Such is our present attitude in relation to the work of benevolence. Now shall we abuse this confidence, despise our privileges, and show ourselves unworthy of our almost angelic exaltation? Shall we make this liberation from the specific requisition of tithes "an occasion to the flesh," an excuse for less pecuniary sacrifices than the Jews were subjected to? What ingratitude! How displeasing to our Heavenly Father who has raised us thus high!
Hence, exemption from tithes, instead of relaxing our obligations to beneficence, rather strengthens them. As charity is purely a matter of voluntariness, the whole soul must be enlisted in it. We must not only guard against a betrayal of our trust, but against dispositions in the least at variance with its duties. We must keep our hearts in sympathy with Christ; lest, failing in sympathy with him, we fail to imitate him.
Let these responsibilities, together with the ingratitude and contempt of God's favor implied in the non-fulfilment, be earnestly contemplated. Let us tremble lest we make the privilege of a more spiritual beneficence, and excuse "for withholding more than is meet," and turn the blessing into a curse.
13. That benevolence is the measure of personal piety. Personal piety is personal resemblance to Christ. "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus." Christ's character is essentially love. This induced him to die for lost man. Now just so far as we resemble Christ we shall imitate him, and, therefore, feel for those on whom the wrath of God is still abiding. And just so far as we feel for them, we shall be willing to do for them; and just so far as we are willing to do for them, we shall contribute of our substance in proportion to our means to relieve their spiritual necessities. So that our beneficence or sacrifices for the extension of the Redeemer's kingdom, will be the just measure of our love to him. This truth we should wear in our hearts. We should make it a principle to give that amount which we shall be satisfied to recognize as the exponent of our piety, and be content that others should thus regard it; such as we shall be willing to pen down and hang up in our bed-chambers, so that we can contemplate it every evening and morning as our full estimation of Christ's dying love;—such that after counting our herds and flocks, examining our barns and granaries, surveying our merchandise, and reckoning up our dues, we can enter our closets and pray for the conversion of the world without blushing before God. Does any one shrink from this criterion of his piety? I fear he will shrink away from the presence of his final Judge, and bury himself in the darkness of hell; his works and conscience alike testifying his unfitness for the world of light.
14. That the true mission of the church in the present age is beneficence. Though the gospel has been preached nearly 2000 years, yet a deep night of spiritual darkness is still brooding over the greatest portion of the world. Millions on millions have no knowledge of the Saviour, and other millions have no right appreciation of his truth and grace; while, blinded by sin and fascinated by its treacherous charms, they are treading their way, rank after rank, to woes everlasting. God's providence seems now to be moving upon the spiritual chaos, preparing it for the reception of light. Obstacles to the introduction of the gospel into benighted regions are fast giving way. The kingdoms spread beneath the sun, from north to south, from China to the farthest verge of the west, are seemingly in the posture of waiting for evangelical instruction. The Macedonian cry is coming up from the four winds. It is made to the church, the sacramental host of God's elect; and they must answer it.
God appoints, in some respects, special duties to different ages and nations. It was the peculiar mission of European Christians in the sixteenth century to break the yoke of papal supremacy; of England in the time of Cromwell to waken those notes of ecclesiastical and civil freedom which are still reverberating among the mountains of Europe, and shakings dynasties; of our fathers to achieve the political independence of the United States,—to plant the genial tree of liberty, and water it with their blood. Now what does the providence of God indicate as the special ministry of the church in the present age? It is written all over the face of the world. We learn it in the awakened condition of heathen, barbarous, and half-civilized countries; in the stir of intellectual energy which is sweeping over the kingdoms, jostling thrones and alarming monarchs; in the tottering pillars of corrupt religions, and of long-established institutions of iniquity; in the progress of governmental science in connection with political liberty, and the extension of the arts of civilization; in augmented facilities for traveling, together with increased efforts for education, and the consequent quickening of mind; in the degradation of those "who know not God," the wants of seamen, of the oppressed, of the spiritually destitute both in our own and other lands, and in the charitable movements of the times. All these seem to declare unequivocally that the special work of the church in this age is benevolence—to toil, to endure privations, to make sacrifices of ease and of property to evangelize the nations. God has opened channels flowing past almost every man's door, ready to convey his donations to distant regions of the globe, carrying light and salvation wherever they go. The appalling condition of the heathen in bygone ages has been as great and pitiable as now; but never have there been so many available opportunities to reach them. These opportunities impose new obligations.
