country, in his little tract, "Is it Right to be Rich?”* gives a forcible exhibition of the teachings of the Scriptures on this subject, in connection with many striking corroborative facts, drawn from his extended observation and experience. We commend the tract to every reader, not, of course, indorsing all its statements. Yet how dangerous this unscriptural hoarding of millions is to the possessors of great wealth and to their families any one may learn by observation. In short, nothing can be clearer than that the Head of the church has not placed this vast wealth, just at this juncture, in the hands of Christians as his stewards, for the purpose of allowing them to indulge in enervating luxuries without stint, or for the purpose of giving them opportunity to pamper their families through their millions of stored and rusting treasure. If there is any meaning in this wondrous chain of providences, taken together and in connection with the truths of God's absolute ownership of every thing and the Christian's stewardship, that meaning must be this, that Christ does not purpose that the thousands of millions of the race for whom his blood has been shed shall perish without the Gospel, and that, moreover, he has rolled upon the church of this very time the responsibility of furnishing the entire pecuniary means requisite for the work in its completeness at home and abroad, the world over. He who has the authority given him by the Father to call for the gold at any time, calls now. Can the church, and especially its opulent members, give a valid reason for not furnishing the Lord's treasury with all that is needed now?

The Word of God and the signs of the times manifestly discountenance the so-prevalent mission creed of the church, that the world's conversion is a work belonging to the indefinite future. The Word shows us that even the law laid down for the Jew, if enforced upon Christians, would call forth from the burglar-proof and benevolence-proof safes all the needed treasures for carrying out the Great Commission now; making it thereby doubly clear that with the application of the higher law and motives of the new dispensation there could be no lack of means for the immediate completion of the work for the

* Is it Right to be Rich? By Lewis Tappan. New York: Anson D. F. Randolph & Co. 1869.

world. The Signs of the Times leave no open question as to present duty; since they make the present call of Christ as clear as the facts of the existence of a lost world and of the church as his agent to bear to it the Gospel. Now what have Christians to offer as against this Divine claim? Absolutely nothing but the insane rage for laying up treasure upon earth, upon which Christ set the mark of reprobation in laying down the very constitution of his kingdom! For, what is this remorseless devotion of body and soul and life to money-getting and money-hoarding, whether in the church or out of it, but that worship of Mammon which Christ taught his disciples could not coexist with the service of God? No such plea will stand the test of the judgment. Taking the whole Protestant Church; or simply that portion limited by the Englishspeaking peoples; or even coming down to the church of the United States, we believe there is the requisite treasure in her possession to-day for carrying forward the great work to its completion. Salvation is ready, the world is ready, Christ is calling, and only the church waits; and waits without a shadow of justification for such a course before God or man!

2. Assuming as proved the authority of the Head of the church, and the fact of his present great demand upon his people, the duty of the church in enforcing his call upon those in her communion next requires our consideration.

Christ has the authority and makes the demand; it belongs to his church to interpret the Divine word and providence, and in her teachers and authorities to press his claims upon her communion. The problem, when all the elements, divine and human, spiritual and material, are taken into account, becomes as truly one of supply and demand, as any of those furnished by our earthly political economy. In other words, the supply of pecuniary means must, under God, depend upon the quantity and quality of the enforcement by the proper agent of present duty, as shown by the present Divine demand; so that any defect in the enforcement will not fail to result in a corresponding deficiency in the supply.

The church of this day is making her presentation of God's claims upon those in her communion. If the results thus far reached in this discussion are in accordance with truth and

fact, it must be affirmed of her presentation that it is utterly inadequate. We must go still, farther and affirm it fundamentally wrong in not starting out with God's full claim. The action of the General Assembly for 1869, found on pages 931-3 of the Minutes, illustrates this point. It confesses to the too patent fact of the failure of past plans, and the imperative necessity laid upon it "to arouse the whole church to a higher standard of Christian liberality, and to put in force some method by which liberal gifts shall be made to flow in from every part of the field;" but, nevertheless, it has no whisper of any indication of a Divine call for more than a moderate advance in the supply of pecuniary means for the cause of Christ; in fine, it scarcely ventures to hope for the increase demanded to maintain the present position of the work of the Boards. The method devised by the Assembly's committee (in accordance with the expressed need in the Minutes), for making the liberality at once more free and more general, involved the apportionment of the sum estimated to be required for all the work of the Boards of the church for the current year among the various Synods, and, through these and the Presbyteries, among the churches. The whole sum apportioned, as expected to be raised, to the rich Synod of New York, with its 168 churches, its 23,000 communicants, and its untold millions of wealth, is $196,082. Is any thing more needed to show how far short the church comes of making God's full demand upon those in her communion, than the fact that this is the presentation of the Divine claim for the world's needs made by that branch of the church which in its liberality falls behind no other branch—which, in fact, may be shown by statistics of unquestioned fairness to be the leader in the generosity of its contributions for the foreign work?

