Lessons in Life, for All Who Will Read Them

"That might do, if we practised close economy. But why do they not make the salary seven or eight hundred dollars at once? It would be just the same to them, and make the minister feel a great deal more independent."

"True; but we must let people do things in their own way. We can live on seven hundred dollars, and I therefore think it my duty to give up my school, and accept the call."

"No one, certainly, can charge you with sordid views in doing so, for your school yields you now over a thousand dollars, and is increasing."

"I will try and keep my mind free from all thought of what people may say or think," returned Mr. Malcolm, "and endeavour to do right for the sake of right."

The wife of the Rev. Mr. Malcolm fully sympathized with her husband in his wish to enter upon the duties of his sacred calling, and was ready to make any sacrifice that could be made in order to see him in the position he so much desired to occupy. She did not, therefore, make any objection to giving up their pleasant home and sufficient income, but went with him cheerfully to C—, and there made every effort to reduce all their expenses to their reduced means of living.

It is a much easier thing to increase our expenses than to reduce them. We get used to a certain free way of living, and it is one of the most difficult things in the world to give up this little luxury, and that pleasant indulgence, and come right down to the meagre necessaries of life. This fact was soon apparent to Mr. and Mrs. Malcolm; but they were in earnest in what they were about, and practised the required self-denial. Their expenses were kept within the limits of seven hundred dollars, the lowest sum that had been named.

At the end of the first three months, one hundred dollars were paid to the minister. When he gave up his school, he sold it out to a person who wished to succeed him, for two hundred dollars. The expense of removing to C—, and living there for three months, had quite exhausted this sum. Mr. Malcolm paid away his last dollar before the quarter's salary was due, and was forced to let his bread-bill and his meat-bill run on for a couple of weeks; these were paid the moment he received his salary.

"I don't like these bills at all," said he to his wife, after they were paid. "A minister should never owe a dollar; it does him no good. Above all things, his mind should live in a region above the anxieties that a deficient income and consequent debt always occasion. We must husband what we have, and make it go as far as possible."

By the end of two months, the hundred dollars were all expended; but not a word had been said about the additional three or four hundred that had been promised, or that Mr. Malcolm fully believed had been promised. Bills had now to be run up with the baker, grocer, and butcher, which amounted to nearly fifty dollars when the next quarter's salary was paid.

Mr. Malcolm did not doubt but the additional amount promised when he consented to accept the call would be made up; still he could not help feeling troubled. If things went on as they were going, by the end of the year he would be in debt at least two hundred dollars; and, of all things in the world, he had a horror of debt.

During this time, he was in familiar intercourse with the principal members of his church, and especially with the leading vestrymen who held out inducements to him beyond the fixed salary; but no allusion was made to the subject, and he had too much delicacy to introduce it.

At last, matters approached a climax. The minister was about two hundred dollars in debt, and bills were presented almost every week, and their settlement politely urged. This was a condition of things not to be endured by a man of Mr. Malcolm's high sense of right and peculiar delicacy of feeling. At length, after lying awake for half of the night, thinking over what was to be done, he came to the reluctant conclusion that it was his imperative duty to those he owed, to mention the necessities of his case to the vestry, and learn from them, without further delay, whether he had any thing beyond the four hundred dollars to expect.

The hardest task Mr. Malcolm had ever performed was now before him, and he shrunk from it with painful reluctance. But the path of duty was plain, and he was not a man to hold back when he saw his way clear. If there had been any hesitation, an imperative dun received before he sat down to breakfast, and another before nine o'clock, would have effectually dispelled it.

Mr. Malcolm went to the store of Mr. Elder, one of the vestrymen, and found him quite busy with customers. He waited for half an hour for him to be disengaged, and then went out, saying, as he passed him at the counter, that he would call in again.

"Oh, dear!" he murmured to himself, with a long-drawn sigh, as he emerged upon the street, "is not this humiliating? If I had engaged for only four hundred dollars a year, I would have lived on bread and water rather than have exceeded my income; but at least seven hundred were promised. It was, however, an informal promise; and I was wrong, perhaps, in trusting to any thing so unsettled as this. Of course, it will be paid to me when I make known my present situation; but the doing of that I shrink from."

"Mr. T— was here again for his bill," were the first words that saluted the ears of the minister when he returned home.

"What did you say to him?" he asked.

"I told him that you would settle it very soon. He said he hoped you would, for he wanted money badly, and it had been running for some time."

"He was rude, then!"

"A little so," replied the wife, in a meek voice.

Mr. Malcolm paced the floor with rapid steps; he felt deeply disturbed.

An hour afterwards, he entered the store of Mr. Elder, and found the owner disengaged. He did not linger in preliminaries, but approached the subject thus:—

"You remember, Mr. Elder, that in the interview I had with you and two of the vestry previous to my accepting the call of this parish, you stated that my income would not be limited to the four hundred dollars named as the minister's salary, which I then told you was a smaller sum than I could possibly live upon?"

Mr. Elder exhibited a momentary confusion when the minister said this; but he immediately replied—"Yes, I believe something was said on that subject, though I have not thought of it since. We always had to make up something for Mr. Pelton, and I suppose we must do the same for you, if it is necessary. Do you find your salary inadequate?"

"Entirely so; and I knew it would be inadequate from the first. It is impossible for me to support my family on four hundred dollars; and had I not been assured that at least three or four hundred dollars extra would be made up during the year, I never would have dreamed of accepting the call. It has been a principle with me not to go in debt; and since I have been a man, I have not, until this time, owed a dollar; and should not have owed it now, had I received, since I have resided in C— the income I fully expected."

Mr. Malcolm spoke with warmth, for he felt some risings of the natural man at the indifference with which a promise of so much consequence to him had been disregarded.

