Believers should seek more and more to enter into the grace and love of God, in giving His only-begotten Son, and into the grace and love of the Lord Jesus, in giving Himself in our room, in order that, constrained by love and gratitude, they may be increasingly led to surrender their bodily and mental strength, their time, gifts, talents, property, position in life, rank, and all they have and are to the Lord. By this I do not mean that they should give up their business, trade, or profession, and become preachers; nor do I mean that they should take all their money and give it to the first beggar who asks for it; but that they should hold all they have and are, for the Lord, not as owners, but as stewards, and be willing, _at His bidding,_ to use for Him part or all they have. However short the believer may fall, nothing less than this should be his aim. STEWARDSHIP. It is the Lord's order, that in whatever way He is pleased to make us His stewards, whether as to temporal or spiritual things, if we are indeed acting as _stewards_ and not as _owners,_ He will make us stewards over _more._ Even in this life, and as to temporal things, the Lord is pleased to repay those who act for Him as stewards, and who contribute to His work or to the poor, as He may be pleased to prosper them? But how much greater is the _spiritual_ blessing we receive, both in this life and in the world to come, if constrained by the love of Christ, we act as God's stewards, respecting that with which He is pleased to intrust us! SYSTEMATIC GIVING. Only _fix even the smallest amount_ you purpose to give of your income, and give this regularly; and as God is pleased to increase your light and grace, and is pleased to prosper you more, so give more. If you neglect an _habitual giving, a regular giving, a giving from principle and upon scriptural ground,_ and leave it only to feeling and impulse, or particular arousing circumstances, you will certainly be a loser. A merchant in the United States said in answer to inquiries relative to his mode of giving, "In consecrating my life anew to God, aware of the ensnaring influence of riches and the necessity of deciding on a plan of charity, before wealth should bias my judgment, I adopted the following system: