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How Much for Christ?

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S. D. A. Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jan 10, 1884

FromThe Signs of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 2

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How Much for Christ?

By Editor

The N. Y. Independent speaks thus on the subject of penuriousness in regard to the cause of God in the churches:—
“There is a sad poverty of ‘tithes and offerings’ in the treasury of the Lord. To see the mass of pennies and other small coin in the collection plates that are passed among the well-dressed and bejeweled Christians who worship in the Lord’s house is saddening. That there are noble and generous givers in the church, we have to acknowledge and thank God for; but that the great mass of those who profess his name have never learned how to abound in ‘this grace also’ is sadly true. That the giving on the part of those who do give, in most cases, is not proportionate with their means and their own self-indulgence is also true. We could name many a Christian man whose yearly benevolence does not equal his half-yearly cigar bill; and many a Christian woman whose annual gift to the Lord’s work does not equal her kid glove expenditure; many a young man whose gifts are not equal to the amount he spends on an occasional concert and opera, to say nothing of an hundred other amusements with which he indulges himself; and any number of young ladies in the church of Christ who spend annually twice as much for caramels and bonbons as they give outright to the cause of Christ. And it goes without saying that the scale of expenditure in all manner of living indulged in by the average Christian of to-day is altogether out of proportion to the scale of their beneficence.”
We believe this is “true to the letter” of the great mass of professed Christians; but wherever it is true there is no consecration—no following of Christ. We are happy to say that what it says of the “cigar bill” will not apply to Seventh-day Adventists; they are free from that waste and indulgence. But in how many other points are some of them in fault? Can all reply, Not guilty? EDITOR.