But why such dreadful alarm over this tithe law? Why, for example, should the writer in Smith and Cheetham’s Dictionary try to minimize all this testimony of the Father’s? He is anxious to prove that “the evidence belonging to this period would seem to show that payment of tithe was first regarded as a duty soon after A. D. 350. By that time the idea generally prevailed that the priest of the Christian Church had succeeded to the office of the Levitical priests, and consequently to their rights and privileges.” His bogy comes to light in the following: “Cyprian (Epist. 1:9, Ed. Erasmus, 66 Pamel.) writes to dissuade a presbyter from accepting the position of guardian on the ground that the clergy are separated from all secular business. The tribe of Levi had no inheritance but was supported by tithes, that they might devote themselves entirely to divine service; ‘the same plan and form is now preserved in regard to the clergy’ that they may not be diverted from their sacred duties, but ‘receiving as it were tithes may not depart from the altar.’ Here the phrase tanquam decimas is decisive against the payment of tithe as a fixed legal due, for decimae paid as legal dues could not be tanquam decimae. There is analogy, not identity in the method of support.” The word “legal” is the key to all this twisting and trembling. This will be explained, perhaps, when we recall that he is an Englishman, and comes of a race that has suffered much from enforced tithing. Uhlhorn’s Christian Charity in the Ancient Church is marred by the same tremendous anxiety to kill off any hope of this legal monster ever getting loose again. Hence it seems that it is now time to say that the tithe never was in Bible times, the legal monster that it afterward became. Under Old Testament teaching and practice, the tithe was voluntary. No hand of force was used to collect it, but as in the time of Hezekiah, the people brought in the tithes willingly and abundantly. It was a moral precept, enforced by appeals to the conscience. Hezekiah does not reckon on the tithes in a way that indicates that he would compel them to be brought in, but expresses his gratitude when he finds that so much was brought in by the people. The appeal of Malachi to the nation that had robbed God is a moral appeal and is based upon the same thought that we find in all such appeals of Scripture. That the Pharisees by their traditions had reduced it to a burdensome legal requirement need not be questioned. So did they weigh down every moral precept that the Lord ever laid upon the conscience of men. The advocacy of the tithe in this country is always on the voluntary basis, so far as I know. I feel that it would be a calamity were it put on any other basis, and I know that all who are working in this line, so far as I have become acquainted with their work, have the same feeling. What we believe is that this is God’s standard of giving, a minimum below which one cannot fall and be entitled to a claim on