eakable gift of eternal life,
is less than the love it speaks, in that He Himself has in wondrous
manner become partaker of our weakness. The pattern of all sympathy, the
giver of all our possessions, is God. Let us hold to Him in faith and
love, and all earthly love will be sweeter and sympathy more precious.
Our own hearts will be refined and purified to a delicacy of
consideration and a tenderness beyond their own. Our souls will be made
lords of all circumstances and strengthened according to our need. He
will say to us 'My grace is sufficient for thee,' and we, as we feel His
strength being made perfect in our weakness, shall be able to say with
humble confidence, 'I can do all things in Christ who strengtheneth me
within.'

GIFTS GIVEN, SEED SOWN

'And ye yourselves also know, ye Philippians, that
in the beginning of the Gospel, when I departed
from Macedonia, no church had fellowship with me
in the matter of giving and receiving, but ye
only; for even in Thessalonica ye sent once and
again unto my need. Not that I seek for the gift;
but I seek for the fruit that increaseth to your
account. But I have all things, and abound: I am
filled, having received from Epaphroditus the
things that came from you, an odour of a sweet
smell, a sacrifice acceptable, well-pleasing to
God. And my God shall fulfil every need of yours
according to His riches in glory in Christ
Jesus.'--PHIL. iv. 15-19 (R.V.).

Paul loved the Philippians too well and was too sure of their love to be
conscious of any embarrassment in expressing his thanks for money help.
His thanks are profuse and long drawn out. Our present text still
strikes the note of grateful acknowledgment. It gives us a little
glimpse into earlier instances of their liberality, and beautifully
suggests that as they had done to him so God would do to them, and that
their liberality was in a fashion a prophecy, because it was in some
measure an imitation, of God's liberality. He had just said 'I am full,
having received the things which were sent from you,' and now he says,
'My God shall fill full all your needs.' The use of the same word in
these two connections is a piece of what one would call the very
ingenuity of graceful courtesy, if it were not something far deeper,
even the utterance of a loving and self-forgetting heart.