p. 16 (64) | A Misspent Life

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jan 28, 1903

A Misspent Life.

Seventeen years ago a miner began in the Black Hills of South Dakota a search for gold. That search absorbed his life. He left civilization, friends, home, ease, comfort, to search for the shining metal. Like the man in Pilgrim’s Progress, he saw not the enduring gems overhead, his heart was buried in the muck of the earth. Stars of God shone in the blue vault of heaven, telling of God’s wisdom and power; the flowers bloomed by the wayside, the green grass waved in the fields; he saw them not. Birds caroled their love songs of praise to God; but he heard not. Brooks went babbling down the hillside stones and purling their way toward the ocean, but he heeded not unless it was to quench a thirst aggravated by the fevered search for gold. His heart was in the earth all those years, uncontented, miserable. He eked out an existence in a wretched cabin and in his search for the yellow metal, and after wasting in the dry, fevered thirst over twenty-eight millions of golden waking minutes he found the golden, shining sand. The result?—The vision of great wealth was too much for the fevered, restless brain; a blood-vessel burst in his excessive joy, and he died. God gives a golden present in which to live. Mines of gold are opened every day. Treasuries of His goodness and grace are open before us; and all that He gives may be ours forever. “So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.”