Unknown Heroes

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Dec 10, 1912

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 39, No. 48.

Not all heroism is manifested on the battlefield, or in acting cool and quiet when wounded or sick. There is an instance of this reported from Glasgow, under date of November 23. A doctor was called to see a child, dying of diphtheria, its condition most critical, the disease as far advanced as it could be without actual death. The doctor saw that it was a case of instant action, and without a moment's hesitation he decided on the last desperate remedy. Making an incision in the child's throat, he knelt down and proceeded deliberately to suck out the virulent, poisonous, diphtheritic matter in the windpipe. Three times he put his mouth to the boy's throat, without apparently the slightest thought of the terrible danger he was himself running, and yet he knew it as no one else knew it. He was deliberately risking his life for the child's. The sad thing was that his heroic act was not successful. He himself was very ill that night, but recovered. A witness who saw it said: "I went through the South African War, and have seen brave acts, but the bravest I ever saw anywhere was that which I saw enacted in that little kitchen.

The doctor, John Monroe Campbell, was an entire stranger to me, and I shall probably never see him again."

And there are many such cases of unknown heroes and heroines, whose acts and deeds are not recorded of men, but they are written in heaven. In the light of the books of God there will be an entirely different estimate of the deeds of the world.