Page:Siam and Laos, as seen by our American missionaries (1884).pdf/230

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Some of the members of the royal family are afraid to trust the heir-apparent and his royal brothers to the influence of Christianity; so a Calcutta Brahman has been employed and a school started in the palace. A friend went to visit this school one day, and the teacher handed some writing-books to the visitor to let him see how well the little princes could write. Almost the first page he looked at had this as a copy: "The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom." This shows what unexpected means God sometimes takes to teach the truths of his own word, and how foolish it is for any one to suppose that the English language can be learned without learning the religion of Jesus at the same time. May this not be the great good that God in his providence means to bring out of this universal desire for a knowledge of the English language? It is so full of Christianity that to know the one is to know the other.

May we not hope that our mother-tongue may some day become the language of all nations, and that Christianity may be the religion of the world?