Charlie and His Youthful Teacher
“Come, now, my dear boy, confess what you’ve done,
To your loving, kind Father on high;
You cannot conceal from the All-seeing One
The fact that you’re telling a lie.”
So said the young teacher of Birmingham school,
To Charlie, when no one was nigh;
She grieved that her pupil had broken a rule,
Still more that he’d told her a lie.
His face, once so joyous, was then very sad,
His heart was too full to reply,
As Miss Mary pressed home on the dear little lad
The fact of his telling a lie.
“Oh come, now in penitence tell me, dear boy,
The whole truth, and then we will try
And ask the dear Savior his grace to employ,
To guard you from telling a lie.”
But, though the child wore a sad look of distress,
No penitent tear dimm’d his eye;
All arguments failed;—Charlie would not confess
That he had been telling a lie.
The teacher stood there, with her heart raised in prayer
To One whom she felt ever nigh;
Oh how could she bear that her pupil should dare
To grieve him by telling a lie.
“Dear Father, I know not what course to pursue;
Oh guide me,” she said, with a sigh;
“I am young and too helpless to know what to do
With a child who is telling a lie.
“Leave not this dear child to perish, I pray,
Oh listen, and hear my sad cry!
What more can I say? I must send him away,
He will not repent of this lie.”
A change soon was wrought, when Miss Mary was taught
By God, her kind Father on high,
That his Word must be brought, and thence must be sought
His threatenings to those who will lie.
Charlie reads of the joys of the ransomed above,
And learns that this home in the sky
Forever is closed by our Father in love,
From those who on earth learn to lie.
To that Heavenly City, so good and so fair,
The Lamb will a welcome deny,
And no little child can e’er hope to go there,
“Who loveth and maketh a lie.”6
The Bible has conquered! The teacher with joy
Sees that tears are now filling his eye,
She kneels and implores for her penitent boy
Forgiveness for telling a lie.