On a bright summer morning, a young girl of sixteen might have been seen climbing a steep path that led up to an old house, half hidden among the trees, the owner of which was an old man of seventy. He was said to be very wealthy, but no one would have guessed it from his surroundings. Everything seemed to indicate that he lived most frugally; in fact, the old housekeeper complained that she was hardly able to get enough money from him to keep them supplied with the bare necessities of life. The old man was a miser. Money was his god; his whole heart was set on it.
Do you think he was happy? No indeed, he was not. He thought everybody was seeking to rob him, and the haggard look on his face only showed how miserable he really was. With all his wealth he was unsatisfied because, dear young reader, wealth is not enough to satisfy the heart. Like the grave, it never has enough; the more it gets, the more it wants, and it never knows what it is to be satisfied. The world with all its wealth and pleasure is not enough to fill the heart; to a sinner without God it is all “vanity and vexation of spirit.” There is none but Christ can satisfy.
As Jennie tripped along the lane that led to the miser’s house, she was singing the lines of a sweet hymn, and nature all around, the birds, the little lambs in the fields, basking in the morning sunshine, seemed to listen to the song. Jennie was the old man’s granddaughter. She had just come home from school on her summer vacation. Only a few weeks before she had come into the joy that fills the heart of those who receive Christ as their Saviour and Lord.
Jennie had been born again, and she was rejoicing in the knowledge of God’s salvation. As she tripped along that morning, she sang from the gladness in her heart:
Heaven wears a brighter blue,
Earth a robe of sweeter green—
All around a happy hue,
By my former eyes unseen.
Brighter suns around me wheel,
Brighter stars around me shine:
Everywhere I only feel,
I am Christ’s, and He is mine.
When she entered her aged grandfather’s cottage, she found him sitting all alone, brooding sadly over his lot — a sad contrast to her joy in the Lord. They talked about schools and classes, and then Jennie said, “I have come home happier this year than ever I did before.”
“How is that?” inquired the old man with interest.
“It is because I can say, Jesus is mine. He has saved me and satisfied me, and I cannot tell how happy I am since I have trusted in Him.” Then she added, “I am sure, dear Grandpa, that if you only knew Jesus and His love, many of your sorrows would be gone.”
Before she left, he asked her to sing to him. Delighted, Jennie sang as a young convert, in the fulness and warmth of that first love, can sing:
My heart is fixed, eternal God,
Fixed on Thee;
And my eternal choice is made,
Christ for me.
The old man listened eagerly, especially as the lines, so well suited as God’s message to his soul, were sung:
Let others boast of heaps of gold,
Christ for me.
His riches never can be told—
Christ for me;
Your gold will waste and wear away,
Your honors perish in a day,
My portion never can decay—
Christ for me.
The Lord fixed those words deep in the conscience of the old man. Hardened and full of earthly things as he was, he could not forget it. What if, after all, these earthly gains would waste and wear away, and leave him a beggar for time and eternity? That night he tossed restlessly on his bed, thinking of the world beyond the grave — something that had scarcely occupied his mind since he was a boy.
He had gone in for the world, money had been his object in life; in it he had hoped to find the satisfaction of his heart, but he had been sorely disappointed, as everyone else has been who makes that their object in life. There is no satisfaction, no solid lasting joy apart from Christ.
Morning came, and he longed for Jennie to come. Again he asked her to sing to him, and contrary to his usual custom, he invited her to wait for supper. He opened his mind to her, told her how unhappy he was, and what had occupied his thoughts during the night. She told him the story of how she had been saved, and sought to make plain to his dark mind God’s “wonderful words of life.” He knew nothing of the gospel of God, although he had lived seventy years in what people call a Christian country. But such is God’s love and compassion for sinners, that the old man now heard the blessed message from the lips of his own grandchild, and it reached and won his heart.
There on the brink of the grave, and of a lost eternity, with the world set in his heart, God’s good news reached the old miser, and won him for Christ. Surely this was a miracle of sovereign grace, and all who heard it wondered. The old man lived to prove that Christ can save and satisfy. But he had the sorrow of looking back over a life spent in the service of money, which yielded only sorrow.
Do not be snared by the world’s fair promises, dear young reader. The world has nothing new to give. Oh, it is just wonderful to know Christ as your Saviour when you’re young, to go on and live for Him, to serve Him in your life, and to wait for His coming in the clouds to take all His own home to heaven.
ML 09/10/1967