A STANDARD OF GIVING

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Oct 3, 1878

A STANDARD OF GIVING.

The impression is largely prevalent that under the New Testament dispensation there is none. Neither Christ nor the apostles gave any definite rule in the matter, but said, “Freely ye have received, freely give.” Did they therefore expect the church of the latter day to give less than the church in the wilderness? Yet such is the fact, as we all know. Is it not more likely that they had in mind a standard which they expected us to exceed rather than fall below? There was no need of a new law, for there was one already established. Does it seem likely that God had with so much care and painstaking educated the earlier church in this matter without any purpose farther than the supplying of the needs of the church as it then was?

We train our children with such habits and principles as we wish to have regulate them all through life, and expect them to go on developing and improving; and if when they come to manhood they ignore our teaching, we are disappointed and grieved. He who understood far better than we, the deep seated selfishness of the human heart, saw the necessity of a training that would tend constantly to undermine that selfishness. Hence, under the old dispensation, in his infant church, he required not only the tithe which was for the support of the priesthood (or as we might say of the ministry), but the first sheaves of the harvest were to be his; the first year's ingathering of all fruits; the very best of whatever was brought as a burnt sacrifice, which was a free-will offering. Also he required of them very much time, and made stringent laws to protect the poor from the grasping avarice of the rich, and, in addition to all the rest, made repeated appeals for free-will offerings of money. Can we suppose a far-seeing God to do all this without a far-reaching purpose?

There are multitudes of real Christians to whom such a standard of giving as is here suggested will come as a real shock. They have never come practically to consider themselves as the Lord's stewards, holding all they have as subject to his order. The feeling is, whatever the intellectual conviction may be, “This is mine. I made it and I have a right to it.” And of course this is true so far as man and man are concerned; and the reason we do not practically recognize God's claim to property is because our education on that point has been deficient. Almost every Christian act is performed in the first place as duty. Many a man has had as severe a conflict with himself in making his first public prayer, as he will have in literally holding all his possessions subject to the demands of God's work on earth. But both must be done, and done from principle, until time and the growth of love in the soul make both a pleasure.

Let me commend a careful reading of the fifty-eighth chapter of Isaiah. God's displeasure, as there expressed, is applicable to any condition of the Christian in which he is very zealous for certain phases of Christian duty while he neglects others equally important. And while special reference is had to oppression of the poor, it cannot be supposed that he has less care for the starving souls of his children than for bodily suffering. Oh that American Christians would arouse themselves and shake off this great sin of accumulating and holding property mainly for self; for when we do this we shall realize the promise, “Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily; and thy righteousness shall go before thee; the glory of the Lord shall be thy reward.”—The Advance.