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.

that the problem, when it comes up, is not left to solve itself (as it often might) in a natural and right way: but a pressure is brought to bear from without; a cry of "political preaching" is raised on one side, and on the other there are never wanting those to goad a sensitive conscience into a position which there may be neither force of will nor capacity of intellect nor popular gifts to sustain. There are cases, again, where a wrong public spirit seems to offer a direct challenge to whatever of right conscience and Christian manliness there may be in the profession. And, whatever a scrupulous casuistry may decide in any given instance, this at least ought to be said, that the profession owes the rescue of its honor to those, many and nameless, who have proved their simple allegiance to duty; and, to their great cost, have accepted the challenge in the same obstinate and indomitable temper that offered it.

We look, for the solution of these embarrassments, to the truer relations between the profession and the public, which we are sure will grow from this long controversy, truer, not in the sense of mechanical fixity, but of adjustment to altered conditions of thought and other habits of life. In particular, as we hold, there must be developed, in forms as yet unsettled and unfamiliar, a style of professional character and expectation, and a code of professional duty, the equivalent of that loyalty to the welfare of the parish as such, which prevailed when this profession was a more definite and precisely recognized order than it is now. And this must come mainly from the general recognition of a precise and definite sphere of duty in it, one not quite commensurate, perhaps, with all the ranges of human thought, or all the applications of divine morality, yet broad enough and grand enough to enlist the enthusiasm and command the loyalty of competent men. In a period of "drift," of party passion and of restless change, it has been inevitable, that many of the noblest minds enlisted in this profession should believe in ideas, not institutions; should even expressly disclaim any loyalty to the Church, claiming to be only servants of the Truth. But the task of a liberal Christianity will be incomplete, until it

shall have perfected an organization so divinely generous and noble, so humanly tender and dear, so entwined with the best traditions and affections of the past, as to be worthy, for its own sake, of the utmost devotion that a man can give.

To this, then, our argument and illustration tend, to an organization of the Christian ministry among us, better adapted than any we have attained as yet, to the needs of the time, to the fitnesses and opportunities of its members. The conditions which appear to us most important to be observed are these two, first, that it shall turn to account the spontaneous enthusiasm and exuberant vitality that belong to the first years of active manhood; and, second, that it shall interterpose some check to those personal anxieties and embarrassments which often take from the later years of professional life full half their vigor. It is not too much to say, that every thing turns on the direction given to the first five years of service. Here let the Church take a lesson from the State. When the young, highly-educated officer enters the army of the nation, it is on a low grade, with hard service and poor pay. He does not grudge that he must spend weary years in a frontier garrison, or risk his life in a pitiful skirmish with half-naked savages, or reach the prime of manhood rarely knowing the charm of cultivated society, and never expecting the secure comforts of a home. And yet, in this service, with all its petty rivalries and jealousies, its few opportunities of a finer culture, its sullen and haughty pride, we find the very type, all the world over, of professional honor, fidelity unto death, and a self-respect that bides no stain. Shall that which some of us love to call the service of the Lord Jesus, the captain of our salvation, what others of us prefer to call the service of truth, humanity, and the living God, win less enthusiasm, fidelity, zeal, than the following the nation's flag? We are well assured, that a very large proportion of those who enter this profession at five-andtwenty, do it with hearts all ready to respond to the call for service just as arduous and as poorly paid as that, - service on the frontier, in weary circuits, or among the poor in the city streets, if any man would show the way. And this

service would educate and train them, as nothing else could, for the very highest work and the very noblest privileges of the Christian ministry in riper years.

In illustration of what we have urged, and by way of experiment, we add the following outline of a working plan, which has received the approval of some of our most intelligent and experienced men. Let us suppose, that the American Unitarian Association—or any similar body, holding sufficient funds should offer to enlist for special service, under its own direction, a limited number of young candidates for the ministry.* We would suggest some such conditions as these: That the term of enlistment be for a definite time, say five years; that the immediate compensation in money be a sum strictly limited for personal expenses, say two hundred dollars a year, — understanding that lodging and board will be found in the place of service, and that the necessary costs of travel will be defrayed; that an equal sum, say one thousand dollars in all, be paid at the end of five years' acceptable service, or a just proportion of it in case of disability or death; that any candidate who, by marriage or settlement or engaging in any other vocation, relinquishes the service, loses all further claim upon the Association; while the directing council or committee are held bound in honor to promote, in all fit ways, the professional advancement and welfare of its faithful servants. Such a plan would offer no interference, or even modification, to such professional relations or personal aspirations as now exist; but we are sure that it would open to a class of young men (however small), standing always ready, those to whom the ministry is not a profession merely but a vocation, - an opportunity which

* Among the forms which this special service may take, we may indicate missionary service in prisons or hospitals, or among the poor; the gathering of churches and Sunday schools in cities; education of freedmen and refugees; the supply of old and dwindling parishes; experimental labors in new communities; together with auxiliary service in large and laborious city parishes. All these are tasks eminently fit to be done under responsible direction; essential to the complete work of the Church as an institution in society; and the very best training for the early years of professional life.