We Should Give Joyously and by System.
WE have now scattered over the seats of enterprise in the United States a class of churchmen, any individual of which could, without the slightest sacrifice of comfort, and perhaps without exceeding the limit of the Scripture tenth of mere income, carry all the expenses of either our Domestic or Foreign Missionary Committee. It is this fearful grasp of material selfishness, this fierce heathen passion for mere possession, that reveals in most startling certainty the secularizing influence. The gospel nowhere disparages the gathering of property; but it insists inexorably on the rich man's remembering that God's increase shall keep even pace with his own; it commands that, in token of the eternal truth that “the earth is the Lord's and all that is therein,” its first-fruits belong in nowise to the mortal, but to the original Owner, who survives; and the law of definite rates is absolute and unrepealable. Preach this; preach it in love; preach it for their sakes who hear; preach it as the Lord preached the unworldliness of his kingdom to Pilate, whether men will hear or forbear. Circuitous devices will not fulfill the law. Our churches are full of almsgivers who do not really give, or who, when they do, want to cheat themselves into the lower comfort of supposing they get back the worth of their money; of the sort of Louis XIV., whom Madame Maintenon begged to be a little kind out of his royal opulence to the starving peasantry whom his wars of bigotry and ambition had brought to famine. “Madame,” he replied, “I give alms best by spending largely.” By his rule what a benevolent people we are! Saying nothing of his political economy, the best “spending” is not “alms,” and God says “alms.” I speak of “unwillingness” in giving, because that is the infallible mark of the world-spirit; surer even than the littleness of the gift. Joyous giving; giving as they give whose love makes the gift a relief to longing; giving with the thought lifting the soul up that by it the best Friend is honored and gladdened; giving in order, too, or by system, because in the sphere of grace, as in that of nature, order is beauty and strength together; this giving from the king's money, and from the poor man and the child, is the triumph over this world of the kingdom of Christ. They that practice it, priests or not now, will reign and shine as kings and priests, and be reverenced even by those who hate and fight them now, and when the King of kings and his kingdom shall come.—Sel.