252 MOKEY AND. THE KINGDOM. 



American Board, said to him: " Yoii ought not to do it. 

 I don't think it's right. You ought to stop giving to 

 mi.ssions and preach for us on a smaller salary " ; add- 

 ing, in conclusion, " We are heathen." A proposition 

 which few enlightened men Avould be disjwsed to con- 

 trovert, though it is a hard rub on the heathen. 



When the heathen come to the light, they are much 

 more Christian in their conceptions of duty and privi- 

 lege, and shame us by their giving. Six native Chris- 

 tians, living on the banks of the Euphrates, whose prop- 

 erty averaged, perhaps, eight hundred dollars, gave to- 

 ward their chapel and school-room three hundred and 

 eight dollars, an average of more than fifty dollars each. 

 "This contribution," adds the missionary, "means for 

 one of those poor mountaineers more than one thousand 

 days' ivork.''' "It is an amazing circumstance that, in 

 1881, the 1,200 church-members belonging to the mis- 

 sions of the United Presbyterian Board, in Egypt— most 

 of them very poor men and women— raised £4,546, or 

 more than $17 each, for the support of churches and 

 schools. The Baptists, among the Karens, have done 

 equally well."^ Yes; that is amazing; but it is far 

 more amazing that Christians in rich America should 

 give only fifty cents each to home missions. If we gave 

 as much per caput to home and foreign missions as they 

 gave for churches and schools, our offering would be 

 $241,000,000, instead of $10,695,000. 



Is it not evident that most of our church-members 

 have failed to learn the first principles of Christian giv- 

 ing? And many who give most largely do not seem to 

 have grasped fully the idea of stewardship, and to hold 

 themselves under obligations to use every dollar in the 

 way that will most honor God. A wealthy clergy- 

 man (!), who was a munificent giver, saw, in Paris, a 

 pin that struck his fancy, and gave $800 for it. If, in 

 the wide world that was the highest use he could find 

 for the money, it was his duty to spend it as he did. 



1 Joseph Cook, Occident, p. 125. 



