CHURCH FINANCE.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXIII, 23 March 1926, Page 2

CHURCH FINANCE.

STRIKING SERMONS BY REV. 11. BURCH AS. .-.Sermons wore preached; in the_Anglican' district of . Otipun, on Church. 'Finance,”, by : the JRev. - H. Purchas, vicar of ■;Geraldine,- (in .Sunday. /At Holy Communjmi, the subject was tlic injunction that the animal offered must be without blemish (Leviticus 22, 19-20). The religion of the Old testament, said the preacher, deprecated the reception of God's gifts without acknowledgment. It was a religion of giving as well.as of receiving, and the males* of the community were ordered, as! a minimum, to appear thrice, yearly. to make their acknowledgment, to their, Creator and, not to appear . empty-; handed - . " The offering must, too,- he without.-blemish. -In the light of: Christ’s life and teaching, these iinjunctions formed the principle of wor- - ship, with a -gift representing a real sacrifice as a witness to its sincerity,-' Malacbi taunted his; people with offering to God the blind,' the lame and thesick animals, which they dared not present to their governor. If this were an insult which would not have been borne and might have ' been punished by death, how much greater tho insult to God. The preacher applied tlieso eternal principles of worship and offering to the conditions of modern church -finance, with its insincere methods, its appeal to the. parish for amusements', its willingness to put tho cost of church maintenance on any one who could be induced to play or gaiiihlc at bazaars and carnivals. Too often church finance was a b’emished offering, an insult to God, vitiating tho entire course of church life. That such methods were employed generally was no reason that Christian people should descend to them and violate the eternal principles of religion. At evensong, tho subject taken by Air Purchas was the widow’s Alite (St. Alark 12: 41-42). A vivid picture was drawn of the thirteen alms boxes in the Tempo, and of Christ sitting so near that ho was able actually to distinguish the coins dropped in. The widow’s gift probably represented the pay for a day’s work (“ail she had. all her living”)—a thanks-offering for some mercy, a recovery from illness or a return to employment. Nearby, in another of the Temple courts, the Court of the Gentiles was a very different scone, a market, a bazaar, whence the authorities of tho Templederived revenue from percentages on the sale of stock and the operation of j money changers. The contrast of the two methods was enforced, and again tho unworthiness and unseemliness of modern methods of church finance demonstrated, introducing into the church the spirit of worldliness. The preacher offered no objection to the use of such methods to finance sports clubs, but they were self-condemned when employed for sacred purposes, and they would be universally deemed to be contemptible if applied to the erection of a war memorial. In the church they constituted an insult to God, and a poisoning of. the, spiri ttial Jifo. The true principle .was that of a freewill offering, at a real cost to the giver.