Tithingman

“ And we have said to the Bishops that if any man refuses to pay his Tithing, try him for his fellowship; and if he still refuses, cut him off from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and so we say now. We have not required this of the people, but the Lord has required it, and that is enough for us and for all the Latter-day Saints upon the earth. If we live our religion we will be willing to pay Tithing.
We feel sometimes as though the people did not live as near to the Lord as they should, and we have a right to feel so. ”

“ But tithing according to God’s plan and in the spirit which He has laid down in His word must and will bring great blessing.
One of our missionaries in India tells of a native who was an earnest Christian and a believer in tithing. He had a friend who was converted and he was anxious to have him tithe also. After some effort to persuade him and seemingly without avail, he gave his friend a sound thrashing and enforced the tithe by brawn and not by persuasion of conscience. This was zeal without knowledge. You can no more make a man give than you can make him pray. ”

“ Who takes either for his own robs God, His word being witness. The same question arises as to why both are not more distinctly taught in the New Testament. Both are old and well established. Each is a minimum demanded without reservation. If this be not true of the tithe, then there is no law governing that grace of God in which we are to abound, unless it be that we should hold with some of the Fathers that “those who have received liberty should set aside all their possessions for the Lord’s purpose.” ”

“ Pay your tithing, just because you like to, not unless you want to. They say we cut people off the Church for not paying tithing; we never have yet, but they ought to be. God does not fellowship them. The law of tithing is an eternal law. The Lord Almighty never had his Kingdom on the earth without the law of tithing being in the midst of his people, and he never will. It is an eternal law that God has instituted for the benefit of the human family, for their salvation and exaltation. ”

“ I look upon this law of tithing as an equitable law: it comes alike upon the rich and the poor. The poor person who pays his ten dollars tithing gives as much in proportion as the richest man in the community. The rich gives no more than a tenth, and the poorest gives no less. We are all alike, then, in this respect when we observe this law of tithing; and it should be strictly observed by us, if we want the blessings of God to rest upon us.
I have thought, I do not know how truly, that of late there has been a disposition among the Latter-day Saints to be penurious in this respect. ”

“ If a man has not faith in God he is not very likely to pay tithing, or make many offerings. To use a common expression, he looks after "number one," and self-interest rules him. Such a man is an unworthy member of the Church of Christ. But when every man pays his tithing and witnesses unto God that that law is honorable in his sight, what is the result? Is anybody impoverished by it? No. Are we as Latter-day Saints any poorer because of the tithing we have paid? Not one cent. When that tithing is properly appropriated it is expended in works which add to the wealth of the entire community. ”

“ Will the people rob God? “Bring ye the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, 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.” Why not make the test? Then God even our own God will bless us with the riches of His grace, to whom be glory in the Church of Jesus Christ throughout all ages, world without end. ”

“ While tithing was not so directly pointing to the atonement, nor was it designed for that purpose, it is yet an offering to the Lord required by Him, to be used for righteous purposes and to prepare the heart of the tithe-payer to give his all to God, to consecrate all in the interest of human redemption. The Lord, in tithing, does not demand the best nor justify His people in offering that of the least value in any substance tithed. ”

“ One thing is required at the hands of this people, and to understand which there is no necessity for receiving a commandment every year, viz.—to pay their tithing. I do not suppose for a moment, that there is a person in this Church, who is unacquainted with the duty of paying tithing, neither is it necessary to have a revelation every year upon the subject. There is the law—pay one tenth. I wish to say to you, and I wish you to tell your neighbors, if there is any man or woman who do not want to pay their tithing, we do not want they should. ”

“ The institution of Tithing is one which is emphatically binding upon us, and is as essential to our salvation and exaltation in the kingdom of God, so far as temporal things are concerned, as the ordinance of baptism for the remission of sins, and the laying on of hands for the gift of the Holy Ghost are in the spiritual part of the Gospel. ”

“ We send forth Elders to the nations of the earth, as messengers of salvation to the people; and while we sustain those who go to proclaim the gospel, let us also sustain the printed word.
Enough has been said on this subject, and I do not wish to recapitulate. Let us pay our tithing, and do all we can to sustain the servants of God. And in paying our tithing we should not forget our money tithing. We hear considerable about hard times, so far as money is concerned; they who are endeavouring to sustain the work of God feel the pressure as much as anybody else. ”

“ Tithing is an institution which has prevailed from the beginning, and it looks to me as though it was the consideration required by the Lord—the Creator of the earth, from men who dwell upon it, as a material something by which they may acknowledge to him, in deed and in truth, that the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof, and by means of which they can restore to him, in the order of his appointment that which is his. ”

“ The law of Tithing was in the household of faith, the Church of God on the earth, before the old Babylonish nations were founded, and they as well as the sectarians have learned pretty much all they know from the people of God at one time or another. ”

“ This line of argument is almost unanimously accepted among Christian scholars as an adequate basis for the belief that sacrifice was a divine institution. Why is it not fully as applicable to tithing? It is not stated in Scripture, prior to the giving of the Mosaic law, that either is a divine institution. But if “divine acceptance is a demonstration of a divine institution,” the tithe has as clear a demonstration of its origin as has sacrifice. [38] Now and then in Scripture the whole business of sacrifice is spoken of in a deprecating way. ”

“ There is something connected with the law of tithing that, when men do not have faith in God, appeals to their selfishness; and for a people to be wholehearted in its observance, they need faith in God. When Israel began to decline in faith in God, their selfishness increased, and their determination became stronger and stronger to grasp everything within their reach and to retain everything they gained possession of; and as this feeling grew, tithing and freewill offerings were withheld from the house of God, and in consequence of this the blessing of God was also withheld. ”

