, so as to double in value, by compound
interest, every ten years, would have increased to one thousand pounds
during the years they had lain idle!

One gift was sent in, as an offering to the Lord, instead of being used
to purchase an engagement-ring by two believers who desired their lives
to be united by that highest bond, the mutual love of the Lord who
spared not His own blood for them.

At another time, a box came containing a new satin jacket, newly bought,
but sacrificed as a snare to pride. Its surrender marked an epoch, for
henceforth the owner determined to spend in dress only what is needful,
and not waste the Lord's money on costly apparel. Enlightened believers
look on all things as inalienably God's, and, even in the voluntary
diversion of money into sacred rather than selfish channels, still
remember that they give to Him only what is His own! "The little child
feels proud that he can drop the money into the box after the parent has
supplied the means, and told him to do so; and so God's children are
sometimes tempted to think that they are giving of their own, and to be
proud over their gifts, forgetting the divine Father who both gives us
all we have and bids us give all back to Him."

A gift of two thousand pounds on January 29,1872, was accompanied by a
letter confessing that the possession of property had given the writer
much trouble of mind, and it had been disposed of from a conviction that
the Lord "saw it not good" for him to _hold so much_ and therefore
allowed its possession to be a curse rather than a blessing. Fondness
for possessions always entails curse, and external riches thus become a
source of internal poverty. It is doubtful whether any child of God ever
yet hoarded wealth without losing in spiritual attainment and enjoyment.
Greed is one of the lowest and most destructive of vices and turns a man
into the likeness of the coin he worships, making him hard, cold,
metallic, and unsympathetic, so that, as has been quaintly said, he
drops into his coffin "with a chink."

God estimates what we _give_ by what we _keep,_ for it is possible to
bestow large sums and yet reserve so much larger amounts that no
self-denial is possible. Such giving to the Lord _costs us nothing._

In 1853, a brother in the Lord took out of his pocket a roll of
bank-notes, amounting to one hundred and ten pounds, and put it into Mr.
Muller's hand, it being _more than one half of his entire worldly
estate._ Su