PAM. 
 
 MISC- 
 
 Young People 
 
 and 
 
 Scriptural Giving 
 
 By the Rev. CHARLHS E. LO CK.E, D.D. 
 
 t 
 
 The Open Door Emergency Commission of 
 the Missionary Society of the Methodist 
 Episcopal Church, 150 Fifth Ave., New York 
 
Young People and Scriptural Giving 
 
 In the education and training of young people 
 in scriptural habits of giving it should first of all 
 be emphasized that, as the whole Christian system 
 rests upon God incarnate in Christ, so is all per¬ 
 sonal Christian character based upon Christ. Our 
 young people must be led to accept all heavenly 
 gifts; such as “faith, the gift of God,” “the gift of 
 the Holy Ghost,” “the gift of God, which is eternal 
 life,” and “the gift of Jesus Christ,” for “God so 
 loved the world, that he gave his only begotten 
 Son.” “Thanks be unto God for his unspeakable 
 gift!” We should follow the example of our im¬ 
 perial apostle who exhorts the young man Timothy, 
 “Neglect not the gift that is in thee.” With in¬ 
 finite tenderness and justice, in writing to his son 
 in the Gospel, Paul says, “I call to remembrance 
 the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt 
 first in thy grandmother Lois, and thy mother 
 Eunice; and I am persuaded that in * thee also.” 
 The youth of this twentieth century’s dawning 
 have the most majestic ancestry the world has 
 seen—a heroism that could found a republic and 
 free the slave, and make the nineteenth century 
 the greatest period of missionary achievement since 
 the resurrection of Christ. To our youth have 
 been bequeathed colossal tasks, but they have also 
 inherited extraordinary gifts; and they must be 
 persistently “put in remembrance that they stir 
 up the gift of God which is in them.” 
 
 Hence, if we would instruct the youth in giving 
 
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John F", Gouch^^r- 
 
 they must be persuad.ed^oQleeep.t..the.„G;iyer. In 
 clear, definite consecration they must offer them¬ 
 selves to his service, and receive in their own 
 hearts the personal assurance that “the Spirit of 
 God witnesseth with their spirits that they are the 
 children of God.” With hearts illuminated by the 
 Holy Spirit, they will be prepared to study God’s 
 word in order to find direction concerning “scrip¬ 
 tural habits of giving.” 
 
 Definite Instruction 
 
 In their education on the subject of giving, the 
 young people should receive definite instruction. 
 They are accustomed to definite instruction in the 
 public school and college. In the Sunday school 
 the youth are taught definite knowledge concern¬ 
 ing Bible history, the doctrines of sin and salva¬ 
 tion, and the divine person of Jesus Christ. But 
 our disastrous blunder in the past has been that 
 when we reach the momentous question of giving 
 to the Lord we have blunted the edge of expecta¬ 
 tion of the youth who has just come from an en¬ 
 chanting reading of the Old Testament, by saying, 
 “O, give according to your ability,” 
 
 Is there definite direction in the Scriptures con¬ 
 cerning giving? Unquestionably there is, and “he 
 who runs may read.” Shall we confine ourselves 
 only to the New Testament in pursuing this inves¬ 
 tigation? Why should we? We go back to the Old 
 Testament for the Decalogue, for instruction con¬ 
 cerning the atonement, for the radiant eloquence 
 of Isaiah, for the fervent songs of David, and for 
 incontrovertible arguments for a personal God; 
 and, moreover, it was to the Old Testament that 
 Paul referred when he urged Timothy to continue 
 in the study of the Holy Scriptures, which are 
 
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“given by the inspiration of God and are profitable 
 for instruction in righteousness.” 
 
 The Tithe in the Old Testament 
 
 There are two great principles for supporting 
 the cause of God enunciated in the Bible. The 
 first of these is in the Old Testament, and it is, 
 “The tithe is the Lord’s.” Five hundred years 
 after Abraham had presented tithes to Melchizedek, 
 the mysterious king of Salem, Moses was inspired 
 to frame this exact law for Israel: “ All the tithe 
 of the land, whether of the seed of the land, or of 
 the fruit of the tree, is the Lord’s: it is holy unto 
 the Lord. . . . And concerning the tithe of the 
 herd, or of the flock, even of whatsoever passeth 
 under the rod, the tenth shall be holy unto the 
 Lord” (Lev. xxvii, 30-32). The tenth thus re¬ 
 ceived was in turn appropriated to the house of 
 Levi for the support of public worship, as the 
 children of Levi were without an inheritance and 
 were assigned to the service of the tabernacle; and 
 the Levites were themselves required to give a 
 tenth of the tithes which they received from the 
 people. Later, when the good King Hezekiah came 
 to the throne of his wicked father Ahaz, he cleansed 
 the temple, and reinstituted the religious rites and 
 ceremonies; and it is stated, “The tithe of all 
 things brought they in abundantly” (2 Chron. 
 xxxi, 5). Again, when the gallant cupbearer, 
 Nehemiah, had rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem and 
 restored the religious customs of the people, 
 “Then brought all Judah the tithe of the corn and 
 the new wine and the oil unto the treasuries” 
 (Neh. xiii, 12). Among the Jews it was recognized 
 that the tenth belonged to God. His giving could 
 not commence until his tenth had been paid. In 
 
