Visions of Giving: A Place to Begin

Introduction

The notion of a “reformation without end” has long fascinated some American Protestants. Successive generations in the last two hundred years have entertained the hope that the Reformation begun in the sixteenth century and renewed periodically in the "awakenings" of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries would once again recreate the life of church and commonwealth in this country. They have anticipated eagerly hints and signs of the coming waves of reform. And so it was that the Methodist minister, Abel Stevens (1815 -1897), heralded the arrival of “the next great idea” for American Protestantism in his 1856 essay, “The Great Reform.”

Stevens wrote this small book near the peak of his influence as one of Methodism's leading journalists. After he had served his second parish for only two years, he was tapped at the age of 25 to become editor of a growing denominational journal. Fifteen years later Stevens catapulted into national prominence as editor of the Christian Advocate and Journal. During his first year in that post he also composed the next reading.

“The Great Reform” reflected Stevens' longstanding conviction about the larger significance of Protestant benevolence in the nineteenth century. Early in his career, he came to believe that the growth of Christian giving would someday produce sums of money that would rival (or exceed) the income the government received from taxes. During the succeeding years that intuition ripened into a passionate belief in American benevolence as a force of historic importance. Here was the “next great idea,” the coming wave of the continuing Reformation.

It was no wonder, then, that in 1855 he entered a Methodist contest for the best “tract on systematic beneficence.” This prize-wining essay, along with Samuel Harris's earlier entry in a different contest, represents the best of the 1850s bumper crop of writings on this subject.

In hindsight, “The Great Reform” offers a reprise of the themes that coursed throughout much of the ante-bellum literature on the Protestant teaching about giving. Like Lyman Beecher and Pharcellus Church, Stevens believed that the midwifery of true benevolence would usher in a glorious future in which the triumph of evangelical Protestantism would be complete. Thus he estimated that “half the energy now expended in wranglings that distract the Christian world . . . would be sufficient, if devoted to this great question [benevolence], to advance Christendom fifty per cent in a couple of generations, and would come near redeeming the world in a century.”[1] But the time to adopt this “great reform” is now, lest Christians miss a “day of opportunity such as the history of our fallen race has never before seen.”[2]

Like Pharcellus Church and Samuel Harris, Stevens also stressed the need for a system in benevolence. Without deeply embedded disciplines that would govern individuals in their giving, Protestants would fall prey to the power of Mammon, the last remaining obstacle on the pathway toward a millennial state. Along with Pharcellus Church and Samuel Harris, he looked to Scripture for clues about that system. In particular, they invoked Paul's admonition to the congregation at Corinth about giving to the collection for the “saints” in Jerusalem: “Upon the first day of the week, let every one of you lay by him in store as God hath prospered him, that there be no gatherings when I come.” (I Corinthians 16:2 in the King James Version which he cited.)

Indeed, Abel Stevens pinned all his hopes on this single sentence. He embraced I Corinthians 16:2 as comprising the whole of God's commandment about giving. “This passage,” he wrote, “we deem to be the divine rule of Christian beneficence.”[3] On that foundation he built his version of the system that would deliver Christians from the sovereignty of Mammon and thereby open up the way toward “the moral conquest of the world itself.”[4] "What a revolution of ordinary Christian life would these principles make! We affirm that they are Scriptural, and that their enunciation and demonstration throughout the Christian world are the great want of the times, and must be secured before the Church can avail itself fully of its present great opportunities.”[5]

Stevens portrayed a relatively simple and uncluttered world in which the power of idealism and a few words of Scripture could sway the destiny of history. There is a beguiling spirit of innocence about this earnest tract. But scarcely four years after The Great Reform appeared in print, he got a bitter foretaste of the agony and complexity that the Civil War would soon visit upon the American people. In the course of his editorial duties at the Christian Advocate and Journal, he became trapped in the crossfire between abolitionist and slave-holding Methodists. Although he considered himself an abolitionist, he tried to play a mediating role between these two warring parties. Once he lost that struggle and his job in 1860, Stevens began a somewhat different career. The Civil War proved to be a turning point in his life.

The War was also a turning point in the life of the nation. What was once taken for granted in the ante-bellum now sometimes seemed quaint and outmoded. But significantly enough, the vision that Abel Stevens shared in The Great Reform would soon again become evident in the “new” visions of giving in late nineteenth century America.

