THAT’S YOU, JIM

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Mountain View, California · Jan 18, 1905

“THAT’S YOU, JIM.”

A troop of young men who had blacked their faces and hands, and dressed themselves in very strange-looking clothes, arranged themselves before a gentleman’s store door, one day for a “performance.” These people were “Ethiopian Serenaders.” After they had sung some comic songs, one of them, a tall young man, stepped up to the door and held out his hat for a few pennies.

Mr. Carr, the owner of the store, took one of the Bibles from the case, and going to the door, he said, pleasantly, “See here, young man, I will give you a shilling and this book besides, if you will read a few verses in it to your companions.”

The young man laughed. “That’s getting a shilling for an easy job,” he said gayly. “Now listen, boys, I’m going to give you a ‘public reading.’”

Mr. Carr opened to the fifteenth chapter of St. Luke, and pointing to the eleventh verse, asked him to read:

“Now, Jim, speak up!” said one of the party, “and earn your shilling like a man.”

And Jim took the book and read:

“‘A certain man had two sons; and the younger of them said to his father, Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me. And he divided unto them his living.’”

Something in the reader’s voice seemed to keep the gay company quiet. He read on—

“‘And not many days after the younger son gathered all together, and took his journey into a far country, and there wasted his substance in riotous living.’”

“That’s you, Jim,” exclaimed one of the boys, “It’s just like what you told me of your father.”

Jim read on—“‘And when he had spent all, there arose a mighty famine in that land; and he began to be in want.’”

“Why, that’s you again, Jim,” the same voice said. “Go on.” “‘And he went and joined himself to a citizen of that country; and he sent him to the fields to feed swine. And he would fain have filled his belly with the husks that the swine did eat; and no man gave unto him.’”

“That’s like us all,” said the same voice again. “We’re all beggars and might be better than we are! Well go on; let’s hear what came of it.”

Jim went on, but his voice began to tremble—

“‘And when he came to himself, he said, How many hired servants of my father’s have bread enough and to spare, and I perish with hunger! I will arise and go to my father.’”

At this point he broke down and could read no more. It was his own story told in the Bible; it made him think of his own home, of his father, of the love and care that had been given him when he was a little boy, and he made up his mind that he would arise and go to his father.

Will the boys and girls who read this story look for the fifteenth chapter of Luke and finish the Bible story?—Selected.