Self-denial may be in very simplest matters, and yet be quite as acceptable to Christ as would be the most costly gifts bestowed by the rich upon His service. You remember when Jesus was on earth, how one day He was sitting over against the Treasury, and as He sat there He kept taking notice of all the pieces of money that were cast into the Treasury. Now there happened to come by some very rich people, and they put large sums into the box, and passed on their way. And again others came, and they too being rich, "cast in much." But after awhile there came by one who is described as "a certain poor widow;" and "she cast in all she had, even all her living." How much it cost her to give that one farthing Jesus Christ knew well. Instead of keeping it to spend upon her own needs, she brought it up to the temple Treasury and gave it back to God. And that is just what you must do. I do not say it is necessary, or even right, that people should in these days give everything they possess to God. In one sense indeed we ought to give up _all we have_ to the service of Christ; I mean by this that we ought at all times to be ready to part with things earthly, if they interfere with the cross we are called upon to bear. And I do say that we ought to deny ourselves some little comfort or pleasure, and make a rule of giving the money that we should thus have spent upon ourselves to the service of Almighty God. It is told of a great and good man who lived many years ago at Cambridge, that on one occasion, being disheartened by the wickedness of many of those with whom he came in daily contact, he retired to his rooms, and taking his Bible he asked God to give him such help from its pages as would serve him in his trouble. He opened the Bible at the twenty-seventh chapter of S. Matthew’s gospel, and his eye quickly fell on the thirty-second verse, "And as they went out they found a man of Cyrene, Simon by name; him they compelled to bear His Cross." Charles Simeon, for it was he, rose from his knees comforted and strengthened. The likeness between his own name of Simeon and the Cyrenian’s name of Simon, struck him forcibly; and he came to the conclusion that it was the will of his Father in heaven that he should bear the cross under which he was labouring.