Introduction

Only a few years after the echoes of Lyman Beecher's peroration had faded away, it became clear that the benevolence movement needed to reform itself if it was going to thrive as a lively force within American Protestantism. One of its earliest sympathetic critics was Pharcellus Church (1801-1886).

His life spanned much of the nineteenth century. Born on the frontier in upstate New York, he attended the fledgling Baptist school, the Hamilton Literary and Theological Institute, and then served three congregations in New England and New York. Church spent the second half of his long career as a religious journalist and published in the New York Chronicle, a weekly newspaper that eventually merged with The Examiner.

He wrote his first book, The Philosophy of Benevolence,[1] in the winter of 1835 while he was in between pastorates. A large and sprawling compendium of advice and theological judgments, this work was among the early efforts in the nineteenth century to criticize the “benevolent movement,” as Church and his contemporaries liked to call it. 

Church shared much of Lyman Beecher's worldview. Along with a fair number of ante-bellum evangelical Protestants, both were enthusiastic advocates of foreign missions. Both believed in the abundance of money, if only church folk were willing to share it. (Indeed, Pharcellus Church spoke easily about the “superabundance” of fiscal resources.) And both believed that a generation or two of generous givers could quicken the arrival of the millennium.

But there were some subtle differences in emphases between the two. First, Church fretted more about the developing split in American culture between what later generations would describe as “spirituality” and “materialism.” In one vignette, for instance, he portrayed a “rich man” whose resistance to all philanthropic overtures was not so much covetousness as it was “the habit of feeling that pecuniary considerations and religion were adverse to each other.”[2] In the succinct words of the reluctant giver, “The union of the two is of the devil.”[3] The Philosophy of Benevolence was written to combat that heresy.

Second, Church was more inclined to stress the potential giver's deeply entrenched resistance to all appeals on behalf of benevolent causes. Fund-raising, he seemed to imply, pitted one will against another. That sort of will-against-will intellectual and moral combat figured in his fictional account of the visit of several mission advocates to the palatial home of “Deacon Brooks.” A shortened version of that encounter is included in the following Resource.

Most important, Pharcellus Church was quicker than Beecher in assaulting the money raising methods of American Protestantism. As a young minister, he had seen enough of the burgeoning benevolent movement to wonder about its future. His concern centered upon the agency system, the practice of benevolent societies in sending out agents–a “swarm of beggars,” according to the fictional “Deacon Brooks.” Resource 4.3 also includes a wry portrait of these agents and their dubious fund-raising tactics in congregations. “There is too much art and contrivance in such a method of originating benevolent funds to be adapted to nature. . .. The public will not long endure to be thus jaded, teazed and hood-winked.”[4]

Therefore reform was in order. Pharcellus Church's proposals reached well beyond dismantling the agency system. He wanted to return to what he thought would be a more honest, straight-forward teaching about giving, one that embodied both “reason and Scripture.”[5] Instead of relying upon visiting field agents who disrupt local church life with their polished “charity sermons,” why not encourage ministers and congregations to return to the Biblical teachings about giving? The Old Testament suggested the bare minimal standard of the tithe, while the New Testament advocated gifts that were “proportioned to our pecuniary ability.”[6] In fact he believed that the “founders of the Christian church” required “that all its members should submit to be taxed in proportion to their ability.” Church also advocated congregational discipline of stingy givers.

Those same motifs of thought would return again and again in the course of the nineteenth century. In retrospect, The Philosophy of Benevolence pointed toward a vision of giving that would appeal to some Protestants over the next one hundred years.

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Source: Selections from Pharcellus Church, The Philosophy of Benevolence (New York: Leavitt, Lord and Co., 1836).

There has always appeared to me something singular in the conduct of professors of religion, in reference to the use of their worldly substance. If I mistake not, the cases are rare, in which the adoption of the Christian faith leads to any new modes of procedure, in regard to the use of money. It is not so with time, the gift of speech, or any other earthly blessing. The converted man readily conceives that he ought to devote time to secret and family prayer, to attending meetings, not only on the Sabbath, but other days, and a failure to do so, is considered on all hands, as inseparable from a decline of the Christian graces. And in confessing their faults, Christians as often allude to the parsimony, of which they have been guilty in the time devoted to prayer, and other religious exercises, as to any other sin.