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addition to the tithe which he paid, the faithful 
 Jew also gave for the support of the annual feasts 
 and for the poor, and was liberal in his free-will 
 and trespass offerings. 
 
 Finally, the Old Testament Scriptures close with 
 a most startling presentation of this great theme. 
 With the severity and directness of a prophet of 
 God, Malachi seeks to arouse a lethargic people 
 from their indifference: “Will a man rob God? 
 Yet ye have robbed me. But ye say. Wherein have 
 we robbed thee? In tithes and offerings. Ye are 
 cursed with a curse: for ye have robbed me, even 
 this whole nation. Bring ye all the tithes into 
 the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine 
 house.” This closing utterance of the Old Tes¬ 
 tament is like another rending of Sinai. The Fa¬ 
 ther commences to inculcate the doctrine and duty 
 of the tithe in Genesis through Melchizedek and 
 Jacob; it runs with unmistakable and unbroken 
 continuity throughout the entire Old Testament, 
 until, in the closing book, in tones of thunder an 
 offended and forsaken God calls his wandering 
 children to a just account; then his wrath passes 
 away, and with the tenderness of a mother’s voice 
 his promise of overwhelming mercies falls in 
 sweetest cadences upon our souls! 
 
 The Tithe in the New Testament 
 
 When we reach the New Testament we find that 
 the law of the tithe has not been abrogated, for we 
 hear Jesus saying in the Sermon on the Mount, 
 “Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or 
 the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to ful¬ 
 fil. For verily I say unto you. Till heaven and 
 earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise 
 pass from the law, till all be fulfilled” (Matt, v, 
 
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17, 18). It is beyond credence that Christ would 
 speak so minutely concerning the law as that not 
 the slightest punctuation point shall be omitted, 
 and not include a great law and custom upon which 
 the maintaining of the worship of the temple and 
 ancient tabernacle depended. But if some are 
 seeking for explicit command concerning the Chris¬ 
 tian duty of tithing they can find it unequivocally 
 given in the words of our Lord: “Woe unto you, 
 scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe 
 of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted 
 the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, 
 and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not 
 to leave the other undone” (Matt, xxiii, 23). 
 
 There is a picturesque corroborative argument 
 to these words of Jesus given by the unknown 
 writer of the book of Hebrews, where in the sev¬ 
 enth chapter he compares the quaint character of 
 Melchizedek with our Master. He recalls and em¬ 
 phasizes in six different clauses the giving of 
 tithes by Abraham to the king of Salem, and then 
 speaks of “another priest” who has arisen, but 
 who shall be a priest forever after the order of 
 Melchizedek. The logical conclusion is unavoid¬ 
 able, that if the paying of tithes was approved in 
 Abraham as he offered his homage to the first 
 Melchizedek, so the giving of the tenth would be 
 part of the humble service to be rendered to that 
 greater King of Peace, who shall be “a Priest for¬ 
 ever.” 
 
 As God Hath Prospered Us 
 
 The second of the two great principles for the 
 support of the cause of God is found in the New 
 Testament clause, “Lay by in store as God hath 
 prospered you.” This teaching manifestly does 
 not annul the doctrine of the tithe. It is our con- 
 
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tention that the precise and emphatic Old Testa¬ 
 ment instruction concerning the tenth was ac¬ 
 cepted and practiced by the Christians of Paul’s 
 time; and that after paying their tithe unto the 
 Lord, a just obligation which each would acknowl¬ 
 edge, then his giving would commence. It was from 
 their free-will gifts, after the tenth had been paid, 
 that they supported the general work which Paul 
 was now conducting. The money that they were 
 to “lay by in store” was for Paul’s missionary 
 work, that “there be no gatherings when I come,” 
 and was in addition to their offerings for the sup¬ 
 port of the church in Corinth, 
 
