, as a fund for
benevolent expenditure, supporting myself and family on the remaining
nine-tenths. I further determined, that when at any time my net profits,
that is, profits from which clerk-hire and store expenses had been
deducted, should exceed $500 in a month, I would give twelve and a half
per cent.; if over $700, fifteen per cent.; if over $900, seventeen and
a half per cent.; if over $1,100, twenty per cent.; if over $1,300,
twenty-two and a half per cent.; thus increasing the proportion of the
whole as God should prosper, until at $1,500, I should give twenty-five
per cent., or $375 a month. As capital was of the utmost importance to
my success in business, I decided not to increase the foregoing scale
until I had acquired a certain capital, after which I would give
one-quarter of all net profits, great or small; and on the acquisition
of another certain amount of capital, I decided to give half; and on
acquiring what I determined would be a full sufficiency of capital, then
to give the whole of my net profits.

"It is now several years since I adopted this plan, and under it I have
acquired a handsome capital, and have been prospered beyond my most
sanguine expectations. Although constantly giving, I have never yet
touched the bottom of my fund, and have been repeatedly astonished to
find what large drafts it would bear. True, during some months I have
encountered a salutary trial of faith, when this rule has led me to lay
by the tenth, while the remainder proved inadequate to my support; but
the tide has soon turned, and with gratitude I have recognized a
heavenly hand more than making good all past deficiencies."

PROSPERITY AND LIBERALITY.

A London correspondent of the _Western Christian Advocate_, writing some
years ago of raising a fund for the extinction of debts on chapels,
gives the following incident:

"A gentleman named Wilkes, who was promised a subscription of one
thousand guineas to this fund, has a history so remarkable as to be
worth relating across the Atlantic. Seven years ago he was a journeyman
mechanic. Having invented and patented some kind of a crank or spindle
used in the cotton manufacture, and needing capital to start himself in
the business of making them, he made it a matter of earnest prayer that
he might be directed to some one able and willing to assist him. In a
singular and unexpected manner he fell in with an elderly Quaker, a
perfect stranger, who accosted him with t