p. 13 | How Much Are You Worth? by Mary Wood-Allen, M. D.

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · Feb 9, 1905

How Much Are You Worth?

By Mary Wood-Allen, M. D.

My daughter dear, when I see you with your bright girl friends, when I look into your bright eyes, and listen to your merry laughter and your girlish chatter, I wonder if any one of you understands how much you are worth? Now you say, “I haven’t any money in the bank; I have no houses or land; I am worth nothing;” but that would only be detailing what you possess. It is not what you possess, but what you are that determines what you are worth. One may possess much wealth and be worth little.

It is not after you have grown old that you will be of value to the world; it is now, in your young days, while you are laying the foundation of character, that you are of great importance. We can not say that the foundation is of no importance until the building is erected, for upon the right placing of the foundation depends the firmness and stability of the superstructure.

We can see what men are doing when they build railroads, construct immense bridges and towering buildings, but it is more difficult to measure what is done through intellectual and spiritual forces; and women’s work in this world is not so much the using of strength as it is the using of those finer forces which go to build up men and women. With this thought in your mind, can you answer the question, How much are you worth? How much are you worth to yourself? How much are you worth to your home? How much money would your parents be willing to accept in place of yourself? How much are you worth to the community in which you live? How much are you worth to the State, the nation, the human race?

You can recognize your value in the home when you remember how you are the center of all that goes on there; how much your interest is consulted in everything that is done by father and mother. You can realize your value to the State when you realize how much money is spent for the education of young people, how cultured men and women give the best of their lives to your instruction.

You can not measure your value to the human race until you begin to think that the young of to-day are creating the condition of the world in the immediate future; that you, through your physical health, or lack of it, are to become a source of strength or weakness in future years, if you are a mother. It is all right that young women should think of marriage and motherhood, provided they think of it in the right way.

I want you to reverence yourself, to realize your own importance, to feel that you are a necessity to God’s perfect plan. When we are young, and feel that we are of no account in the world, it is difficult to realize that God’s complete plan can not be carried out without us. The smallest, tiniest rivet or bolt may be of such great importance in the construction of an engine that its loss means the incapacity of that piece of machinery to do its work. As God has placed you in the world, he has placed you here to do a specific work for him and for humanity, and your failure to do that work means the failure of his complete and perfect plan. Now, can you begin to see how much you are worth?—Mary Wood-Allen, M. D.