We have seen in a preceding part of this essay, that our bounties should be in a compound proportion to calls and ability. This is a principle which the present generation would do well to consider; letting it penetrate the very heart's core. To meet such emergencies as are now transpiring on the moral stage, perhaps, was one reason why Christ designated no specific ratio of income for charity. He foresaw there would be crises when no proportion would be adequate, and when the christian heart would yearn to give more than his income, even all his living. And may not the present be such a crisis?
Indeed, the multiplied opportunities afforded us of invading the dominions of the prince of darkness plainly intimate that the present is a crisis demanding the most generous sacrifices for God. The sigh of every breeze that sweeps over the blood-stained regions of idolatry declares it. The cries and outstretched arms of millions sinking into the everlasting gulf declare it. Then let it be laid up in the mind as a settled truth, that it is our peculiar ministry to break the chains of ignorance and superstition, to demolish the habitations of cruelty, to crush the thrones of intellectual and moral enthralment, to overthrow the temples of idolatry, and bring up man from his long degradation to reunion with God through the blood of the Lamb. There has probably been no age since the foundation of the world, which has demanded so great contributions as this, and, perhaps, no subsequent age will, till the desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose. At least in a few generations we trust the Gospel light shall illumine every shore. Then there will be no such urgent calls on our charities; certainly none pressing with such undying interests. This, therefore, is emphatically the age of giving; for the bulk of the church can aid effectually in bringing about the happy consummation of millennial glory in no other way. Would that Christians of the present generation could be induced to look at this truth in its intense application to themselves individually. Would that its accents could be made to ring over every hill top, and echo through every valley in Christendom; startling the soldiers of the cross to deeds of love, as the voice of Peter the hermit once bristled with arms the plains of Europe to shed the blood of infidels.
Not long since, thousands were starving and dying in Ireland. A cry of anguish came up, and thousands of generous American hearts responded to the call. This was noble. It was thought to be an especial occasion for benevolence. Who did not feel that every Irish landholder should have shared his abundance with the suffering and dying poor around him? But what is the death of the body to the death of the soul! What is the temporal destruction of a few thousands to the eternal damnation of hundreds of millions! Was it the duty of the wealthy Irish to feed their starving neighbors? And since the providence of God has made the remotest of earth's dwellers who are perishing for lack of vision our neighbors, should we not supply them with the bread of heaven, and thus prevent untold agonies? I ask every candid reader, is not the present a special occasion for benevolence? and if the church is to be the instrument by which God has determined to work in restoring the kingdoms to his Son, will it not be such an occasion till that blessed period arrives, when there shall be nothing to hurt or destroy in all God's holy mountain?
15. The duties growing out of the possession of property in view of death, judgment, and eternity. The obligations imposed upon us by the possession of wealth may be irksome, but we cannot escape them; we must bear them to the judgment. In our pride we may resolve that we will use our money as we please; but God commands us to use it as he pleases. A vivid sense, then, of the tremendous scenes before us should be ever associated in our minds with ideas of property. We should realize how our wealth will appear in the final hour, as its pleasures and enchanting illusions begin to fade from the dying eye, and as we reflect how short and unsatisfactory, like "a dream when one awaketh," all these enjoyments have been. Rioting amid the luxuries of affluence, and giddy with its bewildering joys, these may be unpleasant thoughts. But why regard thoughts of that which we cannot avoid, unpleasant? We must not only think of these dread realities, we must meet them, and experience all their joy or woe. Then let us realize, now and always, how all our uses of property will appear at the bar of God, where the thought of every misimprovement will be sharper than a serpent's fang; how, in eternity, as we contemplate those who might have been saved by our liberality in undying misery; how, if we are lifting up our eyes with them in torments; how, if, while we ourselves shall be saved as by fire, we behold them excluded from those blissful seats by our covetousness. Let each one put these searching questions to his own conscience; and let him take heed that his gifts be such, that their remembrance will not only sweeten his dying moments, but diffuse a fragrance over all his future being.