IM
THE K I NG ' S BUS I NESS
May, 1937
What is to be done when a boy in Sunday-school declares
“That's Not Enough for M e " His Teacher Suggests a Reply
S O M E T H IN G was evidently wrong. Walter, the popular thirteen-year-old, whom twenty boys were proud to call their class president, apparently had suffered a sudden loss of interest in everything. He was usually the very life of the group, not only a good mixer but also a real soul-winner and a promising youthful execu tive. But today he was silent and depressed. At the close of the lesson in which, contrary to custom, he had taken no active part in discussion, he waited until the other boys had gone off, bounding down the stairs, before he approached the teacher. “ I— I must speak to you— all alone,” he faltered. Determination and manliness marked the set of the jaw, though the chin quivered a little. His lithe young body was tense. Politely, he refused the chair that was offered, and paced back and forth in the little classroom. “ You’re going to be ashamed of me!” he finally confided. “ I’m afraid you’re going to be terribly ashamed of me.” “ No,” the understanding one replied, “ I ’ll not be ashamed of you, Walter. You could not do anything that would make me ashamed of you. If you have somehow grieved our Lord Jesus, I shall be sorry—more sorry than I can ever tell you. But however shameful may be the offense, I shall always be your friend, and proud to bear that name.” “ Boy! I’m glad of that!” the words slipped out as a great sigh. “ What is it that troubles you, Walter?” There was a long pause. Then, in slow, painful sentences, the boy laid bare the burden of his heart. “ Last week,” he said, “ something happened— and I didn’t know whether I was saved or not.” The boy did not tell then or later what that “ something” was, and the teacher did not pry. “ Oh, it was terrible' not to know,” he went on. “ I couldn’t eat or sleep.” S eek ing for U nderstanding “ Did you tell your parents? Couldn’t they have helped you?” The father and mother were active members of the church and Sunday-school. “ Oh, no, I could never tell them that,” the boy gasped in amazement. “ They would have laughed, or else felt dis graced. But I ’ll tell you what I did do. I hunted up the man who knelt beside me at the altar a long time ago when I was just a kid in the Junior Department. I went to his house, last week, and talked to him all alone in his yard. I said to him right straight, ‘M r. Green, did you save me?’ “ And he laughed, and said, ‘W hy no, lad, I didn’t save you. Nobody on earth could do that.’ “ I thought he had forgotten me, so I said, ‘Don’t you remember? It was during the evangelistic campaign. The preacher asked all of us who wanted Christ as our Saviour to come to the altar and pray. A lot of us boys and girls went forward, and older people, too. You knelt down right beside me, and you prayed for me, and I felt happy afterwards. Honestly— didn’t you save me that night?’
“ ‘Why no, boy,’ he said. ‘I didn’t save you. I just prayed for you.’ He didn’t seem to want to talk any more about it, so I said good-bye and went on home.” Walter paced up and down in the little classroom, his hands clenched, his face white and drawn in an agony of fear. “ I tell you that’s not enough for me," he cried. “ I ’ve got to know. Prayed for me! That’s not enough! I ’ve got to know I ’m saved.” T h e P a t h of C e r t a in t y “ You may know, Walter, my lad. You may know right now and forever.” The words were quietly spoken, but they must have carried with them sincerity and hope, for the boy stood still, relaxed. “ How, then?” he asked. “ You may know on the authority of God’s own Word. You may safely place your trust in the W ord that is for ever settled in heaven. On that night that you knelt at the altar, did any one direct your attention, Walter, to passages in the W ord of G od?”
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Om itting the
I. In the Church
“ You never led me to the Saviour!’’ What will parents and teachers and ministers answer if the children now in their care shall some day bring that charge against them? They may have given their boys and girls a taste of religion, but have withheld from them the experimental knowledge of sins forgiven through the blood of Christ. One wonders what reply would be offered by the “adopted father’’ who writes in “ The Parents’ Magazine’’ (April, 1937), and of the “ intelligent minister’’ to whom he refers in the article, and of hundreds of others like these two. “As far as I was concerned,’’ comments the writer, “ I felt the boy was better off without any religion. But . . . I felt he might as well be exposed to religion in one of its milder forms. “ I picked a liberal church with a highly intelligent min ister and for the first time in many years attended a Sunday morning service. I told the minister that on the following Sunday I would ask the boy to attend all services in the church. Thereafter I would do nothing further about the matter. If the boy found something he needed, well and good. If not, he should not be forced to attend. “He attended the services the following Sunday. He en joyed the Sabbath school because he found out they argued informally or debated about such matters as Hitlerism or Soviet Russia, but he calculated how he could come fifteen minutes later next Sunday and avoid the hymns and prayers which, he said, he did not like. He enjoyed the minister’s sermon. He especially admired his vocabulary. . . “ Thereafter he attended the church regularly for three Sundays. Later he dropped off. Now he goes occasionally if there is a particularly interesting subject up for debate, or
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