But do they ever confess that they have robbed God in tithes and offerings, that they have not given as much money as they ought, that covetousness has taken a strong hold upon their feelings, and that this has caused their spiritual decline? No, never did I hear such a confession. And is it because they are innocent in this respect, and never withhold from the cause of humanity and of God, the money which they ought to bestow? Oh, that such a plea were founded in truth! It cannot be; for the great majority of those who are connected with our churches, either never give at all to religious objects, or at least, have no fixed principle in doing it. Do they feel sinless on this point, because the duty of devoting money to God is left equivocal in the scriptures? This is not possible; for they contain ten inculcation's of that duty, where they do one even for observing the Lord's day. And the former duty is, to say the least, equally sustained by the light of nature with the latter. But if a Christian, in addition to restricting his times of daily devotion, should work on the Sabbath in the same manner as any other day, he would not be left to a casual confession, but the voice of the church would be raised against him in tones of reprobation that he could not mistake. While at the same time, the majority of that church perhaps, act in regard to devoting money religiously, just as that delinquent member does with his time. They give nothing, or they give casually, irregularly, as feeling or convenience may dictate.

Moreover we employ the gift of speech, in praising, praying, and other religious exercises, and should esteem our piety exceedingly deficient if we never pronounced a word in favor of the cause of God. But what are words compared with the more solid arguments of charity and beneficence? Thousands who are the most conscientious in introducing religion into their conversations, practice in reference to plans of doing good with their money a remorseless neglect, owing either to their not having attended to the principles in which this duty is founded, or to supposing that their families have a natural right to the whole of their income, or more probably to deeply seated habits of covetousness. It is to be feared that the number who seriously aim at acting as they ought on this point, is extremely small.  And if we often fail of doing as we ought when we aim at doing thus, how certain is it that we wholly fail, when no such aim has yet been formed.

It may be said that this is an age of beneficence, and that in these remarks, we do not allow due credit for the immense sums which are annually contributed to the different plans of human improvement. To this we reply, that when we say that the number who act on a system of liberal beneficence, in the use of their money is small, we mean that it is so, in comparison with what it ought to be, not with what it has been. For, though the present age is extremely deficient in this respect, there have been those much more so. How small is the aggregate of all that is annually given in this country, for benevolent purposes, compared with the number in it, who profess religion! If it were equally divided among them, how small would be the amount for each! Probably a tax of a cent to the dollar, upon all the property in the hands of the American church, would furnish an aggregate of ten times the value of our annual charities, even in this proud age of benevolence!

But, besides that portion of our charities which comes from persons out of the church, (and it is considerable,) how large a deduction must be made for those who give merely on the spur of the moment, without any conception of its being their duty to act upon system! And if the motives of all were brought to the test of our Saviour's precept, how sadly deficient would they be found! But when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth: that thine alms may be in secret, and thy Father which seeth in secret, himself shall reward thee openly.

That among those who make it a point to give, there is no fixed principle of action, as there is in supporting their families, is evident from the inequality of their benefactions. Some that have the stewardship of large estates, give little, while others with a moderate income, give liberally. Hence, either the one or the other, are not in the way of their duty; for truth and duty are uniform, speaking the same language in every heart, and producing the same results upon every life.

[A few paragraphs later, the author recounts the efforts of several “solicitors” for evangelical causes to raise money from an apparently wealthy man. After opening the “massy iron gate” which led into “the spacious enclosure of Deacon Brooks’ mansion” and “the marble walks within,” they approached the front.]

. . . [T]hey found themselves at the door of the mansion, into which they were welcomed by its owner with great cordiality. Deacon B. was now a man of forty-five, with a form erect, athletic, and rather inclining to corpulency, and with a demeanor portly and dignified. With the exception of the lines which care had worn in his visage, and which rather increased the interest of his appearance, his face was as smooth as ever, his cheek as florid, and his spirits as brilliant.

