Introduction

In 1847 the crushing Irish potato famine moved a handful of British church leaders to ask how they might encourage a deeper interest in “systematic beneficence.” Among other responses, they sponsored a prize contest for the best essays on the topic. Their action inspired imitation on this side of the Atlantic as the American Tract Society and some denominations launched similar enterprises. These contests produced a host of essays, all of which offer the latter day reader a glimpse into the thinking of a generation of American ministers about the teaching of giving in the 1850s. Two of those essays are included in this collection.

The first of these offerings came from the pen of a promising young Congregational minister, Samuel Harris (1814-1899). A native of Maine and graduate of Bowdoin College and Andover Theological Seminary, he spent fourteen years in two parishes before teaching at Bangor Theological Seminary and serving a brief stint as the President of Bowdoin College. Harris concluded his long and fruitful career by serving as professor of theology at Yale Divinity School for almost a quarter of a century.

Zaccheus; or, the Scriptural Plan of Benevolence was his first major essay. Although this early (1850?) piece had little of the theological depth that marked his later writing, it did reflect the presence of an acute moral sensibility at work. Harris had something more to offer than just the usual clerical complaint about selfishness.

Much of his attention centered upon the rising business class and the contradictions inherent in its behavior. In the course of his pastoral responsibilities in the little town of Conway, Massachusetts, he had watched business leaders at both work and in the church. What he found disturbed him greatly. Like other observers Harris noted the pervasive influence of the spirit of trade. “There is,” he wrote, “an absorption of all interests and energies money-getting, such as was never witnessed in the world before.”[1] That preoccupation wrought havoc in the lives of Christians. “How is it possible to be seeking first the kingdom of God, when, practically, the controlling aim of all the transactions of business is to make money; when giving to the treasury of the Lord is only occasional and secondary, seldom occupying the thoughts; called forth, perhaps, only by solicitation?”[2]  All too often, therefore, he found the church-going businessmen of his time “full of forethought and anxious calculation to realize the utmost of worldly acquisition; deliberate and far-sighted in planning, cautious in executing, lynx-eyed to discern an opportunity to gain, exact to the last fraction in their accounts, but heedless and planless in all they do for charity.”[3]

These contradictions were so deeply set within the fabric of the American culture and in the lives of individual Christians that they presented a major challenge to the American churches. What was needed, he believed, was a moral discipline that helps the believer resist the mighty powers of self-deception. Such a system should be a “barrier against the temptations of selfishness”[4]  and thereby guard Christians against the temptation of “yielding to second thoughts and withholding a purposed charity."[5]  In sum, there was an unprecedented need for countermeasures to covetousness.

Harris discerned such a system implicit in the pages of the Bible. Significantly enough, he did not evoke the ancient tradition of tithing. Rather he constructed the “Scriptural” principle of proportionate giving by way of appealing to various Biblical episodes. That proposal is well described in Resource 4.5. Whether this plan is Biblical – or whether indeed one can discover a single and universally applicable “Scriptural plan” in the Old and New Testament – is a debatable issue that I will leave to the reader's judgment.

But what is indisputable, at least in my view, is the thoroughly American character of his version of the “Scriptural plan.” Harris played with the notions of “system” and “efficiency” in ways that would intrigue his own contemporaries in the United States. These same notions would also figure prominently in Protestant church life from the middle decades of the nineteenth century well into the first half of the last century. Even more important, the phrase – “systematic benevolence,” or its close cousin, “systematic beneficence” – would become the single most popular slogan in literature on giving during the last half of the nineteenth century. In that respect the appearance of Harris' essay, along with the other pieces inspired by the prize contests, constituted a landmark in the history of Protestant teaching about giving.

There are several other themes that loomed large in this work. Harris focused on the notion of “covetousness” in much the same way that recent American commentators lamented the apparent rise of greed in the 1980s and the 1990s. But his explorations of covetousness led him into theological territories where few contemporary moralists in our time ever dare to venture. For instance, Harris' brief references to the Biblical theme of idolatry opened up promising interpretive possibilities. Likewise he was convinced that the sources for any change in our attitude toward money must come from the depths of the human being, from the gift of true piety or from a transformation of the affections of the heart that ultimately shape all that we do or think in our lives. Finally Harris saw in money one of the critical tests of faith. What we do with our money tells much about who we are as Christians. These theological persuasions added rich meaning to his otherwise conventional assaults upon covetousness.

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Source: Selections from Samuel Harris, Zaccheus; or The Scriptural Plan of Benevolence (New York: The American Tract Society, n.d.).

