The Benevolent Work of the Church, and the Report of the Committee of Twenty-One [pp. 246-272]

270 THE BENEVOLENT w0R~ OF THE CHURCH. [April,
the Boards of the Cliurch," will not preclude a large rental
from other sources.
But this subject has such wide relations, and involves such
important consequences, that it ought to be fully discussed
upon its merits, for which we have no space in this article.
We will oniy add that the operations of this Board might
and should be so conducted, in such a style of liberality and
catholicity, that ours would undersell all other religious
literature, and make our doctrinal and practical works, and
all our literature, more accessible and more ac~eptable t()
Presbyterians, (not to say others) than anything else of the
sort. We hope, we expect, that the new life of reunion will
greatly aid in these directions.
The suggestion of the Report, that there should be one
Trea~ury, was rather to be a consequence of wise consolidation, than an element of systematic beneficence. There appears to have been, by some, a total misapprehension of this
feature of the plan; as if the Committee aimed at only one
mode of collecting and disbursing the funds. There are
those, it is well known, who advocate giving every week t()
benevolent work in general, not specifying any particular object; these coilechons to be remitted periodically to a central
Treasury, and to be distributed according to some schedule
of apportionment, either by the Church authorities or by the
donors. This idea is admh~ably set forth in the lately published arrangements for collections by the Brick Church of
New York City, and its principle underlies long-tried methods
in some of our largest-giving churches. But in no case that
we have heard of does such a plan preclude the entire freedom of every contributor to give to what objects, and in
what proportion, he pleases. This may have been the plan
favored by two or three of the Committee of Twenty-one.
But there is no allusion to it in the Report, nor ~ ~t any
part of their p~~opo&iti~n.
Neither consolidation, nor a single treasury, requires the
adoption of any one over others of existing modes of contnbuting. On the contrary, the plan in question admits of
~erfect liberty in respect to all such indifferent details.