CHILDREN’S PAGE.

LITTLE SALLIE. PROFESSOR A. K. SPENCE, OF FISK UNIVERSITY. (Written from Dundee, Scotland.)

Little Sallie was born a slave, but became free through the Emancipation Proclamation of Abraham Lincoln. She had learned to read elsewhere, but came to the school connected with Fisk University to pursue her studies still further. There she soon saw she was a sinner, and needed a Saviour. She sought long, but did not find peace to her soul. She was very sorrowful, and her trouble appeared in her down-cast face. She often sighed and sometimes wept. She prayed much and read her Bible. Her teachers felt sad for poor little Sallie.

At last light came. The Bible says, “Sorrow continueth for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.” Her joy was great. Any one could see that she had met a change. Her countenance was all aglow. A sweet smile played on her lips. Her voice was full of music as she told what God had done for her. Her eye kindled as she spoke of her dear Saviour. All the affection of her young heart was given to him. It was sweet to listen to her prayers, in which she often said, dear Jesus.

But Sallie wished to do something for Him who had done so much for her. All young converts feel in that way. Old Christians feel so, too. Paul says, “The love of Christ constraineth us.” But what could she do? She was so young, and only a girl. Even if she were a woman, she could not go into the pulpit and preach. Only men do that. What could she do! This perplexed little Sallie.

One of her teachers, knowing her trouble, said to her, “Well, Sallie, you can read, can you not?” “Oh, yes!” she replied, for she was a good reader. “There are many colored people who were long slaves, and cannot read, are there not? Would not you like to read the Bible to some of them?”

This thought pleased little Sallie. Soon after she put on her hat, took her Bible, and went out, Christ’s little missionary. She stood erect, she stepped light, she looked happy; she was going out to do good for Jesus. No doubt His love was warm in her heart just then. We always feel love to God when for His sake we try to do good to men.

She did not know it, but the teacher who suggested her mission followed to see what she would do. When she turned a street corner, he turned it soon after her. At last she entered a little house, such as many of the colored people live in. It was made of boards, one story high, and had only one room. The day was warm. The door was open. He went to it and looked in. I will try to tell you what he saw.

Sallie sat in a chair with her Bible in her lap, reading. One colored woman was, seemingly, busy at a table, ironing clothes. But her iron went back and forth nearly in the same place, while she looked away, eyes and mouth open, to little Sallie, to whom she listened attentively. Another had ceased from her work, and, leaning against the wall, looked down upon our little missionary in a most loving, motherly way. A third was sitting at her feet and gazing with her great, dark face into the face of Sallie, who, in a low, sweet voice, was reading: “He was wounded for our transgressions; He was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed.” Was it not beautiful? You know this is a prophesy of Christ, written many hundred years, before the sufferings it describes, which Jesus bore for us. Find the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah and read it for yourselves, my young friends, and think that Sallie read it to those poor colored women; and as you go over these verses, may the same love and joy fill your hearts as filled hers.

Remember, also, that you, too, may be workers for Christ in some way. It may not be in Sallie’s way. She used to sing “There’ll be something in Heaven for children to do.” There is something for them to do on earth, too. Seek God’s guidance and He will show you what. Christ says that if we give even a cup of water to any one, for His sake, we shall not lose our reward. Sallie did not work for pay, but she had her reward in the consciousness that she was pleasing Jesus and doing good to those women.

Many years have passed since the time of this narrative. Little Sallie is now a young woman. Through the aid of kind friends she completed the course of studies in the Normal department of Fisk University, and is now teaching colored children in the far-off State of Texas. The freed people of the South need such teachers; they need also ministers of their own race; and many missionaries are needed for Africa.

One way, my dear young friends, in which you can serve the Lord, is this: Help us to educate these young people. When you put a little piece of money into the box for this cause and for Jesus’ sake, He sees it and will say to you in the last day: “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”