The Missionary by Rev. H. Clay Trumbull

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 21, 1880

The Missionary.

By Rev. H. Clay Trumbull

THE DUTY OF TITHE-GIVING.

BY REV. H. CLAY TRUMBULL.

THERE are some duties which the Bible seems to recognize as understood from the beginning. There is no mention of their origin and first announcement. Their violation, or their performance, is mentioned incidentally in the sacred story long before they are recorded as specifically enjoined. It appears to be taken for granted that they were known to be duties at man's very start in the world.

There is no record, for instance, of any law against murder until after the deluge; but Cain was not exculpated from guilt on the ground that he had never been told not to kill a brother. There is no command to prayer—either public or private prayer—in any of the earlier books of the Bible; but most of the patriarchs whose story is elaborated are represented as in the habit of prayer. And although the duty of praying is not specifically enjoined in the ten commandments, it was and is recognized as of universal obligation. The duty of tithe-giving—of giving one-tenth of one's entire income to the Lord—is one of those duties which seems to have needed the record of no original announcement or injunction. Like prayer, tithe-giving was practised by the patriarchs long before the proclamation of the Mosaic law. While, as in the case of prayer, it finds no specific mention in the decalogue, tithe-giving has had, and it has, a wide-spread recognition in the world—a recognition that would be as nearly universal as that given to prayer, if it were not that it costs so much more. The duty of tithe-giving certainly seems to stand out in the Bible as a duty of equal obligation with prayer; and its wilful violation appears to be there counted just as surely deserving of condemnation as the breach of any or all of the ten commandments.

The first Bible mention of tithes is in the fourteenth chapter of Genesis, where Abram, returning from the slaughter of the kings, was met by Melchisedec, a "priest of the most high God," and he gave him tithes of all the spoils. It does not appear by the record that that act on Abram's part was something unlike anything ever done before. On the contrary, it appears to have been the spontaneous performance of a most seemly and fitting act—the performance indeed of a plain duty; for Abram did not count those particular spoils of battle his own; he looked at them as properly belonging to the king of Sodom; but whosoever they were, one-tenth of them belonged of right to the Lord, and must be handed over to the Lord's representative. This, be it remembered, was long before the Mosaic law had made tithe-giving obligatory on Jehovah's peculiar people. And, to go outside of the sacred record, it is found that "the usage of consecrated tithes existed among the Greeks, Romans, Carthaginians, and Arabians," as may be seen by a reference to Herodotus, Diodorus Seculus, Xenophon, and other ancient historians. The duty of tithe-giving would, therefore, seem to rest on the common law of God's kingdom, rather than on any specific statutory requirement.

Yet there is no lack in the Bible of specific commands for tithe-giving, or of explicit commendation for the performance of this duty, and denunciations of those who neglect it. We have found this duty recognized in the first book of the Old Testament. Later we find specific and repeated commands for its continued exercise. In the last book of the Old Testament, we find its neglect denounced of God as nothing short of robbery. "Will a man rob God?" he asks. Is there a man bad enough to deliberately steal from God? That is God's question; and his answer to it is: "Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say, Wherein have we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings." In using the one-tenth of your income, which is the Lord's portion, you have robbed God of his property. That is God's way of stating this case. In other words, if any of you who profess to be the Lord's children have failed to pay over to the Lord his tenth of your income, you are thieves;—that is the plain English of the Bible teaching on this subject.

It is, as we have shown, of no use to say that tithe-giving was a mere duty of the Mosaic ceremonial law, and that therefore it was done away with in Christ. Tithe-giving we find to have been a recognized duty long before the days of Moses, and outside of the realm of Israel; and in its essence it was repeatedly enjoined by Christ and the apostles upon all who would be followers of Christ. One-seventh of all our time and one-tenth of all our income belong to the Lord to begin with. The common law of God settles this. This was true before the Mosaic dispensation, during it, and since then. It is all very well for a disciple of Christ to affirm that he is no longer bound by the letter of the law on either of these points, if he unmistakably lives up to the spirit of that law. *