Source: Abel Stevens, "The Great Reform" in Systematic Beneficence: Three Prize Essays (New York: Carlton & Phillips, 1856), pp. 11-34.

Importance of the Subject

We approach the subject which we are about to discuss with the conviction that its importance cannot easily be exaggerated.

Two coincident tendencies of our times render it one of the most important questions before the Christian world. The first of these is, that Christianity, throughout Protestant lands at least, is becoming more and more detached from states, and therefore thrown, with its immense interests, upon the voluntary support of its followers. The other is the fact, that at the same time the opportunities for enterprises of philanthropy and evangelization, at home and abroad, are augmenting beyond all precedent, and therefore calling for greatly increased fiscal means. These two tendencies have become such determinate facts, that they may indeed be considered laws of our times; and they are inseparably related to all that is progressive in Christianity.

What practical question, then, can be more momentous to the Church, at this hour, than the one now before us–the right mode of meeting its financial wants?

The great enterprises now devolving upon it cannot be prosecuted, any more than war itself, without financial “sinews.” Here indeed is their present most urgent desideratum; and we think we mistake not when we say, that the next great idea to be brought out, and made prominent in the Church, is its true standard of pecuniary liberality–the right relation of Christian men to their property.

A change, amounting to a revolution, must come over Christendom in this respect before Christianity can fairly accomplish its mission in our world. And does not the providence of God present the solution of this question as precisely and inevitably the next great duty of the Church? A series of providential dispensations have followed each other, in her modern history, until she has been brought to confront directly this problem, and here she stands–hesitating, shall we say? No–we trust not hesitating, but preparing to solve it, and to derive from it a new, and, as we believe, a transcendent dispensation of success.

First in these providential dispensations was the Reformation, letting out again the light of the primitive truth upon the world; then came the “Revival Epoch,” under Edwards, Wesley, and Whitefield; then, and almost immediately, ensued the great Aggressive Movement, originating Sunday schools, Bible, Tract, and Missionary Societies, the Temperance Reform, &c.

The Church itself having been thus put into a new posture, and inspired with new energies, the providence of God began the work of preparation for it in the exterior world; and how marvelously has that preparation advanced!

Let us glance at it here but for a moment.

First, the geographical access of the Church to the foreign world has become almost universal. Take the map of the globe, and trace its outlines with your finger. You will find that doors for evangelization are open nearly at every important point. China, with more than half the population of the earth, is accessible to all the efforts that Christendom is willing to make for her. Her provinces, peopled with millions who are generally able to read, and who read but one language, might be inundated with the Scriptures and other religious publications. Meanwhile her internal movements are presenting new and marvelous opportunities to the truth.

Descending southward we come to Siam, where our missionaries already have full access, and even royal protection at the capital.

Turning westward we reach Burmah and Hindoostan, where Christianity, following in the track of European conquest, is invading Asia from the south, and achieving some of its most signal triumphs.

Crossing the Indian Ocean we meet Madagascar, where the truth has had a lodgment for years; and, after trials and martyrdom, such as the modern Church has no where else endured, has even reached the degraded throne of the country.

We pass the Channel of Mozambique and reach Africa, and here a whole continent lies open to our labors–open on the East, the South, the West.

We ascend northward and pass along Europe: almost everywhere presenting obstacles, she almost everywhere presents also opportunities. It will be time enough for us to complain of the former when we have fully availed ourselves of the latter.

We cross the ocean to the New World. All the northern continent may be said to be thrown wide open for every triumph the Church may propose. The field is won and somewhat fortified; and, as if the providence of God would not wait our delays, but would thrust upon us opportunities, the populations of the Old World, of both Europe and Asia, are cast in upon the mighty arena by hundreds of thousands annually, to be evangelized by our Christian agency.

South America, debased as it is by Popery, is more or less open, everywhere, to the labors of missionaries and the circulation of the Scriptures.

Passing thence to the Pacific–to the innumerable islands, and not merely islands, but continents of Oceanica–now the resort of a vast emigration, and soon to form a second “New World”–we find there not only unobstructed doors, everywhere, but already some of the most triumphant victories ever won by our faith.

