Consider what are some of the good investments in life, which bring in solid advantages.
I. First among the gains of life is peace of mind, and for that the investment is simply and alone acts of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. You must commit your whole self, as a poor, miserable sinner, absolutely to His grace and power. Do it fearlessly, and the result is sure; there will come back a sense of pardon; and the interest of that pardon, if I may so call it, pays you every day and every moment. And peace is that "meat to eat which the world knows not of;" it satisfies.
II. The next thing which you will do well to traffic in is truth, the clear knowledge of God's truth. I do not say that any man can get truth without labour. It is the wages of severe work. And you will have your recompense in that delightful feeling of the discovery of new truth.
III. Next to peace and truth as the gains of life, I have to place the affections of our fellow-creatures. Every affection is a real possession, and well worth the purchase, cost it what it may, so we do not barter truth. That you may have much-love, you must go out of yourself, you must cultivate and show sympathy. Christ's sympathy did more than Christ's miracles. If you feel, not for a person, but with a person, it is astonishing how it will make itself felt in a way you cannot trace. There will be a knitting together of your common manhood, and to have it is a very pleasant thing, and it makes life's food.
IV. Everything which we give or do for God is actually laying up for us in heaven, transferred from this insecure and bankrupt world to the high places of that safe bank, and it is gone before and awaits us there against the time we come; every day we may increase that hidden treasure within the veil, and we shall receive it all back again at last a hundredfold.
J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons,10th series, p. 192.