TO the natural heart it is a very pleasing thing to be admired. Little Fanny Heal, a child of about eight years of age, proved the truth of this. Her father, also, gloried in the very general expressions of admiration of his sprightly little daughter. Night after night, when his day's toil was over, he would bring her, dressed in her very best, to the Concert Room, where her nightly performances, were greeted with general applause. The spirit of vainglory took possession of her, and her unwise father encouraged her vain conceit. He had made an idol of her, and her foolish little heart was given over to the pleasure of being admired.
It so happened that one night her father brought her on the stage dressed in brand-new attire. Fanny was so vain that she thought all must envy her, and, addressing the audience, said, “Don’t you wish you was me?”
How little she thought that that same concert room, which had been to her the place of her very highest enjoyment, would soon become the scene of her extreme bodily anguish. Only about a month after she had put her vainglorious question to her audience, she was dancing in that same room, and carelessly approached too near one of the footlights upon the stage; in a moment the applause of the audience gave place to screams of terror! Every effort at extinguishing the flames that quickly encircled the little dancing girl was in vain, and in a very short time all was over. That quivering frame, from which the life ebbed so swiftly, was all that remained of pretty little Fanny.
We will not dwell upon a scene so terrible. Take warning, dear child, seek not to win the applause of the world, rather seek the Lord while He may be found, call ye upon Him while He is near.
Follow me now to where a dear child lies upon a sick bed. His young life has been almost from its commencement one of suffering, oftentimes very acute. He is sitting up, but has no power to walk, and the little of the world he can see is from his bed-room window. His little cousins and friends must come to him, for he cannot go to them. But his face is bright. “What do you want, Bertie?" his father asked.
“Oh, papa, will you please take these books with you, and give them to someone this afternoon, and will you give this one to some child?”
“All right, Bertie," says the father, who is rather in a hurry to start for the hospital. As he proceeds on his way, however, he takes occasion to open the books, and discovers that his dear little Bertie has placed in each one a piece of paper upon which he has carefully written, " God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
“Come unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."
Dear Bertie loves the Lord Jesus Christ, and desires that others may also receive the truth as it is in Jesus, and this is his way of scattering the precious truth, which has made his own little heart glad in the midst of all his sufferings.
Youthful reader, I would rather you were like dear Bertie, happy in the Savior, than that you should love this present world like poor little Fanny.
Oh! that every dear child were like a boy, of whom the Sunday-school teacher wrote a a few days ago. “Last Sunday afternoon one of my boys confessed Jesus before all the other boys in the class. He wishes to devote his life to Christ as a missionary. Is not it nice? I do feel so glad."
There are many ways of serving God besides going out as a missionary. Which child is prepared to confess Christ openly before his or her companions? How many young believers are ready to devote their lives to the service of Christ?
A. J.