Proverbs 13

An Old-Time Party

There is that maketh himself rich, yet hath nothing:

There is that maketh himself poor, yet hath great wealth. Proverbs 13:7.

Your grown-up friends will tell you that they can never forget their schooldays. They remember the lessons, and they remember their schoolfellows. They remember the fun too. It used to be a question with us whether the fun of winter or the fun of summer was the better. While in July and August we favored summer, in January and February we believed very strongly in winter.

One of winter's attractions was a party we all liked very much. It was held on a certain Tuesday in February. In some calendars it is marked as Shrove Tuesday. That does not sound very festive, does it? It was not meant to do so. Originally Shrove Tuesday was a day set apart for humiliation and the confession of sin, in preparation for Lent which began on the following day.

In course of time the idea of confession and penance was set aside, and Shrove Tuesday came to be regarded as a day of mirth and sport. It is strange to think that a children's party at length grew out of it a party that in the north of Scotland used to be looked forward to as a very happy event. It is as the children's festival that I want to speak to you about it.

Boys and girls in a village school might sit puzzling over their sums on a disagreeable February afternoon, and be comforting themselves with thinking, “This is pancake day, we'll have grand fun to-night!” They looked forward to a party at which pancakes or, to give them their Scotch name, bannocks held a prominent place. Little bannocks, big bannocks, monster bannocks they were of all sizes. Games followed tea; but the event of the evening was the cutting up of a pancake, or bannock, that was bigger and thicker than any of the others. In it were concealed a ring, a few coins, and a button. Each boy and girl got a piece of the pancake, and thus had a chance of finding one or other of the articles. To find the ring was the chief honor; the boys were generally eager to get the coins; nobody wanted to get the button.

There must have been wise heads at the starting of the party that became a children's one. To get the ring meant that the finder would be beloved; the boy or girl who found the coins would become wealthy; but the finder of the button was one who would never make much of anything he would “never get there,” as we say.

The old-fashioned party preaches a sermon to us a sermon about boys and girls. It places them in three sets those to whom love is the greatest thing in the world, those to whom money is everything, and those who get the button who never make much of anything.

The first two need to be united. It is a good thing to be careful of money; even love cannot get on without it. The Great Master was the son of poor people. In His home there would never be more than enough to satisfy simple wants. He Himself worked for a livelihood. But while He saw the need of money, He knew that the love of it could draw the mind away from what was good. His whole life was a story of love. And because some people are followers of Him, out of their lives they make a story a little like His.

A tired workman, making his way home after a day's work, passes a toy shop; he sees something in the window that makes him stop. It is a little toy horse. He can ill afford it, but he goes in and buys it for the sick boy he has at home. That man had both the coins and the ring. Don't you understand? If you have the coins, you need the ring, you need the love.

A Tasmanian preacher tells of the little spring that trickles from beneath a stone on the mountain-side.

“Where have you come from, little spring?” he asks. “From the deep, dark heart of the mountains!” the spring replies. “And whither away in such a dreadful hurry?” “To the deep dark bed of the ocean; can't you hear it calling?” On it rushes, laughing all the way, singing a song, leaping over waterfalls until at last it finds the great river, plunges gaily in, and moves grandly with the waters out to the deep, deep sea.

“Happy little spring!” the preacher adds. But he goes on to tell of rivers that have set out to go to the sea. They too have heard the cry of the deep; but they have lost themselves in the sand. They have never got there.

Boys and girls, do you understand the lesson? I think you do. Be sure you find the ring, then look for the coins; never be content with the button.