Such, then, is the geographical access which we now have to the foreign world. Was it ever equaled? Everywhere does the Macedonian vision stand out on the boundaries of the nations, and beckon us. Not even in the age chosen by God for the introduction of the Christian religion, because of the general sway and peace of the Roman empire, was the whole world more amply thrown open for the march of the Church. There is now passing over her a day of opportunity such as the history of our fallen race has never before seen. Apostles themselves it may be soberly said, saw no such day. What is the providential meaning of these facts? What but that the Church is summoned to labors, and liberality, and victories such as her history has not before recorded.

Not only have we this great access to the nations, but the Scriptures have been rendered into most of their languages. We have now about two hundred translations. Out of the nine or ten hundred millions of our world's population, some six hundred millions have the oracles of Revelation in their vernacular. This was the next essential provision: for what would the living agency, entering into these open doors, have done with the masses of reclaimed pagans without the Scriptures? What else than prepare another edition of Popery? But now, almost everywhere, the rock is smitten in the desert, and the streams have begun to flow.

Again, while breaches have thus been made in the walls of error all around the world, and the munitions–the Holy Scriptures–have been provided for the conflict, the enemy to be assailed has everywhere been declining in the capacity to resist. The inherent strength of all the principal false religions of the world is decaying.

These great false religions are summarily three – Paganism, Mohammedanism, and Popery. Judaism we take not into the account, as it is not numerically formidable, and, having no “local habitation,” presents no local difficulty. The others make up the strength of religious error in our world, and each of them is not only smitten with inherent declension, but that declension is produced by causes which must, almost inevitably, continue to operate, independently even of our direct Christian efforts; causes social, scientific, commercial, even mechanical, which are impelling forward the world into a new position, where its old religious delusions must become obsolete, whatever new evils may take their place.

Heathenism, for example, as it exists throughout Asia and Africa and some of the isles of the sea, must give way before the progress of the new light that is everywhere following in the track of commerce and colonization.

The leading forms of heathenism are so identified with errors in science that the advancement of intelligence alone, dissipating the latter, must almost inevitably dissipate the former also. Their history is so fabulous, their cosmogony so mythical, their astronomy so astrological, the whole encyclopedia of their knowledge so mixed up with absurdities, and these absurdities so interwoven with their religion, that both must alike give way before the new merely human light that is now everywhere breaking in upon their darkness.

We cannot conceive of the continued existence of the great systems of Paganism in lands intersected by railroads and telegraph-lines, and penetrated on all sides by those practical ideas and practical enterprises which modern business and modern science are extending over the world.

One fact is conclusive of the fate of Paganism: it has no longer the power of self-propagation. We never hear of its extending itself any more. It has made no more new conquests for generations, and it is impossible, in the very nature of things, that it should. The power of progress, of conquest, is without, and is continually compressing it into closer and feebler quarters.

The same may be said of Mohammedanism. It appeared at first before the nations full of energy; its early progress forms the most brilliant chapter in history since the fall of Rome; it won its triumphant way westward from Arabia, through Northern Africa, into Spain, and even into Italy; it triumphed over the Byzantine empire and penetrated to the very gates of Vienna. It spread its rapid conquests eastward into the heart of Asia; but its energy is now exhausted. In the East it gives way before the advances of European enterprise from Southern India; and in the West it would expire, as a power among the nations, in a day, were it not for the support which is extended to it by Christian states. The Crescent is the device on the banners of Mohammedanism–it is an appropriate emblem of its fate. Sometimes when the sun has risen we see the crescent-moon still lingering in the heavens; but it pales, and at last disappears amid the effulgence of the day. So pales the Crescent of the great imposture in the advancing light of the age. Hardly one century can be reasonably assigned to its future history as a state power in the world.

We contend that Popery is beginning to forebode a similar fate; and from its essential incompatibility with the new tendencies of progress, which the providence of God is now evolving in the world, must inevitably decline.