Plan Prescribed in the Bible

THOUGHTFUL readers cannot but observe the importance ascribed in the Bible to acts of charity; the boldness with which the inquirer for salvation is commanded, “Sell that thou hast, and give to the poor;” the preeminence in deadliness assigned to the love of money as “the root of all evil;” the earnestness and frequency with which men are warned of its perils, and of the absolute incompatibility of serving God and mammon; the elevation given to the standard of benevolence, “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus;” and the vital connection everywhere implied between alms-giving and the highest attainments of piety, of spiritual power, and spiritual joy. They cannot but be startled, sometimes, with the apprehension that there is a strange contrast here between the Bible and the church; that the faithful applying of scriptural truth on this point, might make many a professed disciple go away, like the young ruler, sorrowful, or cry, as they did of old when Christ had been preaching on this very subject, “Who then can be saved?” And they cannot but be justified in inferring that this very contrast between the church and the Bible is a prominent cause of embarrassment in our benevolent enterprises; of the prevailing worldliness of Christians; the limited success of efforts for the conversion of souls; the fewness of those who enter into the deepest experience of the spiritual life; and the absence of that rapidity of enlargement and energy of action which marked the apostolic church.

But the Bible not only teaches the importance of charity, it lays down principles systematizing it. To secure its divinely appointed prominence in advancing the enterprises, the piety, the power, and the blessedness of the church, it is necessary to understand and to practise the divinely appointed plan of SYSTEMATIC BENEVOLENCE.

“UPON THE FIRST DAY OF THE WEEK LET EVERY ONE OF YOU LAY BY HIM IN STORE, AS GOD HATH PROSPERED HIM. ”

This requires that charitable appropriations be systematic. It requires some plan, deliberately and prayerfully adopted, assessing on the income a determinate proportion for charitable purposes. It forbids giving merely from impulse, as under the excitement of an eloquent charity sermon, or the accidental sight of distress. It forbids giving merely at random what happens to be convenient. It transfers the control of charity from the capriciousness of sensibility and the parsimony of convenience, to the decisions of reason and conscience. It regulates impulse by principle. It brings the whole subject into the closet, to be determined by prayer and deliberation, according to the rules of the Bible, in the fear of God, and the spirit of consecration to him. In carrying into effect the plan thus deliberately adopted, charitable appropriations will enter into the calculations as much as the necessary expenditures on the person, the family, or the business; they will be managed with as systematic exactness as any branch of business; they may with advantage be as regularly booked. A line written on a memorandum of his charities, kept by a systematic giver and found after his death, suggests an important reason for keeping such a record: “I keep this memorandum lest I should think I give more than I do.”

They who obey the scriptural rule of benevolence, do not wait to be solicited. Like the impoverished but liberal Macedonians, they are “willing of themselves.” If a way of conveying their gifts is not at hand, they seek one out, as Paul describes the Macedonians: “praying us with much entreaty that we would receive the gift, and take upon us the fellowship of the ministering to the saints.” Thus, according to the inspired plan, the urgent solicitation is not on the part of the agent of benevolence to draw charity from the giver, but on the givers' part to find the agent to receive and disburse their charities. Let this system be adopted, and the funds of benevolent societies would flow in unsolicited, and the expense of collecting agencies would cease.

The scriptural rule requires frequent and stated appropriations. “On the first day of the week, let every one lay by him.” If it is allowable sometimes to depart from the letter of this law, the spirit of it must be regarded. Having adopted his plan of giving, the giver is required at frequent and stated times to examine his income, assess on it the prescribed proportion, and set aside the amount sacred to benevolence. His appropriations must be frequent, to keep pace with his earnings and with the constant calls of benevolence; stated, that they may not be forgotten. This is inconsistent with giving a large sum, and then for a long time nothing, and with the intention of giving only or chiefly at death.

The text cited requires that charities be proportionate to the income. In the laws regulating the Jewish tithes and offerings, God prescribed precisely what proportion should be given. This was practicable in a system of laws for a single agricultural people, among whom every family was entitled to an inalienable inheritance in the soil; but the gospel, designed for all nations and ages, could not with equity fix the precise proportion. And it fits the entire character of the gospel – free grace from God, free love from man – to leave the decision of this point to the unconstrained love of those who have freely given all to Christ; for “God loveth a cheerful giver.” But the principle by which the proportion to be given is determined, is most explicitly stated. “Let every one lay by him in store, as God hath prospered him” Nothing can satisfy God's claim less than a consecration to benevolence of an amount proportioned to the prosperity God has given. Do you think yourself benevolent because you give something – much? If you give less than “according as God hath prospered you,” yours is but the benevolence of Ananias and Sapphira.

This principle of proportionate benevolence is repeated in various forms in the Bible. “If any man minister, let him do it as of the ability that God giveth.” “As every man hath received the gift, even so minister the same one to another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God.” “As we have opportunity, let us do good unto all men.” “I am debtor” to put forth benevolent efforts “as much as in me is.” “Honor the Lord with the first-fruits of all thine increase.” There are three points in this requirement of benevolence proportioned to the income.

