THE TRUE PRINCIPLE

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Mar 13, 1879

THE TRUE PRINCIPLE.

WE are glad to see good moral stamina still manifested in some quarters, against the questionable practices in which various religious denominations so freely and unconcernedly indulge. In The Christian Cynosure of Dec. 29, 1878, appears a letter from Miss J. A. Trow, missionary at Elichpoor, India, to whom fifty dollars of missionary money had been sent, which had been raised by a strawberry festival. Although in need of funds, she promptly declined to receive this because the manner of raising it was so unscriptural and irreligious. Among many other good things she says: “The money that is given in such ways is equivalent to saying, ‘Dear Lord, I’ll take half of this money and have a good time with it, and you can have the other half.’ I do not feel that this can be benevolence at all. Part of the money spent in self-indulgence, and the rest, above the cost of the feast, given to the Lord. I believe the Lord wants only free-will offerings.”