A QUESTION UPON S. B by Dudley Marvin Canright

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jun 1, 1876

FromThe Review and Herald, Review and Herald, Vol. 47, No. 22.

A QUESTION UPON S. B.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

FRANK TERRY, Mo.: You refer to my statement that the Lord requires one-tenth of all our income. Having paid this to the Lord’s treasury, the other nine-tenths belong to us to use for our own benefit. Then you suppose that a man raises one thousand bushels of corn. One hundred he gives to the Lord, and nine hundred belong to himself. With this nine hundred bushels he buys a field of forty acres which he rents for $120 per year. You conclude that, according to my statement, he would be under no obligation to give any of this $120 to the Lord, and that he might go on that way till he need not pay even a one-thousandth of his income to the Lord.

This conclusion is not right. Each year the Lord requires one-tenth of all our income from whatever source. That field of forty acres each year has to be warmed by the Lord’s sun, and watered with the Lord’s rain. If he gives you increase from that field, one-tenth is the Lord’s. If you work it yourself, the Lord must give you strength and wisdom with which to do it. Shall you render nothing to God for all this? No doctrine of the Bible is more plainly taught than this; viz., that one-tenth of all our income each year, whether from the produce of the land, the fruit of the tree, the increase of our cattle, or the labor of our hands, is to be given to the Lord.

While most of our people profess to believe this fully, not one in a hundred of them practice it. Many a man who raises from his farm, and earns in various ways, from $300 to $600 a year, quiets his conscience by giving from $10 to $20 per year. Every year he is withholding from $10 to $50 which do not belong to him. Then when he meets with losses, misfortunes, sickness, etc., he is ready to murmur at Providence and wonder why these things should come upon the righteous. It is time that we looked after this matter a little closer.

D. M. CANRIGHT.

Memphis, Tenn.