1. All must give. “Let every one.” The gospel does not release the poor from giving. The smallest income can pay a proportion. Nothing short of the total cessation of God's gifts can exempt from the law, “As God hath prospered him.” The Macedonian church was praised for giving in “their deep poverty.” The story of the widow's two mites settles for ever the acceptableness to God of offerings from the poor. And one dollar thus given has often a moral power greater than a thousand. The benevolence of Louisa Osborn the colored domestic, who, from the wages of one dollar a week, paid twenty dollars a year to educate a youth in Ceylon, as it has been brought to light by the missionary who witnessed the unusual benefits of her donation to the mission, has thrilled the hearts of American Christians. The widow's two mites, which were all her living, lifted to the gaze of the universe and illuminated by the Saviour's commendation, have exerted and will exert a power which no mine of gold can equal – as if a dew-drop, expending its whole being to refresh one tiny flower, had been transformed, as it exhaled to the skies, into a star, and fixed in the brightness of the firmament to bless the creation for ever.

2. Donations should increase with the increase of ability to give. “As God hath prospered him.” This requires the rich to give proportionally to their increasing wealth, though, in order to do it, they must give thousands of dollars where they used to give one. And these great donations are not to be regarded as specially praiseworthy, more than smaller gifts which cost as great sacrifice and are proportionally as much. In both cases the giver has but “done what it was his duty to do.”

3. The rich must give a larger proportion of their income than the poor. A poor widow with a helpless family cannot give a tenth of her earnings without taking bread from her children. Will any imagine that a man who has wealth, or even a competency, is required to give no larger a proportion of his income than that widow? A poor laborer may be subjected to more inconvenience by giving five dollars, than a man of wealth by giving five thousand. Hence, the greater a man's wealth, the larger must be the proportion of income which he gives. Hence the propriety of a rule adopted by Mr. N. R. Cobb, a merchant of Boston: to give from the outset one quarter of the net profits of his business; should he ever be worth $20,000, to give one half of the net profits; if worth $30,000, to give three quarters ; and if ever worth $50,000, to give all the profits. This resolution he kept till his death, at the age of 36, when he had already acquired $50,000, and was giving all his profits.

Different individuals, who have aimed at systematic benevolence, have come to different conclusions as to the proportion which they ought to give; and, perhaps, each one to a correct conclusion, in his particular circumstances. Zaccheus gave half of his goods to the poor, besides restoring fourfold his unjust gains. The first converts at Jerusalem, to meet their peculiar circumstances, sold their possessions and made distribution of the avails, as every man had need. Paul repeatedly intimates that he had suffered the loss of all things. Others have adopted plans similar, in the main, to that of Mr. Cobb, already cited. Others, after paying what has been needful for a most economical support, have given all their income. John Wesley is an example. “When his income was £30 a year, he lived on £28, and gave away £2; the next year his income was £60, and still living on £28, he had £32 to give. The fourth year raised his income to £120, and steadfast to his plan, the poor got £92.” Others, again, have given a tenth of the gross amount of their receipts.

Such is the scheme of Christian beneficence devised in heaven and enjoined by inspired wisdom. Let every man consider that in neglecting it, he sets at naught the authority and the wisdom of God. Men may deride it; and so it is written of one of our Lord's many discourses on the right use of property, “The Pharisees, who were covetous, heard these things, and they derided him.”

Superior Efficiency of Systematic Benevolence in Providing Funds for Benevolent Enterprises

System always promotes efficiency. What would become of a man's worldly business, if he managed it without system, never executing a plan or making an investment till solicited, and abandoning labor to the control of impulse or convenience? And can he hope for any better results from a like disregard of system as a steward of God? From such lack of order, what but embarrassment and failure can result to the enterprises of benevolence? And what shall we say of those professors of Christ's religion who show so thorough an understanding of the necessity of system in worldly business, so utter a neglect of it in their contributions to benevolence: who are full of forethought and anxious calculation to realize the utmost of worldly acquisition; deliberate and farsighted in planning, cautious in executing, lynx-eyed to discern an opportunity of gain, exact to the last fraction in their accounts, but heedless and planless in all they do for charity? Verily, "the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light;” but “the children of light” show no lack of that wisdom, till they come to use property for the benefit of others than themselves.

Systematic benevolence will usually dispose the giver to increase his contributions . If a man gives without system, he will commonly give too little. Under the hallowed influences of the closet, let him estimate the claims of a world lying in wickedness, and the means of benevolence with which God has blessed him; let him ponder what amount of charity would be acceptable to God and is demanded by the love of Christ; and it will be strange if he is not convinced that he ought to increase his donations.

