A STATED PROPORTION OF OUR INCOME.
By WILLIAM ARTHUR, A.M.1
(Continued from page 26.)
IT is ordained by Christianity that giving shall be both bountiful and cheerful. It does not satisfy the demands of our religion that we give; we must give much. “He that soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly.” This refers to the amount of gifts; but having decided that the amount must be unsparing, Christianity is not even then content; that unsparing amount must be given with a cheerful heart, “not grudgingly or of necessity; for God loveth a cheerful giver.” One of the oddest things in all argument is, that this passage is sometimes resorted to as cover by those who claim liberty to give away as little as ever they please. Let them turn to the passage (2 Cor. ix. 5-7) and they will see that it is not left to them or to any man to decide whether giving shall be on a bountiful or a sparing scale. That it is not to be sparing, and is to be bountiful, is settled; and then a cheerful heart is commanded in addition. The two-fold requirement is a gift not sparing as to amount nor grudging as to feeling. One may cheerfully give a sparing gift who would grudge a bountiful one; and one who, from “necessity,” from pressure, or shame, gives a large gift, may grudge while he gives. Do not spare when you give, and do not grudge when you make sacrifices! This is the voice of a passage which some would fein use to cloak their unwillingness to make liberality a regulated and well-considered virtue.
A sparing, a bountiful, and a grudging giver may all be met with in your everyday life. You call on a wealthy gentleman, Mr. Close, for the Patriotic Fund. “Yes; it is a good cause, a great public occasion, everyone ought to do his share; but really one has so much to do, one is always giving. However, I have great
1 This excellent address was delivered about fifty years ago in the Victoria Hall, Belfast, the Bishop of Down, in the chair. —ED.
pleasure in giving my mite; you are perfectly welcome, gentlemen, to this trifle,” and he gives you a guinea. You modestly hesitate; tell him that much will depend on his example, and that from his position you had hoped for something considerable, say fifty pounds. “O dear no! I could never afford that. That is a subscription for a nobleman. I am very happy to give my mite, but I never thought of any sum like that.”
From this sparing but cheerful giver you pass to another, Mr. Goode. He just hears you, and saying “Ah, poor fellows, little we can do to what they are doing!” puts down his name for a hundred pounds. This is neither sparing nor grudging,
From him you go to Mr. Sharpe. He hears your statement. “O yes! all the principal people are giving to it. One must do something respectable. Will you let me see your book, gentlemen? What! Goode down for a hundred pounds! I know why he did that. It was to be a-head of me, or rather to spite me; for he knew I would never be behind him. It is not the first time he has served me so; but I’m not going to let him stand before me for the sake of fifty pounds.” And so he puts down a hundred.
Now, while this gift professes to be an act done out of consideration for others, it is really done out of consideration for himself; and, while his hand was giving, his heart was grudging.
The greedy man who would grudge a large gift, but makes a merit of a small one, and the vain man who must stand high, even in giving, and grudges the price he pays for his importance, are equally far from Christianity. A bounty that reaches the point of sacrifice, and a heart-charity that rejoices in such sacrifice, can alone meet the call of the gospel.
It is ordained by Christianity that our bountiful and cheerful giving shall be in proportion to our means. “Upon the first day of the week let every one of you lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him.” Here the scale which regulates giving is decisively taken from the hand of impulse, fashion, or personal disposition. Whether our giving is or is not to be in proportion to the bounties of God to us is no matter of debate. The principle of proportion is enjoined in the New Testament. But the passage decides nothing as to what application of the law of proportion is to be made. One who gives a hundredth part of his increase observes a proportion as much as one who gives a fifth, and might plead that he was giving as God had prospered him if he could find ground in scripture for the belief that one hundredth would be acceptable.
This scripture, “As God hath prospered him,” forces us to ask, What is giving in proportion to God’s gifts to us? If we seek an answer in the New Testament, everything seems to push up the scale to a proportion from which we nearly all shrink away. We find liberality in a rich man sanctioned up to “half his goods,” as in the case of Zaccheus; and in a poor widow up to “all her living,” as with the two mites. We find a whole church selling
their property, and giving away without limit; and though that example is never enforced on others it is never reprobated. We find the church of Macedonia, in “depths of poverty” and also in “a great trial of afflictions,” abounding in “riches of liberality;” and their record is written for the gratitude of all ages, that they gave “beyond their power.” These early Christians, who thus rejoiced to bestow, are melted to yet greater sacrifices by words so winning and so mighty as, “Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that ye through his poverty might be rich.”
