Nobody's Children

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 14, 1871

Nobody's Children.

A YEAR or two ago, as I sat in front of a farmhouse, one warm summer afternoon, my attention was attracted by numerous feathery objects that kept floating in and out at the open door. At first I thought they were insects; but on examination I found them to be seeds.

“Of what?” I asked the farmer's wife, as she passed through the entry.

“Thistles,” she replied. “There's a bed of them just below here, and the breeze carries them hither and thither, as you see.”

Presently, I took my hat and walked down the lane, until I came to the thistle bed. There it was—a large patch of ground covered with the unsightly things; and as the wind swept over them, thousands of the light, feathery seeds were borne away, and scattered all over the surrounding country. Next year, thought I, they will spring up in the hay fields, and in the corn fields, and among the grain, and the crops will be injured by them; they will spring up in the flower gardens, and the farmer's little daughter going out to gather flowers, will have her tender fingers wounded by them; they will do no good, but only harm, wherever they find space to grow. So I went back to the house.

“Pray, tell me why those thistles are not rooted up?” I asked the farmer's wife.

“Oh,” she said, “they are not on anybody's ground, and so they are left to themselves.”

“Not on anybody's ground, and so they are left to themselves.”

There is a text for a sermon; but I am not the person to do the preaching.

I sat down and began to think. I thought of swarming city streets; of the barefooted boys and girls, whose rags scarcely covered their limbs; of vulgar and profane language uttered by almost infant lips; and of crimes committed by little children, no older or larger than the farmer's little daughter.

Who are all these? Oh, they are nobody's children—nobody cares for them—they are left to shift for themselves. So they grow up and become the pests of society. They are the gamblers, the burglars, the incendiaries, the robbers, the murderers. They fill our alms-houses, our jails, our prisons; they travel on the road to destruction, and they lead thousands and thousands along with them. Why? Oh, they are nobody's charge—nobody is responsible for them; they take care of themselves. Oh, will this excuse stand in the day of Judgment? Dare we look in the face of almighty God, as we stand before the “great white throne,” and say: “They were nothing to us—we could not help them—we had not power or strength to raise them from their degradation”? No—No! We dare not.

Christian! there is work for you and me in this great vineyard of the Lord. Let us go into these streets and lanes—into these highways and hedges, and carry the news of salvation. Let us seek out these little neglected ones, and bring them into our mission schools and our churches; let us visit these wretched homes, and tell their parents of the Lord Jesus Christ, who came to seek and to save the lost. Thank God, there are many workers already laboring in the Lord's harvest fields; but there is room for more—there is room for every Christian to share in the toil and the burden, and also in the rest and the reward.—Methodist.