70 CENTENNIAL HISTORY
contribution ; wherefore, as God has prospered you, so freely offer. " The ministers, when there was any extraordinary occasion, accompanied the call with some earnest exhortation out of the Scriptures, urging to liberality. The contribution was received, not by passing a box or plate from seat to seat, but in a manner calculated to make the gift seem more like a gift and an offering to God. " The magistrates and chief gentlemen first," says Lechford, " and then the elders and all the congregation of them, and most of them that are not of the church, all single persons, widows, and women in absence of their husbands, come up, one after another, one way, and bring their offerings to the deacon at his seat, and put into a box of wood for the purpose, if it be money or papers ; if it be any other chattel, they set or lay it down before the deacons, and so pass another way to their seats again ; which money and goods the deacons dispose toward the maintenance of the minister and the poor of the church, and the church's occasions-without making account ordinarily. " This was the mode of contributing at Boston in 1640 ; there is evidence that it was the mode at New Haven also ; and we find it practised in Plymouth, Mass., as early as 1632. Governor Winthrop in his " Journal, " describing a visit to Plymouth, and the services on the Lord's day, says, " When this was ended, the deacon, Mr. Fuller, put the congregation in mind of their duty of contribution ; whereupon the Governor and all the rest went down to the deacon's seat, and put into the box, and then returned. " No man's contribution, under such circumstances as these, was likely to consist of the smallest coin which his pocket contained; but whatever it was, it meant something. Those were the days of self-denial, and where money was not to be had, something else-as you have noticed-was offered. We meet, in 1662, with the following suggestion-probably as timely as it is quaint : " The court proposeth it, as a thing they judge would be very commendable and beneficial, to the towns where God's providence shall cast any whales, if they should agree to set apart some part of every such fish, or oil, for the encouragement of an able and godly minister among them." A