The Jews, again, never counted their alms-giving as a part of their tithe-paying, yet alms-giving was always a sacred duty with the Jews. Their alms-giving could not begin until their tithes were already provided for. Their charities must be out of their nine-tenths of their income—not out of the Lord's one-tenth. Who then supposes that the New Testament commands to give systematically and freely were intended or were understood as covering in all less than the very lowest limits of Jewish and of heathen religious giving? It is an absurdity to suggest such a thought. "Freely ye have received, freely give." "Sell that ye have, and give alms." "Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him." "Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity; for God loveth a cheerful giver." Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, "It is more blessed to give than to receive." "If therefore ye have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches?" Let a man read over these and many like injunctions from the New Testament, in the light of the Old Testament record, and then say, if he can, that a Christian can have common honesty before God while not giving at least one-tenth of his income to the Lord's cause.

"But," says one, "I have debts to pay, and my income must be devoted to that, before it can fairly be available for charities. I ought to be just, before I am generous." Of course your creditors have a prior claim to strangers on your income. And of course you ought to be just. But are all your other creditors to be preferred above the Lord? Is there any justice in your ignoring his fair claim upon you? One of the meanest things that any business man can be capable of, is the dividing up his assets without a share to his endorser. If you refuse to pay over the first-tenth of your income to the Lord as a preferred creditor, you do a meaner thing than the man who deliberately swindles his endorser. The tithe of one's income to the Lord is not a charity; it is one's first and most pressing debt—a debt of honor; a sacred and supreme obligation; an obligation resting on each and every Christian believer. The tithe is not the outermost limit of a believer's duty in religious giving; but it is the innermost limit. Many a Christian ought to give far more than this; never one ought to give less—less than one-tenth of his actual income, whether that income be little or much.

In recognizing the duty of tithe-giving when one's income is limited and one's personal and family needs are great, it is essential to recognize the supernatural element in God's providential care of his children. If a Christian man has an income large enough to supply all his needs without difficulty, there is neither shadow of excuse nor show of decency in his failure to pay over

one-tenth of it to the Lord. But when one feels the pinch of poverty every day of his life, then it is important that he should bear in mind that nine cents will go farther than ten cents would go, and that nine dollars will go farther than ten dollars would go in providing for himself and his loved ones, when that other cent or that other dollar has been paid to the Lord, who claims it as his own. There is no mistake about this to him who has faith. Every child of God who has rested on this truth has found it to be a source of unfailing dependence. Only those disbelieve it who have never trusted God enough to try it even as an experiment. It is with individuals as it is with churches in this matter. Neither their troubles nor their doubts ever come from their paying their debts, or from their giving too freely of their substance to the Lord. The old colored preacher had the right idea about this when he said: "I hab nebber known a church killed by too much gibbing to de Lord. If dere should be such a church, and I should know about it, I tell you what I'd do. I'd go down to dat church dis bery night; and I'd clamber up its moss-cobered roof, and I'd sit a straddle of its ridge pole, and I'd cry aloud, 'Blessed are de dead which die in de Lord.'" Dying for duty-doing—starving to death for tithe-giving to the Lord—is a good way of dying;but there is less danger of death in that line than in any other that we know of.

It was twenty-three centuries ago that God said to some of his children who had had doubts on this point: "Bring all the tithes into the store-house, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, . . . if I will not open you the windows of Heaven, and pour you out a blessing that there shall not be room enough to receive it." And it was twenty-six centuries ago that an experiment of this sort was fairly made among God's people. As a result of it, the tithes lay in great heaps, beyond the ability of the Lord's priests to make use of them. "Then Hezekiah questioned with the priests and the Levites concerning the heaps. And Azariah, the chief priest of the house of Zadok answered him, and said, Since the people began to bring the offerings into the house of the Lord, we have had enough to eat, and have left plenty, for the Lord hath blessed his people; and that which is left is this great store."

To-day if all the Lord's people should bring in their tithes to the Lord's treasury, the money would lie in heaps waiting for new machinery to put it in motion. What do you think is the prospect of such a financial freshet in the religious channels of beneficence? Are you doing your share to bring it about?—S. S. Times.