"Next day I got my towels, pieced out the best one, and when it was almost dark, put on my bonnet, went to the church, slipped my towel into the box, and came away thinking that the Lord knew I had done what I could. "And now, ladies, let me tell you it was not long after that till my husband got into a good situation; and prosperity has followed us ever since. So I date back my prosperity to this incident of the brown towel." Her story was done, and, as her carriage was waiting at the door, she took her departure, leaving us all mute with surprise that one so rich and generous had been trained to give amid poverty. GIVING BLESSED. A merchant of St. Petersburg, at his own cost, supported several native missionaries in India, and gave liberally to the cause of Christ at home. On being asked how he could afford to do it, he replied: "Before my conversion, when I served the world and self, I did it on a grand scale, and at the most lavish expense. And when God by his grace called me out of darkness, I resolved that Christ and his cause should have more than I had ever spent for the world. And as to giving _so much_, it is God who enables me to do it; for, at my conversion, I solemnly promised that I would give to his cause a fixed proportion of all that my business brought in to me; and every year since I made that promise, it has brought me in about double what it did the year before, so that I easily can, as I do, double my gifts for his service." And so good old John Bunyan tells us, "A man there was, some called him mad, The more he gave, the more he had." And there are truth and instruction in the inscription on the Italian tombstone, "What I gave away, I saved; what I spent, I used; what I kept, I lost." "Giving to the Lord," says another, "is but transporting our goods to a higher floor." And, says Dr. Barrow, "In defiance of all the torture and malice and might of the world, the _liberal_ man will ever be rich; for God's providence is his estate; God's wisdom and power, his defense; God's love and favor, his reward; and God's word, his security."