Giving Begets Love

Seventh-Day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 31, 1884

FromThe Signs of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 5

Giving Begets Love.

INTEREST in anything is quickened by sacrifice for that thing. The giving to a good cause increases love for that cause, or creates a certain affection for it where none existed before. Father Childlaw, of Ohio, tells of a woman in his field who declined to give money for a bell for her neighborhood church, because she never liked the sound of bells, and was glad to be beyond their reach. At last, however, she was over-persuaded and gave five dollars, under protest. When the bell was in place, and sounded out its ringing notes, some one asked this woman what she thought of it. “Well, I've always said that I never liked bells,” she replied, “but I confess that's the sweetest sounding bell I ever heard.” “Ah!” says Father Childlaw, “she heard her five dollars jingle when that bell rang. That was why its sound was so sweet to her.”—Sel.