Keeping out of circulation more than one’s wants, properly adjusted, call for is poor financiering.  For that which is held back is not earning anything.  All beyond one’s needs should be out in circulation for the Master in His campaign for a world.  Yet nowhere is there finer chance or greater need for the play of keen judgment than in deciding that question of need.  Mistakes are made on both sides.  It looks very much as though the most serious mistakes are being made on the side of too little sacrifice or none.  Yet clearly some serious mistakes are made on the other side too.  But no one may criticise another.  Each must decide for himself.  In the judgment of charity we are to presume that each is doing what he thinks right and best.  We are, none of us, the keeper of our brother’s purse.

A Living Sacrifice.

There is a simple story told that contains its truth in its very naturalness and simplicity.  It reveals a bit of the real life ever going on all around us unnoticed.  A minister in a certain small town in an eastern state received from the home mission board of his church a letter asking for a special offering for a needy field in the West.  With the letter was literature setting forth the need.  The call appealed to him and with good heart he prepared a special sermon, calling the attention of his people to the great need.

Sabbath morning came and he preached the sermon.  But somehow it did not just seem to hook in.  That banker down there on the left looked listless, and yawned a couple of times behind his hand.  And the merchant over on the right, who could give freely, examined his watch secretly more than once.  And so it was with a little tinge of discouragement insistently creeping into his spirit that he finished, and sat down.  And he remained with head bowed in prayer that the results might prove better than seemed likely, while the church officers passed down the aisles with the collection plates.

Meanwhile something unseen by human eye was going on in the very last pew.  Back there, sitting alone, was a little girl of a poor family.  She had met with a misfortune which left her crippled.  And her whole life seemed so dark and hopeless.  But some kind friends in the church, pitying her condition, had made up a small fund and bought her a pair of crutches.  And these had seemed to transform her completely.  She went about her rounds always as cheery and bright as a bit of sunshine.

She had listened to the sermon, and her heart had been strangely warmed by the preacher’s story of need.  And as he was finishing she was thinking, “How I wish I might give something.  But I haven’t anything to give, not even a copper left.”  And a very soft voice within seemed to say very softly, but very distinctly, “There are your crutches.”  “Oh,” she gasped to herself as though it took away her very breath, “my crutches?  I couldn’t give my crutches; they’re my life.”