A Costly Trinket | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 18, 1872

A Costly Trinket.

A CHRISTIAN woman who had with much earnestness sought to do the will of God, was at one time convinced by the Holy Spirit that a certain ornament which she wore upon her person was not becoming in a follower of the Son of God. Instead of yielding at once to this inward monitor which had only echoed the utterances of the Holy Scriptures, she doubted and hesitated, and finally persuaded herself that she was mistaken in her convictions, and continued on, doing as she had done before.

This course naturally led to spiritual darkness and declension; and whenever her soul was aroused to attain to a higher and holier Christian experience, this same trifle came up before her as an obstacle; and she was still unwilling to lay it aside.

Five years were spent in this state of bondage and neglect of duty, until she at length determined she would “lay aside every weight,” and fully follow the Lord; and putting off the ornament which had so long ensnared her, she yielded her will in all things to divine control.

Shortly afterward, she carried this little bauble to a lapidary to ascertain its value, and learned, to her surprise and mortification, that the ornament to which she had clung so long, and for which she had suffered so much, was neither “gold, nor silver, nor pearls, nor costly array,” but a little, contemptible, catch-penny trifle, worth only a few pence, and so utterly cheap and vain, that her pride, if nothing else, would have scorned to wear it had she known its real worthlessness. And she had the shame and mortification of thinking that for five long years, she, a child of God, had allowed that little paltry “bauble,” only fit to adorn a painted squaw, to stand as a shadow and a hindrance to bar her from the fellowship of Him who loved her with an everlasting love.

The Scotchman, who, by mistake, put a silver half-crown instead of the intended penny into the collector’s plate, and, after seeking in vain to get it back, comforted himself with the thought, “Aweel, I’ll get credit for it in Heaven,” was told, “Nae, you’ll only get credit for a penny.”

But this poor woman would have all the credit, as she had received all the sorrow, of years of disobedience, while after all she found herself cheated and fooled at the end.

Is it not so with everything by which men are seduced from God? Satan’s bargains are bad enough, but he never fulfills any of his pledges, and makes us fulfill all of ours. And the goods he professes to give us, when delivered, prove to be so mean, that so far from selling our birthright for them, we would be fools to take them as a gift.

How much better to yield ourselves wholly to the Lord for time and for eternity.—The Christian.