 The New Testament principle of giving stands 
 upon the shoulders of the Old Testament doctrine 
 of paying, and reaches toward the higher achieve¬ 
 ments of the reign of Christ Emmanuel, The new 
 commandment, “Love one another as I have loved 
 you,” does not controvert the Decalogue—it is the 
 blossom and product of Sinai’s great utterances. 
 So giving “according to our ability,” and “as God 
 has prospered us,” points out to the Christian the 
 lofty altitudes of generous giving to which he may 
 come, after he has discharged his honest debt as a 
 faithful steward, in paying to God the tenth. The 
 tenth is interest on the capital which has been 
 loaned to us, and must be paid back before we can 
 commence to give. We must be just before we are 
 generous! 
 
 Let us imagine a case. Suppose a faithful Jew 
 had become a convert to Christianity. As a Jew 
 he was accustomed to paying his tithe. When on 
 that first Sabbath after his conversion he assem¬ 
 bled with the Christians and brought his offering 
 to God, can any one believe that this converted 
 Jew would attempt to justify himself in giving 
 less than he had given when he was a Jew? Would 
 
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not his natural impulse be to add as much more 
 to his offering as he felt the new religion to be 
 more valuable to him than the old ? Certainly 
 he would not give less when his blessings were 
 more! 
 
 Present Percentage of Gifts 
 
 As a lamentable result of a failure to preach the 
 scriptural doctrine of the tithe, it has been com¬ 
 puted that, while the Church owns one fifth of the 
 wealth of the United States, only one sixteenth 
 of one per cent is given for evangelizing the 
 heathen world. Under a mistaken idea that “giv¬ 
 ing as God hath prospered” was a loftier basis of 
 supporting the kingdom than the scriptural doc¬ 
 trine of the tenth, the Christian Church is giving 
 immeasurably less than the ancient Jews; and 
 every interest of Christ’s kingdom is embarrassed 
 for want of funds. “By their fruits ye shall know 
 them” is our invincible dictum as Christians. In 
 the face of failure, and depleted treasuries, and 
 crippled enterprises, is it not time for us to ascend 
 from our easy, theoretical, slothful, and sometimes 
 vociferous levels of “according to your ability,” 
 and come up to the definite, just, honorable, and 
 practical purpose of paying our tithes unto the 
 Lord? 
 
 Let us train our young people into exact, busi¬ 
 nesslike methods of caring for the kingdom, and 
 not withhold from them the truth taught in the 
 Scriptures concerning definite and systematic giv¬ 
 ing! Let us cease desecrating the courts of the 
 Lord’s house, and in some cases, I fear, even the 
 holy precincts of the sanctuary, with such ques¬ 
 tionable expedients as fairs and suppers, to make 
 up for deficiences which have accrued because 
 God’s people are withholding even their tenth. 
 
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Buddhism and Mohammedanism build their pa¬ 
 godas of jasper and their mosques of alabaster, 
 and with increasing tenacity possess the vast 
 oriental world by the aid of the tithe. Mormonism 
 spreads its loathsome cancer and befouls our re¬ 
 public with the putridity of polygamy; and so 
 rigorous are the leprous elders in the collection of 
 the tithe that in the paying of wages one tenth 
 of the coin is marked “tithing money” and may 
 be used for nothing else than for the support of 
 their infamous institution. 
 
 If these enemies of the true faith thus promul¬ 
 gate their false systems, surely the friends of 
 Christ should provide as much for the propagation 
 of the truth that ennobles and sets free. And, 
 moreover, if the ancient Jew gave a tenth for 
 maintaining the Hebrew religion alone, recogniz¬ 
 ing as he did no obligation to any other peoples, 
 under how much greater responsibility is the Chris¬ 
 tian to give much more than the Hebrew, because 
 the Christian’s commission is to “go into all the 
 world and preach the Gospel to every creature ”! 
 
 If this scriptural method should be adopted, 
 then history would repeat itself: the chests of 
 the Lord would be bursting with treasure; Azariah, 
 the chief priest, would answer again, “Since the 
 people began to bring the offerings into the house 
 of the Lord, we have had enough to eat, and have 
 left plenty: the Lord hath blessed his people.” 
 And coronated Malachi would lean over the battle¬ 
 ments of heaven and shout once more, “There shall 
 be meat in my house. I will open the windows 
 of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, and there 
 shall not be room to receive it.” 
 