We cannot too carefully watch it, nor too zealously labor for its defeat, for it will yet, for years, be capable of disastrous influence upon the world; but its essential strength is sapped. Its history, as a great agent among the governments of Europe, is closed. Its dotage comes on apace. It is out of harmony with the age, and destiny itself is against it. Our estimates of Popery in the United States have erred egregiously. According to the census of 1850, it has not one-eleventh of the number of churches belonging to the Methodists, scarcely more than one-eighth of the number of the Baptists, not one-fourth the number of the Presbyterians. It has not one thirty-third of the whole number reported, while the Methodists have more than one-third, and the Baptists nearly one-fourth. Its declension in Ireland has been incredible. According to Rev. R. Bickersteth, there were, about six years ago, upward of five thousand priests in Ireland; last year, as appeared from a return, there were only two thousand three hundred and sixty-six–a loss of more than one-half. [It should be stated, in reference to these and other statistics in this volume, that it was written in 1854.] As a State, in Italy, it could not stand one week were the arms of its foreign protectors withdrawn; the people whose ancestors recognized its head as the vicegerent of God on earth, would now chase him ignominiously from their ruined country.

What is a pope's bull now-a-days? Nothing but a religious epistle to his ecclesiastics against heresy, Bible societies, &c. A few generations ago it was the thunderbolt of Jove, smiting a whole province, or paralyzing an army.

What sovereign would now care for the Pope's excommunication–that terrific mystery at which the knees of kings, a few centuries since, smote together? We never hear of it any more as against rulers; and if it should be revived, it would be a jest in almost any court of the world.

Why? Because the prestige of Popery is gone–irrecoverably gone. The delusions of the dark ages are past; mankind has awakened from that thousand years' sleep, has risen up, rubbed their eyes, and found they had been dreaming. The courts of Europe recognize the popedom as an historical fact, still lingering, and therefore to be taken account of, in some way or other, in their conservative policy; but it is no longer a potential fact in any respects among them. The Pope has little or nothing to do with them directly, except it may be to act the puppet in the ceremonial of a coronation. Since the first French revolution (a great curse with a great many blessings) this has been about his significance in the affairs of Europe. The world is outgrowing Popery, and that is the explanation of its late history. It may make efforts to retrieve itself–it may attempt to relate itself to the movements of states, as in the French reaction and in the politics of America–it may, by Jesuitical agencies, insinuate itself into the religious movements of anti-Catholic countries, as in the Tractarianism of Oxford–it may attempt to startle the remains of superstition among the multitudes by new trumpery, as the winking Madonnas, or the coat of Treves, or the Immaculate Conception; but they all ultimately fail, and more than that, they react. Puseyism, as a project for papalizing the Anglican Church, is now a determinate failure. The imposture at Treves excited the ridicule of Europe, and turned thousands out of the ranks of Popery. The winking and nodding Madonnas have of late years become standing jokes in the newspapers of Christendom. It is too late in this working day of the world for such nonsense. Men, honest men, will either weep or laugh at it; but they will not respect it. Destiny itself, we repeat, has set in against Popery. It must descend into the abyss of the past–its appropriate grave. Its old follies, like the congenial ones of alchemy, astrology, witchcraft, scholastic metaphysics, cenobitic and anchorite life, must inevitably disappear amid the increasing light of the age, as bats and owls flee before the day. It may make temporary and spasmodic efforts at self-resuscitation, but it cannot succeed. The waves may dash forward upon the strand when the tide is descending; but, as sure as the invincible laws of nature, will they at last go down. Popery attempts to extend itself abroad; it has many foreign missions, and they at times seem to have the energy of life in them; but where do they succeed now as they did two, three, and four hundred years ago? We are all familiar, from our childhood, with a long-legged spider which, when pierced through the center, still struggles in its extremities, and the severed extremities themselves still for a time move with convulsive life, but at last die. Such is Popery.

Thus, then, do the once mighty systems of error begin to totter throughout the world. The day has come for the moral strength of Christendom to be put forth universally, demonstratively, and we trust finally – put forth on a scale never equaled before; for most deliberately do we repeat, that never, not even in the days of its founders, did an hour so fraught with opportunity and hope strike upon the clock of the world.

But we stop not here.

Coincidentally with these great changes innumerable other advantages have been providentially provided.

A few generations ago navigation and commerce, those great means of access to the foreign world, were almost exclusively in the hands of papal states – Spain, Portugal, the Catholic cities of Italy and Holland; now they are almost as exclusively in the hands of Protestant Christendom. England is mistress of the seas, and in a few years America will be their master.