It is more convenient to set apart money for charity in frequent installments. He who neglects to provide for his charities until the call for them is made, may find it inconvenient or impossible to raise at the time the one dollar, or the hundred dollars, or whatever sum it is his duty to give. But had he set apart a proportion from his earnings as they were received, he would not be incommoded by giving the sum required. Persons even in the most moderate circumstances, adopting the practice of systematic benevolence, are often surprised at the amount they can give without serious inconvenience.

System will enlarge the amount of money expended in beneficence by being a barrier against the temptations of selfishness. Many a man means to answer the calls of charity, but does not weekly or monthly set apart a specific sum as sacred to the Lord. Hence, when he sees some tempting article of luxury, having by him unappropriated the money which should have been the Lord's, he buys it; when some tempting, though perhaps hazardous investment presents, having the money by him unappropriated, he invests it. Thus, through lack of sys­tem, many sums in the purses even of the benevolent are turned aside from the Lord's treasury. Self-interest has the advantage in being beforehand and having constant access to our hearts. Systematic charity helps to put the interest of Christ's cause on an equal footing.

System prevents yielding to second thoughts and withholding a purposed charity. Many a man, under the influence of a charity sermon, or of the teachings of conscience, or of the sight of distress, purposes in his heart to give a certain amount. As the subject first strikes his unbiased judgment, such an amount seems not too large for the urgency of the case and his own means. But selfishness steps in and argues the point; it presents to the man his various wants, and pretty soon convinces him that the purposed sum is quite too much; then, forgetting Paul's injunction, “Every man, according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give,” he gives little or nothing. But let a man have a fixed plan, in accordance with which he consecrates a fixed proportion to the Lord as regularly as he meets his notes when they fall due, or pays the expenses of his family, and the matter is settled. Here is a breastwork by God's grace impregnable against all the pleading of selfishness.

System increases the contributions by making it more pleasant to give. When a man has no system of charity, every call to give is unprovided for: if he comply, he must give from money which he was expecting to spend otherwise; it is so much taken from what he had reckoned his own; it seems so much dead loss. Hence, every donation chafes him; he is tempted to make it as small as possible; giving comes to be surrounded in his mind with unpleasant associations; he often looks back with regret, when he gives any thing, that he gave so much; and the call of charity becomes repulsive. But when he systematizes his charities and at stated times sets apart to benevolence a sum proportioned to his income, he no longer reckons that consecrated money as his own, or depends on it for the supply of any want. When the call of charity is heard, he is not obliged to take from what he had reckoned his own, but from what was already consecrated to the Lord. He can give both largely and cheerfully, and with no drawback from the blessedness of doing good.

System removes many common excuses of selfishness for “withholding more than is meet:” “I have lately given to another cause;” “I give as much as convenient;” “I have so many expenses;” “I give as much as others.”

System increases the amount of charities by forming habits of benevolence. From earliest life, habits of gaining and using money for self have been strengthening, and these consolidated habits have never been overcome. Even in the church the covetous use of property is too generally the habit, the benevolent use of it only an occasional act. And it is but dimly apprehended that the gospel requires it to be otherwise. Hence, the gifts of the church are exceedingly stinted. To remedy this evil, it is necessary to make the beneficent use of property the habit of the Christian's life, and thus turn to the advantage of Christ's cause that law of habit which has been all against it. To do this, there must be systematic benevolence. It were the extreme of folly to think of subduing these consolidated habits by desultory efforts – to send up now and then a platoon of light troops against these most massive and well-appointed fortifications of selfishness. We must approach them by well-concerted, persevering siege, till they fall into our hands and the guns are turned against the foe. Mere occasional, unsystematized donations scarcely make a perceptible impression in subduing selfish and forming benevolent habits. But when beneficence is systematized, the habit of doing good is formed, it moulds the whole life, it becomes second nature, and shows in all its results its efficacious vigor.

These considerations show the duty of Christian parents to train their children to the habit of systematically making a benevolent use of money.

One of the greatest difficulties in the way of obtaining an increase of funds is found in another influence of this same law of habit. Of those who contribute regularly to particular causes, and thus have made an approach to system, a large portion is in the habit of giving from year to year about the same sum. The same twenty-five cents, the same dollar, or five dollars, stands from year to year against their names. The wants of benevolent enterprises increase, the property of the giver increases, but the contribution is stereotyped. The attempt to increase this amount breaks up their settled habits of thought and action. They have never thought that perhaps Christ requires a revision of their whole plan of benevolence. The adoption of the divine plan of frequent and proportionate appropriations would remove this difficulty.

It must be added, that systematic benevolence may be expected by God's blessing to increase the giver's means of usefulness. But this thought will be reserved for a more extended examination in another chapter.

