I HOPE, if you have been to the seaside, that you may have been so fortunate as to find a place such as I know, where there are two beaches, one rocky and rough, with beautiful clear pools among the rocks, full of bright seaweed and little crabs; and the other, on the opposite side of the bay, all of sand.
I fancy, if you had to choose, you would rather have the sandy beach, where you could build houses and make gardens.
I will tell you of the most beautiful sand house and garden I ever saw. A great many children had joined to make it, and they were very sensible children, too―at least, the elder boys and girls who planned it must have been, for they got the little ones to carry their buckets full of sand right away from the place where the tide came in every day, to a sheltered spot under the sea wall, and there, high and dry, they made their model mansion.
A very grand place it was, I assure you. Nothing was carelessly done; the garden paths were straight and well pressed down, and the beds were cut out almost as cleanly as a gardener would have done them. The little ones grew hot and tired as they ran backwards and forwards with their buckets, but still the work went on; and at last, to crown it all, some beautiful roses and pinks were stuck into the garden beds, and the children clapped their hands with delight.
“It seems a pity,” said a gentleman who had been watching them at work, “that all their labor should be in vain.”
“Oh, I dare say their pretty work will last a long time,” replied the lady to whom he spoke; “you see what a good place they have chosen, quite out of the way of the tide. Of course the flowers must wither, but I hope the house and garden will be here for many a day.”
“It is spring tide tomorrow, and I think the waves will come quite up to this wall,” said the old gentleman. “I fear they will be bitterly disappointed when they find no trace of their handiwork remaining. However,” he added, as they turned to go home, “it is a lesson we must all learn sooner or later.”
If the children had overheard the conversation I dare say they would have had very different thoughts about it. Many of them would have felt vexed with the old gentleman for even thinking it possible that their beautiful house should be swept away, and would have said, “I don’t believe it a bit.” The elder ones might have remembered with some anxiety that they had never thought of the spring tide, and some perhaps would have noticed the words, “It is a lesson we must all learn sooner or later,” and they would wonder what they meant.
Well, the spring tide came, and the waves rose higher and higher. They washed up against the sea wall, and the bright flowers of the blooming garden which surrounded the house built of sand, were soon floating far out to sea, and when next I passed that way the place where the house had been was not to be found.
The old gentleman’s words had come true. But what of his other words about the lesson we must all learn? Ah! I think he meant we must learn to build our hopes not on the uncertain things of this life, which are as bright for a moment as the flowers in the sand garden, and are as soon withered and swept away; but upon what is sure and immovable. I think you understand me. None of you are so young that you have not known many a disappointment; pleasures, to which you have looked forward with eager delight, have seemed not worth having when they really came, and some of you have known worse trials than these.
Our Lord once spoke to His disciples of a house which a foolish man had built without a foundation. The man built it upon the sand, and when the storm beat upon it it fell. The children of God in all times, though living in a world of change and sorrow, where the resistless tides of death are ever rising, have looked for a City which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God; they have had a sure hope which will never fail them.
Let me tell you of a British queen who tried to make the king, her husband, think of a life to come. It was a long time ago, when even kings who removed from one part of the country to another, took with them their furniture and household goods.
One day King Inihad already started on a journey, when Queen Ethelburg, who was riding beside him, besought him as a favor to turn his horse, and ride back again with her to the house they had left the day before.
When they came to the old hall where the king had so lately feasted with his brave men, they found all desolate and empty, save that pigs and cattle were feeding there. As the king looked upon the scene, Ethelburg turned to him and said, “After this manner the glory and pleasant things of this world pass away ; so that I hold him foolish who cleaves to the things of this world, and takes no thought of the life everlasting.”
Let us ask God so to teach us by His Holy Spirit, that we may build our hopes for this present time, as well as for the great future, on His sure foundation, even the Lord Jesus Christ. “He that believeth in Him shall not be confounded.”