A few generations since colonization–that great means of extending civilization, in both ancient and modern times – was almost entirely papal. With the era of the Puritans it began to pass over to Protestantism, and now Saxon Christianity is bearing forward that great banner of progress in almost every part of the world.

The art of printing, borrowing the energy of steam, lends its invaluable aid to the progress of the times. The American Bible Society can now send forth a Bible every minute. Literature, among the greatest, is becoming one of the cheapest of human blessings.

The rapidity of international communication is annihilating distance, and uniting the races of the world; all arts which contribute to the relief and advancement of humanity are receiving an impetus never before known in the history of mankind.

No man, however sober his judgment, can look at these facts without perceiving that the history of the human race is verging fast to a new and unprecedented epoch; that the false religions, the whole status of the unenlightened world, surrounded and pressed upon by such resistless agencies, must inevitably be revolutionized.

We have, then, the geographical access; we have the Scriptures, the munitions; we have many incidental facilities for this final moral campaign of the world. And meanwhile the strength of the foes itself inherently declines. What is next needed besides the spiritual purity of the Church? The sinews of the war, we repeat – the right standard of pecuniary liberality. We say, with all deliberation, that we cannot perceive why the mission of Christianity in our world could not proceed right on to its consummation, if this one condition were secured. The great obstruction now laid before its chariot-wheels is Mammon – the last idol of our Christian heathenism.

The Church has long been looking for the Apocalyptic angel who is to bear the Gospel to “every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people.” She has looked to every point in the horizon for the blessed sight, but she has looked amiss. She must look to her own altar; there she will find him bound in the golden fetters of her avarice, impatient, but unable to attempt his gracious flight. Let her break his chains; then will he spread his pinions, and she shall see the sublime vision “flying in the midst of heaven, bearing the everlasting Gospel to preach to them that dwell on the earth.”

This is the subject under review, the great question of the day for Christianity, though infinitely subordinate, of course, to that spiritual consecration of the Church which is everywhere presupposed in this essay. It has already begun to attract attention, but it is yet too vague; it needs development, precision, demonstration. Several prize volumes have been published upon it; several personal instances–princely ones – of systematic charity have become familiar to the public; and, as examples, will do much to promote the beneficence of the times. But the idea is yet too indefinite to have a distinct impression on the public mind of the Church. It must be more discussed. It is the idea for the next general discussion of Christian reformers. And a sublime theme for them is it – ennobled not only by its essential beneficence, but by not a few profound ethical bearings.

Half the energy now expended in wranglings that distract the Christian world and disfigure the Church with sectarian bigotry would be sufficient, if devoted to this great question, to advance Christendom fifty per cent in a couple of generations, and would come near redeeming the world in a century. The remark is emphatic, but it is uttered in all soberness.

The Present Standard of Beneficence in the Church

Standing upon the high position which we have assumed in the preceding chapter, and surveying the unprecedented prospects which extend from it in every direction, the question of the practical duty of the Church in such circumstances–of what is and what ought to be done? –comes upon us with a resistless appeal.

Let us then ask ourselves the question, What is the actual standard of financial liberality in the Church?

We can hardly put the question without a startling, and if it were not for the seriousness of the subject it would be a ludicrous sense of the incongruity of the language. Can we indeed say that there is any standard – any definite principle whatever in the Christian beneficence of the age? We are proposing, what? – the overthrow of Popery, of Mohammedanism, of all heathendom – the moral conquest of the world itself? Nay, we go further; we propose the redemption of the human race for both worlds; we are proposing this at confessedly the most opportune and, therefore, the most responsible hour of the world's history. We admit that a financial basis is requisite for this mighty design; and yet hardly a definite idea has been recognized respecting the pecuniary duty that lies, in a sense, at the foundation of the whole enterprise.

Let us meet the question honestly; but in doing so let us acknowledge some late rapid improvements – improvements which indicate that the revolution we have affirmed to be necessary is not improbable. Twenty-five years have effected marvelous changes in this respect. Nearly all the great Protestant philanthropies have been much advanced within that period; and if we bear in mind that hardly a century has passed since most of our Christian “enterprises” began, the present degree of pecuniary liberality among us is certainly encouraging. Many Christian capitalists, in England and in this country, have come to understand that they are not proprietors, but stewards of their wealth; and are devoting it, in large sums, to the charities of the times.