“ A good Saint perhaps, may be honorable and upright and honest in dealing; may be a tolerably good neighbor; he may be zealous to a certain extent, according to his ideas and notions in regard to the propagation of the word of truth; he may be active and energetic in many things, but if he does right in the main, Tithing is a matter of very little importance; it is only a temporary idea, it does not concern us much, it is only meant to meet the financial affairs associated with the Church—and that is a matter of very little importance. ”

“ These things being thus considered, let your most holy piety take into wise consideration whether it is well to impose upon an ignorant race, at the beginning of the faith, the yoke of tithes, so that [288] they shall be fully exacted from house to house. It is worth considering whether the Apostles, taught by the God Christ Himself, and sent to preach to the world, required the exaction of tithes or anywhere demanded them. We know that the tithing of our substance is a very good thing; but it is better to sacrifice the tithe than to lose the faith. ”

“ He who falls below one-fourth gives less than the Jew. Having a better covenant, established on better promises, and administered by a better Mediator, shall we grumble at one-tenth, the tribute of a heathen or savage to a god he dreads and with no spark of divine love to call forth his offering? To fail to pay the tithe is not only worse than Jewish but even worse than heathenish. Nowhere do we find such niggardliness, no not even in a heathen. ”

“ The enemies of the Evangelical Church recognize it. The Mormons, the Seventh Day Adventists, the Dowieites all find the tithe sufficient to carry on their wonderful propagandas and demonstrate the argument that God’s tenth if rightly used by His Church would enable us soon to take the world for Christ. ”

“ When the New Testament opens its pages of history we find the tithe principle very scrupulously observed by the “rigidly righteous,” and perhaps by a majority of the Jewish people. The 7th chapter of Hebrews makes use of the word tithe to show that the priesthood of Christ, who is after the order of Melchizedek, is superior to the priesthood of the Levites, because they in the loins of their father Abraham paid tithes to Melchizedek. Barring this chapter there are just six other places where the tenth, or tithe, occurs. ”

“ Do they want to know what is done with the Tithing. If the Lord requires one-tenth of my ability to be devoted to building temples, meeting-houses, school-houses, to schooling our children, gathering the poor from the nations of the earth, bringing home the aged, lame, halt and blind, and building houses for them to live in, that they may be comfortable when they reach Zion, and to sustaining the Priesthood, it is not my prerogative to question the authority of the Almighty in this, nor of his servants who have charge of it. If I am required to pay my Tithing, it is my duty to pay it. ”

“ We ask and demand only spiritual goods. The tithes which we ask and which you owe us are not temporal goods; as the Holy Sacrament, which you receive, is a divine and holy thing, so no one may receive the tithe but us, who are monks of the order of the Observance.”
The poor simple women, who believed the good friars were more like angels than terrestrial beings, did not refuse to pay the tithe. There was not one who did not pay in her turn, from the highest to the lowest, even the wife of the Lord was not excused. ”

“ We are dealing with that which has no end, which is true as much in respect to the tithes paid as to any other part of this divine arrangement. Any claim that the Levites had was only for the time. Any claim that Christ has had is living, is perpetual and no posterior grant can make it null and void. Here, then, we have a strong and inconvertible statement of the claim that Christ has on the tithe and that at just the point where we might be led to expect it. It seems to me that a man must be hunting for something when he passes this by and cries out for proof. ”

“ The law of tithing is a commandment with promise of reward for obedience. No man ever observed this law but he was blessed in so doing, for God is both able and willing to fulfill all his promises when the conditions are complied with on our part. Those duties which God requires may seem a burden to the disobedient and unfaithful, but to the willing and obedient they are sources of blessing, pleasure and delight and are no burden at all. Our burdens become lighter in proportion to our increasing faithfulness. ”

“ Some of the Bishops and Elders become so contracted that it is too hard for them to pay their tithing when it pertains to them as individuals, for it is an individual salvation. Let us be one in these things, and be up and doing while it is time; and it is time all the time, and it is time in eternity all the time, and always will be; and when we get into the next stage of action it will be time while we are there, and it will be eternity around us. Let us go to work and purify our hearts—our tabernacles—and purify and cleanse our houses, and let us rise up as a people. ”

“ Tithing is a law of God which we are required to obey, and it is binding upon all the Latter-day Saints, the poor as well as the rich. In some places the widow, who depends upon the Church for support, pays one-tenth of her income as Tithing. ”

“ We have sued to them many times for our rights. We have asked for bread, and they have given us a stone; we have asked for a fish, and they have given us a serpent; we have asked for an egg, and they have given us a scorpion; so we have got to live within ourselves and trust in God. We will pay our taxes and we will pay our tithing. But there are some among us who, probably, would like to meddle with our tithing. I wonder if they would like to meddle with the tithing that is paid to build churches in the east, and with the donations made for that purpose? ”

“ We are told by some of the unbelievers that we pay tithing and we are dupes to fanaticism, that we are priest-ridden, and bound down with galling chains of oppression. That same class of persons will boast that they pay no tithing. ”

“ One thing I do know, that when our tithing is paid in the north and in the south it costs almost as much to get it here as it is worth. What is paid here is clear profit, and is useful and beneficial for us to work upon. If the brethren pay their tithing, and pay it willingly, we are satisfied; that is all that is required of them. If my brethren who live near here, whom the Lord is blessing, have a mind to put in some teams extra for drawing rock, I give them the privilege. ”