Getting Hold of the Boy by N. H. Burdick

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Tacoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jun 13, 1907

Getting Hold of the Boy

By N. H. Burdick

MANY times the appeal comes to a pastor to get hold of some mother’s boy. “I want you to get hold of my boy,” says the anxious mother; “he is getting out of the notion of going to Sabbath-school, and he is keeping company with boys that are careless.” Then the pastor may ask, “How old is your boy?” And the mother replies, “He is about fourteen,” or fifteen, or sixteen, as the case may be; just at that critical age when he is starting on life’s path of right or wrong.

Now a word to the fathers and mothers of all such boys. What has been your example before your boy? Not what has been your teaching. In ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the precepts you have been giving him are correct. But what has been your example? Have you been faithful yourself in supporting by your presence and your means the church of your Lord? Has your boy found, by experience, that, unless sickness or other unavoidable reasons intervened, your attendance at the Sabbath services was one of the inevitable things of the week? In short, while your preaching has been as it should be, have you before him practised what you preached?

You know yourself what the effect would be upon you if, for instance, your pastor preached Sabbath observance, and then went picnicking on that day. You would not tolerate his preaching one thing and practising another. If you, as a parent, allow small things to interfere with your church obligations, you must take into consideration, as a part of the price you will have to pay, the fact that your boy will manifest indifference also when he arrives at that critical age when he begins to make his own choices.

All this is said in a spirit of kindness, and in full sympathy with that parental anxiety which a father and a mother must feel when they realize that the boy by whom they have set such store is beginning to turn in the wrong direction. For one of the earliest symptoms of going wrong that a boy manifests is distaste for church and Sabbath-school. A true pastor will certainly do all in his power to save any boy. But remember that when you, as a parent, neglect the church, you have, by your neglect, put up a barrier between the pastor and the boy that in the majority of cases it is almost impossible for him to overcome. The boy has been taught by your example to consider the church, and all that appertains unto it, of secondary importance, and the influence of the pastor is greatly weakened by that lack of respect that such a course upon the part of the parent can not help but produce. The influence of your example counts for vastly more in the life of your boy than that of any one else, be he pastor, Sabbath-school superintendent or teacher, or any one else. Is not the application of all this too obvious for need of enlargement?—Rev. N. H. Burdick.