The Fragrance of the Life in the Gift.

It is a part of the peculiar potent value of money that there can be a practical transfer of personality through its use. For instance I have a friend whose heart burned to go to a foreign mission field for service there. But the physician said it would not be wise for her to go. Yielding to his expert judgment, she still yearned to be of service there. In the providence of God she became intrusted with large wealth. And so she arranged to have a man go in her stead to China, she caring for all the expense involved, while he was so left wholly free for the service.

Tell me, was that not a practical transfer of her personality to the point of service where he is engaged? Then she arranged for another, and another, and yet others. It is not only a transfer of personality in practical results, but a duplication of personality, and a triplication, and more. For she is busy in her home circle, while her representatives are busy elsewhere through the influence of her action.

A young woman, graduate of a western college, developed much talent in speaking to other young women of the Christian life. Her public service was much blessed in the lives of large numbers of women. She had no wealth, but was dependent upon her efforts for a livelihood. Another young woman, in the East, came under the warm spell of her personality and speech. And her life was blessedly revolutionized by that spell. Her own heart burned to be doing something of the sort for her sisters out over the land.

But she seemed not to have gifts of that kind. Yet she had been intrusted with large means. And so she said to her new friend whom God had so graciously blessed to her own life, "Let us be partners together. I will so gladly give what I have, that you may be wholly free to give to others what you have brought to me." And so it was arranged. And the one woman gives of the gold of her inheritance while the other gives her life and her special gift. The one in her home pays and prays. The other goes constantly here and there, and lives are ever transformed through the Spirit of God resting upon her.

Is not that a practical transfer of personality? and duplication of personality, too? Is not this young woman whose own actual personality remains, in the gracious providence of God, in her home, is she not going potentially about from place to place winning her sisters up to the highlands of the best living? It surely is so.

And these two are but illustrations of the many who have come to understand Jesus' law for the right use of money. And there are to be many more as the days go by, doing just that sort of thing. And let those of us who have not been intrusted either with the large amount of money, or with the large power to earn, remember that the amount involved does not affect the law of results. All who have felt the blessed contagion of the Master's example will give freely of what is in store, whether much or little.

Those whose giving is in smaller amounts by our bulky way of reckoning values, may still be making that same blessed transfer and doubling their own capacity for service through the agency of their gold. For the gold given represents the life that gives. And the gift takes on the quality and power and fragrance of the life that gives it. I have sometimes thought that there seems to be a peculiar potency in the smaller gifts, that represent as they so often do the greatest, most devoted sacrifice. Could we trace the intricate crossings of the lines of influence in the web of life, we would be awed many times at the potency of the giving that is small in amount but tinted red with the life-blood of sacrifice.

It should be remembered that through this strange stuff called money there is a double transfer of personality going on all the time. Men are constantly transferring themselves into gold, in a perfectly proper way. A man gives his labor, and at the end of a specified period he gets a certain amount of money. That money represents himself. It is himself for that length of time. That is the first transfer of manhood in money. It is going on all the time. It is necessarily so, for so we get our food, and clothing, and home.

Then there is the re-transfer of this money into some other form. As we choose to use this money, so we are re-transferring ourselves into what forms we will. The money is the transition state of ourselves. We pass through it out into the exchange of life. We reveal ourselves in the way we pass it out. In no way does a man reveal the true inner self more. And if perchance we let it, or some of it, lie and gather rust, there we are, some part of us being covered with rust.