Voluntary Love Versus Compulsory Tax in God's House

Maclaren identifies a fundamental rupture in ecclesiastical practice: the Old Testament operated on the principle of law—'Thou shalt' or 'Thou shalt not'—with fixed assessments on each man. But the New Testament animates itself by love's voice: 'Though I have all boldness in Christ to enjoin thee ... yet for love's sake I rather beseech.' The money given from compulsion versus the money that 'cometh into any man's heart to bring' differs not merely in quantity but in spiritual substance.

When the Church binds the growing limbs of Christian generosity 'in Jewish swaddling bands,' degrading New Testament giving into mere assessment, the result is catastrophic. The 'abundant gush of the fountain of love opened in a grateful, trusting heart' becomes a shrunken, squeezed stream. Maclaren observes that this anachronism has 'marred the Church for many centuries, and in many lands.'

Beyond financial principle, Joash's patience with negligent officials—waiting until the twenty-third year of his reign—reveals another reality: clergy commonly treat their own support as 'a first charge on the church,' and may become less enthusiastic about religious objects than the laity they serve. The money 'slips through their fingers' through carelessness, if not deliberate misappropriation. When institutional self-interest eclipses the work of restoration, even God's house languishes in disrepair. Common sense and business principles, applied with watchfulness, prove indispensable where the human heart proves unreliable.