p. 107 | A Skeptic Answered

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 16, 1873

A Skeptic Answered.

A gentleman, strongly inclined to skepticism, visited the infant-class of a Sunday-school, and listened with fixed attention to the lesson. At the close of the exercises, he turned to the teacher with an incredulous look upon his face, saying, “Is not this time thrown away trying to teach babies about a Christ? Or, supposing you may impress them with some kind of knowledge, of what use will it all be, seeing that they will not be able to remember anything of the character you are now telling them of?”

“Pardon me, sir,” returned the teacher, “but may I ask if your mother is living?”

“Ah! no; she died when I was a mere infant,” said the visitor, a cloud of sadness passing over his face. “But,” he continued, “I was told all about her as soon as I could learn anything. I was told how loving, patient, and self-sacrificing, she was; and so clearly and well was my mother represented to me that I love and revere her memory.”

“Then, sir,” broke in the teacher, with a warm smile upon her lips, “if you at that early age could be so taught about the mother whom you had not seen, may I not be sure that Jesus can be made as plain to the mind and lasting to the memory of these little ones?”

The gentleman’s cheek flushed, but he made no reply, and shortly after took his leave.

The good teacher supposed she had given offense, but knew that her motive had been pure, and so simply lifted her heart in prayer that good might come of the words she had spoken.

To her great surprise, the next Sunday the gentleman again presented himself, this time holding by the hand a lovely little girl of about four years of age. Leading the child to the teacher, he said simply: “I have brought you my child: she is motherless, as her father is, also; but I cannot endure the thought that she should be Christless.”—S. S. Times.