“The dignity of the church must be first consulted, Jerom: and I have a certain repugnance to any thing like speculation in so sacred a property as tithes. In my opinion, the worst omen for the church is this peculiar revenue being in the hands of any laymen: and I much question whether the royal act of allowing lay impropriations be not the cause of the present adversity of the establishment.” Alice looked up from her cup of tea, on hearing that tithe property was sacred. She asked, with a look of mortification, “May not I play with the tithe lamb Mr. Parker sent this morning, papa? And he sent some eggs, too; and I bade Susan make a custard with them. Must not we eat any custard?” “To be sure, my dear child. Why not?” “I thought you said that what was tithe was sacred, papa.” “Well, my dear, that does not prevent its being used. Do you forget what your Latin lesson was about, this morning?” “About the bullocks that were offered to Jupiter. People did eat them, to be sure; and they were sacred. But those people were not Christians.” “Which only shows, my dear child, that there are some things which are inherently sacred,—shown to be so by the light of reason and nature: and among these are tithes. You will find, hereafter, that the Phenicians paid tithes. So did the Egyptians and the Hindoos, as well as the Greeks and Romans: all which seems to prove that these nations must have been under one common guidance as to this institution. This is confirmed by a reference to the attributes of some of the heathen deities. Thus Apollo— —” “O, Apollo! The author of light——” “Exactly so. Now mark what is conjoined with his being the source of light. He was emphatically called the ‘tithe-crowned,’ the ‘taker of tithes,’ and so on.” “Then, papa, I will put some of Mrs. Parker’s mint and sage and parsley upon your head, and then you will be like Apollo.” “As the Jews paid tithe in consequence of a divine revelation,” observed Jerom, “I should be disposed to doubt whether the tithe system arose from the light of nature.” “Whether we so consider it, or conclude that it arose from some unrecorded revelation made to Adam,” returned the vicar, “my doubts remain as to whether this kind of property may be made the material of speculation, like any other kind of property.” “But, papa, who took Adam’s tithes? Did he pay them to Eve, or to the angels? or, perhaps, to himself? Only, there would not be much use in that. If every body did so, I don’t know what would become of _us_.” “I do not speak as from knowledge, child. I only mention what seems to me the most probable solution.—But, brother, there is further evidence, from its wide extension, of this being an institution of the highest origin, whether natural or revealed;—evidence which has not yet been duly improved. Governments have been supported in a vast majority of countries, by contributions analogous to our tithes;—contributions from the produce, not from the rent, of land.”