Giving Blessed
A merchant of St. Petersburg at his own cost supported several native missionaries in India, and gave liberally to the cause of Christ at home. On being asked how he could afford to do it, he replied:
“Before my conversion, when I served the world and self, I did it on a grand scale and at the most lavish expense. And when God, by His grace, called me out of darkness, I resolved that Christ and His cause should have more than I had ever spent for the world. And as to giving so much, it is God who enables me to do it; for at my conversion I solemnly promised that I would give to His cause a fixed proportion of all that my business brought in to me, and every year since I made that promise it has brought me in about double what it did the year before, so that I easily can, as I do, double my gifts for His service.” And John Bunyan tells us,
A man there was, some called him mad,
The more he gave, the more he had.
And there are truth and instruction in the inscription on the Italian tombstone, “What I gave away I saved, what I spent I used, what I kept I lost.” “Giving to the Lord,” says another, “is but transporting our goods to a higher floor.” And, says Dr. Barrow, “In defiance of all the torture and malice and might of the world, the liberal man will ever be rich, for God’s providence is his estate, God’s wisdom and power his defense, God’s love and favor his reward, and God’s word his security.”
“Before my conversion, when I served the world and self, I did it on a grand scale and at the most lavish expense. And when God, by His grace, called me out of darkness, I resolved that Christ and His cause should have more than I had ever spent for the world. And as to giving so much, it is God who enables me to do it; for at my conversion I solemnly promised that I would give to His cause a fixed proportion of all that my business brought in to me, and every year since I made that promise it has brought me in about double what it did the year before, so that I easily can, as I do, double my gifts for His service.” And John Bunyan tells us,
A man there was, some called him mad,
The more he gave, the more he had.
And there are truth and instruction in the inscription on the Italian tombstone, “What I gave away I saved, what I spent I used, what I kept I lost.” “Giving to the Lord,” says another, “is but transporting our goods to a higher floor.” And, says Dr. Barrow, “In defiance of all the torture and malice and might of the world, the liberal man will ever be rich, for God’s providence is his estate, God’s wisdom and power his defense, God’s love and favor his reward, and God’s word his security.”