The child speaker could not utter another word. The trembling voice broke into a sob that was more eloquent than the simple words which had however gone home to the hearts of the elder ones present.
“You are right, Nelly darling,” said one of these as she drew her little friend to her side and kissed her tenderly. “There must be no ornamental shams amongst our thank-offerings to God. We should not like our neighbours to know that a portion of the fringe ought to be labelled ‘Only straw,’ should we?”
“No, indeed,” was the answer from all the rest, and one said, “How could we bear to look at it and think that it was a miserable counterfeit? Better no fringe than straw where corn should be.”
To this all the workers heartily assented. I do not remember how the little difficulty was got over, but I know it was not by the substitution of straw and empty husks for corn. I know, too, that all present learned a solemn lesson from the child who, out of the fulness of her heart, spoke on the side of truth.
It was indeed a question of truth or untruth, reality or pretence, which had so stirred the young speaker. The child’s words and the circumstances under which they were uttered have often recurred to my mind during intervening years, and I believe that in repeating them I shall have done good service to you, my dear girl friends.
Does not the very thought of that little scene suggest self-examination? Are we not inclined to ask ourselves how much of what we may well call “straw” is mingled with our offerings to God? When we kneel with every appearance of devotion and even our lips repeat the familiar words of praise, is our worship always what it seems to be? Do not you and I know that often, when the knee has been bent and the head bowed in apparent reverence, and when our lips have moved in prayer or response, or our voices have rung out tunefully in psalm or hymn, our hearts have had little share in our seeming worship?
It has been a poor, mechanical thing in which true reverence, penitence, faith and the spirit of love, thankfulness and praise, have been almost entirely absent. It has seemed to our neighbours like true corn, but has been mostly empty straw. I say mostly, because it would be hard to think that there was no reality in it. Even amongst the straw cast aside from the threshing machine, a few grains of corn will always be found, each of which contains the germ of a new and fruitful life.
If, in looking into our own hearts, we find out the poverty of our worship, the barrenness of our life service, the vast proportion of coldness and indifference when compared with the little spark of genuine love to God and man which finds a place there, we cannot help acknowledging that only a grain of true corn is to be found here and there, amid the poor straw of our daily lives.
Let us, nevertheless, take courage. A single grain of true wheat may be the fruitful parent of grand harvests to come—of a handful of grain at first, each corn of which, fructifying in turn, will yield more and more until, as the years pass on, whole fields of waving gold will mark their increase.
Look carefully, dear ones, for the little grains of true corn in your natures. The little grain of love to God will grow if you let your hearts dwell on the thought of His great love for you. If we do not think about it we cannot realise it, but when we do, we are so filled with a sense of its vastness, that the living grains of love, gratitude, thankfulness, praise, joy and longing to prove our love by service, all fructify and become the parents of glorious harvests in our future lives.