After apostolical times, monthly offerings and oblations, we are informed, were made in all the churches, and were used for three purposes. (1) In maintaining the clergy; (2) in supporting the sick and needy; and (3) in repairing the church fabric. These monthly contributions were in the third century augmented by grants of lands, which were annexed to churches, the revenues derived from which were appropriated to the same three purposes. In A.D. 322 Constantine, the first Christian emperor, published an edict which gave full liberty to his subjects to bestow as large a proportion of their property to the clergy as they should think proper. From all these sources of revenue the Christian Church was rapidly increasing in wealth. But for more than four hundred years after the Christian era there was no authoritative Church canon made for the payment of tithes; and then such canon was founded upon the Mosaic Law. The question then is, are Christians justified in adopting the Mosaic Law for the payment of tithes? This law had no force outside Jewish territory. There is no order in the New Testament for their payment. Among the Jews we fail to find such anomalies, rather scandals and misappropriations, in respect to the distribution of tithes, as are found in England and Wales. The gross amount of tithe-rent charge is slightly over four millions per annum. Add to this the extraordinary rent charges on hops, the corn rents and extensive lands awarded in lieu of tithes by the large number of Inclosure Acts. Among the Jews we find no record of lay impropriators, schools, colleges, charities and hospitals receiving tithes. Granted, for argument’s sake, that the Christian priesthood as succeeding the Mosaic priesthood, claimed the tithes according to the Mosaic Law, then it is a misappropriation of tithes to give them to those outside the priesthood, and who perform no spiritual functions. We must therefore go back to very early times, to the history of tithes in the Christian Church, for the beginning of the scandalous misappropriations of tithe endowment for spiritual purposes. In England the scandal commenced after the Norman Conquest with the Norman monks who were in English monasteries. About one-fourth of the whole tithe rent charge is appropriated or rather misappropriated to lay purposes by laymen, many of whom are quite unconnected with the religious duties of those parishes from which the tithes arise. Then, again, we have a large extent of land—formerly monastic—which is tithe free. There are also lands in the vicinity of large cities and towns built upon, for which the landlords receive enormous ground rents, and when the leases expire they take possession of the house property. But they pay nothing to the Church for the increased value of their land, which may be one hundred times the yearly value per acre before it was built upon.