p. 10 | Disgraceful Methods of Money-Raising

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Sep 14, 1911

Disgraceful Methods of Money-Raising

SUCH indeed is the character of a matrimonial lottery held at a lawn party of Saint Michael’s parish in Avon, Mass., recently. According to the Christian Advocate of August 3, this lottery gave to a certain young woman the right to have a certain young man for a husband. “She also won a one-hundred-fifty-dollar diamond ring, and the privilege of a free marriage certificate and a free wedding by the rector of Saint Michael’s. Four Avon bachelors agreed to draw lots to see which one was to offer himself as the bridegroom of the lottery. This was conducted under the auspices of the rector.” It is not surprising that so little regard is placed upon the sanctity of the marriage relationship when professed Christians thus lower it to the scale of barter and trade. Commenting upon this incident, the Advocate says:—

During the last twenty years in most denominations money has been made by a method whose essential quality is made a crime by the civil laws. We have heard of doings in Methodist churches that disgraced the denomination, and on several occasions we have exposed them. After one such disgraceful affair in a Methodist church, we were invited to go to the Christmas celebration of another church, by a lady not a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church. We went, and before the affair was half over, she mournfully confessed her surprise at the performance. At the close she acknowledged that that exhibition was on the same grade with the other. The law forbidding lotteries should be enforced against churches with at least as much vigor as against secular concerns.

Surely if the professed Christian church hopes to raise the moral standard of living among the masses, it can not stoop to these methods of money-raising in order to catch the popular ear and draw worldly patronage. With the recognition of the Scriptural method of raising money for Christian work, there would be no temptation to employ questionable methods.