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pray, or any other of his rich graces, you must not hoard them up, and keep them reserved for your own private benefit; but you must communicate them to others, and improve them for the promoting their spiritual good, and edifying them in faith, hope, and love.

By communicating your good and common gifts of God in this sort, you make yourself friends with them, Luke xvi. 9, against a day of need; and when you honour God, and do good with the talents which God puts into your hand, then you make the best improvement of them. He who thus walks with God in prosperity, shall certainly find him to be his sure friend in adversity, and when he shall be put out of his stewardship at death, then he shall be received into the everlasting habitations, Luke xvi. 9. When, the more you prosper, the better you desire and endeavour to be, and do more good, this is an infallible proof of true thankfulness, and is an evident sign that you walk with God in prosperity as he would have you.

Give all diligence therefore, to learn this lesson, how to be full, and how to abound, Phil. iv. 12; but know, it can be learned no where but in Christ's school, and can never be practised but by Christ's strength. This is it which the apostle had learned, and said, he was able to do it through Christ that strengthened him, Philip. iv. 12, 13. It is a most needful and high point of learning, to be instructed and to know, every where, and in every thing, how to be full and how to abound: of the two, it is more rare and difficult, than to know how to be abased, and to suffer want, which shall be the subject of the next chapter.