The Little Bell Boy

    I remember a mother that lay dying. She had been married the second time, and she had a boy that her second husband, this step-father, did not like, and his mother sent for me, and she said, "Now I am dying from consumption. I have been sick a long time, and since I have been lying here I have neglected that boy. He has got into bad company, and he is very, very unkind, and he is given to swearing; and, Mr. Moody, I want you to promise me that when I am gone, and he has no one to take care of him, you will look after him." I promised that I would. And soon after that mother died, and no sooner was she buried than that boy ran away and they did not know where he went to. The next Sunday I spoke to the children in my Sabbath-school, and I asked them to look for him, and if they found him to let me know. And for some time I did not hear of him, but one day one of my scholars told me that the boy was a bell-boy in a certain hotel, and so I went there and I found him and talked with him. I remember it perfectly well; it was the third of July. He had no father or mother, but a step-father who did not care for him; and as I spoke to him kindly about Christ and what He had done for him, and how He loved him, the tears trickled down his cheeks, and when I asked him if he wanted to know Christ, he told me he did, and a little boy that was with me got down upon his knees and prayed with him; and at night—it was the night before the "Fourth"—he went up upon the flat roof, and they were firing off cannon and sky-rockets, and there upon that roof at midnight, upon the top of that hotel, that boy was praying and calling upon God for light, for aid and for comfort, and now he is an active Christian young man, and superintendent of a Sabbath-school. He was taken right up, and he has held on, and he is leading others to Christ. There is a work for you. Take these children by the hand and lead them to the cross of Christ. They can be gathered into our churches, and be a blessing to the church of God.