What, then, is the response of the current year to this utterly inadequate presentation of God's demand for a lost world? What as compared with that of the past year? Once more by a single branch of the church may be illustrated the condition of the whole. From two appeals sent out to the membership through the religious journals, and coming from the two principal Boards, may be learned something of the present financial condition of what was the Old School branch

of the Presbyterian Church. The first appeal is from the Board of Foreign Missions, and comes from the pen of the worthy treasurer, Mr. Rankin. It runs thus:

February 1, 1870-Cash payments to date (9 months)...

.$231,210

Which would have been $9,000 larger if the average premium for gold had remained as during the preceding year.

The total receipts from churches, Sabbath-schools, legacies, and 'miscellaneous' for the year ending April 30, 1869, were....... Deducting nine months' receipts as above, to February 1, 1870...

Leaves....

required to make the receipts of this year equal to those of the last.

.$300,492

142,556

.$157,936

"It is not likely that this amount will be realized between this and the 1st of May. But the nearer it is approached, the less will be the legacy of debt transmitted by the existing Board of Foreign Missions to its successor.

"MISSION HOUSE, NEW YORK, Feb. 7, 1870.”

The other bears date January 6, 1870, and is signed by Dr. Musgrave, Secretary of the Board of Domestic Missions. We extract the following paragraphs :

"The receipts during the first ten months of the present fiscal year, viz.,— from March 1, 1869, to January 1, 1870,-as compared with the corresponding period of the preceding year, were less by twenty-eight thousand four hundred and thirty-five dollars and thirty-four cents!

"This is not all. Encouraged by the action of the General Assembly, Synods, and Presbyteries, and the assurance of many pastors that the churches would contribute more liberally than heretofore, the Board enlarged its operations and increased its liabilities. During the present year the appropriations to the first of January exceeded those of the corresponding period of the year preceding twenty-three thousand and eighty-four dollars. This increase in the liabilities of the Board, and diminution in its receipts, make an adverse difference in the present financial condition of the Board of fifty-one thousand five hundred and nineteen dollars and thirty-four cents !"

Let each judge of the prospects for himself. Altogether the worst feature in the case is the universality of this state of things. It is a fact that the supply of means is as deficient in measure as the enforcement of the demands of Christ is in

adequate. Each year calls for a louder cry over impending bankruptcy, in order to the annual extrication from financial difficulties.

Before taking leave of a theme of such profound practical importance, we pause to enumerate a few of the requisites to any right and adequate enforcement of the present pecuniary demand of God's cause, without due regard to which the supply can never, with reason, be expected to approximate to that demand.

The first and fundamental requisite to the full enforcement of the Divine claim is a more complete, general, constant, and forcible exhibition of the scriptural doctrine of the stewardship of the church under Christ, the absolute owner of all things. In the full and correct conception and reception of this truth is laid that solid foundation of principle in its application to the use of property, without which there may indeed be impulsive, spasmodic distribution, but never the intelligent, systematic, liberal, dutiful Christian giving which the word of God evidently contemplates. Having to do in this day with such grand and awful issues, the lesson of Christian beneficence deserves a place next to those first words in the home which bear to the tender conscience and the retentive memory of the little ones of the household the dawning knowledge of salvation by the crucified Jesus; claims a place only second to that of the way of life in the more elaborate unfoldings of the Scriptures, doctrinal and practical, in the Sabbath-school and Bible class; and in the exhibitions of truth and duty from the pulpit demands for itself a place no less important than that which God has given to love to our neighbor in the Decalogue. The obligation to respond in full to every call of the Head of the church must somehow be made plain beyond possible misunderstanding, and that speedily. It must be acknowledged that there are times when the professed people of God have need of the sweet and encouraging words of warning to the angel of the church at Philadelphia, but the present is rather a time when many of them need to have thundered in their ears the awful message to the angel of the church at Laodicea. Giving to God's cause has long enough been regarded as something Christians