What, reader, are the best things to you?
If you could have just what you like, what would you choose? Would it be money? Well, in some ways that would be a wise choice, for money will buy a great many things. You might wish for this or that, but if you wished for plenty of money, you could get anything that money can buy.
But there are things money cannot buy.
You well know that. It cannot buy the best things. It cannot buy relief from envy, jealousy, revenge, remorse. It cannot buy peace of mind and conscience. It cannot even buy health or freedom from pain. When you come to think of it, money has a very limited use.
Above all, it cannot buy life―it cannot keep from death. Neither can it give rest as to the future, as to the sins we have committed. The poorest here is on a footing with the wealthiest. Money will not, cannot buy freedom from guilt and from sin.
Now think it over and say whether it would not be better to have God take away your sins―to have them all blotted out forever―than to have great wealth. Would it not be better to be a child of God, to know Him, to be sure of His love and favor, than to be the richest man in the country?
You know that it would. Moreover, you know that you cannot buy the love and the favor of God with money. You cannot buy salvation with money. The best things, the most desirable things, the things that last eternally, cannot be bought with money.
No, they are free gifts. They are for poor and rich alike, for all who will receive them. The best things are free, they cannot be bought, they are God's gifts to sinners.
Now, if they are free, why do you not accept them? If one who was able to do so should offer you a large sum of money, offer it freely, how long would you hesitate about accepting it? You would take it as soon as you could, you would be in a feverish haste to get possession of it.
But here is something better offered to you freely. Something vastly better than money or anything that money can buy is placed before you and you are bidden to help yourself. Yet you delay to take it.
Why do you wait? Why do you not make sure of the best things while they are within your reach? The Spirit of God says through the prophet Isaiah:
"He, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.”
Isa. 55:1.
"By grace are ye saved through faith,” says the apostle Paul; "and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast."
Eph. 2:8, 9.