(1) Love to Christ transfigures the humblest services.

All, indeed, who have themselves a heart

value its least outgoings beyond the most costly mechanical performances; but how does it
endear the Saviour to us to find Him endorsing the principle as His own standard in judging of
character and deeds!
(2) Works of utility should never be set in opposition to the promptings of self-sacrificing love,
and the sincerity of those who do so is to be suspected. Under the mask of concern for the poor at
home, how many excuse themselves from all care of the perishing heathen abroad.
(3) Amidst conflicting duties, that which our "hand (presently) findeth to do" is to be preferred,
and even a less duty only to be done now to a greater that can be done at any time.
(4) "If there be first a willing mind, it is accepted according to that a man hath, and not according
to that he hath not" ( 2 Corinthians 8:12 ).--"She hath done what she could" ( Mark 14:8 ).
(5) As Jesus beheld in spirit the universal diffusion of His Gospel, while His lowest depth of
humiliation was only approaching, so He regards the facts of His earthly history as constituting
the substance of this Gospel, and the relation of them as just the "preaching of this Gospel." Not
that preachers are to confine themselves to a bare narration of these facts, but that they are to
make their whole preaching turn upon them as its grand center, and derive from them its proper
vitality; all that goes before this in the Bible being but the preparation for them, and all that
follows but the sequel.