His treatment of the visitors seemed to say, the best that this house affords is yours – 'What'll you have to refresh you? – a thousand welcomes. Your mountain breezes to one who has been pent up in the city are like being fanned by angel-wings. Truly, God made the country, but man made the town. How fare all things in your village? Well, I hope.'

Thus, an aspect of pleasantry was spread over the whole scene, till the solicitors began cautiously to disclose the object of their visit, when Deacon B. instantly put himself into an attitude of resistance, and made them feel that they were intruding upon forbidden ground.

Before they had proceeded half through their account of the outfit, he rose from his seat, folded his arms across his breast, and took one or two stately rounds on the floor of his spacious parlor, then said, 'Gentlemen, I wish you could be in our city one week to witness the swarms of beggars with which we are continually infested. They come up like flies on all the coast.'

'But do you give them any thing,' inquired the lawyer. 'I grant that there is a better way of filling the coffers of benevolence, than that of doing it by agents; that if the churches would do their duty, much of this labor and expense would be superseded, but'

Here Deacon B., impatiently interrupted, 'I give, I give, yes, I do my full share towards supporting our own church, and that is enough for any man.'

'Then you do nothing for missions,' said one of the solicitors.

Deacon B., ‘I, yes, our pastor thought when an agent was along last winter, that we ought not to be behind others, and we raised for him one thousand dollars, of which I gave one hundred.'

Solicitor. 'That was well; and having made so good beginning, we hope you will aid us too.'

'Aid you, no. I had as lief throw my money into the ocean, as to lay it out upon these paltry charities, that are springing up like noxious weeds, all over the country. Your nutshell schemes may do for narrow minds, and empty purses; but when I give, it shall be to something that has dignity, and that fills a broad space in the public eye. Then I can feel a security that an object will be accomplished worthy of my money.'

'Allow me to inquire, Deacon B.,' said the lawyer, 'have you any plan of serving God and your generation, in the use of that estate of which you are made the steward? Do you render it productive of the greatest possible amount of good? From how many hearts have you extracted with it, the thorn of anguish? How many wanderers has it enabled you to direct into the way of truth and eternal life? Do you as regularly serve Christ with your money, as with your time, your voice, and with other earthly blessings?  Have you yet yielded to the claims which he makes upon your worldly substance?' 'As to that matter,' said Deacon B., 'I have always done my part to support my minister, and I take pleasure in doing so, for he is a learned and celebrated man, and I am instructed by his sermons. I have not been backward in paying my money, to repair and embellish our meeting-house, and to keep the parsonage in good condition. These things I have done as regularly, as I have provided for my own family. Why is not that serving God with my property?'

'Deacon B.' rejoined the lawyer, 'you pay your money to educate your children also, but is that a reason for your doing nothing to instruct the children of the poor and the ignorant? That you are under obligation to the latter as well as to your own, is a principle recognized by our civil authorities; and hence you are required under the pains and penalties of law, to pay an annual tax for the purpose of general education. If such a law is rounded in equity, then would you not be bound as a Christian, to do something for the general purposes of education, even if you were not required by law? And are there not cases in which you are thus bound, where the civil authorities make no demand upon you?

'You take care of your family when they are sick, but is that visiting the fatherless and widow in their afflictions? In these things you do better certainly, than those who will not educate their own children, nor watch over their sick families. The question is not whether you make it a point to do some duties in the use of your money, but whether you do them all.

‘In supporting public worship for your own benefit, and that of your family, you certainly do better than those who take no interest at all in matters of this kind, neither for their own benefit, nor for that of others. But is this a gift? Is it charity? Do you not obtain an equivalent? Is not the instruction you receive from your minister, as well worth the money you pay him, as the labors of your school teacher are of what you pay him? If you answer, no, I imagine your minister would consider it no compliment to his talents.  You own a part of the property in your meeting house, and when you lay out money upon that, you increase the value of your property in it, besides realizing the value of what you pay in the additional comforts which you enjoy in attending worship. Moreover, the money expended upon the institutions of religion in one's own town, is fully realized in most cases, by the general rise of property, and on this very principle, infidels invest their money in such institutions. The question is, whether the additional value of property in your city arising from your religious institutions, will not more than cover the cost of them. What, therefore, do ye more than others, or more than you do, whom you put your money into a bank, to receive your regular dividends? My dear sir, is there not after all some other way of serving God and our generation, in the use of our property.'

