I. The Divine power given by the Almighty to true faith and devotion of heart takes up, nourishes, and cherishes whatever is good and comfortable in our condition, makes the most of it, spreads, enlarges, ripens it, as the sun in springtime does the little flowers, which would otherwise quite wither away; while, on the other hand, there is in the love of the world, in all kinds of covetousness, a blighting, withering quality, which gradually causes the most abundant growth of prosperity to shrivel, and contract, and sink into nothing. A little circumstance in a good man's life may grow Upon him and cause him more happy thought, even in this world, than the greatest prosperity of a bad man.
II. One sure friend that the righteous hath is worth all the companions of the ungodly. Elijah in the wilderness, with now and then a visit from an angel did he not find that the remembrance of those rare moments cast a light over all his solitary hours which quite prevented them from being tedious?
III. The same rule holds, not only in respect of outward things, but of knowledge also, and scholarship, and acquaintance even with Divine matters. A little drop of knowledge, touched by Divine grace, may swell into a sea.
IV. Such is God's mercy on the one hand, and the perverseness of men on the other, that even in respect of spiritual blessings also the Psalmist's saying holds true. A little measure of grace well employed and received into a heart willing to be made righteous is better than the highest spiritual privileges when God, in His unsearchable judgments, has vouchsafed them to unworthy persons.
Plain Sermons by Contributors to "Tracts for the Times"vol. vi., p. 159 (see also J. Keble, Sermons for Saints' Days,p. 343).