The central Presbyterian. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1856-1908, 1884-02-06
For the Central Presbyterian.
"A Glance at "the Other Side"
of a Serious Question.

The old view was that unbelief was the
great sin of the world. The future his
torian of our Southern Church, if he shall
draw inspiration from the communica-
lions to our Church papers and the re-
ports of committees Oh Lne several causes
to the Assembly, will set down the love
of filthy lucre' as the peculiar sin O:
our church members. Before his mental
vision will arise two pictures: On the
one hand $4,000 men and women,
clothed in purple and fine linen, faring
sumptuously every day, rolling in riches
and luxuriating in idleness, able to graft
fy every within ere it natures into a de-
sire, and only careful to hoard and hus-
band their yearly gaines; each thinking
" what shall | do, because have no room
where to bestow my fruits? This will l
do: 1 will pull down my barns, and
build greater; and there will l bestow
all my fruits and my goods And I will
say to my soul, thou hast much goods
laid up for many years; take thine ease,
eat, drink, and be merry" And through
1T all clinging to their dollars, with a
tenacity that evokes the power of the
Assembly to lay an assessment, under
the name OF an apportionment, that, per-
chance, they may thus be led to honor
God with their substance. On the other
hand, something less than 1000 men,
gaunt and hollow-eyed from hunger and
want, miserable mendicants, because their
gust dues are withheld, half clad and
pinched for the very necessaries of life,
literally living FROM hand to mouth, and
nm the agony OF despair, without the
memory of temporal comforts in the past,
or hope for like comforts in the future
pointing to their miserable, forlorn, neg
lected, pitiful wives and children huddled
about them, beseeching the surfeited
horde to grant them the crumbs that fall
from their table-the miserable pittance
saved by change in the rate of postage
from three to two cents, forsooth.
Who, that reads, could not have had
such pictures as these rise before him, if
he had been willing to close his eyes to
the stern logic of the facts surrounding
him, which prove that the ministers of
the Presbyterian Church and their fam
lilies are better, and in most cases far bet
ter, clothed, lodged, fed, and provided
for than the average families to which
they minister; that their children receive
OeLUeI euuCdJlOuS JndJ Jney are enabled
to live, as rule, in style suited to the
very highest social circle in the congre-
cation. And who is it that has not felt
his heart burn within him with indigna-
tion at the thought that good, pure, holy,
men should entertain and make public
such morbid, jaundiced, one-sided views
of this subject.
In the Central of the 23d of January
1884, writer, under the heading n
Serious Question:" actually takes the
position that there is reasonable ground
for believing that " the stinginess of the
Church accounts for the dearth of min
listers and candidates for the ministry.
Now once establish the proposition that
for an individual to enter the ministry of
our Church, is to assume position where
fewer comforts Of life are to be enjoyed
than are enjoyed by the people to whom
he ministers, and the stigma Of stinginess
as justly fixed upon the Church. On the
other hand, establish the proposition that