Almsgiving is commended to us; but one there is, expressive both of the duty and attendant blessing, preserved to us, not in the Gospels, but in the pious memory of an Apostle, when he called on his disciples to "support the weak, (in this instance the sick,) and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, when he said," "It is more blessed to give than to receive."

Blessed words-words of power and persuasion, on which His Church immediately acted. Amongst the earliest Apostolical rules is the command, "On the first day of the week let every one of you lay by in store as God hath prospered him, that there be no gatherings when I come." How expressive are these last words! The giving of Alms was not to depend on the influence of St. Paul's personal presence, but to be an habit uniformly acted on from a constraining sense of duty. On the principle thus laid down the Church of Christ has ever acted, and our own Branch puts it forth in the plaintive and appealing sentences of her despised and rejected Offertory.

Be it so. But the principle involved in the Offertory is of eternal obligation; and in whatever form the offering be made, no Christian man can escape from the duty of consecrating a portion of his worldly goods to the service of God in the relief of Christ's poor. If it be asked, what portion? our Lord Himself has briefly but decisively answered the question in the story of the Widow's Mite. Our Alms must extend to a point involving some degree of self-denial. The rich poured into the Treasury great gifts, but the All-seeing Eye passed them over, for they gave only of their abun

dance. They gave much indeed, but it was only of their abundance; they felt not its loss; they probed not themselves to the quick by giving to the extent of self-denial. But the offering of the poor widow-" the two mites that make one farthing," "all her present living," involving as it did great and grievous self-denial,-drew from Him a praise and blessing which endures from generation to gene

ration.

It is the duty of every Christian to lay aside a portion of his worldly goods for the relief of the poor; to do so upon principle; to make the amount the subject of earnest and conscientious thought; to say to himself, "This I must give up, this I must deny myself, for God's sake." Happy are they, who, for the love of Christ, yield to and cherish every charitable impulse; who see Him in every poor and suffering brother; and whose daily struggle it is, so to deny themselves, so to give up, it may be, some accustomed indulgence, some gratification, however innocent, that they may have more to give to the naked, the hungry, the sick, the afflicted. Oh, blessed avarice, thus to be rich towards God, to be rich in hopes laid up in Heaven, for Alms which God hath promised to reserve in his own Treasure House, and to restore again. This need interfere with no duty to our families; and the words of one, who, in the language of our own Hooker, was the "greatest divine that Christendom hath ever bred," have expressed with equal truth, wisdom, and beauty, the way in which this duty may be reconciled with the most just and pressing claims on our worldly substance :

"Give," says St. Augustine,* "give Christ a place with thy children: be thy Lord added to thy family. Thou hast two children: reckon Him a third. Thou hast three: let Him be counted a fourth. Thou hast five: let Him be called a sixth. I will say no more: keep the place of one child for thy Lord; for what thou shalt give to thy Lord will profit both thee and thy children. Give that portion which thou hast accounted as one child's portion, and reckon thou hast got one child more,"-even the Holy Child Christ Jesus.

Give then, brethren, and liberally, to relieve the present distress, and God grant it be the earnest of future increased and permanent support.

* St. Aug. Hom. on the New Testament, vol. i. p. 289.

THE END.

H. J. WALLIS, Printer, Exeter.

PREACHED IN THE

PARISH CHURCH OF BIDFORD,

ON ALL SAINTS' DAY, Nov. 1, 1848,

ON OCCASION OF THE

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BY T. P. BOULTBEE, M. A. Late Fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, and Curate of Oldberrow and Morton Bagot.

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