A minister whose heart was aglow with missionary zeal gave notice to his congregation that in the evening an offering would be taken for missions, and he asked for liberal gifts.
A selfish, well-to-do man in the congregation met the preacher before the evening service and said, “You are going to kill the church if you go on saying, ‘Give, give, give.’ No church can stand it. You are going to kill it.”
After the sermon the preacher said to the people: “Brother Jones told me I am going to kill this church if I keep asking you to give; but, my brethren, churches don’t die that way. If anybody knows of a church that died because it had been giving too much to the Lord, I would be very much obliged if my brother would tell me where that church is, for I will visit it and climb on the walls of that church, under the light of the moon, and say, ‘Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord.’”