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CHANGING A TOWN

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Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Apr 23, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 17.

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CHANGING A TOWN.

We know that the followers of Him who “went about doing good” try to walk in His footsteps and minister to human suffering wherever they find it; but perhaps the following story will give us a more vivid realization of what Christianity does toward meeting human needs.
Norah had been given a model village for a birthday gift. There was a big square, painted with streets and grass plots, and on this were set up tiny houses, people, and trees of pasteboard. It was a most fascinating plaything, and Norah never tired of setting up her village and sending the pasteboard people to church or along the streets. She was sending all the little ones to school one day, when her father, who had come in and was looking at the little village, asked, with an interested face,—
“What kind of a town is that, Norah?” and then as she looked up inquiringly, “I mean is it a Christian or a heathen town,—a town where people know and love God, or one where they do not?”
“O, a Christian town,” Norah answered quickly. “See the church?”
“Suppose we make it a heathen town,” her father suggested. “What must we take out?”
“The church,” answered Norah, setting it one side.
“Is that all?”
“I suppose so.”
“No, indeed,” said her father. “The public school must go. There are no public schools in heathen lands.”
Norah set the school aside. “Then the children ought not to have books in their hands,” she said.
“Certainly not the girls,” her father said. “Nor ought they to be in the streets with the boys. Take them out.”
Norah looked very grave as she set the happy-faced little girls aside.
“Take the public library, too,” her father directed.
“Anything else?” she asked, sadly.
“Isn’t that a hospital over there on Elmwood avenue?”
“But, papa, don’t they have hospitals?”
“Not in heathen countries. It was Christ who taught us to care for the sick and the old.”
“Then I must take out the Old Ladies’ Home,” said Norah, very soberly.
“Yes, and that Orphans’ Home at the other end of town.”
“Why, papa,” Norah exclaimed, “there is not a good thing left! I wouldn’t live in such a town for anything! Does knowing about Jesus make all that difference?”
As we remember how Jesus tried always to teach men to be loving and kind to one another, we realize anew how wide must be the difference in the conditions of life among those who strive to follow His teachings and among those who have never heard even His name.
Would you like to live in such a town as Norah’s would be without all that her father told her would be impossible in a heathen town, where nothing of the influence of Christ’s love had penetrated? What can you do to make this country less like a heathen country?—Ex.