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cannot believe it is the absolute verity. The law of its development, like all the rest of God's laws, is running forward into the future not less than coming up from the past. The same forces, acting on the same principles which led to the world's growth out of fetichism and polytheism, are still at work. And the culmination of the process, the final doctrine in which the whole race is evermore to rest, is that of one Person, the Eternal Father, embracing all excellence, immanent in all things, and accessible, without rite or priest or intercessor, directly to all souls.

ART. IV. - ON SOME CONDITIONS OF THE MODERN MINISTRY.

Proceedings of the National Unitarian Conference, in Session at SyraReport on the Supply of Ministers. By S. H. WINCKLEY.

cuse.

THE claims and prospects of the Christian ministry have generally been urged, as they are urged here, with a noble disregard to certain material conditions of its existence. It is to the honor of the profession, that this disregard is especially conspicuous in all its own appeals for encouragement, and the inducements it offers to its own recruits. It has left to the literature of romance, such as "The Minister's Wooing" and "Dr. Johns," the statement of its actual relations with the public that maintains it; and to secular journals, like "The Nation" or "The Round Table," the protest against the straitened terms by which it often lives. Among themselves, the members of that profession — whatever their private confessions of difficulty or hardship in their experience have said little, we might almost say have been unconscious, of what to many has seemed its chief embarrassment, in comparison with that great spiritual want, that great Christian task, to which its services are pledged.

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And yet there are reasons why the members of that profes

sion should make their own voice heard on a point which has attracted so much public attention. It is well that it should be looked at from their position, and spoken of in counsel with one another, and with the community at large. Curious misunderstandings, and injustice in the zeal for justice, are sure to follow when it is looked at only from a distance. Thus a writer in "The Round Table," commenting indignantly on the scanty ministerial salaries in Connecticut, speaks of three thousand dollars as the least that ought to be paid, charging the prevalent scale of maintenance to a deliberate wrong on the part of the public. We say nothing of the very desirable standard of recompense proposed: would that it were possible! But, as to the charge, we extremely regret that it should have gained ground, and even been echoed from some professional channels. So far from doing wilful injustice to its religious institutions, we consider that, in the older parts of the country at least, they are the pet extravagance of the people, and that the community is taxed to a very unreasonable amount for their support. True, this extravagance consists generally in the multiplication of sects and accumulation of church debts; rarely, though sometimes, in paying salaries unreasonably large. But it ought to be more distinctly seen, that the public is not ungenerous, but unwise, in its expenditure for church purposes; and that the chief ecclesiastical want, financially speaking, is not a greater munificence, but a truer economy, in the appropriation of its means.

There is one fact, at the outset, which it appears to us important to state very explicitly. In plain terms, it is simply this: This profession, along with a cordial welcome, with many social privileges, with as sure and liberal and honorable support as any to the individual who enters it, does not, as things are, provide and the public does not care that it shall provide for the maintenance of his family, or the costs of a domestic establishment. We say nothing of the few instances to the contrary that might be pointed out, except to say that they are exceptional. In every case with which we are well enough acquainted to speak with confidence, a preacher who maintains his family respectably, and clear of

debt, does it by means outside of his profession. We need not press the details. But we know that many a young man, on entering it, does not understand this cardinal financial fact; and for want of it we constantly see cases of what, in any other profession, would be a criminal and reckless haste in assuming the heavy responsibility of what is called a "settlement in life," together with a false and hurtful expectation on the part of one's parish or friends, that he shall do it. Hence, in more instances than we like to confess, the humiliating and painful spectacle of chronic insolvency and hopeless debt, in a man in full health, in full activity, in full course of professional success; or else a secret, dreary, painful struggle, aggravated perhaps by the dread of parochial change, and darkening with years into the sure prospect of poverty for one's self, dependence and suffering to those for whose welfare he has pledged his own.

We have alluded, in a single word, to those changes of parochial relation which make this point press so much more keenly. But we must stop to show how it affects this more than most other professions. In the first place, a change of this sort suspends - in many cases, definitely cuts off — the whole of one's customary resources. Few will have the courage or ability to wait for the loss to be made fully good. Many will be compelled, by stress of need, to accept such measure of compensation as presently offers. So, by sharp and sudden. steps, a man may decline from comparative ease to real indigence, from the mere lack of ability to bide his time. Again, in almost any other profession, a faithful workman may reasonably hope that his legitimate income in it will be larger at fifty years than at thirty, corresponding with his increasing needs. In this, almost alone, the likelihood is that it will be less, relatively, perhaps, much less. Pride, expectation, sympathy, popular gifts, are often mostly on the side of the young: the older must win what they win with less enthusiasm, and by a soberer esteem. The days of anxious dependence, or perhaps penury, come just when the harvest of life is gathered in other callings; as the ease of an ample present maintenance comes in this just in those early years

when other callings bring their season of anxiety and struggle. So that, in a great measure, the pecuniary conditions on which the ordinary economies of human life rest, are in this case reversed.

