Washington standard. [volume] (Olympia, Wash. Territory) 1860-1921, 1897-08-27
Abolish the system.

I
pressed.
If church collections must be con.
tinued let the sordid business be rele.
gated to some weekday service, and
not on the holy Sabbath when the
minds and souls of devout people
are supposed to be lifted above the
world and engaged in the contempta.
ton of something higher and more
spiritual than quarters, dimes and
nickels.
Hundreds of people go to church
perfectly able and willing to contrib
ute literally towards the support Of
religious service, but it is something
distasteful il not antagonistic to true
religious growth, to have the plate
thrust before ones face morning and
evening on the Sabbath day, by
solemn-visaged deacons, who affect
the demand if they do not say it in
audible words, "Your admission, sir"
The most well-to-do people do not al.
ways have the coin ut hand which
they would drop upon the plate; but
the failure to then and there contrib
ute something in the line of money
is always construed in Il way quite
unfavorable to the unlucky wight
whose purse was not put into the
pocket OF his Sunday pants and whose
wife's pockets are also empty.
Somebody has said that there are
two things that never fail to come,
namely. death and the tax-collect-
Or; Verify, he might have added,
"and the church collection"
There is something more than a
humorous thrust in the old story
about a boat-load of pleasure-seekers
being in danger of drowning, and when
it was found that nobody ON board
could pray, one individual realizing
that the case was desperate one
and that some sort of religious service
should be resorted to, proposed that IL
collection be taken up! We are not
informed as to the outcome of the sad
affair; it is quite certain, however,
that somebody must have escaped to
tell the story.
Preachers tell us that salvation is
free, but the Sunday collection, al
ways taken in the preliminary part of
the service, would seem to so modify
the comforting assurance as to make
it conditional affair in a worldly
point of view; that is to say, salvation
is free in all our popular churches if
paid for in advance.
Many good people are discussing the
question as to the good or bad re.
suits of Sunday collections. They
shrewdly adopt the safe policy, how
ever, of continuing the practice while
the discussion is pending. When
Christ was upon earth and engaged in
his ministrations, he pursued course
totally different from that adopted by
those who professedly assume to be
his devout followers nowadays. Sal
walton as offered by our Great Ex-
emplar was indeed free, without
money and without price. Instead
of bleeding the people who flocked to
hear him, he fed them; instead of
soliciting, he dispensed; in fact, he
made himself the inexhaustible foun-
tain from which flowed in unstinted
streams every possible form of worldly
blessing as well as spiritual sustenance
for the suffering children of men.
1t even turns out that a morbid
eagerness for the potential dollar has
we'll nigh demoralized the humble
Salvation Army, whom religious critics
on both sides of the Atlantic had be-
gun to regard as the true representa-
tives of the meek and lowly Jesus
of Nazareth.
1t is not denied that it takes money
to run churches and religious societies,
as they are at present organized and
conducted, but preachers must be.
come evangelists in the true sense of
the word before the world will have be-
come converted and righteousness
shall reign throughout the earth.
st. Paul set the example when he
declared that he was a charge to no
man, but that by the labor OF his
hands he ministered to his temporal
wants and necessities.
Let preachers and laymen ponder
these things.