Untitled article by D. F. NEWTON

Untitled article

D. F. NEWTON

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · September 17, 1867

FromReview and Herald, Vol. XXX, No. 14

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THE STREET SCHOOL AND ITS FRUITS.

By D. F. NEWTON

“Oh, it is a saddening sight, When children go astray, Forsaking what is good and right, To walk in Satan’s way.”

Marble-playing, copper-pitching, chess and checkers, fox and geese, are often stepping-stones to the gaming-table. Many of the most dissolute, degraded, miserable, and abandoned, date their first moving steps ruinward to marble-playing, the chess-board, or what is erroneously termed an innocent game at cards.

How, then, can parents, especially religious parents, consistently permit their children to engage in them? Time is lost, worse than lost, precious, golden moments, for which God will call you to account. A seared conscience, a callous heart, a turning away from the path of life to the path of death, is sure to accompany these games sooner or later.

Yet, strange as it may appear, professed ministers of the gospel are publicly advocating these time-killers—missiles of Satan—commending them to parents for the amusement of their children! Wicked! wicked! shameful! shameful! “My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not.” “Enter not into the path of the wicked, and go not into the way of evil men. Avoid it, pass not by it, turn from it and pass away.” Prov. i, 10; also iv, 14, 15.

Recently two boys were playing at marbles, and several, as is usual, were looking on to see how the game went; and it went very peaceably for a time. At last, “You cheat,” burst from one, “You lie!” cried the other. “Tell me I lie?” cried the first with an angry scowl. “Call me a cheat?” rejoined the second. “Call me a cheat again and you take that,” doubling up his fist in the other boy’s face. “Get out,” cried the first, jumping up in a passion, “or I’ll pitch into you.” And pitch into each other they did like a couple of bull-dogs. It was a regular fight, until one got the nosebleed, and the other was kicked over in the dirt.

A city missionary in an eastern city, visited a man in jail waiting his trial.

“Sir,” said the prisoner, tears running down his cheeks, “I had a good home education; it was my STREET education that ruined me. I used to slip out of the house, and go off with the boys in the street. In the street I learned to lounge; in the street I learned to swear; in the street I learned to smoke; in the street I learned to gamble; and in the street I learned to pilfer. Oh, sir, it is in the street the Devil lurks to work the ruin of the young!”

Some boys are always in the street. They sleep and eat at home, but they live on the street; seek amusement on the street; do all the work they have to do on the street; receive their education on the street; they enter society on the street; and the Devil enlists them

in his service on the street. O parents, all the grace in the world cannot save them if they go much on the street.

“There is no remedy for time misspent; No healing for the waste of idleness, Whose very languor is a punishment Heavier than active souls can feel or guess. O, hours of indolence and discontent Not now to be redeemed! ye sting not less Because I know this span of life was lent For lofty duties, not for selfishness.”

—D. F. NEWTON, Author of "Home Thrusts."