GIVING LIKE A LITTLE CHILD.
Not long ago a poor widow came into my study. She is over sixty years of age. Her home is one little room, about ten feet by twelve, and she supports herself by her needle, which in these days of sewing machines means the most miserable support. Imagine my surprise, then, when she put three dollars into my hands, and said: “There is my contribution to the church fund.” “But are you able to give so much?” “Oh, yes,” she exclaimed. “I have learned how to give now.” “Do you remember,” she answered, “that sermon of three months ago, when you told us that—you did not believe one of your people was so poor that if he loved Christ, he could not find some way of showing that love by his gifts?” “Well, I went home and cried all night over that sermon. I said to myself, ‘My minister don’t know how poor I am, or he never would have said that.’ But from crying I at last got to praying. And when I had told Jesus all about it, I seemed to get an answer in my heart that dried up all tears.” “What was the answer?” I asked, deeply moved by her recital. “Only this, ‘If you cannot give as other people do, give like a little child.’ And I have been doing it ever since. When I have a penny change over from my sugar or loaf of bread, I lay it aside for Jesus, and so I have gathered this money all in pennies.” “But has it not embarrassed you to lay aside so much?” “Oh, no!” she responded, eagerly, with beaming face. “Since I began to give to the Lord, I have always had money in the house for myself, and it is wonderful how the work comes pouring in. So many are coming to see me, that I never knew before.” “But didn’t you always have money in the house?” I asked. “Oh, no! Often when my rent came due, I had to go and borrow it, not knowing how I ever should find means to pay it again. But I don’t have to do that any more, the dear Lord is so kind.” Of course I could not refuse such money. Three months later she came with three dollars and eighty-five cents saved in the same way. Then came the effort of our church in connection with the Memorial Fund, and in about five months she brought fifteen dollars, all saved in the little mite-box I had given her. This makes a total of twenty-one dollars and eighty-five cents7from one poor widow in a single twelvemonth. I need hardly add that she apparently grew more in Christian character in that one year than in all the previous years of her connection with the Church. Who can doubt that if in giving, as well as in other graces, we could all thus become as little children, there would result such an increase in our gifts that there would not be room enough to contain them?