A Traveler one day called at a cottage to ask for a draft of water. Entering, he found the parents cursing and quarrelling, the children crouched in a corner, trembling; and wherever he looked he saw only marks of degradation and poverty. Greeting the inmates, he asked them, “Dear friends, why do you make your house like hell?”
“Ah, sir,” said the man, “you don’t know the life and trials of a poor man, when, do what you can, everything goes wrong.”
The stranger drank the water, and then said softly, as he noticed in a dark and dusty corner a Bible, “Dear friends, I know what would help you, if you could find it. There is a treasure concealed in your house. Search for it.”
At first the cottagers thought it a jest, but after a while they began to reflect. When the woman went out, therefore, to gather sticks, the man began to search, and even to dig, that he might find the treasure. When the man was away, the woman did the same. Still they found nothing; increasing poverty only brought more quarrels, discontent, and strife.
One day, as the woman was left alone, she was thinking upon the stranger’s word, when her eye fell on the old Bible. It was a gift from her mother, but since her death had been long unheeded and unused.
A strange foreboding seized her mind. Could it be this that the stranger meant? She took it from the shelf, and found the verse inscribed on the title-page, in her mother’s handwriting— “The law of Thy mouth is better unto me than thousands of gold and silver.” It cut her to the heart. “Ah!” thought she, “this is the treasure, then, that we have been seeking.” How fast her tears fell upon the leaves!
From that time she react the Bible every day, and prayed, and taught the children to pray; but without her husband’s knowledge. One day he came home, as usual, quarrelling, and in a rage. Instead of meeting his angry words with angry replies, she spoke to him kindly and with gentleness. “Husband,” she said, “we have sinned grievously. We have ourselves to blame for all our misery, and we must now lead a different life.” He looked amazed. “What do you say?” was his exclamation. She brought the old Bible, and, sobbing cried, “There is the treasure. See, I have found it!”
The husband’s heart was moved. She read to him of the Lord Jesus and of His love. Next day she read, and again and again, while he sat with the children round her, thoughtful and attentive.
Time passed on and after a year, the stranger returned that way. Seeing the cottage, he remembered the circumstances of his visit, and thought he would call and see his old friends again. He did so, but he would scarcely have known the place; it was so clean, so neat, so well ordered. He opened the door, and, at first thought he was mistaken, for the inmates came to meet him so kindly, with the peace of God beaming upon their faces. “How are you, my friends?” said he. Then they knew the stranger, and for some time they could not speak.
“Thank you, thank you, sir; we have found your treasure. Now the blessing of God dwells in our house—His peace in our hearts!” So said they; and their entire condition, and the happy faces of their children, declared the same more plainly.
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