"How much do you owe?" inquired the vestryman.

"About two hundred dollars."

"Indeed! so much?"

A bitter remark arose to the minister's lips, but he forced himself to keep silence. He was a man, with all the natural feelings of a man.

"Well, I suppose we must make it for you somehow," said Mr. Elder, the tone in which he spoke showing that the subject worried him. "Are any of the demands on you pressing?" he inquired, after a pause.

"All of them are pressing," replied the minister. "I am dunned every day."

"Indeed! That's bad!" returned Mr. Elder, speaking with more real kindness and sympathy than at first. "I am sorry you have been permitted to get into so unpleasant a situation."

"It certainly is very unpleasant, and entirely destroys my peace. Were I not thus unhappily situated, I should not have said a word to you on the subject of my salary."

"Don't let it distress you so much, Mr. Malcolm. I will see that the amount you need is at once made up."

The minister returned home, disturbed, mortified, and humiliated.

"If this is the way they pay their minister," he remarked to his wife, after relating to her what had happened, "it is the last year that I shall enjoy the benefits of their peculiar system. But little good will my preaching or that of any one else do them, while they disregard the first and plainest principles of honesty. There is no lack of ability to give a minister the support he needs; and the withholding of that support, or the supplying of it by constraint, shows a moral obtuseness that argues but poorly for their love of any thing but themselves. I believe that the labourer is worthy of his hire; that when men build a church and call a minister for their own spiritual good, they are bound to supply his natural wants; and that, if they fail to do so, it is a sign to the minister that he ought to leave them. Some may call this a selfish doctrine, and unworthy of a minister of God; but I believe it to be the true doctrine, and shall act up to it. It does men no good to let them quietly go on, year after year, starving their ministers, while they have abundant means to make them comfortable. If they prize their wealth higher than they do spiritual riches, it is but casting pearls before swine to scatter even the most brilliant gems of wisdom before them; and in this unprofitable task I am the last man to engage. I gave up all hope of worldly good, in order to preach the everlasting gospel for the salvation of men. In order to do this successfully, my mind must be kept free from the depressing cares of life, and there must be something reciprocal in those to whom I minister in heavenly things. If this be not the case, all my labour will be in vain."

On the next day, as the minister was walking down the street, he met Mr. Larkin. The allusion to this gentleman's personal matters, which the vestryman had made, still caused him to feel sore; it touched him in a vulnerable part. He had been talking quite freely, since then, to every member of the church he happened to meet about the coolness with which Mr. Malcolm, after running himself in debt, a thing he had no business to do, called upon the church to raise him more money. He for one he said, was not going to stand any such nonsense, and he hoped every member of the church would as firmly set his face against all such impositions. If they were to pay off this debt, they would have another twice as large to settle in a few months. It was the principle of the thing he went against; not that he cared about a few dollars. As soon as Mr. Larkin saw the minister a little ahead of him, he determined to give him a piece of his mind. So when they paused, face to face, and while their hands were locked in a friendly clasp, he said—

"Look here, friend Malcolm, I have got something against you; and as I am an independent plain-spoken man, you must not be offended with me for telling you my mind freely."

"The truth never offends me, Mr. Larkin," said the minister, with a smile. "I am not faultless, though willing to correct my faults when I see them."

"Very well." Mr. Larkin spoke in a resolute voice, and seemed to feel pleasure rather than pain in what he was doing. "In the first place, then, I am sorry to find that you possess one very bad fault, common to most ministers, and that is, a disposition to live beyond your means, and then come down upon the parish to pay your debts."

The blood came rushing to the face of the minister, which his monitor took to be the plainest kind of evidence that he had hit the nail fully upon the head. He went on more confidently.

"Now, this, Mr. Malcolm, I consider to be very wrong—very wrong, indeed!—and especially so in a young minister in his first year, and in his first parish. If such things are in the green tree, what are we to expect in the dry? You accepted our call, and were plainly informed that the salary would be four hundred dollars and rent free. Upon this our former minister had lived quite comfortably. If you thought the salary too little, you should not have accepted the call—accepting it, you should have lived upon it, if you had lived on bread and water."

Mr. Larkin paused. The minister stood with his eyes cast upon the pavement, but made no answer. Mr. Larkin resumed—

"It is such things as this that bring scandal upon the church, and drive right thinking men out of it. It isn't that I value a few dollars more than I do the wind; but I like to see principle; and hate all imposition. You are a young man, Mr. Malcolm, and I speak thus plainly to you for your good. I hope you will not feel offended."

Mr. Larkin paused, thinking, perhaps, that he had said enough. The minister's eyes were still upon the pavement, from which he lifted them as soon as his monitor was done speaking. The flush had left his cheeks, that were now pale.

"I thank you for your honesty in speaking so plainly, and will try to profit by what you have told me," said he, calmly. "The best of us are liable to err."

There was something in the words, voice, and manner of the minister that Mr. Larkin did not clearly comprehend. He had spoken harshly, and, he now felt, with some rudeness; but, while there was nothing in the air with which his reproof was received that evidenced the conviction of error there was no resentment. A moment before, he felt like a superior severely reprimanding an inferior; but now he stood in the presence of one whose calmness and dignity oppressed him. He was about commencing a confused apology for his apparent harshness, when Mr. Malcolm bowed and passed on.

Larkin did not feel very comfortable as he walked away. He soon more than half repented of what he had done, and before night, by way of atonement for his error, called upon Mr. Elder, and handed him a check for twenty-five dollars, to help pay off the minister's debt. So much for the principle concerned.

On the next Sabbath, to his great surprise, when the text was announced, it was in the following unexpected words—