The question is often asked: “Do you want us to go out upon the streets
and bring those ragged, dirty boys with us into our churches, and have
them sit in the same pew with us?”
No, indeed, no. Both you and the boys would be unhappy.
The idea is for you to take an interest in preparing them for your
church. To shove them out of your way, into the gutter, and say, “they
are only newsboys,” will never bring these boys to you or into your
churches. They are the strayed sheep.
When upon the street you meet these “dirty brats,” instead of avoiding
them, of paying no attention to them, say pleasantly, “Good morning,”
and say it in a tone that means you are sincere and really wish them a
very good morning. That would be easy and a thousand times better than
to throw them money, as you, perhaps, have often done, to get rid of
them, or thinking you have done them a great act of charity. All this
costs you nothing.
Instead of having in your heart the desire to destroy; encourage the
desire to rescue, to uplift. Instead of hating, cultivate love. “Go
forth into the world and seek for light and light is yours.”
If you would learn the secret of real happiness, mingle with the
children. They are messengers which come to bless.
But you must understand them. They will teach you things you never knew
or dreamed of.
A speaker at one of the auxiliary meetings asked a boy to give him an
illustration of, “who is my neighbor?”
He answered: “This morning I shoveled off the snow from the sidewalks
in front of our house. After I got through I went across the street and
cleaned the snow from the sidewalks of a widow lady. A friend passing
asked me ‘why I did it,’ I replied ‘why, she’s our neighbor’.”
We often hear it said that time is wasted in trying to save these
newsboys, not perhaps because of the boy himself, but because of that
which makes him what he is. It is argued that his environment, the
influences which surround him from the day of his birth, will make him
a criminal in spite of all we can do.
The Bible holds man responsible.
If you kind reader, believe in God, believe in the Bible, you will
find the divine law (Ezekiel XXXIII.) determines your personal
responsibility. “So thou, O son of man, I have set thee a watchman unto
the house of Israel; therefore thou shalt hear the word at my mouth. If
thou dost not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked _man_
shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thy hand.
Nevertheless, if thou warn the wicked of his way to turn from it; if he
do not turn from his way, he shall die in his iniquity; but thou hast
delivered thy soul.”
Following down the ages the same responsibility is required of
Christians (James IV-17): “To him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it
not, to him it is a sin.”
The man who fails to rise above the level of his own selfish interests
is the man to whom these apply.
The church, at large, today, is like what Napoleon once said: “The army
that remains in its entrenchments is beaten.” The church remains mostly
in its own entrenchments of conventional practices and indifference
to the unsaved young men. There is but one remedy for this present
indifferent condition, and that is to be found in an awakening of
consciousness of personal responsibility for the salvation of the boy.
We need a new doctrine, not a new law, that will bring people back to
the Simple Life that demands some self-sacrifice.
If we follow these teachings what shall be our reward?
Do you remember what Pharaoh’s daughter said when, winning that strange
prize from the bulrushes, on the Nile; she called to the woman whose
child might have perished?
Pharaoh’s daughter said to the mother: “Take this child away, and nurse
it for me, and I will give thee thy wages,” and that message is given
as the crown of all motherhood on whom the divine mercy falls today.
There comes this same message: “Take this child and nurse it for me,
and I will pay the thy wages.”
The good that you have done you shall know, “not here, but hereafter.”
We should never forget that the best and truest lives are those who
strew all the years with the sweet aroma of loving and self-sacrificing
deeds. Did you ever go, in summer, to the great marshes of our
fresh-water lakes, and in the little bayous, where the muck and
grasses are so thick it is difficult to even row a boat? If not, it
will pay you to go. You find the white water lilies, dotted here and
there all over this forsaken waste. They take root and grow silently
amid the slime and mud in the quiet waters, until, in mid-summer,
they open their creamy beauty to the persuasion of the sunshine, the
glory and idealization of all flowers. So amid the lowest and poorest
of humanity, among its shadows and mists, we can sow, day by day, our
small seeds of gentle and generous deeds, not knowing when they take
root, or expecting to ever behold their unfolding into the blossoms on
the great river of time.
To have a perfect government we must have a perfect people, and that
cannot be accomplished unless we educate, unless we train, our boys in
the right direction. If we do our share in this generation it will be
easier for those who follow.
The more you mingle among newsboys the easier it is to learn how to
influence and guide them in the right path.
They will open out to you a world you have never found, a world full
of sunshine. If you are inclined to serve these boys, and are willing
to try to teach them how to live right, you will build for yourself a
crown of happiness in this world that all the wealth of a nation cannot
purchase.
[Illustration: PASTIME—THE FINISH.]