NOT IF IT WAS MY BOY by Anon.

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Aug 12, 1897

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 23, No. 31.

“NOT IF IT WAS MY BOY.”

By Anon.

SOME years ago the late Horace Mann, an eminent educator, delivered an address at the opening of some reformatory institute for boys, during which he remarked that if only one boy was saved from ruin, it would pay for all the cost and labor of establishing such an institute as that. After the exercises had ceased, in private conversation a gentleman rallied Mr. Mann on his statement, and said to him:—

“Did you not color that a little, when you said that all the expense and labor would be repaid if it only saved one boy?”

“Not if it was my boy,” was the solemn and convincing reply.

Ah, there is a wonderful value about “my boy”! Other boys may be rude and rough; other boys may be reckless and wild; other boys may seem to require more pains and labor than they will ever repay; other boys may be left to drift uncared for to the ruin which is near at hand; but “my boy”—it were worth the toil of a lifetime and the lavish wealth of a world to save him from temporal and eternal ruin. We would go the world round to save him from peril, and would bless every hand that was stretched out to give help and welcome. And yet every poor, wandering, outcast, homeless man, is one whom some fond mother called “my boy.” Shall we shrink from labor, shall we hesitate at cost, when the work before us is the salvation of a soul? Not if it is “my boy,” nor if we have the love of Him who gave His life to save the lost.—Anon.