Your ShelfYour Projects

KINDNESS AND TACT

3%

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 24, 1876

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 48, No. 9.

Read the full edition

KINDNESS AND TACT.

Many years ago a minister was going one Sabbath morning to his school-room. He walked through a number of streets, and as he turned a corner, he saw assembled around a pump a party of little boys playing marbles. On seeing him approach, they began to pick up their marbles and run away as fast as they could. One little fellow not having seen him as soon as the rest, before he could succeed in gathering up his marbles, the minister had come up and placed his hand upon his shoulder. They were face to face, the minister of God and the poor little ragged boy who had been caught in the act of playing marbles on the Sabbath morning. And how did the minister deal with the boy? That is what I want you to notice.
He might have said to him: “What are you doing here? You are breaking the Sabbath. Don't you deserve to be punished?”
But he said nothing of the kind. He simply said:—
“Have you found all your marbles?”
“No,” said the boy, “I haven't.”
“Then,” said the minister, “I'll help you.”
Whereupon he stooped down, and began to look for the marbles, and as he did so, he remarked:—
“I liked to play marbles when I was a little boy very much, and I think I could beat you.” “But,” he added, “I never played marbles on the Sabbath.”
The little boy's attention was now arrested. He liked his friend's face, and began to wonder who he was. The minister said:—
“I am going to a place where I think you would like to be. Will you come with me?”
Said the boy, “Where do you live?”
“In such a place,” was the answer.
“Why, that's the minister's house!” exclaimed the boy, as if he did not suppose that a kind man and a minister of the gospel could be the same person.
“Yes,” said the man, “I am the minister myself; and if you will come with me, I think I can do you some good.”
Said the boy, “My hands are dirty; I can't go.”
“But,” said the minister, “here is a pump; why not wash them?”
Said the boy, “I'm so little, I can't wash and pump at the same time.”
“Well,” said the minister, “if you'll wash, I'll pump.”
He at once set to work and pumped and pumped; and the boy washed his hands and face till they were quite clean.
Said the boy, “My hands are wringing wet, and I don't know how to dry 'em.”
The minister pulled out a clean handkerchief, and offered it to the boy.
Said the boy, “But it is clean.”
“Yes,” was the reply, “but it was made to be dirtied.”
The boy dried his hands and face with the handkerchief, and then accompanied the minister to the door of the Sabbath-school.
Twenty years after, the minister was walking in a street in a large city, when a tall man tapped him on the shoulder, and looking into his face, said:—
“You don't remember me?”
“No,” said the minister, “I do not.”
“Do you remember twenty years ago, finding a little boy playing marbles round a pump? Do you remember that boy's being too dirty to go to school, and pumping for him, and speaking kindly to him, and taking him to school?”
“Oh!” said the minister, “I do remember.”
“Sir,” said the gentleman, “I was that boy. I rose in business and became a leading man. I have attained a position in society, and on seeing you to-day in the street I felt bound to come to you and say that it is to your kindness, and wisdom, and Christian discretion—to your having dealt with me persuasively—that I owe, under God, all that I have attained, and what I am at the present day.”—Sel.