13G EEV. HENKY LANSDELL^ D.D., ETC., ON 



tithe-giving was known and observed also among other 

 European nations such as the Samothracians, Liparians, 

 Gauls, and even Britons and Saxons. 



And these facts are witnessed to by the most famous authors 

 of antiquity, such as Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, 

 Aristophanes, Plutarch, and Demosthenes among the Greeks ; 

 and, among the Romans, by Varro, Juhus Caesar, Pliny 

 and others ; their testimony as a Avhole tending to show 

 that the Greeks, Romans, and all other principal civilized 

 but heathen nations of early Europe recognized it as a 

 religious duty to offer a part of their property to the gods, 

 the proportion offered being to the whole, rarely less, but 

 in some cases more, than a tenth. 



Wliat, then, is suggested by this array of facts, from early 

 Eiu-ope, Eastern Africa, and Western Asia, concerning tithe- 

 giving? 



When philologists and granmiarians observe that many 

 words of a class (belonging, for instance, to agriculture) 

 linger in use among peoples now widely separated, and 

 having no visible connection with one another, these students 

 of comparative tongues infer that at some time, in the 

 remote past, the ancestors of such peoples must have lived 

 together and spoken such words in a common language. 

 And such philological observations, comparisons, and infer- 

 ences are called "scientific." Let us then be similarly 

 scientific Avith the facts we have had under review. 



We have traced the practice of tithe-giving into almost 

 every known country of importance in what Ave call the 

 ancient Avestern Avorld. But Avhen did the practice begin t 

 Roman history takes us back only to the day Avlien two 

 boys Avere suckled by a she-Avolf, nor does Grecian lore go 

 far behind the Trojan Avar. 



Egyptian hieroglyphics conduct us further back, and the 

 cuneiform inscriptions of Western Asia, perhaps, further stilh 

 But, though the earliest historical records seem to bear Avit- 

 ness to the existence of the practice of tithe-giving from the 

 remotest times, yet have Ave found no secular inscription that 

 tells us when, or Avhere, tithe-giving began, or avIio issued 

 the laAV for its observance. Yet here are the facts before us, 

 and they have to be accounted for. If it was originally left 

 to every man to give for religious pin-poses according to his 

 oAvn inclination as much or as little as he pleased, then hoAv 

 should so many peoples have hit upon a tenth for God's 

 portion, rather than a fifth, or a fifteenth, or any other 



