During a tour to the southern USA, beginning September 11, 1917, Joseph F. Smith was recorded as teaching the following on tithing to Church members:
Think what it means to hold keys
of authority which--if exercised in wisdom and in righteousness--are bound to
be respected by the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost! Do you honor this
Priesthood? Do you respect the office and honor the key of authority that you
possess in the Melchizedek Priesthood, which is after the order of the Son of
God? Will you, who hold this Priesthood, profane the name of Deity? Would you
be riotous, and eat and drink with the drunken, with the unbelieving and with
the profane? Would you, holding that Priesthood, forget your prayers, and fail
to remember the Giver of all good? Would you, holding that Priesthood, and
possessing the right and authority from God to administer in the name of the
Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, violate the confidence and the
love of God, the hope and desire of the Father of all of us? For, in bestowing
that key and blessing upon you, he desires and expects you to magnify your
calling. Would you, as an elder in the Church of Jesus Christ, dishonor your
wife or your children? Would you desert the mother of your children, the wife
of your bosom, the gift of God to you, which is more precious than life itself?
For without the woman the man is not perfect in the Lord, no more than the
woman is perfect without the man. Will you honor the Sabbath day and keep it
holy? Will you observe the law of tithing and all the other requirements of the
gospel? Will you carry with you at all times the spirit of prayer and the
desire to do good? Will you teach your children the principles of life and
salvation so that when they are eight years old they will desire baptism, of
their own accord? (F.W. Otterstrom [official Church Reporter], "A Journey
to the South: Gems from President Smith's Talks to the People on the Way,"
Improvement
Era 21, no. 2 [December, 1917]: 105-6)
