Buchanan County bulletin. [volume] (Independence, Iowa) 1869-1891, 1878-04-19
Making Way for a Younger Man.

The Boston Herald has some forcible
remarks in reference to the statement
that the pastor of a Congregational
church, in a New England village, had
been requested to resign, to make way
for a younger man." Churches that are
inclined to do thai sort of thing may
like to see how it looks from a secular
point Of view:
It is easy to imagine what has preced-
ed that step. The men and women of
this congregation have forsaken their
prayer meetings and Sunday services,
and gone buzzing about from house to
house, with all sorts of gossip about
their spiritual shepherd, his age, it may
be, or his sermons, or his frequent in
frmities, or his peculiarities of some
sort. They have begun their Christian
life chiefly through his Cody admoni-
tions, and now they express their graft
tude and show their religion by turning
against him. They are so eager to ao-
complish their object that they invent
stories to put him down, when they
have no facts to go upon. The stab him
right and left, in the dark and in the
light. They ruin his influence Over the
young, and her claim that he no longer
attracts them. His parish is not pros
porous. The deacons begin to feel that
they cannot hold him up. The pews are
vacant. The salary is cut down, The
talk runs high in religious circles. He
is isolated. 1t costs something to be his
friend. He is subject to a social inqui-
sition as cruel as it is unjust, and no
stone is left unturned to break him up
and set him adrift-to so, nobody in the
church cares where, Now, if this case
were new or exceptional, we could treat
it as such. But in this protestant
world, where ministers are hired by the
year, as farmers hire laborers for the
season, we are rather used to see this
sort of thing, and it is only when people
do a thing which is so disreputable and
outrageous that it becomes secular
news, that we pause to think of the
Chistian minister who is subjected to
such often unjustiiable disgrace. In
many of our largest corporations the
heads of the firm retire honorably its
older and long-tried servants when they
must give place to younger men, but the
pastor is simply kicked out of the posi-
ton which his people called him to, as a
man kicks an unfriendly dog from his
doorstep. The saints in hat hamlet
are thinking only of the spruce young
man whom they can get to take his
place, hut the outside world has its
opinion Of their conduct, and says truly
that the proceedings by which men like
Mr.. Hammond are forcibly elected from
positions which they are filling with at
least average ability, are both unchris-
tian and indecent. There are countless
religious societies everywhere in this
country, where men who are the noblest
of their race, men who, in one point or
another, are the very back-stay Of the
communities they live in, are in danger
of being called upon to resign their par
ishes for reasons which honest Christian
people ought never to avOW, or even
think Of. This is a devilish sort of bus
mess, and alienates more than it wins to
the churches. 1t keeps good men out of
them, because they are too honorable to
have a hand in such work, and do not
want to associate with those who thus
attempt to blackmail their pastors. We
dwell upon this crowding out of one
minister in a parish to make room for
another, because it is one of the grow
ing evils of the times. 1t meets one ev-
erywhere, and is cutting up the churches
by the very roots. What inducement is
there for capable and able men to enter
the ministry, when, at the very time
their large experience will make them
most useful to a parish or to society in
general, they are asked to resign to
make way for younger men? Are relig-
ious people so stupid that they cannot
see what they are doing? There is no
class of men who deserve more graft
tude at the hands Of the churches, Or
from the community at large, than the
men who have given their lives to the
work of leading others to righteousness.
If they did it as a worldly occupation
alone, they would deserve respect; but
when it is considered that, in most cases
they have willingly accepted a life of
comparative poverty, in order that they
might walk in what seemed to them the
higher path of duty, they deserve from
every one the recognition of their benef-
icent work, and that parish or body of
Christians simply disgraces itself which
ever treats one of these social and relig-
ious servants with d~isrespect or injus-