Deacon Brooks, who had sat very uneasy under these remarks, replied rather angrily, 'Have I not told you that I gave a hundred dollars last winter, for missions; and I shall probably do something again, when I think the circumstances call for it. I would enter as promptly as any man, into plans for doing good, provided they were sufficiently ample and magnificent, to embrace the world. But to send out a single missionary, is like throwing a thimble full of sugar into the ocean, with the view of sweetening it.

'You first tell us that a population of more than six hundred millions, need missionaries, and then ask aid to place among this vast assemblage, a little handful of men, perhaps one for every ten millions. But what can one man do, for so many ignorant, polluted, besotted pagans, speaking a language to which he is a stranger, and inhabiting a climate, that may perhaps prove fatal to him, the first year of his residence among them? How should I appear, were I to require a single clerk, to transact a mercantile business of a million a year? No, no, gentlemen, I am too much a matter of fact man, to be decoyed into such visionary schemes. I am a friend to my race, and as soon as I see something devised for their melioration, that approves itself to common sense, some beginning on a scale, that shall promise a favorable ending, some plans that will bear the severe test of mathematical calculation, to which every enterprise in which I embark, must first be subjected; then, gentlemen, my purse and myself, too, shall be at your service.'

Seeing that it would be of no use to urge the matter further, the solicitors dismissed the subject, and soon took their leave of the deacon and his mansion, resolved never more to suffer the mortification of visiting it, on a similar errand.

What a numerous class of church members are in the habit, like Deacon B., of reducing every religious enterprise to the same carnal rules of calculation! They will give, it is true, to buy a reputation for liberality, in behalf of themselves or their churches, but are totally blind to those secret influences which the scriptures represent as operating in the spiritual world, and which are often wielded as potently in connection with feeble, as with more promising agents.

It is but of late that the present benevolent movement took its rise. Yet, so great was the force of the causes from which it originated, that it has already acquired astonishing momentum, and has thrown its wake into every section of the globe. It was long after the reformation had shed its light upon the church, and she had commenced coming up out of the wilderness, before she began to take decided measures either for the alleviation of suffering or the propagation of her faith. What with warding off the attacks of Rome without, and quelling the turbulent elements of schism within, she had, for a century or two after that period, little remaining vigor or leisure to embark in plans of conquest. The materials, however, were collecting – by the study of the Scriptures – by the publications of pious men – by the example of a few such spirits as Baxter, Whitefield, and others – by the advance of the church in knowledge and holiness, and by the general march of mind in the career of dignity and improvement; and as soon as the favorable crisis came, they broke out into our present crude and unfinished forms of benevolence. The origin of this movement cannot, perhaps, be better illustrated than by comparing it to those convulsions which might be supposed to occur in the material universe. It is as if the elements of combustion collected in the heart of one of the planets in undefined quantities, should suddenly explode, upheaving and disparting its solid mass into a thousand formless parts, flying in their random courses through immensity, till each should be brought to its proper bearing in the scale of nature's forces, and, clothed again with verdure and life, should describe its regular and appropriate orbit through the boundless ether. Thus, the elements of the present benevolent movement had for ages been collecting under the solid surface of society, till, becoming ripe for combustion, all that was needed to bring on an explosion was the flinty contact of such spirits as Schwartz, Buchanan, or Carey, and thus to throw the crude masses far and wide. The work of regulating their motions, and covering them with order and beauty, requires time for its accomplishment. None but the unthinking can regard our present systems of charity otherwise than in the light of an experiment, to be altered and matured by the force of future circumstances, till they shall have attained the ideal of earthly perfection.

