The Old Father's View

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · Mar 10, 1904

The Old Father's View

TWENTY years ago a discouraged young doctor in one of our large cities was visited by his father, who came up from a rural district to look after his boy.

“Well, son,” he said, “how are you getting along?”

“I’m not getting along at all,” was the disheartened answer. “I’m not doing a thing.”

The old man’s countenance fell, but he spoke of courage and patience and perseverance. Later in the day he went with his son to the Free Dispensary, where the young doctor had an unsalaried position.

The father sat by, a silent but intensely interested spectator, while twenty-five poor unfortunates received help. The doctor forgot his visitor, while he bent his skilled energies to his task; but hardly had the door closed on the last patient, when the old man burst forth: “I thought you told me you were not doing anything,” he thundered. “Not doing anything! Why, if I had helped twenty-five people in a month as much as you have in one morning, I would thank God that my life counted for something.”

“There isn’t any money in it, though,” exclaimed the son, somewhat abashed.

“Money!” the old man shouted, still scornfully. “What is money in comparison with being of use to your fellow men? Never mind about the money; you go right along at this work every day. I’ll go back to the farm and gladly earn money enough to support you as long as I live.”

“That speech,” I said to a friend of mine, one who has spent many years as a conspicuously successful teacher, “went into the bones of the young doctor’s life, and strengthened him for a life of unselfish usefulness.”

“Ah!” said the professor, “that one speech was worth years of text-book teaching! And yet it was made without an instant’s preparation.”

“Far from it,” I answered, quickly. “It had taken sixty years of noble living, struggling against sin and self, pressing forward in the paths of righteousness, bearing the cross, following hard after the perfect Man, to prepare that old Christian to make this speech. Then the moment came, and he was ready to teach the glorious lesson.”—Our Young Folks.