On Giving by Jos. Clarke

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 15, 1866

On Giving.

By Jos. Clarke

Nothing can be more beautiful than union, harmony, justice, and equality, in our families and communities in bearing public burdens.

In a well-regulated family, each individual has his portion of labor to perform; even the little child of five or six years, has some little daily labor to do at its proper time. In communities the expenses of the public are cheerfully borne by the tax-payers, and thus it is the heaviest burdens are easily borne, and the heaviest expenses are cheerfully and certainly met.

Thirty years ago the most of Wood Co., Ohio, was literally overflowed with water at certain seasons of the year; and so level is this section that even rivers and creeks need to be conducted by ditches in order to prevent their spreading over a vast extent of country. But no individual could bear the expense of such labors as were presented, and so proper laws were soon made by the legislature, and by an equal system of taxation, immense systems of drainage are perfected, and lands once worthless are now sought after with eagerness, and the overflowing streams are taught to flow in more regular channels; and to haste away to the lake. Beautiful farms adorn the landscape, and herds and flocks graze peacefully, where a few years since the fish from Lake Erie sported in freedom. And all this was done by a people impoverished by floods, and often immigrating hither during the fine autumn, when these prairies bloomed in almost Eden beauty. But alas, the freshets of Spring turned their fine fields into vast pools. After years spent in individual and disconnected, unsystematized effort, often spending thousands in this vain attempt, the people were ripe for any good plan of union, and now witness the result of union.

If union is strength in temporal matters, how much more in spiritual things? In the plan of Systematic Benevolence, we have the best possible plan of equality in bearing burdens, and who can estimate the good yet to come of this plan—this plan so heartily adopted by the church and so cheerfully entered into.

Let us go on, even if there is no immediate call for the funds, there will no doubt soon be a call for all we have laid by in our S. B. funds. Let none of us bury our talent in the earth, but improve it as our Lord has directed.

Jos. Clarke.