HOW THE TENTH SAVED A MAN.
Mrs. N. M. Claflin relates in the Chicago Interior this telling incident illustrative of the influence of a good habit early formed:— "Returning from one of our large missionary gatherings, several years ago, I found myself seated with a woman whose very expressive face I had several times noticed during the sessions of the meeting. We naturally spoke of subjects of especial interest presented, and I said it hardly seemed consistent for us now to have no higher standard of giving than that of the Mosaic law—when a Christian and all that he has belongs to Christ for his service, to say a tenth should be the standard seems like levying a tax, instead of giving a freewill offering. "Oh," she replied, 'if we know anything of the blessedness of giving, we will not stop at the tenth. Why, when last fall I had forty dollars to help pay the debt of the American Board, I am sure no one got more real pleasure out of forty dollars than I did out of that; but my experience has made me love the old law, and I will tell you why. My father was a New England pastor, and we children were brought up to regard a tenth of the little we had as belonging to the Lord—given to us that we might have the privilege of giving it back to him, and we would have considered it stealing from the Lord to have used a penny of that tenth for ourselves. When I was old enough to teach, a tenth of my wages belonged to the Lord; I never questioned it. I married and came West with my husband, and in a few years the war came. My husband enlisted, and just five weeks from the time he left us the message came that he was shot in the battle of Antietam, killed instantly, and I could not even know where he was buried. But I could not sit down with my sorrow. I had two boys, the elder four years and the baby three months old, and I must take care of them. I had our home, and that was about all. I must do some work that could be done at home, and I finally decided on taking in washing and ironing. The Lord helped me, and I brought up my children as I was brought up. They each had their little to divide, and we put the Lord's tenth by itself as sacred to this service, and under no circumstances to be used for ourselves. "When Charlie was about eighteen years old, I began to realize what real trouble was. He seemed to change all at once—was dissatisfied with everything, and wanted to go West and make his fortune. Nothing that anyone could say or do seemed to have any influence with him, and I had to let him go. Sometimes I would not hear from him for weeks, and I knew he was not doing well. I lived through the five years he was gone. Then he came home without the fortune he went for, but he was a Christian man. In telling me of his life while away, he said: 'Mother, it was the habit of giving the tenth that saved me. It was so natural to put it aside whenever I received money that at first I did it almost without thinking; then afterward I was angry with myself for being bound by a habit, though I could not make up my mind to break away from it. One night, being unusually reckless, I said to myself: Now I am going to get rid of that superstitious notion once for all; the money is mine; I'll take this tenth and pay it for a drink of brandy, and that will end it. I went into a saloon, called for the liquor, and was in such a hurry to carry out my resolution that before the waiter could get the brandy I threw the money on the counter. That instant I was seized by such a horror—a something I never could describe—I don't know what it was. I caught up the money and rushed out and did not stop till I was away from everybody and everything but the earth and sky, and then I sat down and did some serious thinking. I felt sure that another step in the direction I had been going was destruction, and that my only chance of escape was to turn back, and I did it.' You may be sure Charlie's experience set me to thinking, and I wondered that I had never before realized the value of the habit of tithing.'"—World-wide Missions.