“PINCHING YOURSELF TO GIVE.”
By Mark Guy Pearse
Mr. Horn often used to say: “There’s one thing that lots of good people will never know in this world, and ’tis one o’ the things we sha’n’t know anything about in heaven itself,—the joy of really pinching yourself to give. I often think that that is the blessed thing about being hard up, when you do give—then you feel it.” It was with a merry laugh that he would tell the younger members that, when he had been at the class meeting three or four times, he said one evening, “Put me down, please, for a penny a week.” The leader looked at me through his spectacles, and opened his mouth wide, and, after a minute or two, said, “What!” as if he was quite frightened. “A penny a week, sir,” I said, putting down the money for each evening I had been at class. The leader was what you might call a common sort of a man—for they are the commonest sort of people that I know. He thought that the less he could give the better, and, if he could do without giving at all, it would be better still, just as if the Lord did not see what was left behind. The man was in good work and had no family, and yet a penny a week was all he gave. It looked so bad for a lad like I was to give so much. “You can’t afford it, Jim; you know you can’t.” “Put it down, sir,” I replied, “put it down. There it is, and there it will be as long as ever I’ve got the love of Jesus in my heart.” Soon after that came the time for renewal of the quarterly tickets. The leader headed the list with what Mr. Horn used to call a “beggarly threepenny bit.” “Why, the fellow spends twice as much in the week for10tobacco,” he would say indignantly, as if interrupting himself—“sixpence for smoke, and threepence for the work of God!” “Well, the minister went through the names, and they all sung to the low key that had been pitched, till they came to my name. Then what did the leader do but lean over and whisper that I was young and could not give anything, and he had better not ask me. The minister nodded his head and took up the hymn-book. “‘Please, sir, I love God too,’ I said; ‘why mayn’t I give anything?’” “The minister looked at me kindly and said, ‘Brother Skimes tells me that you can’t afford anything.’” “I replied, ‘The rule says a shilling at least, sir, every week except in extreme poverty, and that isn’t the state of any of us, I am sure, and I wish you to put down a shilling for me.’” “‘A shilling!’ cried the leader, and he jumped off his seat as if some one had pricked him.” “‘There’s the money,’ said I, as I put the shilling on the table. ‘I would afford it somehow, sir, however it might pinch me.’ And I looked at Brother Skimes so much as to say, ‘Though it should even put my pipe out.’” “‘Ay, I used to pinch myself too!’ continued Mr. Horn. ‘More than once I’ve gone on dry bread, and then done so much as any of ’em. Now and then I used to buy a lot of broken herrings for sixpence, and then I had a bit of relish. You know they say that there is nothing like bitters to give you an appetite, and it is when you give away what you want that you enjoy what’s left. Try it. Give away half of your dinner, and then the other half, bless ye! the lord mayor of London might envy it. If anybody wants to taste a bit o’ real joy, let ’em just go and do that. I’ve often turned it over in my mind that love is real true love when it has got a bit of real hard, pinchin’ sacrifice about it, and not till then.’” “‘Kindness and pity will give you, perhaps, what it thinks it can do without, but love gives everything. “He spared not his own Son”—that is love. “Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us.” Kindness and pity will send the scraps and bones to the shivering beggar at the door, but love brings him in and gives up its place and its plate and will stand behind waiting and helping. Ah! that’s how the blessed Lord treated us when we came home from the far country perishing with hunger. No old, cast-off clothes, but the best robes. No scraps—all bones and crusts—but the fatted calf. No pitiful words, but himself. His arms about the neck and his kiss upon the cheek, and all his heart to welcome us. But we, when he comes to ask anything of us, keep him waiting at the door for an answer, and then we send him out our miserable scrapings—just what we think we can spare without feeling it. Depend upon it, we don’t know much about love if love don’t pinch us now and then.’”—Mark Guy Pearse, in “Mister Horn.”