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The Paramount Work of the Church 
 
 The paramount work of the Church to-day is 
 the training of the youth into scriptural habits of 
 giving. Upon this education depends not only 
 the character and usefulness of the young people, 
 but the redemption of our republic from the 
 thralldom of secularism, vice, and avarice; and 
 the evangelization of the whole world. Is it not 
 painfully significant that the so-called “submerged 
 tenth” of our population bears the same fraction 
 as the tenth of our incomes which many are with¬ 
 holding? By the aid of God’s tenth the submerged 
 tenth will be rescued. In their quest for the Holy 
 Grail this noblest knighthood that the world has 
 ever seen must be taught that the heavenly vision 
 is for those who serve and sacrifice: 
 
 “Not what we give but what we share, 
 
 Bor the gift without the giver is bare; 
 
 Who gives himself with his alms feeds three: 
 
 Himself, his hungering neighbor, and me.” 
 Christ’s advice to the young man who came seek¬ 
 ing counsel was, “If thou wouldst be perfect, go, 
 sell that thou hast, and give.” Ideal character is 
 possessed only by those who most give. “Love and 
 venerate ideals,” said Mazzini to the young men of 
 Italy. “Ideals are the word of God.” If our young 
 people would become revelations of God to their 
 age they must obey the law of service and not 
 the law of self. 
 
 In his human birth, Jesus Christ attracts the 
 mothers to his cause; in his early years in Naza¬ 
 reth, he interests the children; in his lowly sur¬ 
 roundings, makes himself the friend of the poor; 
 in his grief and woes, finds followers among the 
 sorrowing multitudes; in his crucifixion, he draws 
 
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all men unto himself; and as the Young Man Re¬ 
 deemer, charms the young people of the world 
 with his enchanting personality. Christianity 
 needs the youth with their boundless faith and 
 hope, and their fiery enthusiasm. Young men 
 won the battle of Marathon. Young men saved 
 Paris during the French Revolution. Young men 
 fought the battles of the American republic, lib¬ 
 erated the slave, and established freedom upon en¬ 
 during foundations. Three fourths of the soldiers 
 of the civil war were under thirty years of age, 
 and one half under twenty-four. In the recent con¬ 
 flict, when the suffering reconcentrados were re¬ 
 lieved, and the Pearl of the Antilles slipped from 
 the palsied hand of Spain, the brave warriors 
 who achieved the victories in that war for human¬ 
 ity were mere boys—from the farm and factory 
 and schoolroom. 
 
 It was a little girl who inspired the organiza¬ 
 tion of the British Bible Society; it was a Meth¬ 
 odist young woman who gave to Robert Raikes 
 the idea of the Sunday school; it was another 
 3 "Oung woman whose writings resulted in the es¬ 
 tablishment of the Fresh Air Funds of all the 
 large cities; and one of our bishops declines the 
 honor of originating the call for “Twenty Millions 
 Twentieth Century Thank Offering,” and says that 
 it was the product of the faith of a devoted 
 Methodist girl. 
 
 Proper Protection from Unwholesome Influences 
 
 While the Church is educating and training the 
 young people into habits of giving it should de¬ 
 mand for them proper protection from evil in¬ 
 fluences and impending calamities. The youth 
 of the Church and of the nation are being destroyed 
 
 II 
 
by a devilish octupus of vice, which throws out 
 its long tentacles of impure literature, and the 
 saloon, with all its alluring abominations. Sab¬ 
 bath-breaking, and blasphemy, a corrupting play¬ 
 house, a prostituted printing press, and impurity 
 with its Satanic siren voices. There will be more 
 money and fervor and holy lives for the Church 
 and all its missionary enterprises when the Church 
 awakens to the power which it possesses and ut¬ 
 terly destroys the destroyer of the youth, and 
 makes licensed and protected vice impossible. 
 
 In training the youth in scriptural habits of 
 giving we are teaching them that they are called 
 to the service of a living Christ. Jesus lives to-day 
 in the holy lives and loving endeavor of his fol¬ 
 lowers. We shall urge the youth to earnest habits 
 of giving because he who gives most to Christ gets 
 most from Christ and becomes most like Christ. 
 Not only shall we behold 
 
 “From eye to eye through all their order flash 
 A momentary likeness of the King,” 
 but our youth shall belong to a knighthood which 
 shall never perish, and as incarnations of the King 
 shall press the battle for righteousness to the ends 
 of the earth, and hold the citadels for truth, “un¬ 
 til He come.” 
 
 50 cents per 100 copies 
 
 Series of 1903