Yet I remember once hearing of a boy who was paid in both ways.
He was very, very poor. He lived in a foreign country, and his
mother said to him one day that he must go into the great city and
start in business, and she took his coat and cut it open and sewed
between the lining and the coat forty golden dinars, which she had
saved up for many years to start him in life. She told him to take
care of robbers as he went across the desert; and as he was going
out of the door she said:
"My boy, I have only two words for you--'Fear God, and never tell
a lie.'"
The boy started off, and towards evening he saw glittering in the
distance the minarets of the great city. But between the city and
himself he saw a cloud of dust. It came nearer. Presently he saw
that it was a band of robbers.
One of the robbers left the rest and rode toward him, and said:
"Boy, what have you got?"
The boy looked him in the face and said:
"I have forty golden dinars sewed up in my coat."
The robber laughed and wheeled around his horse and went away back.
He would not believe the boy.
Presently another robber came and he said:
"Boy, what have you got?"
"Forty golden dinars sewed up in my coat."
The robber said: "The boy is a fool," and wheeled his horse and
rode away back.
By and by the robber captain came and he said:
"Boy, what have you got?"
"I have forty golden dinars sewed up in my coat."
The robber dismounted, and put his hand over the boy's breast,
felt something round, counted one, two, three, four, five, till he
counted out the forty golden coins. He looked the boy in the face
and said:
"Why did you tell me that?"
The boy said: "Because of God and my mother."
The robber leaned on his spear and thought and said:
"Wait a moment."
He mounted his horse, rode back to the rest of the robbers, and
came back in about five minutes with his dress changed. This time
he looked not like a robber, but like a merchant. He took the boy
up on his horse and said:
"My boy, I have long wanted to do something for my God and for my
mother, and I have this moment renounced my robber's life. I am
also a merchant. I have a large business house in the city. I
want you to come and live with me, to teach me about your God; and
you will be rich, and your mother some day will come and live with
us."
And it all happened. By seeing first the Kingdom of God, all these
things were added unto him.
Boys, banish forever from your minds the idea that religion is
SUBTRACTION. It does not tell us to give things up, but rather
gives us something so much better that they give themselves up.
When you see a boy on the street whipping a top, you know, perhaps,
that you could not make that boy happier than by giving him a top,
a whip, and half an hour to whip it. But next birthday, when he
looks back he says,
"What a goose I was last year to be delighted with a top. What I
want now is a baseball bat."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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