“Sallie Tucker!” and her mother’s voice was cold and stern, “you just put this notion out of your head. You don’t know what giving to the Lord means. Put this trash away. When the Lord remembers us with some of his plenty, ’twill be time enough to give to him, I reckon.”
It was the afternoon for the Woman’s Quarterly Missionary Meeting, in the Shadyville Baptist church. Mrs. Gray, the minister’s wife, came to the vestry with a sad heart. She knew too well the character of these gatherings. A few ladies came together, in a listless, apathetic way, a few lifeless prayers were offered, a little business disposed of, and the ladies went to their homes wondering why there wasn’t more interest in missions. Mrs. Tucker wasn’t in the habit of attending the missionary meeting, so when she came into one this afternoon, the ladies present looked at each other in surprise. Mrs. Gray read the psalm and offered prayer, and then came the usual dead silence.
Presently Mrs. Tucker rose to her feet, and, in a voice shaken with emotion, said:—
“I s’pose you’re all astonished to see me here, but the truth of the matter is, I’ve got something to say to you, which can’t half be told in words, neither. You all know my little Sallie has been sick; but I don’t s’pose none of you know what that sickness has been to me. You see the children wanted her to go to the mission band, but I was tough and cranky, and dead set ag’in’ anything of the kind, and told her, in the crossest way, she couldn’t go. She’d heard somethin’ about giving to Jesus, and laid out her best doll and book; an’ I laughed at it, an’ told her the Lord didn’t want her trash. Well, she took sick, an’ got sicker an’ sicker, till my heart stood still with the fear o’ losing her. She was out of her head, you know; and every time I come near the bed, she’d start right up an’ say, ‘Oh, can’t I give him anything? Don’t he want my dolly? O mother, mother can’t I go?’ till I just thought my heart would break in two. Everywhere I looked, I could see her eyes, with such a beseechin’ look in ’em, and hear her voice callin’, ‘Mother, mother, can’t I give anything?’ till at last I went down on my knees, all broke up like, and I sez:—
“‘Lord, I’m a poor, ungrateful sinner, and I’ve been a-withholding from you all these years; but if there’s anythin’ I can give you, won’t you please take it? Even my little girl, and everything I’ve got I just lay down.’
“Well, my sisters, I cried an’ cried as I hain’t for years, and it wasn’t all for sorrow, neither; there was a great deep joy in it all. An’ I come here to-day to tell you that I just give myself and all I’ve got to the Lord’s work. I’m fairly converted to missions, and if the Lord will only take the poor, miserable offerin’ I’ve got to give, and use me rough-shod in his work, I’d really be only too thankful. Why, my sisters, I’m the happiest woman on earth, and it’s all owin’ to the blessed child and that there children’s band.”—Selected.