[Several pages later, the author describes some of the changes that would help this “experiment” to come into its own full maturity.]

If the church were to require at least so much as the adoption of a liberal system of beneficence in the use of earthly substance as a condition of membership, it would naturally lead to frequent exhibitions of the reasons of the duty. These reasons would be spread out before candidates for membership; and thus conscience would be brought to bear upon the subject, a subject which she has hitherto hardly dared approach. By inspecting the conduct of members, also, whose benefactions are manifestly disproportioned to their means, she would still further arouse attention to the subject, and set the sin of such disproportion in their true light. In this way a public conscience on the subject will be created in the church, which her members would be as fearful of violating, as they now are to break the Sabbath, or to be guilty of other misdemeanors.

A general effort should also be made to exhibit the principles of the duty from the pulpit, and by every other consistent means, that thus it may attain in our view its proper standing in the list of our obligations. By such exertions rigorously prosecuted, we might hope to produce a constant flow into the treasury of the church of the adequate means of doing good.

In the absence of such a spontaneous and regular supply, those pious and enterprising men, who could not rest without attempting something for the good of mankind, have contrived such plans for creating the means as expedience has suggested. The public mind uninstructed on the subject of giving, and no funds at command to carry forward their benevolent designs, they have been forced to divide their exertions between the two objects of creating the means, and appropriating them to the work of human improvement. And of the two, it may be hard to say which has proved the more difficult task. Their situation has been an arduous one; and whatever defects may have accompanied their movements, yet, being to a certain extent the result of a defective organization of the churches, and the want of instruction on the subject of giving, and hence unavoidable, a merciful God has seemed to regard them with a lenient eye; and has made them the means of greater good, perhaps, than has been accomplished by almost any other body of men since the first age of Christianity.

Still, if the same men who have been chiefly concerned in our benevolent operations for the last half century, could have had the money which they have actually received, poured into their hands by the spontaneous outburstings of a charitable principle in the churches, so that they should have been left free from the care and expense of collecting it, how much more good might they have done! And if it was the duty of those with whom this money originated, to give, in obedience to their call, it was doubtless their duty to give without that call. The object of a call upon the church for the means of doing good is not to create the obligation of bestowing, but to enforce an obligation which stands on a basis entirely independent of the call itself. If the church understood her duty, therefore, and were disposed to do it, much of the labor of agencies would be superseded. That it would not be wholly superseded, however, we have reason to believe, since agencies for the collection of benevolent funds began with Paul and his coadjutors, and have always been connected more or less with the prosperous days of the church. But they might be confined within narrow limits, and directed chiefly to the communication of intelligence, if a benevolent principle could be established among Christians, as the fountain from which all their charitable contributions should flow. Hence, the importance of seeking to establish such a principle, and of making the serving of Christ by the liberal contribution of money for the advancement of his cause, a prerequisite to membership in the churches.

The course which we have hitherto been under a sort of necessity of pursuing, is but too much like that of a man who erects a splendid array of hydraulic machinery in a ravine where no water exists, merely because he has convinced himself that it is a place which some river ought to select for its channel. When his machinery is once up, he exercises all the power of which he is master, to force the streams in its neighborhood, to concentrate their waters in that ravine for its benefit. Thus enterprising individuals form plans of benevolence that cannot be prosecuted short of fifty or a hundred thousand dollars a year; when perhaps there is scarcely a dollar flowing in that direction. But when their names become identified with the enterprise, and their hearts enlisted in it, they will overturn every stone in the land, but that they will find the means of carrying it forward. Agents are sent out, not always of characters the most discreet, who cry up the object to the stars; represent it as casting every collateral enterprise into the shade, and by pulling upon every string succeed, perhaps, to collect barely sufficient to keep the cause from sinking.

