“Children,” said a Sunday school teacher, when the lesson was over, “I should very much like for each of you to try next Sunday to bring a new scholar with you. I think it would not be very difficult, and in that way we will have many scholars to teach the way of life. Will you try?”
There was a general shout of “Yes” in reply, If the children really realized whet they were promising, and whether they would take any trouble to keep, their promise, was doubtful. But one little girl did keep her promise, and that was little Mary Gordon. When on her way borne, she said to herself.
“I have promised to try, but all the children that I know, go to Sunday school, except Tom, and I can’t speak to him. He is a big boy, and so rude, I am really afraid of him. No, I can’t ask Tom.”
Tom, that Mary was so afraid of, was the terror of all the children in the neigorhood. If a boy found his kite torn, or his skates broken; or a girl found that her cat had been ill-treated, or thrown into the water, it was always Tom who had done it. Naturally, he didn’t want to hear anything about the Sunday school, and once he had said, with a threatening air, that he would like to see the person that would try to take him there. No wonder, then, that little Mary was afraid of him, but still she could not forget her promise.
“I promised to try,” she repeated, “It was a promise and I will break it, if I don’t try, and that wouldn’t be right. And he might come; then he would hear how he could get to heaven. I fear he doesn’t even know that he ought to be converted. Yes, yes, I will speak to him; perhaps he will come.”
Not long afterward she found an opportunity. The next day, coming out of school, she met Tom. She saw him first. With trembling lips, and a beating heart, she called out to him.
“Tom, will you go with me next Suay to Sunday school?”
Tom looked at her as if he could not believe his ears, and then said slowly, “To Sunday school! What in the world would I do there?”
Mary picked up courage, and looking at him, said very earnestly,
“O, don’t you want to go to heaven?”
“Yes, I do want to go there,” was his reply, “but going to Sunday school won’t bring me there.”
“No, it won’t,” answered Mary, “but Torn, when I first went to Sunday school I heard them singing, O, so beautifully,
‘One there is above all others,
Well deserves the name of Friend.’
I thought then I should like to learn to know the Lord Jesus, and I asked how I could learn to know Him, and Tom, it will be just the same with you, if you go with me.”
The friendly child had scarcely finished speaking, when Tom turned his back on her, and walking away a few steps, began whistling as hard as he could, to mock poor Mary.
Poor little girl! Her hopes were dashed to the ground; her little heart was heavy, and large tears filled her eyes. When she took out her handkerchief to wipe away her tears, all at once she saw Tom standing before her. She was startled and sighed.
“Why are you crying?” he asked, “surely not because I’m not going to Suay school with you?”
“O, Tom!” she said looking at hint pityingly, “won’t you go with me? O! do!”
“Listen, Mary,” said the boy, “this has never happened to me before, that anybody thought enough of me to shed tears on my account. Don’t cry, next Sunday I’ll go with you.”
He kept his word. Nobody could be happier than Mary. After he had gone once, he never missed a Sunday. Like Mary, he not only sought the way to get to heaven, but when he had found Jesus as his Saviour, he walked with Him through life. The last I heard of him was that he had gone as missionary to the heathen. Whether he still lives and works for the Lord, I cannot say, but this I know, that when the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall arise, he, who was on the road to destruction, shall rise to eternal life. And still more I know that Mary shall receive a great reward from the Lord, when He comes to call home all of His redeemed ones to be forever with Himself (Rev. 22:1212And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be. (Revelation 22:12)), for she was the means, in God’s hand, of saving the soul of wicked Tom.
ML 05/16/1943