Page 286 - Neglected Arabia Vol 2

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A NEGLECTED ARABIA
Twenty to thirty beggars make up that audience. Utter poverty and
misery and loneliness; hunger and weariness and sin, constitute the very
atmosphere. We tried to tell these people too that Christ is the light of
the world, that whosoever followcth Him shall not walk in darkness but
shall have the light of life; that we are from beneath and He is from above
and except as we believe that Christ is from above we will die in our sins.
But when hunger pinches the face, it pinches the soul as well, and the
windows that ought to admit the light shrink down to tiny cracks. That
morning not a great deal of light got through.
After the service it is the custom to ask what the sermon was about,
which is a wonderful cure for homiletical pride. "What did the Sahib
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TliK OPENING OF T1IE WOMEN’S HOSPITAL AT KA11KAIN
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say?” asked the questioner. “God is love,” answered one of the listeners
who had completely failed to understand the smallest fraction of what ;•
he had heard.
In the days of the Mission patriarchs, it was agreed that there should *
be no street preaching in Bahrain, but times change and it became necessary ;•
to spend a day out of each week, working in the villages. The first re- ■
action to this was sometimes very frosty but gradually doors opened even ?
in bigoted and hostile places. Miss Dalenberg visited and treated the
women in their homes and Mr. Hennings learned the arts and artifices of
the pharmacist. There were sore eyes to foment and drop medicine into,
ulcers to clean, and malaria to prescribe for. The doctor usually finished ?,
with his work half an hour before the pharmacist. There was always a •
curious and friendly crowd of men and boys who received with interest L
the invitation to sit down and listen while we read out of the book. A *
useful introduction we found in “Lay not up for yourselves treasures on k
earth, where moth and rust do corrupt and where thieves break through
and steal.” There was no danger that most of the listeners would ever
break that commandment, and it met with great approval. To dignify their |
l>overty as obedience to a divine command was a new and refreshing idea. F