The temptations to corruption in such an agency are almost too much for any human being. The agent, conscious that his reputation, and perhaps his living, depend to a great extent upon the amount which he brings into the treasury of his employers; and finding an almost universal reluctance on the part of the people to meet the demand, one having this and another that excuse, sets himself at work to make out as glowing a story concerning his object as possible; and to make it appropriate to the various classes upon whom he has to operate, he now touches the pride, – now the sympathy, – now the emulation, – now the fear of a coming judgment,–now the vanity,–and now the self-respect of his auditors; and watching his opportunity, when the crisis comes, he causes the boxes or cards to fly through the house, lest a moment's reflection should dispel the magic of his wand, and thus diminish the amount of the contribution. At such an appeal for money infidelity sits in the pulpit, and the devil laughs in the gallery. The consequence is, that the people, not being instructed in the duty of giving, and having no principle of action, feel like a man after a fit of intoxication, vexed at their own excitement, and hence they begrudge the money which it has caused them to bestow. Far be it from us to represent such as the universal course of agents; we only say that they have too many temptations to such a course, and it is but too often pursued; and unless a timely remedy is applied, a reaction is to be feared that will throw the heaven-born cause of charity, a century in the rear. There is too much art and contrivance in such a method of originating benevolent funds to be adapted to nature. The public will not long endure to be thus jaded, teazed, and hood-winked. We say these things, not in a tone of complaint, but because the cause of benevolence is too dear to our hearts, to admit of our being silent to what threatens to do it so serious an injury.

The church ought to be so instructed in the duty of honoring the Lord with her substance, that pecuniary gratuities for the good of the world should enter into the ordinary calculations of life among her members; and then the temptations to such ill-judged measures will no longer exist. If there are streams under ground in a country high above the level of the ocean, it may be an object of enterprise to obstruct their subterranean passages, and to open channels for them to the upper world, that they may flow over the soil to enrich, refresh, and beautify its living tenants. Such is our work in regard to the origination of benevolent funds. There is money enough in the hands of pious men for all our objects, that is now left to flow through the subterranean channels of this world. All we have to do is to afford them such instruction in the duty of giving upon system, and to effect such a change in the organization of the churches, that these funds shall be spontaneously poured into the treasuries of mercy and good will. And if they cannot be obtained in this way, it is questionable whether the world would not suffer more by obtaining them in any other, than it would by doing without them altogether. Shall we sacrifice the interests of religion within our own borders, for the sake of getting money to promote them in Foreign lands?

Manner of Collecting Benevolent Funds

When the above principle for originating the means of doing good comes to be established, it will be an easy task to determine the manner of collecting them. There is little difficulty in taking advantage of the face of a country to change the bed of a river that flows through it, compared with that of finding the sources of one that does not exist.  The difficulty of collecting under the present system arises chiefly from the fact that the one who undertakes it has to originate what he collects. He is both assessor and tax-gatherer–has to awaken the feeling of obligation to give, as well as gather up the results of that feeling, when it is awakened. It is owing to this that qualities of such a peculiar character are necessary to ensure success in an agency. That is no calling for a man who is not adroit in touching the nice springs of action, or who is ungifted with that witchery of persuasion, which ensures for the impulses of one's own mind corresponding impulses in the mind of others. He must be eagle-eyed in detecting the ruling passion of those upon whom he would operate, that he may take advantage of it in unclenching the avaricious passions, and causing at least a temporary suspension of their power. And should he perform his office even with an angel's skill, those passions no sooner resume their hold, than he becomes an object of abhorrent recollections, and ten thousand curses are his only earthly reward, perhaps, for his self-denying labors. Though many an agent may have had a better fate than we here assign him, yet the number is not small whose experience will enable them to testify to the reality of the evils which we depict. Hence, there is a wrong either on the part of those who embark in enterprises of benevolence, or in the feeling and sentiment of the religious public. It must be manifest, therefore, that a change is required; but what it is, or to how it is be effected, are problems of difficult solution.

Source: Selections from Pharcellus Church, The Philosophy of Benevolence (New York: Leavitt, Lord and Co., 1836).

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[1]  Pharcellus Church, The Philosophy of Benevolence (New York: Leavitt, Lord & Co, 1836).

[2] Church, p. 24.

[3] Church, p. 25.

[4]  Church, p. 309.

[5]  Church, p. 312.

[6]  Church, p. 183.