Again, a compulsory change of residence - whether actual, impending, or only seen as probable in the distance - takes out the heart and the stability from whatever else a man may bethink him of for a resource. We wonder, sometimes, at those miracles of thrift by which country ministers of the older times, on salaries almost nominal, could afford a style of living and a hospitality unknown to their successors, and still provide college education for their boys, and a comfortable independence for their old age. But in truth it was a comparatively simple matter. The salary was a life-annuity. The parish was a life-long home. A modest estate of two or three acres perhaps thirty; a social position, definite and unchallenged; an absolute deliverance from restless ambitions or apprehensions of change; a thrifty turning of the soil at need, or, frequently, the resource of family pupils or college exiles, made conditions of material support such as most men might envy, and any wise man find sufficient. Besides, the salary was no measure of the real professional emolument. Was a parsonage to be built? the foundationstones, a large part of the lumber, and half the days' labor would very likely be voluntary gifts; did charities and hospitalities strain the narrow income? the housekeeping stores might be swelled from the larders of half the parish; in 'killing-time," the choicest side of bacon would find its way to the minister's; in apple-harvest came, with brief emphasis, a message from the largest orchard in town, "Send your barrels."* All this, not in the way of "donation-parties,"

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* In illustration, we copy from the record kept by a country minister's wife of her first month's housekeeping:

Feb. 4, 1818. - Barrel of apples, barrel of

sweet apples, loaf of wheat bread, and bowl of cream, Mr. and Mrs. Williams. Two loaves of brown bread, sausages, porksteaks, salt, pickles, Mrs. Col. Whitney. Bottle of wine, Lewis Eager.

Load of walnut wood, Col Eager.
Bowl of soap, Mary Ann Whitney.
5. Cheese, sausages, Col. Eager.

Roasting-piece of beef, Mr. Benj Munroe.
Bottle of cream, Mrs. B. Munroe.

6. Pot of honey, Mrs. Williams.

too often a shabby apology, in the guise of charity, for the neglect of justice, neighborly custom.

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but in the way of frank reciprocity and We do not speak of it as a thing whose loss is on the whole to be regretted. It belonged to a state of things which has passed away, and is not likely to return. But it has left us two real embarrassments in dealing with this matter, first, a state of general feeling or expectation, touching a minister's style of living, which ill fits the change in his relations to the public; and, second, a standard of pecuniary recompense which encourages the multiplying rather than the strengthening of parishes. If a seceding church can muster its six hundred dollars of revenue, the amount of its old pastor's life-annuity,-it considers itself justified in offering it, as the uncertain income of an uncertain term, to the candidates for a position growing ever more and more precarious, we need not say with what probable effect on the dignity and ability of the profession. In showing how the

Half-a-peck of Indian and 2 qts. of rye
meal, Mrs. Col. Whitney.

Cruden's Concordance, 2 pairs of gloves,
Madame Whitney.

7. Bottle of cream, 2 quarts milk, Mrs. B.
Munroe.

Bottle of milk, Mrs. Williams.

Bottle of currant wine and figs, Madame
Whitney.

Half a large squash, Col. Whitney.

8. 7 lbs. of flour and 1 pair of chickens, Dr. Ball.

A pot of soap, Mrs. Oliver Eager.

10. Beefsteaks, &c., Mrs. Benj. Munroe.

11. Piece of beef and bushel of rye, Winslow
Brigham.

Piece of beef and a cheese, Jonas Ball.
Piece of beef and 4 lbs. butter, Abel War-

ren.

Shoulder of pork, Phin. Davis.

Loaf of bread and mince pie, Col. Eager.
Bottle of cream, Mrs. O. Eager.
Bottle of cream, Mrs. B. Munroe.

12. Bottle of cream, Mrs. Williams.
13. Load of wood, Abel Warren.

14. 3 pints of milk, Col. Whitney.

4 lbs. butter, lard, honey, sausages, Mrs.

Joel Parmenter.

Load of wood, Silas Bailey.

16. Bushel of oats, Benj. Munroe.

17. Bbl. of cider, piece of beef, Col. Crawford. A spare-rib, N. Brigham.

A chine of pork and sausages; loaf of bread.

19. Piece of beef.

Three pecks of Indian meal, one peck of
rye meal.

20. 3 quarts of milk, Mrs. Williams.
21. Load of wood, Jonas Bartlett.

30 sausages, bowl of cream, Benj. Munroe.
Piece of beef, peck of apples, a cheese,
a loaf of brown bread, ditto of white
bread, and four quarts of soap, Silas
Bailey.

23. Bottle of cream, Sol. Sherman.
26. 4 cords of wood, Asa Fay.

27. A large spare-rib, Jonas Ball.

Mar. 1. A keg of pickled cucumbers, Col.
Crawford.

2. A salmon-trout (5 lbs.) from Winnipis-
seogee, Sam. Seaver.

March-meeting cake, Mrs. Col. Whitney.

4. 3 quarts of milk, Mrs. B. Munroe.
3 quarts of milk, Mrs. Sherman.

5. Load of wood, Oliver Munroe.

Half a day's work (chopping wood), by

Asa Maynard, Luke Howe, Taylor Brig. ham, John Carruth, Mr. Rice, and Nahum Eager.

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