In these various ways the scriptural system increases the funds of benevolence. Were it universally adopted by the churches, nothing but the experiment would show how immense would be the resulting increase. Without expense of collecting agencies, thousands in the churches who now give nothing, would begin to give; and a permanent and growing increase would be realized at once from those who have given occasionally. Then would the channels of benevolence be like “the river of God, which is full of water,” and the waters of life issuing from the sanctuary with their healing power, would flow as the prophet saw in vision, ever swelling to the ends of the earth.

The following facts confirm the argument of this chapter. In 1844, Rev. Dr. Baird received, in two payments, thirty-eight dollars for some benevolent cause, from “one of the poor disciples of Jesus;” in acknowledging which he says, “The donor of it commenced giving, in a strictly systematic manner, the tenth part of all the money which he earned from the time of his conversion, and through God's blessing he has been enabled to give sums from time to time, to many, if not all the great enterprises for building up the kingdom of our Lord, varying from five to twenty-five dollars.”

There is a farmer in one of the retired mountain towns of Massachusetts, who began business on his farm in 1818, being six hundred dollars in debt. He began with the determination to pay the debt in six years, in equal installments, and to give all his net income, if any remained, above those installments. The income of the first year, however, was expended in purchasing stock and other necessaries for his farm. In the six next years he paid off the debt, and having abandoned the intention of ever being any richer, he has ever since given his entire income, after supporting his family and thoroughly educating his six children. During all this period he has lived with the strictest economy, and every thing pertaining to his house, table, dress, and equipage has been in the most simple style; and though he has twice been a member of the state senate, he conscientiously retains this simplicity in his mode of life. The farm is rocky and remote from the village, and his whole property, real and personal, would not exceed in value three thousand dollars. Yet sometimes he has been enabled to give from $200 to $300 in a year.

Let us be further considered in this connection, that some feasible plan of enlarging the funds of benevolence must be adopted, in order to realize the hopes of the churches from their missionary enterprises. This is apparent from the difficulty of sustaining these enterprises on their present scale. This deficiency is not owing to a want of means in the church. There is money in profusion for railroads, manufactories, any enterprise which promises a return to self. But where is the money for the Lord? “The great current of Christian property is as yet undiverted from its worldly channel. The scanty rills of charity which at present water the garden of the Lord, and the ingenuity and effort employed to bring them there, compared with the almost undiminished tide of selfish expenditure which still holds on its original course, remind one of the slender rivulets which the inhabitants of the East raise from a river by mechanical force, to water their thirsty gardens; the mighty current meanwhile, without exhibiting any sensible diminution of its waters, sweeping on in its ample and ancient bed.”

The aggregate of gifts from its members to the church was probably larger in the times of its greatest corruption than now. When it was believed that salvation might be bought by charity, wealth from the poor and the rich was lavished on churches and monasteries. But as, in the advance of the Reformation, charities with this motive have ceased, the churches have failed adequately to bring in the gifts of gratitude and love in their stead. It should make the ears of him that heareth it to tingle, that in this boasted age of progress, this nineteenth century, less is probably bestowed in charity by the Protestant churches to spread the true gospel through the world than was given in the darkest ages to heap up the treasures of the church of Rome – that the love of Christ constrains to less valuable gifts than the arts and deceptions of a corrupt priesthood.

But the church is aiming at the conversion of the world. It is plain as sunlight that the world cannot be supplied with the means of grace without an immense enlargement of these operations. It was this contrast between the greatness of the enterprise which Christians profess to prosecute, and the littleness of the means which they devote to it, that wrung from the godly Abel the exclamation respecting our missionary work, “If the great God could despise his creatures, it would be despicable in his sight." There must be some way devised of realizing such enlargement, if the world is to be converted. Nor is the expectation of realizing it vain. The scriptural system of benevolence, generally adopted, would realize it without embarrassment to the church.

Let it also be considered, that when God by his providence proclaims, “Behold, I have set before you an open door,” “he openeth, and no man shutteth.” Then, if his church will enter, no obstacles or opposition can prevent her triumph. But if his people will not enter, presently the door is shut; and “he shutteth, and no man openeth.” Ages may pass before, in the revolving cycles of his providence, he will open it again. And when thus shut, the costliest labors of his church are labors where God is not. One day God opens Canaan to the Israelites and urges them to go up, assuring them that the Anaks and the cities walled and great shall not retard them. They will not go. Next day they are all eagerness to go, but the door is shut; the pillar of cloud moves not – they go up only to perish before their foes. All history demonstrates this principle – demonstrates, that as we must follow God's movements in the circling seasons, would we reap in harvest; so, in the enterprises of benevolence, we must not fall behind the workings of his providence, would we achieve success. When God in his own spring-time drives the ploughshare through the nations, as with such startling energy he of late has done, then must his people cast in the seed of truth; lest, neglecting it, they be compelled to fruitless toil till another spring-time returns. And when the time is come to set the fore-front of liberty and Christianity face to face with the hoary forms of Asiatic despotism and idolatry – when God reveals from the bowels of the earth the treasure which he had kept hid for this very juncture, and calls a population together from every land, and a nation is born in a day – then must his church bind the new-born state with the sweet influences of religion, and guide it to the advancement of piety in the earth, or it will lift its young and giant energies to smite her. God's providence never stands still. His church must move with it, if she would move effectively – if even she would avoid disaster. Hence, the necessity of adopting some mode of increasing promptly and efficiently the contributions of the church, so as to improve at once the precious opportunities which God opens.

