How to Enjoy an Old Cloak
Three years ago my friends said, “You will have a new cloak this winter; yours is getting quite old-fashioned.” Its color was fresh, the quality good—perhaps it was a little too long or too short, and as all my neighbors were intent upon new cloaks, without much considering, I answered, “Yes, I suppose I must,” and put aside fifteen dollars of my small income for this purpose. Before the time of cloak-making we learned that a poor and pious woman, who, in her old age, had been defrauded of her little patrimony by a wicked son, was now in need of many comforts for the approaching winter, one of which was a new stove in place of the rickety thing which smoked her kitchen and consumed her wood without making her comfortable. In spite of all I could do, my old cloak and a new stove began to balance themselves in my mind; and in the end the new cloak was given up, and the new stove was bought. The winter set severely in, but having a share in Aunt Joanna’s stock of comforts, I often went to see her. One day, lightly opening her door, I heard her supplicating blessings on those who had thought of her and supplied her wants. And how “pleased was I,” when she took a sick neighbor and her child into her warm kitchen, and nursed her through the coldest weather. Did not my old cloak possess a beauty and a warmth of which fashion could never rob me? Two years ago, “Of course you will have a new cloak,” they said, “the new patterns are very becoming.” “Yes,” I answered, “I suppose so.” One day on going out to make some choice in the matter, a letter came describing the destitute state of a poor minister’s library. “Scott’s Bible,” “Pilgrim’s Progress,” and Webster’s Dictionary, with a few others, made up the scanty catalogue of his books. “Fifteen dollars’ worth of books would do an incalculable good to the missionary in the destitute region in which he lives,” so the letter ran. Here was a new adversary to the new cloak. As I thought of the crippled means of that man of God and the long winter evenings in that far-off clearing, with books or without them, and of his self-denials for his Master’s work, my heart and conscience went for the books. Twenty dollars’ worth of good reading from a friend, added to mine, were forwarded to the distant clearing; and in God’s good time we heard how they had gladdened and encouraged the minister’s heart, how they had passed from house to house and hand to hand, and how they had issued in a great revival of God’s glorious work. Did not the colors in the old cloak begin to stand out with a living luster? One year ago, and the matter of a new cloak again came up, with all the urgency of an “entire new style.” The same preliminaries were gone through, and the cloak was as “good as bought,” they said, when the case of a young man struggling with embarrassments in order to qualify himself for the ministry came to my knowledge. It was a little history of unwonted interest, and there was unwonted urgency in the call. Well-nigh overwhelmed by the waves of disappointment and adversity, should not some Christian brother be ready to throw out to him the life-preserver of sympathy, encouragement, and help? In God’s name, Yes. The old cloak and I have not yet parted. Another winter has come. We are still intimate. What may happen to sunder or cement our tie, we can not tell; but come what will, the dear old cloak has taught me the significant and often-to-be-repeated lesson in the great economy of means, that it is not so much what we have, as what we do, that is the true riches, the real joy; or, as our heavenly Master has at once disclosed the true idea and the great reward of Christianity, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”—Sunday at Home.