Turn where you will in the New Testament in search of an answer to the question, “What is giving as God has prospered me?” you are surrounded by an atmosphere of fervid joy and love; solicited by a feeling of which the words are “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good-will to men;” and the deeds are every good work, distributing, communicating, making sacrifices with which God is well pleased; you are stimulated by examples of apostles forsaking all, individuals selling all, churches bestowing all, the deeply poor giving to the poorer, and, to crown the whole, the MASTER giving always, and storing never; and in the end giving Himself a ransom for all. You feel that if you are to take your answer to the question by honest, logical inference from that Book, any thought of a tenth is out of sight, and you must contemplate a style of giving which no one I know—perhaps I do know some of the poor who would—but which no one of the comfortable classes in our day would think of following.
If fearful to press New Testament precept and example, we go to the Old to learn what the Lord counted acceptable in ancient times, we find that each head of a family among the Jews was bound by direct enactment to give a tenth of all his yearly increase to the support of the ministering tribe of Levi. He had to pay a second tenth for the support of the feasts; a third tenth for the poor once in three years; and, in addition, were the trespass offerings, long and costly journeys to the temple, and sundry other religious charges, all imposed by divine sanction; besides free-will offerings. Taking all these items, it is undoubted that among the Jews every head of a family was under religious obligation to give away at least a fifth, perhaps a third, of his yearly income.1
Passing on to the patriarchs, you find Jacob, when houseless, awaking from his sleep by the roadside, solemnly vowing to the God of his fathers, that if only “bread to eat and raiment to put on” were granted to him in his exile, a tenth of all should be rendered back in honour of his God. And further up, where you see Abraham, the father and representative of all believers, standing before Melchizedek, the type, not of the Levitical priesthood, but of our Great High Priest, he gives him a tenth of all. The
1 For full particulars and various discussion of these charges, the reader is referred to the volume, “Gold and the Gospel,” especially the Essays of the Rev. Mr. Constable and Dr. Morgan.
goods were the property of others, of which he would not, for his private benefit, take “from a thread to a shoe latchet,” but yet he asserted the claims of the Lord upon all.
Thus, in the patriarchal dispensation a tenth seems to be the portion which the Lord accepts. In the Mosaic dispensation that proportion is raised to at least a fifth by express ordinances; and when we come into the gospel dispensation we are sensible at once of a notable rise in the temperature of benevolence. Here the idea of a religion less generous, less self-denying, less superior to sordid hoards or personal comforts is not only inadmissible, but atrocious. Whatever of heavenliness and large heart was in the religion of prophets, receives an expansion and not a chill, and selfish man is placed at last in his highest school of unselfishness.
Whether, then, we take the Old Testament or the New, the lowest proportion of giving for which we can find any pretext or foothold whatever, in command or in precedent, is one-tenth. He who fixes on this, deliberately fixes on far less than was required of a Jew. He who fixes on less than this, deliberately excludes all scripture instruction, and chooses a standard for which no part of God’s Word offers a justification.
But several objections are taken against our conclusion, some of which we ought to notice.
“In urging upon us to give away a tenth, you are reviving the Levitical law, and that is abolished.” Those who hold that this particular provision of the Levitical law is abolished, I would refer to the arguments of my venerable friend, Dr. Morgan, which they may find more difficult to dispose of than they imagine.1 But I do not see that the objector would fare a whit better with one who, like myself, was not disposed to contend that that provision was literally in-force. Indeed, the difference between those who hold that it stands and those who hold that it is abolished lies perhaps more in word than reality. Those who hold that it stands would hardly contend that the letter is in force; for that was, that the tenth should be given to the tribe of Levi, which, to the letter, we cannot fulfil. And those who hold that it is abolished surely do not mean that its spirit is abolished. The spirit of that law is, “Of Thine own have we given unto thee.” This is not abolished, and, blessed be God, never will be! And surely you do not mean that this spirit, a spirit so right and good, in passing from Judaism to Christianity, forsook a more sensitive body for one grosser and heavier with earth! We need not pause to show that, quite independently of the Levitical tenth, the other requirements of the Mosaic law demand more than a second tenth; and that the patriarchs gave their tenth before ever Levi was.
“But we are not now to be brought under rule; for the law is love.” I know that some who thus speak do so upon the best grounds. A good man has a small income and a large family; he
1 See “Gold and the Gospel.”
has also a warm heart, and his neighbours know it. Though he never adopted any specific proportion, he is conscious, and so is his wife, by daily experience, that he gives away “to his power, yea, and beyond his power.” When he hears of fixing a rule, and walking by it, he feels that for him it is unnecessary, and he pleads “The law is love.” Were all like him most gladly should we leave it here. But many whose heart has never led them into the troubles of overgiving, gladly catch up his words, and, as a simple defence against giving something definite, cry, “The law is love.”
