girl, “Did you ever see a new-born lamb cast into the snow and live?” as she left her teacher, show what the children felt after returning to their homes.
Everyone around her knew that Sarra was dying, and they watched to see what the end would be. “Will Jesus stay by her?” “Will He come for her?” they often asked.
One Saturday in June her father was going away, as he often did, to preach, but did not like to leave his dying child. She begged him not to stay with her, saying, “Go, father, and I will pray for you.” Next day, feeling ill and forgetting for a moment that he was gone, she said, “Call my father”; then, smiling sweetly in the midst of her pain, added, “Oh, yes, I remember; don’t call him; let him preach; I can die alone.”
Soon after she asked that her teacher might come to her. Her sister was going to fetch her when Sarra beckoned to her and whispered, “It is the hour when she prays with my companions; don’t call her; I can die alone.”
And so, with no Christian near to speak words of cheer and comfort, Sarra died.
That verse in the 23rd Psalm which you know so well, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me,” was indeed a reality to Sarra, the Persian girl; may God make it true of each one who reads the story of her life and death. C. P.