The Antidote of Covetousness

COVETOUSNESS is deadly in its influence. “Covetousness is idolatry.” It is inconsistent with piety. It is unmitigated rebellion against God. It is the object of God's abhorrence and curse. It is classed by inspiration with fornication, drunkenness, theft, and extortion. It is “a temptation and a snare.” It is unsurpassed in its power to harden the heart and make it impervious to divine truth, to deaden all the religious sensibilities, and to resist the Spirit of God.

Covetousness is prevalent. The miser is one of the most universally abhorred of men. But plume not yourself that you are not covetous, because you are not a miser. Misers are the rarest specimens of this sin. Under other forms, it rankles everywhere. You are warned against a covetousness of a more respectable appearance. It may exist unsuspected. There may be covetousness in saving – parsimony under the “ alias ” of frugality, avarice, which never parts with money without a twinge. Oftener there is covetousness in getting – sometimes rapacity which scruples at no means if money may be gained; but much more generally the more respectable form of worldliness, keeping within the limits of honesty but swallowing all the energies in money-getting, deadening the benevolent susceptibilities, pinching and shrivelling the soul, living only to “buy and sell and get gain.” Covetousness may be found even in connection with prodigality: greediness to acquire, to supply the extravagance of expense. It enslaves multitudes who are neither misers in hoarding, nor rapacious nor extortionate in getting. In its diversified forms it is one of the most prevalent of the vices, and often, under its various disguises, honored rather than condemned; as it is written, “The wicked blesseth the covetous, whom the Lord abhorreth.”

And there is a liability to become covetous and to grow in covetousness, to the existence and dangers of which the most of men seem not to be awake. In the prosecution of business, the love of money is freezing deeper and harder into their souls, and sealing up the springs of benevolence, and they know it not. One remarkable feature in the Saviour's teaching, is the frequency and earnestness with which he rebuked this sin, and pointed out the dangers of worldly acquisitions. He exposed it in the mansions of wealth and the circles of devotion, in the temple and in the street, in amiable inquirers after salvation, in pharisaical professors and vicious publicans. His warning was, “Take heed and beware of covetousness. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.” The frequency and earnestness of his warnings contrast strangely with the eagerness and security with which his professed followers make haste to be rich, and show that he saw a danger imminent and prevalent to which they are strangely blind. We do not vary from the spirit of his teachings in saying, that covetousness is the most common, the most insidious, and the most dangerous form of selfishness, the one which the most deadens the church, and is the most likely to crush it.

A little consideration will show the reality of this danger. “Money answereth all things.” It is the representative of all commodities and the means of procuring them. It is natural that selfishness should fasten with peculiar strength on an acquisition which is the quintessence of all objects of desire. Besides, men are necessarily occupied during the most of their waking hours in earning money. To this end the thoughts must plan and the hands must toil. It is natural that what so occupies the man should gradually grow upon his mind; as a picture long gazed at intently, gradually fills the eye and enlarges to the dimensions of a real landscape. Especially must this result be expected, when the object which thus occupies the attention is one so pleasing to the selfish heart.

Besides, it is the nature of covetousness to grow by what it feeds on. Acquisitions increase its strength. In accordance with this well-known fact, the tendency of gainful business is to make the man more covetous.

These tendencies would be exceedingly strong, and would need to be most diligently guarded against, under circumstances the most favorable to benevolence. But they are strengthened by outward circumstances.

There is a perverted public sentiment, a prevalent overvaluing of wealth, which silently sinks into the inmost soul – the scarcely acknowledged, yet controlling feeling, that wealth is the great good of human existence, which has incorporated itself into our very language; so that “to do well,” “to be successful,” “to accomplish much in life,” are phrases synonymous with making much money; “gain” is equivalent in our language to “filthy lucre” in God's, and “goods” on our lips, is “the unrighteous mammon” on Christ's; and a late writer has suggested the idea, that we speak of a man as being “worth much,” or “worth nothing,” as if all worth centered in money.

Worldliness, too, is the general character of the community, and a man finds few examples of scriptural benevolence, to show him his own selfishness by contrast, and to stimulate him to beneficence.

