A speaker at one of the auxiliary meetings asked a boy to give him an illustration of, “who is my neighbor?”
He answered: “This morning I shoveled off the snow from the sidewalks in front of our house. After I got through I went across the street and cleaned the snow from the sidewalks of a widow lady. A friend passing asked me ‘why I did it,’ I replied ‘why, she’s our neighbor’.”
We often hear it said that time is wasted in trying to save these newsboys, not perhaps because of the boy himself, but because of that which makes him what he is. It is argued that his environment, the influences which surround him from the day of his birth, will make him a criminal in spite of all we can do.
The Bible holds man responsible.
If you kind reader, believe in God, believe in the Bible, you will find the divine law (Ezekiel XXXIII.) determines your personal responsibility. “So thou, O son of man, I have set thee a watchman unto the house of Israel; therefore thou shalt hear the word at my mouth. If thou dost not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that wicked man shall die in his iniquity; but his blood will I require at thy hand. Nevertheless, if thou warn the wicked of his way to turn from it; if he do not turn from his way, he shall die in his iniquity; but thou hast delivered thy soul.”
Following down the ages the same responsibility is required of Christians (James IV-17): “To him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is a sin.”
The man who fails to rise above the level of his own selfish interests is the man to whom these apply.
The church, at large, today, is like what Napoleon once said: “The army that remains in its entrenchments is beaten.” The church remains mostly in its own entrenchments of conventional practices and indifference to the unsaved young men. There is but one remedy for this present indifferent condition, and that is to be found in an awakening of consciousness of personal responsibility for the salvation of the boy.
We need a new doctrine, not a new law, that will bring people back to the Simple Life that demands some self-sacrifice.
If we follow these teachings what shall be our reward?