A Heart of Service

The Finest Looking Little Boy Mr. Moody ever Saw.


A few years ago I was in a town down in our state, the guest of a family that had a little boy about thirteen years, who did not bear the family name, yet was treated like the rest. Every night when he retired, the lady of the home kissed him and treated him in every respect like all the other children. I said to the lady of the house, “I don’t understand it.” I think he was the finest looking boy I have ever seen. I said to her, “I don’t understand it.” She says, “I want to tell you about that boy. That boy is the son of a missionary. His father and mother were missionaries in India, but they found they had got to bring their children back to this country to educate them. So they gave up their mission field and came back to educate their children and to find some missionary work to do in this country. But they were not prospered here as they had been in India, and the father said, “I will go back to India;” and the mother said, “If God has called you to go I am sure it will be my duty to go and my privilege to go, and I will go with you.” The father said, “you have never been separated from the children, and it will be hard for you to be separated from them; perhaps you had better stay and take care of them.”

But after prayer they decided to leave their children to be educated, and they left for India. This lady heard of it and sent a letter to the parents, in which she stated if they left one child at her house she would treat it like one of her own children. She said the mother came and spent a few days at her house, and being satisfied that her boy would receive proper care, consented to leave him, and the night before she was to leave him, the missionary said to the Western lady: “I want to leave my boy tomorrow morning without a tear;” said she, “I may never see him again.” But she didn’t want him to think she was weeping for anything she was doing for the Master. The lady said to herself, “She won’t leave that boy without a tear.” But the next day when the carriage drove up to the door, the lady went up stairs and she heard the mother in prayer, crying, “Oh God, give me strength for this hour. Help me to go away from my boy without a tear.” When she came down there was a smile upon her face. She hugged him and she kissed him, but she smiled as she did it. She gave up all her five or six children without shedding a tear, went back to India and in about a year there came a voice, “Come up hither.” Do you think she would be a stranger in the Lord’s world? Don’t you think she will be known there as a mother that loved her child?