God is not a Merchant

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 16, 1869

God is not a Merchant.

ONCE there was a poor woman standing before the window of a royal conservatory which looked into the public street. It was in the dead of winter, and no flowers were to be seen in the gardens, and no fruit on the trees. But in the hot-house a splendid bunch of grapes hung from the glass ceiling, basking in the bright winter sun, and the poor woman gazed at it till the water came into her mouth, and she sighed, “Oh, I wish I could take it to my sick darling!” She went home and sat down to her spinning-wheel, and wrought day and night until she had earned half a crown. She then went to the king’s gardener and offered that sum for the bunch of grapes; but the gardener received her unkindly, and told her not to come again. She returned home, and looked round her little cottage to see whether there was anything she could dispense with. It was a severe winter, yet she thought she could do without a blanket for a week or two; so she pawned it for half a crown, and went to the king’s gardener, and now offered him five shillings. But the gardener scolded her, and took her by the arm rather roughly, and turned her out. It just happened, however, that the king’s daughter was near at hand, and when she heard the angry words of the gardener and the crying of the woman, she came up and inquired into the matter. When the poor woman had told her story, the noble princess said, with a kind smile, “My dear woman, you were mistaken; my father is not a merchant, but a king; his business is not to sell, but to give,” whereupon she plucked the bunch from the vine and gently dropped it into the woman’s apron. So the woman obtained as a free gift what the labor of many days and nights had proved unable to procure. The salvation of the soul is the greatest treasure you can desire. But you cannot buy it with all the riches of the world, with all the prayers you could pray, with all the alms you could give, with all the useful works you could perform during a life as long as that of Methuselah. The fact is, your soul’s salvation is in the hands of a king, and not of a merchant. If you receive it at all, it must be as a gift, for you never can buy it.—Wind-Wafted Seed.