We have before us several items concerning entertainments given by different churches, which fully merit the condemnation implied in the title of this article. One of these items describes a “social reception” given in aid of Sunday-school library. It was held on a Saturday evening, and we read: “The dancing costumes were neatly designed in variegated colors, and comprised fourteen selections.” In another we are told that the ladies of such a church, “will amuse their friends with tableaux, music, vocal statuary, tea-drinking, and social jollity.” And another church seeks to remove some of its financial burdens by securing the performance of an “operetta,” “preceded by the jolly farce, Box and Cox.” We do not condemn these churches as sinners above all others. It only happens that their doings in this particular are made a little more prominent than the similar doings of some of their neighbors. We take these items as straws which indicate the direction in which the church is running. We are very sure that it is a wrong direction. We, of course, do not mean that sociability is out of place in connection with a church. On the contrary, we are sure that the reverse is true. But there are certainly some things which, as it seems to us, are entirely out of place in connection with any church enterprise. We do not know how any church can look for the divine blessing upon its labors—and without that the church had better not exist—when it employs the worse than questionable expedients as dancing parties and theatrical performances to replenish its treasury. And it makes comparatively little difference that these entertainments are not given in the church edifice. There is little gain in the sense of fitness, that is all. It is through such inconsistencies as these we have noted that the church is often brought to the very contempt of the world. “Where is the difference,” men of the world ask, “between us and professed Christians? We are as good as they.” And where is there any answer to this question, or denial of this assertion? At the very best that can be said of them, such endeavors as these are merely expedients. There is a more excellent way, a way upon which the divine blessing can be asked, as it cannot upon this revelry and junketing. And I fail to see why it is any more easy for one to give, through a church fair, for example, than it is to give out and out. If the money is given thus directly, because the object is a good one, the giver can have the happy consciousness that it is done as unto the Lord. A blessing comes to him who thus gives. But if the money goes through the medium of a church fair, or any other catch-penny arrangement, a part of it is of necessity diverted on its passage to the church treasury. Instead of a willing giver, you are a purchaser, who (perhaps) gets the worth of his money; and you receive only the satisfaction of the bargainer, rather than the blessedness of the benevolent soul. And if this is true of what may be deemed legitimate methods, how far short must those expedients fall which are questionable—or worse? Very many of our churches need a large infusion of Christian conscientiousness in the provisions of their financial support. And this must be on the part of the laity. The Christian pastor, as a rule, meddles at his peril with the financial affairs of the church. His interference, even with what is known and felt to be questionable, is resented. Christian men and women must acknowledge that their connection with the church will cost them something, and must make honest provision for the necessary expenditure. Then there will not be need for the numerous devices for raising money, that are, after all, mere expedients, and which in cases not a few come perilously near incurring the Saviour’s condemnation, “My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves.”—Christian Weekly.