CONQUERED BY KINDNESS

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Apr 10, 1893

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 19, No. 23.

CONQUERED BY KINDNESS.

Boys often go astray from the very energy and restlessness of their natures, without any vicious purpose. If in such cases they are treated with severity and coerced by a stern authority, there is great peril that they may go from bad to worse, and end in shipwreck of character. But such boys have often a nature which may be reached by genuine sympathy and kindness, and moulded to a generous manhood. The following anecdote was told at a meeting of the London Sunday School Union, of James Kershaw, Esq., who died when a member of parliament for Stockport:—

When a lad ten years of age, he was in a Sunday school class in Manchester. The name of the superintendent of that school was Steele, a name very fragrant in that great town. James was a very troublesome boy. The teacher came up with his name to the superintendent, and again and again said:—

"I cannot do anything with him."

"But," said Mr. Steele, "I am sure there is something in James, if one knew how to develop it."

Again and again came the complaint, and again and again did this kind-hearted superintendent set it aside. At last this little boy broke through a rule which involved exclusion; and when the next Sunday came, the inquiry was, I believe, somewhat in this form:—

"Who of you have been to the races during the past week?"

None in this class, none in the other, none anywhere but James.

"Well," said the teacher, "you see the boy must go, Mr. Steele; a diseased sheep will infect the flock."

"But," said the superintendent, "I cannot part with that boy; let us have him up in the presence of the whole school."

Up he came, a fine, daring, defiant, handsome little fellow. All the school looked on and the superintendent said:—

"Now, James, I am sure, when you come to think of it, you are sorry you went to the races."

The little fellow shrugged his shoulders; he was not at all sorry. Then, just as one of you ladies would touch the keys of a piano, did the superintendent in his address try to touch the keys of that boy's heart, till at length he had produced some effect. Turning to the hundreds of boys in his presence, he said:—

"My lads, if we turn James out of the school, he will go to the bad and become worse. Shall he go?"

"No, no, no!" shouted three hundred voices, and James burst into tears, fairly conquered by affection—fairly won by love.

What he became afterwards there are Manchester gentlemen on this platform who can tell you better than I.

He became a member of parliament; he became a member of a Christian Church. His £100 a year was always carefully paid into the London Missionary Society, and sixty guineas, as I know, to the Manchester City Mission; and I may also say, as I happened to have some pleasant acquaintance with him, that there were many things which his right hand did which his left hand was not allowed to know. Now he has gone—one of the brightest trophies of Sunday-school instruction.—British Messenger.