My Will Against God's Will.
Miss A. B. Harris relates in The Congregationalist a story that was told her by “a venerable friend” concerning his life-long endeavors to have his own way, and the lesson he learned at last:— I always had a strong desire to be rich. Not at all for the sake of riches, but to command those beautiful things which it takes money to buy; and after I was married the longing grew upon me, for the sake of surrounding my wife and children with luxuries. I thought I was a Christian; and I determined to give God a reasonable share—one-sixth of all that I made in a year. I gave it most cheerfully, without a grudging thought; and considered that it was liberal in me; and that all the rest was mine, to do with as I pleased. My success was remarkable; and I was just on the eve of realizing my wishes, building an elegant residence, and furnishing it suitably, when a distant relative was suddenly left a widow, with several little children, and without means of bringing them up. She applied to me to set her up in business; not because I was any wealthier, or nearer of kin, than some others of the family, but because I was a Christian, she said; and she thought I should look at it in a different light from the others. Now here was a question forced upon me. I thought she proposed it to me; never imagining that it was God. Some misgivings, however, haunted me as I answered, declining. Nevertheless, I reasoned in this way: God has given me just what I have been asking for so many years, the means of making my family happy (notice, I had never asked him to give what it was best for them to have); and of course I am to use it for that purpose. It can't be my duty to take care of John's widow and children. There are others whom she can call on, who are under more obligation. Besides, I already spend one-sixth of my income for such uses. So I refused, thinking I had only refused her. It proved to be God who had sent the request. Some way I soon began to be financially embarrassed through a singular complication of affairs; and instead of building on the foundation I was so sure of, I made a most disastrous failure, which put me back to my starting place. But being still a young man I set out anew, with the same end in view. That was my chief ambition, and I could not see that it was selfish, because it was not for myself, nor for show, nor for influence; but to make those precious to me happy, to minister to their taste for the beautiful and refined. I could see no reason why it was not proper and right; nor why, if I sacredly set apart one-sixth, as before, I should not keep to my purpose. In time came another test, similar enough to the first to startle a man. An old friend, poor and in feeble health, while traveling across the country to his relatives, stopped at my house, grew worse, and died there, leaving on my hands a beautiful little girl, his only and now orphaned child. After a few weeks the not very willing relatives came for her, but she clung to us, and begged to live with us. Do I seem a monster, in saying that I felt that my own children ought to have all that their father had with such difficulty acquired, instead of sharing with a stranger who had no claims? Both they and my wife pleaded for her, but I resisted, and she went away. I have to add that this orphan, as well as John's widow and children, prospered, and apparently suffered nothing from my refusal. It was I that suffered. I had refused one of those little ones whom, if ye receive not, Christ says ye receive not me. I had been asked by him to do something; but, thinking it would retard my own purpose, I had disregarded him. We are slow in learning that God rules. I lost my property the second time; and in this instance, in a very simple way—through the failure of others with whom I was concerned. And gradually the truth began to dawn upon me; and at last, in its awful light I stood revealed, as I was, a shamefaced, baffled penitent. God had tried me in the one way which most nearly interested me. He had defeated the plan of my life, my plan, once, twice. He had convicted me of my sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. Though I had paid tithes, and cultivated the Christian graces, and tried to live a consistent life, I had twice miserably denied him when he came asking me to do a thing against my wishes. If I had obeyed, and left the result with him, what sweet peace should I have had, and the approval: “Inasmuch as ye did it unto one of the least of these my disciples, ye did it unto me!” Failing to do it, I failed of all. Briefly as my story has been told, the experience of all my most vigorous years is crowded into it. I was a gray-haired man when God flashed the conviction into my soul that he never meant me to be rich. I was fifty years learning that it was not my will, but his, that was to be done.