Here the question of jewellery seems to come in. Perhaps it was an instance of the gradual showing of the details of consecration, illustrated on page 21, but I will confess that when I wrote 'Take my silver and my gold,' it never dawned on me that anything was included beyond the coin of the realm! But the Lord 'leads on softly,' and a good many of us have been shown some capital bits of unenclosed but easily enclosable ground, which have yielded 'pleasant fruit.' Yes, _very_ pleasant fruit! It is wonderfully nice to light upon something that we really never thought of as a possible gift to our Lord, and just to give it, straight away, to Him. I do not press the matter, but I do ask my lady friends to give it fair and candid and prayerful consideration. Which do you really care most about--a diamond on your finger, or a star in the Redeemer's kingdom, shining for ever and ever? That is what it comes to, and there I leave it.
On the other hand, it is very possible to be fairly faithful in much, and yet unfaithful in that which is least. We may have thought about our gold and silver, and yet have been altogether thoughtless about our rubbish! Some have a habit of hoarding away old garments, 'pieces,' remnants, and odds and ends generally, under the idea that they 'will come in useful some day;' very likely setting it up as a kind of mild virtue, backed by that noxious old saying, 'Keep it by you seven years, and you'll find a use for it.' And so the shabby things get shabbier, and moth and dust doth corrupt, and the drawers and places get choked and crowded; and meanwhile all this that is sheer rubbish to you might be made useful at once, to a degree beyond what you would guess, to some poor person.
It would be a nice variety for the clever fingers of a lady's maid to be set to work to do up old things; or some tidy woman may be found in almost every locality who knows how to contrive children's things out of what seems to you only fit for the rag-bag, either for her own little ones or those of her neighbours.
My sister trimmed 70 or 80 hats every spring for several years with the contents of friends' rubbish drawers, thus relieving dozens of poor mothers who liked their children to 'go tidy on Sunday,' and also keeping down finery in her Sunday school. Those who literally fulfilled her request for 'rubbish' used to marvel at the results.
Little scraps of carpet, torn old curtains, faded blinds, and all such gear, go a wonderfully long way towards making poor cottagers and old or sick people comfortable. I never saw anything in this 'rubbish' line yet that could not be turned to good account somehow, with a little _considering_ of the poor and their discomforts.
I wish my lady reader would just leave this book now, and go straight up-stairs and have a good rummage at once, and see what can be thus cleared out. If she does not know the right recipients at first hand, let her send it off to the nearest working clergyman's wife, and see how gratefully it will be received! For it is a great trial to workers among the poor not to be able to supply the needs they see. Such supplies are far more useful than treble their small money value.
Just a word of earnest pleading for needs, closely veiled, but very sore, which might be wonderfully lightened if this wardrobe over-hauling were systematic and faithful. There are hundreds of poor clergymen's families to whom a few old garments or any household oddments are as great a charity as to any of the poor under their charge. There are two Societies for aiding these with such gifts, under initials which are explained in the Reports; the P.P.C. Society--Secretary, Miss Breay, Battenhall Place, Worcester; and the A.F.D. Society--Secretary, Miss Hinton, 4 York Place, Clifton. I only ask my lady friends to send for a report to either of these devoted secretaries; and if their hearts are not so touched by the cases of brave and bitter need that they go forthwith to wardrobes and drawers to see what can be spared and sent, they are colder and harder than I give Englishwomen credit for.
There is no bondage in consecration. The two things are opposites, and cannot co-exist, much less mingle. We should suspect our consecration, and come afresh to our great Counsellor about it, directly we have any sense of bondage. As long as we have an unacknowledged feeling of fidget about our account-book, and a smothered wondering what and how much we '_ought_' to give, and a hushed-up wishing the thing had not been put quite so strongly before us, depend upon it we have not said unreservedly, 'Take my silver and my gold.' And how can the Lord keep what He has not been sincerely asked to take?