LUKE 16 : 8 by J. Clarke

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Aug 14, 1879

By J. Clarke

“For the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light.”

A school-teacher, in the faithful discharge of her duties, chanced to give offense to a lady whose child needed discipline. The lady threatened loud and long what she would say to the teacher when opportunity should offer itself. The teacher, hearing of it, visited the offended lady, but said not a word about the “offense” she had innocently given; but with smiling face and kind words allayed the chafed feelings of the too willful and indulgent mother, who, taken by surprise, was too much pleased to speak of the imagined offense, and was ever afterward a firm friend of the teacher.

Had the teacher felt hurt at the lady’s threat, and visited her with a solemn face, and had she attempted a defense, the willful and imprudent mother would have been at once in her element, and the whole neighborhood would have been vocal with discord, and who knows what evil results might have followed?

Would it not be well for Christians, when injured, and misrepresented, and slandered, to do as this teacher did; that is, overlook the offense, and love and pity the offender, kindly treating them, not seeming to know that they had received abuse?

J. CLARKE.

LUKE 16 : 8.