The evening telegraph. [volume] (Philadelphia [Pa.]) 1864-1918, 1871-05-11
SPIRIT OF THE PRESS.
EDITORIAL, OPINIONS OF THE LEADING JOURNALS
UPON CURRENT ToPIos-ooMPILED EVERY
DAY FOR THE EVENING TELEGRAPH
TITHING AND CHARITY.

From the N Y. Tribune
We called attention some time ago to the
efforts being made in England and this coun-
try to form a Religious Alliance of clergy
men and laity in the different churches, the
object being to ignore, as far as practicable,
all surface differences, and to unite in pro-
mitigating the pure, highest spirit of Chris
tianity. The gentlemen from England, dis
tinguished for both their piety and practical
ability, who are introducing the scheme in
this country have hit upon a somewhat novel
plan of accomplishing their end. On ar
irving at q city they proceed to invite the
leading ministers in it to a breakfast, and
after their bodies and hearts are thus genially
warmed and fed find them, it appears, in a
conciliatory spirit for welcoming innovations.
We would suggest, however, that there is one
point in their great and altogether nobly-
featured plan on which they dwell with what
seems to us undue energy-that of the volun-
tary setting aside by the Association of "a
tenth part of his income for the service of
the Lord" It is insisted ON indeed with so
much vehemence that it would be easy to
mistake it for the principal motive of the
movement. One of the speakes, when urg-
ing it in Philadelphia, remarked that he had
never doubted its propriety but once, and
that was when he was pressing it on the Irish
people during the time of the famine. cit was
difficult, he tells us, ''to ask q man to give
away "a tenth of his income to the Lord
when his children were starving for bread !"
So difficult that it is pity the reverend gen.
tleman had not found it impossible.
This system of tithing, or systematic be-
nevolence, as it is called, is rapidly extend
ing into all the sects, and, although COM
mendable in its spirit, it seems to us that,
like all other prescribed and arbitrary rules
of action, if not under the surveillance of
plain common sense, it is apt to become a
most oppressive yoke. Who is to determine
what is ''the service of the Lord" to
which we must devote a tenth part of our
earnings? We have known sincere men and
women, striving honestly to serve God as
they had been taught, stint and fleece their
workpeople down to the half-starved washer
woman of the last penny in order to give
their tithes religiously to furnish some mon-
ster church with stained glass or carved wood
A man of practical sense might question,
too, whether the money spent in fitting the
children God has given him to be strong
helpful men in the world was not offered to
the service of the Lord quite as much as that
which went to aid in the doubtful education
of some hypothetical Mesopotamian. We
are little surprised that some keen-witted
Irishman did not inquire of the reverend
tither whether to furnish bread for his
famished children was not as binding duty
at the st. Nicholas and Continental, however
savored with Attic or pious salt. Not that
stained glass, and missionaries, and the break
fasts of our friends of the Association, are
not thoroughly good things in their place.
But duties are relative, and no man can say
of them, $50, here is Christi" or $50,
therei"
Our much abused French and German
cousins have an element in their home educa-
Of obi1drop xubioh 10 oil thar
overlooked with us. 1t is that of the great
brotherhood of man. To French child le
pGu0re is one of his kinsfolk, as much part
of his every day life as mother or father enters
into his most trivial plans. He is used to see
his clothes, his meals, his very toys, preserved
carefully and handed over to the pensioners
of the family. Charity is not a seldom, gusty,
impulsive hberality as with us. 1t forms part
of the economies of the household. The
Germans, with less effusion or sentiment in
the matter, act with precisely the same spirit.
There are no people who, in plain matter-of-
fact way, extend SO much help to the needy
or suffering of their own nation. Now this
is a tithing of another kind, such, it seems to
us, as Christ himself would have taught.
Whether child or a man sets aside pre-
cisely five or ten per cent. for religious pur-
poses matters little; nor will it, we fancy, as
is shrewdly hinted, at all increase in the long
run his bank account. But when the poor
are always with us, in truth as in fact, when
our brother man, rich and poor, loved and
hated, shares not only our money, but oui
thoughts, our plans, our active help, not as
an enthusiasm or sentiment, but as an every
day practical matter of course, we shall have
touched the root of the true ''service of the
Lord, and may confidently wait to hear the
words, ''As ye did it to one of the least oi
these, you did it unto Me"
A CRUISE ROUND THE WORLD
From the N. Y Times.
A history of the cruise round the Yorlt