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I. IT IS ASSUMED THAT EVERY CHRISTIAN HAS SOME GIFT FROM GOD.

1. All our endowments are blessings received (1 Corinthians 4:7).

2. All are received from the multiform goodness of God. "Manifold."(1) How gracious is this procedure, by which God's gifts come to us tinged by the infinite variety of the substances on which they fall! When He might have poured His influences in one indistinguishable flood of radiance, He rather sends them reflected differently from each different mind, diversified by all the colours of the rainbow, and sparkling with manifold hues. For thus we are brought to admire and rejoice in not only God Himself as the primal source of all good, but in our fellow men through whose "manifold" concurrence this "manifold grace" has been diffused around us.

(2) It shows itself in all sorts of persons, with all sorts of endowments, in all sorts of offices, for all sorts of duties.

3. All must be accounted for to God.

II. EACH MAN'S GIFT IS TO BE USED FOR THE GOOD OF HIS FELLOW MEN. The funds put into our charge must be administered. We must neither misuse them nor neglect them.

1. We must not appropriate them to ourselves through selfishness.

2. We must not withhold this grace from others through negligence. The sluggishness of our nature is as much to be watched against and overcome as its selfishness.

III. GOD WILL BLESS THE PROPER USE OF HIS GIFTS. Look only at the works of nature. See how the little, almost imperceptible, seed, being cast into the ground in the proper season, with proper care, is blessed by the bounteous Author, and is made to bring forth thirty, sixty, a hundred fold. Will God be more niggard of blessing to spiritual husbandry than to earthly? No effort to do good is ever lost.

(T. Griffith, M. A.)

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KJV: But the end of all things is at hand: be ye therefore sober, and watch unto prayer.

WEB: But the end of all things is near. Therefore be of sound mind, self-controlled, and sober in prayer.