Excerpt
Preface.
The requirement of the gospel is that, having first given ourselves to Christ, we should then devote all we have, be it little or much, to His service. The largest gifts fall infinitely below what He deserves from us; the smallest will not be rejected by Him. For it is the motive, not the gift, which our Lord regards. The poor widow’s mite was more acceptable to Him than the ostentatious and lavish donations of the wealthy. Yet the smallness, the seeming worthlessness, of our means is often pleaded as an excuse for withholding them altogether. Because men can do so little, they do nothing. It was the servant who had received only one talent that wrapped his lord’s money in a napkin, and buried it in useless, unprofitable obscurity. When the multitudes hungered in the wilderness, the disciples hesitated to bring the five barley loaves and two small fishes, asking, “What are they among so many?” They were taught, however, to produce their little all, utterly inadequate as it was to the exigencies of the case, and lay it in the hands of Omnipotent Love, that He might by His blessing increase it to the feeding of the five thousand. “God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; and base things of the world and things which are despised hath God chosen, yea, and things that are not, to bring to nought things that are, that no flesh should glory in His presence.”
This great truth is admirably illustrated in the following pages. In the life of Christie Redfern we may see how the simple desire to serve God, felt and acted upon by a poor, suffering child, may give an almost heroic strength of character, and may produce results, the magnitude and grandeur of which are altogether out of proportion to the feebleness of the means employed.
Chapter One. Christie’s childhood.
“I’ve heard folks say it—I’ve seen it in a book myself—and I heard my father read something like it, out of the Bible, last Sunday—‘Ask, and ye shall receive,’ and in another place, ‘In everything by prayer and supplication let your requests be made known unto God.’ I might try it, anyway.”
But the voice that spoke was by no means a hopeful one, and there was anything but a hopeful look on the face of the little girl who slowly raised herself up from a mossy seat, where she had been quite hidden by the branches of a tall birch-tree, that hung so low as to dip themselves into the waters of the brook at the times when it ran fullest. It was a very pretty place, and a very strange place for any child to look anxious or discontented in. But the little girl looked as if she were both; and there was, besides, a great deal of weariness in her manner, as she leaned for a moment against a branch, and then stooped to let the water flow over a spray of crimson maple that she held in her hand.
“I might try it, anyway,” she repeated, as she left the place....