he good old days weren't all that good, especially for preachers who liked to eat. The plain fact is that Sabbathkeeping Adventists had no regular way of paying them.

As a result, by late 1856 such promising young evangelists as J. N. Loughborough, who had become "somewhat discouraged as to finances," had left the ministry so that he could support his family.¹ J. N. Andrews, who had turned to clerking in his uncle's store in Waukon, Iowa, that same autumn, was another casualty of the problem.

The "preacher crisis" was of special concern to James White, the leader of the young Sabbatarian movement. He and his wife, Ellen, temporarily averted disaster by making a danger-filled midwinter journey to Waukon to wake up the sleeping Adventist community and to reclaim the dropout ministers. Both Andrews and Loughborough saw the hand of God in the visit and rededicated their lives to preaching the Sabbatarian message.

But that rededication did not change the objective financial realities. For example, for his first three months' labor after leaving Waukon, Loughborough received room and board, a buffalo-skin overcoat worth about $10, and $10 in cash as pay for his ministerial labor. The problem was far from solved.

It was not until early 1859 that anything even approaching an adequate solution would be developed. On January 16 the Battle Creek church assembled to "consider the subject of a System of Benevolence which would induce all to do something to sustain the cause of present truth, and thereby fully sustain the cause." J. N. Andrews, J. B. Frisbie, and James White were chosen to "prepare an address on Systematic Benevolence, founded upon the declarations of holy Scripture."²

Systematic Benevolence
Their plan was read before the Battle Creek congregation on January 29 and unanimously accepted. The plan of Systematic Benevolence encouraged men between the ages of 18 and 60 to contribute 5 to 25 cents per week, and women of the same age 2 to 10 cents. In addition, both groups should give 1 to 5 cents per week for each $100 unit of property they owned.³

For the first time the Sabbathkeeping Adventists had a plan to support their ministers. James White was jubilant, estimating that the 1,000 potential givers in Michigan alone could contribute $5,980 a year, enough "to sustain the cause in this State, and to sustain five missionaries still further west" yet without "any privation [to the given of the necessities of life]."⁴

White's wife, Ellen, was equally grateful. "I saw," she penned in 1859, "that there should be order in the church of God, and that system is needed in carrying forward successfully the last great message of mercy to the world. God is leading His people in the plan of systematic benevolence."⁵

Systematic Benevolence, even with all of its weaknesses, was a necessary first step in laying the foundation for the expansion of Sabbatarian Adventism. Regular funding undergirded not only the paying of clergy but also set the financial stage for the organization of the Seventh-day Adventist Church between 1860 and 1863, and the overseas mission program that began in the early 1870s--a mission thrust that would eventually take the denomination's message to the ends of the earth in line with the apocalyptic commission of Revelation 10:11 and 14:6-12. Without some such plan, Sabbatarian Adventism would have undoubtedly either died a slow death or remained a marginal movement, restricted to a few congregations in New England and the Midwest.⁶

One Tenth
But Systematic Benevolence wasn't adequate for the needs of a growing movement. Nor was it rooted as thoroughly in the Bible as some Adventists would have preferred. As a result, as the years passed, more and more Adventists began to emphasize Malachi 3:8-11 and a program of tithing. That was particularly true of Dudley M. Canright, who by early 1876 was arguing for tithing, or the giving of one-tenth of one's income for the support of the ministry. Canright especially pointed out that "the Lord does not say you should give me a tenth, but he says one-tenth is the Lord's." The tithe, he noted, already belonged to God. The believer's responsibility was to return it to Him.⁷

James White was quick to see both the biblical base of the tithing plan and its potential to finance more adequately the growing movement. He soon put out a tract that reiterated Canright's arguments. Finally in October 1878, the General Conference voted in its annual session to recommend "that all our brethren pledge to God one-tenth of all their income for the support of the ministry."⁸

Thus by 1880 tithing as we know it today was well on its way to becoming a part of Seventh-day Adventism. It was that forward step in the understanding of biblical tithing that prepared the denomination to extend its work in Europe and into Australia, Africa, Asia, South America, and the island nations during the 1880s and 1890s as it rode the crest of American Protestantism's second great wave of mission expansion. Adventism would never be the same again after those decades. But those changes would have never come about without the understanding of tithing developed in the late 1870s.

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¹ J. N. Loughborough, Rise and Progress of the Seventh-day Adventists (Battle Creek, Mich.: General Conference Association of the Seventh-day Adventists, 1892), p. 208.
² J. White, "Systematic Benevolence," Review and Herald, Feb. 3, 1859, p. 84.
³ J. White et al., "An Address," Review and Herald, Feb. 3, 1859, p. 84.
⁴ J. White, "The Cause," Review and Herald, May 26, 1859, p. 8.
⁵ Ellen G. White, Testimonies for the Church, vol. 1, p. 191.
⁶ For the interrelationship of Systematic Benevolence and church organization see George R. Knight, Organizing to Beat the Devil: The Development of Adventist Church Structure (Review and Herald, 2001), pp. 43, 44, passim.
⁷ D. M. Canright, "Systematic Benevolence, or the Bible Plan of Supporting the Ministry," Review and Herald, Feb. 17, 1876, pp. 49, 50.
⁸ J. White et al., "Systematic Benevolence," Review and Herald, Dec. 12, 1878, p. 188.

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George R. Knight is a professor of church history at the Seventh-day Adventist Theological Seminary.