The Tithing Question and Principles Concerning the Law
By Editor
A Mr. M. T. Wheeler recently addressed a very interesting letter to the editor of the New York Christian Advocate. The editor published the letter in full, and we extract the following paragraphs, which are worthy of more than mere note: "Editor the Christian Advocate: One of your correspondents says that tithing is a part of the law, but that a man not under the law, but under grace, need not obey it. By this reasoning, he need not obey the law of profanity, or robbery, or of murder. He proves too much. A man who condemns the law most assuredly is not under grace. "A man is under grace because he is reborn. While a man under the law antagonizes and hates it, a man under grace loves it and its Author. His attitude toward the law is the same as if he himself had made it. To him the law is spiritual, and in spirit he is the author of it. His highest pleasure is to honor and obey it, and do his best endeavor to induce others to do likewise. Instead of his 'high calling' in grace giving him license to break any part of the law, it holds him to a stricter accounting and a stress of higher obligation. If a man under the law ought to tithe, much more the man under grace. If a man under the law must not commit adultery, much more a man under grace must live a pure life. The man under the law wants to break it; the man under grace wants to keep it." The reasoning of Brother Wheeler upon the subject of the law is sound. Very appropriately does he say that a man who condemns the law "most assuredly is not under grace," and that "a man is under grace because he is reborn," and furthermore, that "while a man under the law antagonizes and hates it, a man under grace loves it and its Author." While Mr. Wheeler refers these principles to the tithing question, which was really not specifically mentioned in the Ten Commandments, yet these same principles are much broader than many people will admit when it comes to applying them definitely and practically. Most people will recognize and assert with earnestness the very same things that are laid down in the foregoing paragraphs, and will apply them in certain directions where they may be especially interested. But those principles will, if logically carried out, lead every individual in the world to observe the seventh-day Sabbath. Mr. Wheeler is stating good, sound, substantial doctrine, that has been really fundamental in the Methodist Church, to which he belongs. And it was following just such principles as this, which the Bible teaches so clearly, and which the Methodist Church has asserted so strongly, that has led the Seventh-day Adventists to observe the seventh-day Sabbath. There is no getting away from the logical conclusions. Our Methodist brethren have done a mighty and a noble work in this world, and they never did more good in any one line than in their straight teaching of the principles of the law. We urge them to stand ever upon the solid foundation, and to press on to the position of actually carrying out the principles which they lay down. Once the individual learns to know the spirit of true Sabbath-keeping, as it is taught in God's word, it becomes one of the greatest pleasures of the whole life.