It is also an important circumstance, that the man has been trained from childhood under worldly influences; he has seen, perhaps, that whatever their professions, the chief actual anxiety of his parents concerning him has been to have him making money, and that to get him “a good situation,” and a “situation where he can make money,” and to “give him a good start,” and to “start him well in the career of acquiring property,” mean in their minds about the same thing; and that in all his training for business, he is taught that “the main chance” is to make money, and in effect, that a man's life does consist in the abundance of the things that he posesseth. From childhood he has been indoctrinated by precept and example with the maxims of worldly policy, rather than the principles of benevolence – with the proverbs of “Poor Richard” respecting property, rather than the precepts of Jesus Christ.

All these circumstances tend to make wealth the central idea of the mind, to beget a materializing, deadening worldliness, to blight benevolence, and to make men as laborious and untiring in their business, and at the same time as callous to the interests of others, as so many iron steam-engines at their work. The pious and benevolent, who mingle constantly in business, know that the danger is imminent; they know that the maintenance of benevolence is opposed by silent but powerful influences, with which contact with the world every day surrounds them; and they tremble at their own liability to fall under the insidious but fatal power of covetousness. It is alarmingly easy for gold and silver to "canker," and the love of it to become an eating cancer on the soul. Hence, the multitudes whose benevolence never grows with their riches; who, when rich, give nothing like the proportion which they gave when poor; nay, who give no more – who give less than they gave then. Hence is explained the admitted fact, that the greater part of the funds of benevolent associations comes from those of moderate means. Hence arises the general necessity of agents for collecting funds, and of the most pungent appeals for contributions. Have you ever considered seriously your own danger, and taken measures to guard against it? If not, your very thoughtlessness is presumptive evidence that you are already consumed with the love of money.

We see, then, that the path of worldly business is fraught with constant danger of a deadly evil. He who sets out on that path must climb a snow-capped mountain, where every step is along icy precipices, where the air chills to the heart the spiritual life, where every touch is upon nipping frost, and where the cold is perpetually producing a sleepiness almost resistless, but which if indulged, will be the sleep of death. It is, then, a question of spiritual life or death, “How shall I do my necessary business, and escape covetousness – benumbing, paralyzing, deadly covetousness?” Alas, that Christians so seldom ask this question – so little take the tremendous meaning of Christ's assertion, “Ye cannot serve God and mammon” – so little realize the danger which gives the thrilling emphasis to his warning, “TAKE HEED AND BEWARE of covetousness.”

He who knows what is in man, has provided a safeguard against this danger. He has indeed, so contrived the plan of salvation, that all the motives of the gospel, radiating as they do from the cross of the Son of God offering the stupendous sacrifice of himself, may bear directly against selfishness and tend to unfold self-sacrificing benevolence. But this is not all. He has enjoined systematic benevolence. This is God's remedy for covetousness. Infinite wisdom would not trust to unsystematized contributions, knowing that irregular efforts, sustained by no habit, no fixed time, no predetermined plan, giving way to every casual expenditure, would be but a slender barrier against a tendency so constant and powerful. God requires systematic and proportionate benevolence.

This plan is most beautifully fitted to this design. It accords with the laws of the human mind. There is no way of subduing one of our active propensities, but by refusing it indulgence, and so starving it to death. This the scheme of benevolence does to the sinful love of money. As fast as treasures are gained, it tears them from the gloating eye of covetousness to consecrate them to the Lord. It compels the man to give something from the wages of every day, from the profits of every enterprise and investment. Thus, drop by drop, it drains the lifeblood of that giant passion. And as the gains enlarge, God follows with his enlarging claims: should money come into the hands by thousands a year, there would be none left as food for covetousness, and the man would be necessitated to obey the command, “If riches increase, set not your heart upon them.” And there is no way of strengthening our active propensities but by exercising them. Therefore God's rule requires appropriations to charity every week, that benevolence may be strengthening itself by frequent exercise, and the disposition to give be consolidated by habit; it requires appropriations from all the earnings, that benevolence may preside in every department, and the heart, kept always open, may have no opportunity to contract; and it requires appropriations proportionate to the means, that whereas covetousness naturally grows by increasing acquisitions, this advantage may be wrested from it and given to benevolence. Thus the practice of this scheme becomes, with God's grace, like a fire-proof coat, in which the wearer may walk collectedly in the fiercest furnace of worldliness, and “not the smell of fire pass on him.” It is impossible, according to the laws of the mind, to practise on this plan without continually weakening covetousness and strengthening benevolence; nay, the wonted influence of worldly pursuits is reversed: by pouring treasures into the lap avarice is starved, while even by the toils of money-getting benevolence is exercised and strengthened. Thus, by the very processes of business the power of benevolence goes on enlarging, till she stands up in her godlike majesty, the queen of the soul, and crushes beneath her heel the tyrant that had enslaved it.