If we examine the treasury accounts of the “Christian enterprises” of the day, we shall find a rapidly-increasing ratio of receipts. A few years ago Rev. Stephen Roszel, of the Baltimore Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, wrote to a friend that he “really believed the time would come in which that conference would afford $1,000 per annum for the missionary cause.” The treasurer's report from January to December, 1854, shows $23,815.92. The estimate of the veteran Roszel is now probably met by some single churches of the conference. Such examples are multiplying everywhere and in all sects.

Still how far short of the necessity of the times and the capacity of the Church is its liberality! It has been said that the aggregate appropriations of American Protestantism, for foreign evangelization, do not exceed the annual expense of a single American ship-of-the-line. Is this fact befitting the strength and opportunities of American Christianity in an age like this? The largest denomination of the land contributes to both its foreign and domestic missions at the rate of only about twenty-five and a half cents for each of its members. The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions has commanded greater success; the members of the Churches patronizing it give at the rate of one dollar each. These are fair indications of the pecuniary liberality of the times. Encouraging as they are in comparison with the past, they almost assume, we repeat, a ludicrous insignificance when we consider the design contemplated–the moral renovation of the world. Would an average of five dollars per member – four millions per annum – be an extravagant contribution for the Methodist Episcopal Church to such a design? We think the time will come when even that sum will be deemed a pittance for the purpose.

Let us look more closely at our present standard of liberality, if we may venture to use the phrase.

The Christian beneficence of the times lacks two important elements – the sentiment of moral obligation and method. There is, unquestionably, some sentiment of duty associated with our charities, but it is so general as to be almost inappreciable. It has no stronghold on the conscience. We feel that we ought to do something for important benevolent enterprises. He would be pronounced an egregious heretic who should deny it absolutely. But how few of us have ever given Christian liberality a place among our ordinary and acknowledged obligations! How few have defined its extent, or kept its reckoning, or deliberately provided for it as a duty!

We give when occasion offers, but how? We hardly know ourselves. An eloquent speech, an anecdote, an example of rivalry, sometimes even a jest, extorts our contribution; and thus much of the whole fiscal scheme of Christianity for the redemption of the world–much of the whole “exchequer” of the “kingdom of God” among men – is based upon mere accidents. Is this not the case? And is it, can it be right? Is it not amazing that the finances of religion have not taken a more religious character? Is there not needed here a revolution, as we have said?

One question is decisive of this point: Who of us ever feels conscience-stricken if he omits this duty? Who ever goes home from an assembly for religious beneficence to spend the night in remorse for not having given enough? Should you, Christian reader, as a business man, underpay an honest debt, your conscience could not rest. No one might know the fact save yourself; but your own knowledge of it would be more terrible to you than the knowledge which all men and angels could have. Here is as real a duty as your business debts. It does not take precedence of them, but it is in its place as essentially a duty. Yet, alas! how few feel the guilt of its violation. Assuredly the Christian world needs new convictions on the subject. While mere impulse is thus the occasion of most of our contributions, the manner of giving them is also mostly casual. Systematic charity is beginning to be a theme of the religious press and of the pulpit – a hopeful sign of the times. But how limited yet is the habit! Here and there you meet a conscientious man who has become convinced that it is not only his duty to give, but that the obligation is so sacred as to require scrupulous attention. He feels that he must render account of it in the “last day” and he settles the claim by a methodical adjustment of his liberality to the whole business of his life. How can he well do otherwise when once he has perceived aright the subject? Yet so rare are these examples, that scarcely any man can enumerate twenty-five of them in all his acquaintance.

Such, then, is the existing standard of Christian beneficence, if standard it can be called. We are not aware that we have described it with too little qualification. If any one thinks we have, he will at least admit that we are not far short of the truth.

Source: Abel Stevens, "The Great Reform" in Systematic Beneficence: Three Prize Essays (New York: Carlton & Phillips, 1856), pp. 11-34.

[1] Abel Stevens, "The Great Reform" in Systematic Beneficence: Three Prize Essays (New York: Carlton and Phillips, 1856), p. 27.

[2] Stevens, p. 15.

[3] Stevens, p. 45.

[4] Stevens, p. 28.

[5] Stevens, p. 53.