HATTIE WIATT'S LEGACY
How a Little Child Started the Building Fund for the Great Baptist
Temple.
One Sunday afternoon a little child, Hattie Wiatt, six years old,
came to the church building at Berks and Mervine to attend the Sunday
School. She was a very little girl and it was a very large Sunday
School, but big as it was there was not room to squeeze her in. Other
little girls had been turned away that day, and still others, Sundays
before. But it was a bitter disappointment to this small child; the
little lips trembled, the big tears rolled down her cheeks and the
sobs that came were from the heart. The pastor himself told the little
one why she could not come in and tried to comfort her. His heart was
big enough for her and her trouble if the church was not. He watched
the childish figure going so sadly up the street with a heart that was
heavy that he must turn away a little child from the house of God,
from the house raised in the name of One who said, "Suffer little
children to come unto me."
She did not forget her disappointment as many a child would. It had
been too grievous. It hurt too deeply to think that she could not go
to that Sunday School, and that other little girls who wanted to go
must stay away. With quivering lip she told her mother there wasn't
room for her. With a sad little heart she spent the afternoon thinking
about it, and when bedtime came and she said her prayers, she prayed
with a child's beautiful faith that they would find room for her so
that she might go and learn more about Jesus. Perhaps she had heard
some word dropped about faith and works. Perhaps the childish mind
thought it out for herself. But she arose the next morning with a
strong purpose in her childish soul, a purpose so big in faith, so
firm in determination, it could put many a strong man's efforts to
the blush. "I will save my money," she said to herself, "and build a
bigger Sunday School. Then we can all go."
From her childish treasures she hunted out a little red pocketbook
and in this she put her pennies, one at a time. What temptations that
childish soul struggled with no one may know! How she shut her eyes
and steeled her heart to playthings her friends bought, to the
allurements of the candy shop window! But nothing turned her from
her purpose. Penny by penny the little hoard grew. Day after day the
dimpled fingers counted it and the bright eyes grew brighter as the
sum mounted. That mite cast in by the widow was no purer, greater
offering than these pennies so lovingly and heroically saved by this
little child.
But there were only a few weeks of this planning, hoping, saving. The
little Temple builder fell ill. It was a brief illness and then the
grim Reaper knocked at the door of the Wiatt home and the loving,
self-sacrificing spirit was born to the Father's House where there are
many mansions, where there was no lack of room, for the little heart
so eager to learn more of Jesus.
With her dying breath she told her mother of her treasure, told her it
was for Grace Baptist Church to build.
In the little red pocketbook was just fifty-seven cents. That was her
legacy. With swelling heart, the pastor reverently took it; with misty
eyes and broken voice he told his people of the little one's gift.
"And when they heard how God had blessed them with so great an
inheritance, there was silence in the room; the silence of tears and
earnest consecration. The corner stone of the Temple was laid."