Many Muhammadans, who believe that Muhammadanism is a true religion given to them by God through Muhammad, still see that Christianity is the better religion, and Muhammadans have told me that God had given us a better religion than He had given them.
So the _Mullās_ try to persuade or frighten the fathers into not sending their boys to the Mission-school, they try to frighten the boys out of going, and they try to get the governors to close the schools. But it is God’s work, and He does not allow them to stop it for long.
The boys themselves show the greatest interest in whatever they are told about the Bible, and naturally in one way or another Bible reading is always a prominent feature of every class of Mission-school.
Sometimes there is a regular lesson on the Bible as one of the school subjects, but in other places there are no Bible lessons, but only prayers and Bible-reading, with very simple explanations. But however this may be, the gospel story of Christ Jesus, which is known by name to every Muhammadan, but by more than name to very, very few, is always of absorbing interest, and is not likely to be forgotten.
“To the house of ‘Ali Akbar the pea-roaster,” I said to my servant.
“There are two ‘Ali Akbars pea-roasters,” he replied, “one is alive, and one dead; which do you want?”
It proved to be the widow who had sent for me, and we were soon great friends.
“And do you go to school?” I asked Husain, a merry little boy of eight.
“No, I am an apprentice-baker,” he said with an evident sense of importance; he felt he was a wage-earner--a halfpenny a day, I think was the amount, but where a labourer often only earns fivepence a day, even a halfpenny a day counts for something in the family.
Seven years old seems to be a very common age for apprenticing boys in Persia. A boy of that age can make himself useful and gradually learn his trade, and if his master and his fellow-apprentices are kind he may be very happy, like my little baker. He probably fetched and carried, brought sticks for heating the oven, laid out the long thin flat loaves in rows as they were handed to him from the oven, and later carried them in a tray on his head, or hanging over his shoulder, to some of the customers.
