The ringing words of Bishop Potter at the dedication of Grace Chapel in New York city, while they may apply peculiarly to the Episcopal Church, yet are wholesome words to all God’s people. “The growth of wealth and of luxury, wicked, wasteful, and wanton, as before God I declare that luxury to be, has been matched step by step by a deepening and deadening poverty which has left whole neighborhoods of people practically without hope and without aspiration. At such a time, for the church of God to sit still and be content with theories of its duty outlawed by time and long ago demonstrated to be grotesquely inadequate to the demands of a living situation, this is to deserve the scorn of men and the curse of God! Take my word for it, men and brethren, unless you and I and all those who have any gift or stewardship of talents, or means, of whatsoever sort, are willing to get up out of our sloth and ease and selfish dilettanteism of service, and get down among the people who are battling amid their poverty and ignorance--young girls for their chastity, young men for their better ideal of righteousness, old and young alike for one clear ray of the immortal courage and the immortal hope--then verily the church in its stately splendor, its apostolic orders, its venerable ritual, its decorous and dignified conventions, is revealed as simply a monstrous and insolent impertinence!” Seeing that this indictment is well placed, why should not any person or people pay to God at least the tenth, as His minimum requirement? The need has not ceased. We have the poor with us. The ministry is appointed to live by the gospel. The field is not Judea alone, but the world. Opportunities of beneficence are multifold. Men are waiting and hungering for the gospel. Men are longing to take it to them. Means we must have. Our greatest need, as before stated, from the human side is money, not men or machinery. As Mr. Gladstone said, “The inculcation and practice of systematic beneficence will prove the moral specific for this age.” Will the people rob God? “Bring ye the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the windows of heaven and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it.” Why not make the test? Then God even our own God will bless us with the riches of His grace, to whom be glory in the Church of Jesus Christ throughout all ages, world without end. Amen. FOOTNOTES: