IN a bright summer morning a young girl of sixteen might have been seen climbing a steep footpath, 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 immensely wealthy, but nobody would have guessed it, by looking upon his surroundings. Everything seemed to indicate the greatest frugality, and the old man’s housekeeper complained that she was hardly able to get from him sufficient money to keep them supplied with the very bare necessaries of life. The old man was a miser. His money was his god, and on it his whole heart was set. Do you think he was happy? Oh, no, the very opposite. He thought everybody was seeking to rob him, and you had only to look on his haggard countenance, to learn that he was a miserable man. With all his wealth he was unsatisfied, for you must know, dear reader, that 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 it; to a sinner without God it is all “vanity and vexation of spirit.” There is none but Christ can satisfy.
As the young girl tripped along the lane that led to the miser’s house, she was singing the lines of a sweet well-known hymn, and nature around basking in the summer sunbeams, the birds on the trees, and the lambkins in the fields, seemed to listen to the song. Shall I tell you who the singer was, and what the subject of her song?
Matty was the aged man’s granddaughter.
She had just come home from school on her summer holidays; and only a few weeks before, she had been made a sharer of the joy that comes to the heart of those who receive Christ as Saviour and Lord.
Matty had been born again, and as God’s child, she was rejoicing in the knowledge of His salvation. As she tripped along that morning, she sang in the gladness of 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 the house of her aged grandfather, she found him sitting all alone, brooding sadly over his lot—a strange contrast to her joy in the Lord. After a general talk about schools and lessons, Matty said, “I have come home happier this year than ever I did before.” “How is that?” inquired the aged man with interest, as if the words, “happier than ever,” had fallen strangely on his ears. “Because I can say, Jesus is mine. He has saved me and satisfies me, and I cannot tell how happy I am since I trusted in Him.” Then she added, “I am sure dear grandfather, 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 at the request, Matty sang, as only a young convert in the fulness and warmth of their first love can.
“My heart is fixed, eternal God; fixed on Thee,
And my immortal choice is made; Christ for me;”
The old man listened eagerly, especi ally at 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 on the conscience of Matty’s grandfather. Hardened and full of earthly things as he Was, he could not forget it. What if after all, his earthly gains would waste and wear away, and leave him a beggar for time and eternity? He tossed restlessly on his bed all that night, thinking of the world beyond the grave—a subject that had hardly occupied his mind since the days of his boyhood.
He had gone in for this world, gold 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 every worldling has been; for there is no satisfaction, no solid lasting joy apart from Christ.
Morning came, and he longed for Matty to come. Again he asked her to sing to him; and, contrary to his usual custom, he invited her to wait for tea. 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 her conversion, 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 he now heard it from the lips of his own grandchild, and it reached and won his heart. There, on the brink of the grave and eternity, with the world enshrined in his heart, God’s gospel reached the aged 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 mammon, which yielded only sorrow. Do not be beguiled by the world’s fair promises. “The world has nothing left to give.” Its gold, even should you gain it, “will waste and wear away,” and you will be left in the hour of death, alone and empty handed on the dark confines of a hopeless eternity.
ML 04/04/1909