To you who use this objection we have only one thing to say: If the law is love will you keep the law? Then all we contend for, and more than all, is secured. Among laws, none is near so exacting as love. It has never felt, never done, never given enough. It is “never ending, still beginning.” Its great things of yesterday are little things to-day; and its great things to-day will be little things to-morrow. The law of love! It is, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbour as thyself.” And you invoke the law of love to save your money!
As a matter for personal guidance, the definite meaning of this expression is something like this: “The heart that is right is full of love. Love fulfils all law, and secures the rights of God and man. Therefore the heart that is right is a law to itself, and needs no other rule. But my heart is right, and is sure to fulfil the law without special rules.” Is that safe reasoning? If your heart be so right to-day, may it not wax cold some other day? and would it not be well to have a test by which to try its warmth? Or may there not be some like me, who cannot trust so surely to their heart; but feel that it is a wholesome thing to have clear rules whereby its dispositions may be often measured?
Love may be a good reason for going above rules; but it is the worst in the world for staying below them or without them. It is a law of love which binds a man to provide for the comfort of his family; but surely that is no reason why he should refuse to give his wife a regular allowance for the expenses of housekeeping.
“But you speak of giving a tenth—that is an arithmetical law; and you will never bring the hearts of Christians under a cold arithmetical law.” This is a very tremendous objection. Half the sympathies of an audience are in danger of being lost the moment they hear that our rule is a cold arithmetical law. Arithmetic sounds of school-books, and counting-houses, and markets, and hard problems, and dry statistics, and other ungenerous things. Well, it is so, and we cannot deny it; to say you are bound to give away at the very least a tenth of your all, is to speak the language of arithmetic. But is the principle the less sacred for that? “Remember the seventh day to keep it holy.” That is an arithmetical expression! And is there anything unhallowed in the Sabbath because a square seventh is cut off from our time, and is just in that arithmetical proportion to be conse-
crated to God? Again, it is ordained that a bishop shall be the husband of but one wife, which is an arithmetical law.
But if our specious friends who object to narrow arithmetical laws will observe their own givings, it will prove that somehow arithmetic follows them wherever they go. For if you do not give a tenth, but a ninetieth, even that is an arithmetical proportion; and if, instead of giving a tenth all the year through, you only give a tenth of one day’s income for the whole year, still that is an arithmetical proportion—though it might be hard to ascertain it; and, in fact, go down however low you may, if you give anything whatever, at any time whatever, it still bears an arithmetical proportion to the whole. Did we name a tenth as the highest standard of Christian benevolence, and confine ourselves to it, we might be taunted with arithmetic; but when we name it only as the lowest point at which any footing can be found, and leave all above free, that arrow flies below us.
“But if you teach men to give a tenth they will give that and be content, though they ought to be giving much more.” This is an objection of real gravity. Doubtless, did we succeed in producing generally in the churches the state of feeling that all were bound to give at least a tenth, many would think themselves generous in giving that, when perhaps a third or a half would be only their just proportion. But how do matters stand at present? Multitudes of sincere Christians are royally content though they give nothing like a tenth, and could we succeed in bringing up the Church generally to that proportion (though far below what we hold to be the due of many), the state of things then would present a wonderful improvement on that existing now.
But I question whether adopting the principle of proportion would tend to make men content with the minimum proportion after they were abundantly prospered. So far as my knowledge of its practical working goes my impression is the reverse. It is my pleasure to know many men who, at the outset of life, or early in life, adopted Jacob’s resolution to give a tenth. These have all been prosperous men. I do not know one of them but shows that the effect of his early adopting the principle of a tenth has been to prepare him for a higher proportion when years of plenty set in.
And is it not natural that such should be the effect? There is a great, not to say a tremendous, power over man in that very principle of arithmetical proportion which it is so easy to spurn. When an arbitrary proportion of our time or goods is taken—a proportion for which reason has no more to say than for any other what is the effect upon the mind? It serves as a practical claim of sovereignty on the part of the Creator. It says, “This is claimed, because all might be claimed. He who accepts this, owns all, and holds you to account for the rest.” It is not probable that, year after year, one will carefully set apart a fixed proportion for the service of his God without becoming habituated to feel that he is neither author nor owner of any fraction of pro-
perty, but merely steward; and that He at whose feet he lays the first-fruits is the Lord, the Giver of all. Such stated setting apart is a practical keeping of the precept, “Thou shalt remember the Lord thy God, for it is he that giveth thee power to get wealth.” And whoever thus begins life by keeping a law of proportion is the most likely of all men to advance his proportion as his Benefactor augments his blessing.
(To be Continued.)