“Mr. Hardcap has had some experience with promise-breaking churches,” said Deacon Goodsole.

It seems that Mr. Hardcap did the carpenter work in some repairs on the Methodist church here last summer.  When he got through he carried in his bill to the President of the Board of Trustees.  The President referred him to the Treasurer.  The Treasurer reported no funds and referred him to the Chairman of the Building Committee.  The Chairman of the Building Committee explained that it was his business to supervise the building, not to raise the funds, and sent him back to the President.  It was not till Mr. Hardcap, whose stock of patience is small, threatened the church with a mechanic’s lien that the remedy was forthcoming.

“Well, gentlemen,” said I, “I will not be a party to getting a minister here on-excuse the term,—­false pretences; on the assurance that we can pay him $1,500 a year when it is a hard matter to pay him $1,200.  There are ten of us here.  I will put my name down now for $30, if the rest will do the same.  If the Lord sends the $300, or if the ladies raise it by a fair, or if Mr. Wheaton gets up a concert, or the summer boarders come to our rescue, we shall have nothing to pay.  If none of these things happen, the minister will not have it all to lose.”

The matter was eventually settled in that way.  We raised a contingent fund of $250 then and there, which we have since made up to $400.  So that now we can offer $1,500 a year with a clear conscience.

As a lawyer I have had some experience dealing with corporations.  And I record my deliberate conviction here that of all corporations church corporations are financially the worst; the most loose and dilatory and unconsciously dishonest.  I record it as my deliberate conviction, having had some opportunities for knowing, that in the Calvinistic church, of the others I don’t pretend to know anything, on the average not one half the ministry get their meagre salaries promptly.  This injustice is the greatest and most scandalous feature in the treatment to which the churches subject their ministers.  That ministers are subjected to hardships is a matter of no consequence.  So are other people.  It is the injustice, the absolute and indefensible injustice, the promising to pay their meagre salaries and then not paying even those-the obtaining of their services under false pretences-that I complain of.  If I were a minister I never would accept a call without knowing thoroughly the income and the expenditure of the church.

As I write there lies before me a letter from my late pastor.  He wants to borrow $300 for a few weeks.  His Board of Trustees are thus much behind-hand in the first quarter’s payment.  He has not the means to pay his rent.  The duty of the Board in such a case is very evident.  The very least they can do is to share in providing temporarily for the exigency.  The very most which a mean Board could do would be to ask the minister to unite with