We must not leave this part of the subject without considering its bearing on the community, as we have already considered its bearing on the individual. Since the revival of commerce, the warlike spirit of chivalry, the love of martial glory and of conquest have been gradually giving place to the spirit of trade; this spirit has been gradually extending, till it has become, more than any other, the controlling influence in the world. This change constitutes an era in history, the causes, development, and effects of which are worthy of the most serious study. While it has produced many happy effects, as in mitigating the spirit of war, it is yet a problem what results it will finally work out – a problem which, alarming as already is the tendency of the public mind to covetousness, is one of the most momentous subjects now demanding the attention of philanthropists. There is an absorption of all interests and energies in money-getting, such as was never witnessed in the world before. Under this stimulus the country is filling with power-looms, steam-engines, and telegraphs, and energies and resources are employed in the prosecution of peaceful business, which would once have been more than enough to build the pyramids or to conquer the world. We acknowledge all the blessings of these inventions. But while every orator and every newspaper is dwelling on our commerce whitening every sea, our enterprise penetrating every country, on the miracle-working of the iron horse and the lightning messenger, on our boundless territory and exhaustless resources; and while a manufacturing city is laid out in an uninhabited spot, and built up in a year or two, as the early settlers would have built a frame house – we cannot blind ourselves to the alarming tendency in the public mind to regard these things as the sum total of all prosperity and the essentials of all blessedness; nor to the fact that the energies which are so effective in aiding the acquisition of wealth, are scarcely less effective in stimulating the love of it. We cannot blind ourselves to the danger that the love of money will become more and more the ruling influence, absorbing into itself even that powerful passion, ambition; swallowing up the love of office in the love of the salary; overshadowing the enterprises of religion by the gigantic and spirit-stirring achievements of business; drawing the church into the current of the world, and making its members undistinguishable in their pursuit of money from worldlings; nullifying the influence of the means of grace, choking the word and making it unfruitful, and finally overwhelming in worldliness the piety of the church – the danger that the spirit of trade, not checked as it should be, by a contrary example from the good, will engulf the nation in a Dead sea of cupidity and luxury, or degenerate into that mercenary spirit which, reckless of honor and virtue, unscrupulous, untrusty, rapacious, despicable, has no principle but the Judas question, “What will ye give me?” no measure of good and evil but the profit and loss of dollars and cents.

Systematic benevolence is God's appointed safeguard against this danger. Practised generally and from the heart, it will introduce a loftier end of existence than the acquisition of property; will ennoble the pursuit of business by the spirit of love; will hold up a spiritual and sublime principle in antagonism to the materializing tendencies of the spirit of trade; will make civilization centre no longer on wealth; but on “charity that seeketh not her own,” and thus will form it into a civilization pure, generous, heavenly, expressing in every aspect the godlike purpose of doing good; a civilization uncursed by want, ignorance, and crime, unblighted by oppression, unclouded by irreligion, because wherever were misery and degradation, millions of hearts will throb in pity, millions of hands be extended and purses be opened to relieve; a civilization which we see only in bright glimpses revealed in the prophecies of God.

From all these views of the relations of the subject to covetousness, it is plain that, to the church, systematic benevolence is a first duty of self-preservation. She has no walls and battlements but her own active benevolence, no army with banners but her sons and daughters toiling to do good. If the church does not bless the world, she must be buried in it. If the piety of the church, as it makes its way through this wilderness, does not, like a fertilizing stream, make all its banks “rejoice and blossom as the rose,” it must be swallowed up in it like a river lost in the desert sands which it fails to make fruitful. But let the scriptural law of charitable appropriations be adopted, and thus let benevolence keep pace with advancing business, following it into every new path, and laying her gentle hand on all its unfolding resources, then will covetousness wither amid increasing enterprise, and benevolence will unfold with an energy rivalling the energies of business, and making them her ministers. Then the enterprises of religion, no longer cast into the shade by the achievements of worldliness, will encircle the earth with a vastness and a vigor more amazing than the triumphs of commerce and manufactures, and the miracles of modern art.

We must gratefully notice the remarkable coincidence of God's providence in calling his children to great enterprises, and in opening the world for unlimited effort, at the very time when, from the unprecedented pressure of worldliness, there is unprecendented need of such counteraction to covetousness. Let Christians understand that it is God's mercy which multiplies the calls to give, to save them from the multiplied assaults of covetousness. Let them know that they neglect these calls at their peril – the peril of perishing in covetousness, of drowning in the “destruction and perdition” of them “that will be rich.”

Source: Selections from Samuel Harris, Zaccheus; or The Scriptural Plan of Benevolence ( New York: The American Tract Society, n.d.).

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[1] Samuel Harris, Zaccheus; or The Scriptural Plan of Benevolence. (New York: The American Tract Society, n.d.), p. 57.

[2] Harris, pp. 14-15.

[3] Harris, p. 25.

[4] Harris, p. 26.

[5] Harris, p. 27.