BAG VERSUS PLATE.

Thames Star, Volume XI, Issue 3550, 12 May 1880, Page 2

BAG VERSUS PLATE.

This is the title of a controversy which has been figuring in the columns of the London Spectator, and which is said to be rag'tig in half the parishes iv England. The momentous question in debate is, " should church, offerings be collected by bag or by plate ?" ("By neither," says a voice at my elbow, " there oughtn't to beany offertories at all"—which graceless interruption I note without replying to. "A Vicar" w,ites to the Times that he gets nothing in his offertory bags but threepenny bits, and that when paying a bill, to his grocer in this ignominious coin the storekeeper re* marked, " These threepences are such a convenience to me, aB I can now oblige so many of your congregation,.who come to me for them on the Saturday!" The {Spectator recommends the substitution of plate for bag on the ground that publicity would shame the givers into l'berr'ity. It occurs to me that the argument on that side is stronger than the Spectator is aware of. Thrre courses are open to you when a collecting bag is handed to you in church. You may put your finger in and Bt?r it up. (Gentlemen whose private devotions when entering the build'3g consist in looking into their hats and counting fift; :n are believed to adopt this method.) Or you may confide to its unseen depths a button, lolly, or blank cheque (fact, says the Spectator), and nobouy will be the wiser until the. offerings of the faithful undergo the scrutiny of the deacons on .the vestry table. Thirdly, you may imitate the precocious youngster whose first utterance after emerging from a Mayfcir church was " Mamma, how much did you get out of the bag P—l got a shilling!" There is a fourth course, but many adopt that only as a pis aller. You may drop in a threepenny. All these privileges vanish with the advent of the plate. Uiiless/ou have.the nerve to put in a half-sovereign and take back your own change, I don't see how you can make a profit ou the transaction. Nay, you must lose money. Your respectability w;U hardly condescend to give less thau a shilling, and the plate * has consequently done you out of a cool ninepence. The subject is a gloomy one, and suggests low views of human nature. Mrs Civis

tells me that every wet Sunday puts money iv her pocket. "As how ?" I ask. With a meaning look, which tries to in* volve mo as an accomplice, she replies, "We save the collection.'' When, in virtuous accents, I rejoined that then we ought to give double next Sunday, she calmly responds that she " doesn't see it." Too evidently man is a fallen creature— and woman dii h:>. I can think of only one cure for thes evils. Let the churches adopt the m I: -which always strikes me as sadly oii of place on the Post-office pillar boxes—' No collection on Sunday." .—" Civis "in the Otago Witness.