and heart and mind, and
everything else--they all belong to Him. As in old times a nobleman came
and put his hands between the King's hands, and kneeling before him
surrendered his lands, and all his property, to the over-lord, and got
them back again for his own, so we shall do, in the measure in which we
have accepted Christ as our Saviour and our Guide. And so, because am
His, I shall feel that I am His steward to administer what He gives me,
not for myself, but for men and for God.

Then there follows another thing, and that is, that Christian giving,
not of money only, but of money in a very eminent degree, is only right
and truly Christian when you give yourself with your gift. A great many
of us put our sixpence, or our half-crown, or our sovereign, into the
plate, and no part of ourselves goes with it, except a little twinge of
unwillingness to part with it. That is how they fling bones to dogs.
That is not how you have to give your money and your efforts to God and
God's cause. Farmers nowadays sow their seed-corn out of a machine with
a number of little conical receptacles at the back of it and a small
hole in the bottom of each, and as the thing goes bumping along over the
furrows, out they fall. That drill does as well as, and better than, the
hand of the sower scattering the seed, but it does not do near as well
in the Christian agriculture in sowing the seed of the Kingdom.
Machine-work will not do there; we have to have the sower's hand, and
the sower's heart with his hand, as he scatters the seed. Brethren!
apply the lesson to yourselves, and let your sympathies and your prayers
and your wishes to help go along with your gifts, if you intend them to
be of any good.

And there is another thing, and that is that, somehow or other, if not
in the individual gifts, at all events in their aggregate, there must be
present the fact of sacrifice. 'I will not offer unto the Lord burnt
offerings of that which doth cost me nothing,' said the old king. And we
do not give as we ought, unless our gifts involve some measure of
sacrifice. From many a subscription list some of the biggest donations
would disappear, like the top-writing in one of those old manuscripts
where the Gospel has been half-erased and written over with some foolish
legend, which vanishes when the detergent liquid is applied to the
parchment, if that thought were brought to bear upon it. God asks how
much is kept, not how much is given.

Now, de