The Washington herald., 1914-03-15
Inquiry Into Motives.
By RIGHT REV. w

By RIGHT REV. VIM. LAWRENCE. J.
When a citizen has paid his income
tax. no matter how much trouble he may
have had to make up his accounts, h'
is sure that the sum that he pays will
pass by an orderly system through tbs
proper hands in his own town or city
into other proper hands, and will finally
center up at Washington, where hun
dreds of thousands of accounts will be
figured out to the exact cent, so that
from decade to decade the results, with
the sources of the income. can be tabu-
lated and known, and legislation enact
ed based upon these reliable figures.
When a man invests 800 in the stock
OF a corporation, he expects the same
care and system. When a man places
SIS in the contribution plate in church, Re
has a right to ask of the church the
same safeguards that he demands of the
government; and when a poor woman
drops a dime. a part of her hard-earned
wages. into the plate, she not only has
q right to ask the same, but the church
has a right to demand that the utmost
care be taken in the counting for and
the use OF this sacred gift.
To make these statements, which ought
to be self-evident. is to suggest a num-
ber of questions. When that dime is
uTOpp6O lllo lIit PldtCs 10 II Ndhth ooA
and accounted for by officials who are
as safeguarded from error and from the
possibility of criticism as in a bank ?
When the treasurer of the parish has re-
ceived that dime. does II go into an ac-
counting with such system as 20 enable
the vestry as well as The treasurer to
know exactly what becomes of that and
,very other dime. and whether every
dollar goes to the object for which II
a
mand OF the vestry, as every treasurer OF
any great corporation demands, that mis-
accounts shall be audited. not in a care
less, voluntary way. but by responsible
accountants, so that he may be relieved
Of the responsibility of error?
Lack of Method.
When the parish reports to the do
cesan convention, Is the demand made by
the convention that that report shall be
presented under such a uniform system
of accounting as viii enable the diocese
to know what the different parishes are
giving, and for exactly what purposes
And when dioceses report at the end of
three years to the general convention,
have they been required to present their
reports in such an orderly and syste-
matte way as to enable the committee on
the state Of the Church to present to the
church figures which will be as reliable
as are the iigures presented by the
United States Government as the results
Of taxation, or by those OF any well-or-
dered corporation?
As a matter of fact. when the COM
mittee on the state OF the ch;frch re-
port, as they do, that s5s.oso, 4S4.3s have
been contributed by the church in the
last three years, we have no knowledge
as to whether those figures, exact, as
they look, may not be several millions
of dollars out of the way, for we have
no responsible method of discovering as
to whether a parish or a diocese has
made complete and authoritative report
with the result that the church as a whole
never knows exactly where she is finan-
cislly. what she has done, and what
she is able to do for different purposes
The members OF the church are bonn