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and generous administration, whatever may be the response of His creatures. He makes His sun to shine upon the evil and the good, His rain to descend upon the just and the unjust, despite the thanklessness of the far greater portion of those who are so richly and undeservedly blessed. How largely the sublime work of the Lord Jesus is unrecognized ! " Where are the nine ? " is a mournful question still on our Master's lips. But He does not fail, neither is He discouraged because of the blindness and heart- lessness of those whom He suffered to redeem ; He pursues the thankless with offers of grace and blessing. We are far too anxious about acknowledgments and congratulations. It is natural, perhaps, that we should suffer some sense of disappoint- ment, but have we not considerations and motives to lift us far above such discontent? It is rather the gratitude than the apathy of men that should leave us mourning. Let us work in the spirit of a noble faith and consecration, knowing that what we give and suffer will be lightly esteemed among men.
^ It was a saying of Cromwell's that " he goes farthest who knows not where he is going." He did not forecast his actions and see far ahead, did not, indeed, try to do so. To him the important thing was to get what he regarded as a leading from the Lord. When he was sure of that, all hesitation on his part was gone. It is not business-like to know not whither you are going, and he is not likely to go far who should enter upon business in that fashion. But in the spiritual realm it is different. The great thing there is to follow the Divine leading, and to sow even though it be in tears, trusting Him who gives the command that all will be well, and that in His own good time there shall come a reaping time of joy.^
IL
The Promise.
"Thou shalt find it after many days."
This comes in most seasonably on the back of such a precept, and its expressiveness is not instructive merely; it is most encouraging; nothing could be better; it is in every way most worthy of the heartiest consideration and acceptation.
» J, S. Maver.
400 GIVING AND RECEIVING
1. The most uncalculating generosity is precisely that which is most certain, in one way or other, to meet with its reward. "Thou shalt find it after many days." This is not to be the motive of our acts, but it will in the course of time be the result.
^ 21st September 1863— Met at the house of the Eev. C. K. Paul, at Stourminster Marshall, Father Strickland, an English Jesuit, who said to me — " I have observed, throughout life, that a man may do an immense deal of good, if he does not care who gets the credit for it." ^
^ If we give because we do not know how soon we may need a gift, and in order that we may by-and-by " find the good of it," do not even the heathen and the publicans the same ? Well, not many of them, I think. I have not observed that it is their habit to cast their bread on thankless waters. If they forebode calamity and loss, they provide against them, not by giving, but by hoard- ing ; and even they themselves would hardly accept as a model of charity a man who buttoned up his pocket against every appeal, lest he should be yielding to a selfish motive, or be suspected of it. The refined selfishness of showing kindness and doing good even to the evil and the unthankful because we hope to find the good of it is by no means too common yet ; we need not go in dread of it. Nor is it an altogether unworthy motive. St. Paul urges us to help a fallen brother on the express ground that we may need similar help some day (Gal. vi. 1); and he was not in the habit of appealing to base motives. Nay, the very Golden Eule itself, which all men admire even if they do not walk by it, touches this spring of action; for among other meanings it surely has this, that we are to do to others as we would that they should do to us, in the hope that they will do to us as we have done to them. There are other higher meanings in the Eule of course, as there are other and purer motives for Charity ; but I do not know that we are any of us of so lofty a virtue that we need fear to show kindness in order to win kindness, or to give help that we may get help when we need it. Possibly, to act on this motive may be the best and nearest way of rising to such higher motives as we can reach.*
2. Some may happily find an almost immediate return, like the mother of Moses when she entrusted her babe to the Nile
» Sir M. K Grant DuflF, Notes from a Diary, 1851-1878, 111. * Samuel Coz, The Book 0/ Ecdesiastes, 250.
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waters, and her faith was rewarded even beyond her expectations. Others may be like Jonathan, whose unselfish love towards David found a return after he was gone, in David's kindness to his son, Mephibosheth. And to others the fulness of the return may be still more remote, as when Euth cast in her lot with Naomi, and thereby came to be privileged to have in the line of her descent the Saviour of the world.