No one not an unreasoning optimist believes that with our present
methods of Church finance, it is possible that the World will be
Christianized during the Twentieth Century. No one not an unreasoning
pessimist believes that if all Christians practiced the Tithe System
and devoted one-tenth of their income to the Master’s work that the
World could not be brought to a knowledge of Christ within the next one
hundred years. These two facts being conceded, and no thinking man will
deny them, three questions suggest themselves:--
1st. Who is most to blame for present conditions?
2nd. The Results,
3rd. The Remedy.
Answering the first question as to who is most to blame, it is my
deliberate conviction based on more than twenty-five years varied
experience and growing more decided each year, that the blame very
largely lies at the doors of our Theological Seminaries and Theological
Professors, the teachers of our teachers. They must bear a very large
share of the responsibility.
There will be, there can be no permanent change for the better while
our religious teachers are taught to teach us a lot of generalities
which do not have even the merit of being glittering on this, of all
subjects connected with the Christian life of laymen and lay-women, the
most important.
There will be slow progress so long as such a large proportion of
students for the ministry are taught that we laymen and lay-women
owe everything to God in general but nothing in particular, nothing
definite; that the time of payment, manner of payment, and even the
amount of payment of whatever we owe, or think we owe, or somebody
else tells us we owe, is left entirely to our natural disposition to
benevolence or stinginess or to our moods and caprices. That _payment_
to God of any definite proportion of our income does not enter into
the Christian system; that all our benevolences are to be classed
under the general term of “Giving,” thus placing our Heavenly Father
and the street beggar to whom we may give a few pennies, in the same
category. That it is right and not an insult to the Almighty to teach
us that we can _give money_ to God; that the basis and foundation of
the Christian system of providing means for carrying on the Master’s
work in discipling all Nations is founded on a few sentences from a
letter Paul wrote to the Christians in Corinth, urging them to make a
generous free-will offering in aid of some suffering fellow Christians
down at Jerusalem. For obvious reasons, the reason he gives for urgency
in the matter is very rarely quoted: “That there be no collections when
I come.” Paul evidently had his share of human nature, and special
collections which most Ministers so much dread was probably also his
pet aversion.
During the past year I have had a very striking confirmation of this
opinion. On September 29th, 1902, I sent a copy of the following
letter to the President or leading official in each of the Evangelical
Theological Seminaries in the United States and Canada, 152 in all:--
Dear Sir--By this mail I send you a sample package of such literature
as I publish on the subject of “Honoring God with our Substance.” I
will take pleasure in sending gratis, express prepaid, a sufficient
number of similar packages to supply one for each theological student
under your care if you or some one in your institution will state
how many will be required and agree that they shall be placed in the
hands of the students. Hoping to hear from you, I am
Yours very truly,
Just twenty-seven accepted the offer, thus showing that nearly
five-sixths of those to whom the letters were addressed were not
willing or indifferent as to whether the students under their care
should be taught that the debt we owe to God means anything definite.
In November of the same year I sent a similar letter addressed to the
“Professor of Practical Theology” in the 125 institutions where the
first offer was not accepted. A total of 22 responded and expressed a
willingness some of them an earnest desire to distribute literature on
Tithing among the students. Next I tried to reach the students direct,
as I had failed to reach them by the first two methods in more than
two-thirds of the Seminaries of our country and Canada. Once more I had
written and personally signed 103 letters, the envelope being addressed
“To That Student Most Interested in the Subject of ‘Honoring God with
our Substance.’” The letter enclosed was as follows:--