A Difference by R. W. Lowrie

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Jun 19, 1884

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 10, No. 24.

A Difference.

By R. W. Lowrie

THERE is a distinction between dues and offerings. What is due, is a debt. We cannot be said to give our debts. If we pay our debts, we only do a duty; a due-ty, that which it was our due to do. A debt is something due another, while an offering is something given another. Thus, our offerings cannot begin until we have paid our debts, rendered our dues, done our plain and simple duty. All, then, that a man gives over and above his tenth is an offering, and nothing else is, or can be. If all give of their substance in this way, how fully Christian works and worship would be sustained. Farewell, then, exciting ways (some of them not strictly honest) of raising funds; farewell begging sermons, chancel appeals, subscription lists, pride gifts, and all the host of them. The church would be the almoner of the liberal, the benefactor of the needy, the glad home of those now neglected; the brotherhood of the saints and of humanity would be a realized and glorified fact, and the wheels of religious activity would fairly burn with the glow of their own motion; while, on the broad highway over which they should pass, they would leave a track of heavenly light and glory dazzling to behold.—Rev. R. W. Lowrie.