CHRISTIAN GIVING by E. B. Sanford

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Apr 14, 1881

CHRISTIAN GIVING.

By E. B. Sanford

“THIS GRACE ALSO.”

Our giving should not depend upon the coming of a subscription paper that can be looked over, and a sum affixed determined by the amount a neighbor may have contributed. Neither should the duty and privilege of giving be forgotten until the attention is secured by almost irresistible words of eloquent pleading. It may be true that Benjamin Franklin once attended a service with the deliberate purpose of withholding any gift for a benevolent object that was to be presented, but before the service closed decided to empty the entire contents of his pocket-book upon the contribution plate, but it is to be feared that if his example was to be followed there would be a very spasmodic flow into the treasury of the Lord.

Giving, first of all, should have its source in a right purpose and motive. You are only bestowing that which is placed in your hands as stewards. The only difference is that some are permitted to handle more of the Lord’s money than others, and are therefore entrusted with increased responsibilities. Obligation to God, through the love of Christ, is the spring from which our plan of giving and the measure of their fulness should flow forth.

This implies systematic beneficence, the manner and method of which is illustrated practically and fully both in the Old Testament, the words of Christ, and the letters of St. Paul. The great question of meeting the financial demands and needs of the ministry of the church at home and abroad is solved when every professing Christian gives generously and systematically. A pastor of our acquaintance quite startled his congregation recently by showing in a few figures, based upon a very low estimate of the average income of the families connected with the church, that if they were to give the amount called for under the ancient tithing system, their contributions would annually rise above $50,000, where they now gave but a few hundreds of dollars. And yet this is comparatively a very liberal congregation.

It is very plain that the rule is correct, yet how many apparently forget that they should give as the Lord has prospered them. The mite of the poor widow outweighed in the divine balance all the gifts of gold and silver that had been dropped with ostentatious pride into the treasury box of the Temple, but this does not teach that there was any merit in the mite, only as the Master knew that in her great poverty this woman had given all she possessed. There may have been days of struggle and trial when God accepted your mite, but he will not do so now that the sunshine of prosperity again falls upon your pathway. Do not let the increase of luxuries eat into your income until it takes the Lord’s portion. It is easy to blind our hearts in this matter. I recall the enthusiasm with which an aged member of a church stated the fact that when he came to the place of his residence years before, a poor young man, he gave one dollar for the cause of missions, and he had never failed to contribute that amount every year. The good man, whose wealth had grown from month to month, failed to appreciate that the streams of his beneficence should have increased in like proportion. He would have been saved this common mistake if he had prayerfully remembered the nature and conditions of his stewardship, and measured his duty by the standard of Bible principles and obligations.—Rev. E. B. Sanford, in Christian at Work.