Perhaps in the small circle of our personal acquaintance, we can number some few, who, with souls more elevated and spiritually refined by grace, have bestowed in benefactions all their income; peradventure, even common farmers and mechanics—­such as have fallen under the notice of the writer—­who, after frugally supplying the wants of their families, have generously given the remaining proceeds of their labor to the Lord.

On these, and such as these, we should fix our eyes; they are stars of the first magnitude which God has fixed in the dark canopy of time as guides.  We may not be able to give as they did; but the sacrifices they made, we can and ought to make.  If we seek to ward off the force of their example by arguing that they gave too much, or by referring at once to professedly good men who have given far less, we may reasonably conclude that covetousness is still grasping and palsying our christian sympathies.  Such efforts are clearly but the struggles of selfishness, to ease the conscience of the dart.  For, from such generous deeds, the voice does, and will come inevitably, “Go, and do likewise.”

10.  The felicity of beneficence.  That “it is more blessed to give than to receive,” is the voice of inspiration.  Jehovah’s felicity flows mainly from that fundamental element of his being, disinterested or holy love, and its infinitely diversified and glorious workings.  He created us in his own image; and when this love has possession of our hearts, and our conduct is in obedience to its laws, the mental machine works in harmony, and the result is enjoyment; but when the opposite principle controls, its movements are obstructed, and the result is sorrow.  It is a law of our being, as fixed as the ordinances of heaven, that we drink the richest draughts when holding the cup of enjoyment to another’s lips.  Happiness eludes the grasp of the pursuer; while like a flower that sheds its sweetest fragrance when crushed, only tread it under foot in the eager pursuit of another’s good, and its subtle influence vibrates through all our frame.  The blessedness of self-denying efforts for the salvation of souls cannot be estimated.  It is god-like; it is harmonizing with our dying Lord; co-working with him in carrying out the redemptive scheme; wakening a joy which the harps of eternity alone can utter.  “They that turn many to righteousness shall shine as the stars forever and ever.”  What a revenue of glory will forever flow into the enraptured souls of such men as Baxter and Doddridge, and Swartz and Martyn, and Goodell and Norman Smith, as they cast their crowns at the feet of the Saviour; for it is the highest fruition of the redeemed that all their glory is ultimately Christ’s.  Who, as he contemplates the perpetually increasing joy and brightening exaltation of a soul restored to the image of God, becoming through unnumbered years more and more assimilated to its glorious Head, would not participate in a work so