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," * 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 Load of walnut wood, Col Eager. 6. Pot of honey, Mrs. Williams. too often a shabby apology, in the guise of charity, for the neglect of justice, - but in the way of frank reciprocity and neighborly custom. 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 7. Bottle of cream, 2 quarts milk, Mrs. B. Bottle of milk, Mrs. Williams. Bottle of currant wine and figs, Madame 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. 8 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 20. 3 quarts of milk, Mrs. Williams. 30 sausages, bowl of cream, Benj. Munroe. 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 Winnipisseogee, 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 ham, John Carruth, Mr. Rice, and Na- economies of the earlier time were possible, we have shown, at the same time, how hard they are to practise now. Little encouragement to underdrain the glebe or plant the orchard, where five years is a long tenure, and most are less than three; nor of other avocations will many flourish in a migrating and itinerant life. And, such as they are, public opinion sets sharp limits. We remember the scandal in Hollis Street, when Mr. Pierpont sought to "turn an honest penny" with his lathe; a most estimable friend and excellent minister, of inventive genius in mechanics, was carped at as "that machinist" by some who heard him preach; scarce any measure of gospel grace would sustain a carpenter, a tentmaker, or a fisherman in the apostolical succession now; and, though a minister may put his spare revenues in public stocks, he may not, without cavil, give them openly to the exchangers, and so receive them back with usury. Wise or foolish, we do not complain of these restrictions; only refer to them to show, that the one economical condition of permanence in the elder ministry has not yet been made good. Perhaps we shall be pardoned for a word, in this connection, touching the equivocal relations with parishes, which grow out of unsettled questions of professional duty. We refer to those cases where a man's honest conscience brings him into direct collision with the dominant feeling, or dominant interest, of his parish. The case of Mr. Pierpont was one heroic and memorable instance; but Mr. Pierpont was the winner in that long struggle of fourteen years, purely through the legal advantage of his life-tenure. It is only justice to younger men to say, that his very success has made any similar struggle far more difficult for them; since it did something to establish the now universal stipulation, for the termination of contract at a few months' notice. Morally regarded, such collisions as these we refer to have shown the very noblest side of the professional character, particularly among our younger men, who had every thing to risk, and little to hope, in a conflict of conscience and self-interest. Still, aside from class feeling or personal feeling, let us endeavor to look at the simple fact. It is not being true to one's own conscience that makes the sore point, but doing it at others' expense. A man of sensitive feeling is compelled to see, that, unless he stands frankly ready to forfeit his professional support, when he engages in such a controversy, he does one of two things: either he compels a part of his congregation to pay him money against their own wish, - a thing in the highest degree repulsive to one of honorable feeling; or else, by a division in the parish, he compels his friends to pay twice as much as they agreed, or would willingly consent, that his salary may be unimpaired. Either alternative is apt to appear equally discreditable to him and unjust to them. And the only solution that will probably seem to him at once dignified and honest, a sorrowful solution at best, - is, in event of such a collision, frankly to submit the question of the continuance of his relation to the fresh, unbiassed, decision of the parish. He may sacrifice, for a time, his personal interest, and even his means of livelihood; but he has done his very best service to the real honor and independence of his calling, - a service of which his successor, if not himself, is sure to find the benefit. A man says he cannot afford it. Very well, then, he cannot afford to stay in that particular pulpit; at least, he cannot afford to press that particular point of conscience. An honest man, in such a case, is likely to consider that he has entered into a definite business contract, to fulfil a course of duty assumed to be well understood, and that he expects, quarterly or monthly, to draw his stipulated pay. What entitles him to that pay at all, excepting the free consent of the body corporate of his parish? This reciprocal obligation, official on one side and pecuniary on the other, very greatly embarrasses the simple case of conscience, which seems at first sight to be offered.* It is very much to be regretted, * A friend of our own, minister of a Unitarian congregation in England, met a case of this nature in a way which seems to us manly and honorable. Learning that part of the revenue of his chapel was derived from the rent of beershops, - which, as a consistent temperance man, he earnestly opposed, - he first remonstrated with the trustees of his congregation; then, on their declining to withdraw the property from that use, he declined to receive so much of his salary as was derived from that source. The result naturally was his withdrawal at the end of the year, - with no hard thoughts on either side, - to useful and honored service in other fields. |