THE TITHE: ITS HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY.
By M. L. M.
THE tithe enters Bible history, like the story of Elijah, without preface or comment. It first appears as a natural incident in the meeting of Abraham and Melchizedek. Without question, explanation, or requirement, the tenth of Abraham's spoil is handed over to God's high priest. This is done in such a matter-of-course way as to require some already established, well-defined custom for its explanation. Somehow, somewhere, man must have been instructed in this matter. What more natural and reasonable conclusion than that it was by a law given of God himself in some of those audible communings which we know were not uncommon at that early period. We wonder what Abel and Cain knew about offerings that should make the one acceptable and the other not. The mode of their instruction is not revealed. But reason tells us that in some way they must have been instructed. That this giving of the tenth possessed, in some manner and from some source, an authority greater than mere established custom; that it had in it all the force of an enacted law, we think will clearly appear further on. The second appearance of the tithe in the sacred record is in that significant story of Jacob at Bethel. As a result of the vision by which he was made to realize that he was alone with God, he cried out, "How dreadful is this place!" Dreadful because it made him conscious of his sins. He at once sets up a pillar and consecrates it, adding his vow of future service, and without any allusion to the tenth on the part of the angel, he says of his own free-will, "Of all that thou shalt give me I will surely give the tenth unto thee." In moments of great spiritual quickening like that, the mind does not fly to the unknown for refuge and resolve, but to the well known, to the best known. This quickening of Jacob's53dormant spiritual nature instantly suggests to him an obligation with which he was familiar, and to which the newly stirred impulses of his soul had instant recourse. The highest religious act with which he was acquainted, next to the building of the altar, was the giving of the tenth. He knew it either from observation or parental teaching, but it came to him with a force of conviction like that of law. The next allusion to the tithe is found in Lev. 27: 30-33. That long list of requirements running through the entire book is closed with this one, which is not in the form of a law given for the first time, but as if reminding them of something well understood. God says: "And all the tithe of the land, whether of the seed of the land, or of the fruit of the tree, is the Lord's; it is holy unto the Lord." He does not say it shall be so; "it is." But we must not fail to note here that this law, whatever its origin, was not Levitical. For all these allusions to it occur before the Levitical period. It was twenty years after this that God appropriated it to the use of the Levites, as recorded in Num. 18: 24-28. He there says, "But the tithes of the children of Israel, . . . I have given to the Levites to inherit." As if he had said, "This portion, which is mine, I assign to them." But he does not give even this wholly to them, for he immediately adds, "Ye shall offer up a heave-offering of it to the Lord, even a tenth part of the tithe." Thus keeping distinctly before the mind the fact that a "tenth is the Lord's." Passing some allusions to the enforcement of the law, not essential to the argument, we come to Neh. 10: 37, 38. After a long period of decline and captivity, the pure worship of God is restored, and the tenth comes in again as part of the law. Fifty years more pass away, and the nation again lapses into forgetfulness of God, when Malachi sounds out his call to repentance, as found in Mal. 3: 8, 10: "Will a man rob God? Yet ye have robbed me." Observe, he does not say they had robbed the Levite, but the accusation is that they had robbed God himself. And then he specifies that they had robbed him of both "tithes and offerings." The tithe was not an offering, nor the offering a tithe. Each word has a distinct meaning. The tenth was God's; the offering was a portion voluntarily given of the remaining nine-tenths, which, by this simple distinction, is clearly recognized as ours. We cannot be said to bring an offering of that which does not belong to us. The use of this word, therefore, indicates that there is a sense in which God recognizes our right to that which remains after the dedication of tithes, just as he recognizes our right to the remainder of time after setting apart the Sabbath. "Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God." Thus it appears that infinite Wisdom has made a distinct, definite claim upon a certain portion of both time and substance as his own. But it is urged that this claim belongs solely to the Old Testament dispensation; that the apostles make no allusion to it, and their teaching favors a purely voluntary giving; and that it does not appear in church history until after the establishment of the hierarchy. To this we reply that there is under the gospel no disannulling of the law, but, on the contrary, the Saviour expressly says: "Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets; I am not come to destroy, but to fulfill." The fact is simply that after Pentecost the impulse to give was so strong and continuous that the law of the tenth was more than fulfilled without requirement. There was no need of a re-statement. The training they had had, together with the holy zeal that possessed them, carried them away beyond all mere statutory requirement. There are everywhere upon our sea-coasts great rocks away out in the sea which at high tide are completely hidden from view, not lost, not washed away, only for the time covered up and made invisible. So it was with this great law of the tenth, which stands out so clearly in Old Testament history as God's law. Christian giving was at flood tide in the apostolic age, and completely covered up that great historic monument of God's will and pleasure. Yet the monument stood unchanged; and when the ebb tide came, and the interests of the church demanded, God's rock of requirement re-appeared, and the tithe law was again enforced. Nor can its abuse by the hierarchy be urged as evidence against its real, divine authority. For it was not the principle of the tithe, but the unwarrantable method of its collection and the unholy uses to which it was put that made it odious. But it is desirable that this law should not only be authenticated, but that it commend itself to the reason. The philosophy of the tithe is therefore an important subject of inquiry. Between man and man the right of property is expressed in the payment of rent, taxes, and interest. No one but an anarchist questions the right of a man to anything he has made. We belong to God. He has a property right in us which it would seem he has chosen to express in this law, or requirement, of the tenth. Not, however, because it is his right or his pleasure, so much as because it is in the line of his great purposes. Having chosen to save the world by human instrumentality, it may be said there is a sense in which he needs man's money. But apart from any such consideration as this, and vastly higher and deeper, is the consideration which grows out of man's need. That is deep and radical. The ruling principle of the natural heart is self-indulgence. A divine requirement like the one before us tends directly and constantly to check the undue accumulation of property; and especially when coupled with offerings from our part, or the remaining nine-tenths. It is estimated that a devout Jew gave a full fourth of all his possessions. The sacrificial law had doubtless a deeper meaning than to typify the atonement. Self must be sacrificed, laid upon the altar, crucified. Large giving, or giving that means sacrifice, is directly in the line of God's great thought for us. We talk much of hygiene, seeking, by analysis and experiment, to find what most contributes to the nutrition of these bodies of ours. It is a wise quest. Should we be less wise in the matter of soul development, less earnest in seeking out its laws? And what so potent in building noble character as this principle of sacrifice, the yielding up of ourselves in some way for the good of others? What the oxygen of the atmosphere is to the blood, what protein in food is to the tissues, that Christian giving is to soul nutriment. Without it, vigor, strength, development, are impossible. But the men of business, the great money makers of the world, have little opportunity for personal sacrifice for Christ's sake, for getting to themselves this great boon of spiritual health and power, except in the giving of money. Hence the beneficence of God's great plan, which makes the giving of the tenth the foundation, the entering wedge, for larger, more generous giving. It is a law of our nature that we love most that which has cost most. That to which we have given time, thought, anxious days, and sleepless nights, comes to be woven into the very fiber of our being. How evident, then, that we shall love God and his service in exact proportion to the share he has in our treasures. Our interests become identified with his interests. We have an actual share in the things that belong to him. This world, with its throbbing, palpitating human life, belongs to him, and we have a vital interest in it. He loves it. We love it too. We are bound to him and his by an all-consuming love. But into this ideal we must grow by a natural process. "First the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear."—M. L. M., in Missionary Herald.