[Sidenote: The Child at Worship in Thibet.]
The Child at Worship! Far off in distant Thibet today thousands of children are praying morning, noon, and night, joining their parents in the constant repetition of one six-syllabled sentence, “Om mani padme Hum” (“Om! the Jewel in the Lotus! Hum”!) This prayer they are taught from earliest childhood to use as “a panacea for all evils, a compendium of all knowledge, a treasury of all wisdom, a summary of all religion.” It is engraved on the outside of metal cylinders, written on rolls within rolls of paper inserted into the cylinders, which are held in the right hand and whirled round and round like a child’s toy,--each revolution storing up merit to the worshipper. But alack! if the careless boy whirls the prayer cylinder in the wrong direction, i.e., not with the sun, he is adding to the debit side of his account, and the more zealously he “prays,” the less good will his prayers do him.[75] “They think they shall be heard for their much speaking.”
[Sidenote: The Child at Worship in India.]
The Child at Worship in India! “All the way up the bank they are killing and skinning their goats. You look to the right and put your hands over your eyes. You look to the left, and do it again. You look straight in front of you and see an extended skinned victim hung from the branch of a tree. Every hanging rootlet of the great banyan-tree is hung with horrors,--all dead most mercifully, but horribly still....
“We see little children watching the process delightedly. There is no intentional cruelty, for the god will not accept the sacrifice unless the head is severed by a single stroke. But it is most disgusting and demoralizing. And to think that these children are being taught to connect it with religion!
“With me is one who used to enjoy it all. She tells me how she twisted the fowls’ heads off with her own hands. I look at the fine little brown hands, and I can hardly believe it. ‘You, _you_, do such a thing!’ And she says, ‘Yes; when the day came round to sacrifice to our family divinity my little brother held the goat’s head while my father struck it off, and I twisted the chickens’ heads. It was my pleasure.’”[76]
Truly, “the dark places of the earth are full of the habitations of cruelty!”