Our charities, the offerings which we offer to God, too often cost us nothing, and therefore, as a consequence, they profit us nothing ; they help us little or not at all in the way to heaven ; nay, rather, in their littleness serve only as an acknowledgment that we recognize a duty which yet we are refusing to fulfil. Some perhaps will say, Better then to withhold this little, if it shall thus prove a witness against us. They may say this ; but they cannot in their hearts believe that any true help is here. That help can lie only in so multiplying this little that it may witness not against us but for us ; that, like the alms of Cornelius, which, as you will remember, were " much alms," it may come up for a memorial before God.
^ On every coin in your possession you may read the letters " D.G.," by the grace of God. Every coin is yours as the gift of God ; as much so as if He had literally placed it on your open
1 The Spirit of St. Francis de. Sales, 49.
I TIMOTHY VI. TO 155
palm. If our money is really His, by His gift originally to us, and by our subsequent dedication to Him, surely He ought to have a voice in its expenditure. And the concession of that right to Him would speedily make our consecration real. . . . Though I do not plead that consecrated Christians should give all away, I do insist upon it, that they should regard all their money as Christ's, and spend every penny of it beneath His direction, and in harmony with His will. Do not we use the bulk of our Lord's money for ourselves, giving to Him and His work the chance coins which we may be able to spare, or the subscriptions which we are obliged to give, to maintain a character amongst our fellows ? ^
^ Giving is an essential part of the Christian religion. This position needs no special argument. In support of it the whole New Testament cries aloud. The system of redemption is, from first to last, one prodigious process of gift. God loved the world, and gave His only-begotten Son. The Son loved us, and gave Himself to death for us all. This giving does not rest at the point of bounty, but passes on to that of inconceivable sacrifice. Every man on whose spirit the true light of redemption breaks, finds himself heir to a heritage of givings, which began on the eve of time, and will keep pace with the course of eternity. To giving he owes his all ; in giving he sees the most substantial evidence he can ofi'er, that he is a grateful debtor ; and the self-sacrifice of Him in whom he trusts says, far more pathetically than words could say, "It is more blessed to give than to receive." ^ 1 F. B. Meyer. * William Arthur.
Life and Immortality.
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Literature.
Ashby (L.), To Whom Shall We Go ? 133.
Bersier (E.), Twelve Sermons, 230.
Binney (T.), Sermons in Kimfs Weigh-House Chapel, i. 38.
Briggs (C. A.), The Incarnation of the Lord, 127.
Driver (S. R.), Sermons on the Old Testament, 72.
Ellicott (C. J.), Sermons at Gloucester, 153.
Hall (N.), Gethsemane, 314.
Hopps (.J. P.), Sermons of Life and Love, 101.
Horue (C. S.), The Doctrine of Immortality, 1.
Jackson (G.), Memoranda Paulina, 124, 129.
Jacksoo (J. 0.), in Sermons for Home Reading, 177.
Lee (R.), Sermons, 374.
Little (W. J. K.), Sunlight and Shadow, 29.
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Macdonnell (D. J.), Life and Work, 474.
Nixon (W.), Christ All and in All, 198.
Paget (F.), Faculties and Difficulties for Belief and Disbelief, 69.
Roberts (R.), The Meaning of Christ, 75.
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Christian World Pulpit, viii. 328 (W. Brock) ; xii. 296 (J. B. Brown) ;
xviii. 396 (W. Bull) ; xxxi. 264 (R. F. Horton) ; xxxiii. 70 (J. B.
Heard) ; xxxv. 310 (B. F. Westcott) ; Ixv. 225 (C. S. Home) ; Ixvii.
260 (G. Body) ; Ixxvii. 257 (G. A. Johnston Ross). Churchman's Pulpit : Easter Day and Season, vii. 346 (G. Jackson). Hartford Seminary Record, xxiii. 89 (E. P. Parker). Homiletic Review, liii. 217 (M. Dix) ; Ixiii. 308 (S. P. Cadman).
Life and Immortality.
Our Saviour Jesus Christ, who abohshed death, and brought life and immortality (R.V. incorruption) to light through the gospel.— 2 Tim. i. lo.
1. It was during the whirlwind of the French Eevolution, when it seemed as if all religious beliefs and restraints were to be east off and thrown away, that the leading men, alarmed at what seemed to them a most dangerous menace to their political projects, made a concerted and remarkable appeal in support of the two great ideas, of a Supreme Being and of the immortality of the soul. These ideas, they said, are social and democratic. The denial or rejection of them is aristocratic, subversive of justice, order, and liberty ; and Eobespierre uttered his memorable sentence : " If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him." If vice and virtue issue alike in nothingness, if the martyr and his murderer share the same fate, what foundation of justice remains ? In this wholesale and common extinction all moral distinctions are confounded. All the higher motives and ideals of life are destroyed. There is no longer any security for human rights or human freedom. So forcibly they argued this matter that the National Convention proclaimed by acclamation the following decree : " The French people recognize the existence of a Supreme Being and the Immortality of the Soul."