The daily morning journal and courier., 1896-06-04

grandmother upon her seyentieth birth day will not disdain, and indeed would be sorry to miss, the loving salutation of the little child of seven. With all our heart we praise God for the glori- ous work which He has enabled vou to do in the past, and we pray that He may grant you still grander achieve ments in the future.
 l wonder if even we who are boro an pleelate now large a share of our Con etesatloHal work is done under the auspices or this Home Missionary soci- etS' presume that four-fifths of the congregational ministers in the coun- try at some period of their lives have helu a commission from it or from one or US auXiliaries. We know that more than one-half of all the ConsregationaI pastors ln active service in the United states to-day are Home missionaries. The average Home missionary salary IS less than seven hundred dollars a year. The earnest enterprising Home missionary has no time to make money m outside pursuits. Take as an exam pie Brother Platt whom I heard last month telling the Kansas association apout his work. His parish covers the elsht counties in the northwest of Kan sas' ana Is therefore just about as large US thls good state of Connecticut By preachlng three times on Sunday and several evenings week, he manages to make the round of his parish about twice a month. It requires five thou sand miles of driving and nearly as many more by railroad each year, that is, distance greater than from here to China the nearest way, across lots Now in such a life as that there is no leisure for making money. I don't see now he can even keep a garden, for any one of those trips would take him away long enough for the weeds to take it. II the chickens didn't. And even if he should undertake to keep COW, he would get around to milk her only once fortnight Of course that is an ex- treme case, yet it illustrates the general truth that it takes all there is of a man to be Home missionary. Be the field broad or narrow, the faithful minister Will find room in it for the full expendi- ture of all his talents and powers. For this complete devotion of body, mind and heart, he with his equipment of ten years of education, and his wife with her cultured taste, practical tact and Womaniy sympathy, receive the munifi- cent remuneration of seven hundred | dollars year, or about the same as the I income of an illiterate French Canadi- an family in a New England factory village. And on this they live and l move, frequently, and educate their children, and meet the requirements of | TP96inp and trny r,1 ifol ,3 generous Christian benevolence. How much margin is left for accumulation for sickness and old age? At about the age of sixty, even this small income be- | comes precarious.
 | Then what of the years beyond? Un- less they have children in prosperous circumstances, as thank God many of them have, their problem is the dis tressingly simple, the pitifully perplex- | ing problem, of how to live for fifteen or twenty years on an income of noth- | ing year.
 This is no fancy sketch. have let ter, recently received from one who 1 has rendered faithful and valuable ser vice for over thirty years most of it west of the Mississippi The largest | l five hundred dollars year, for three l years in South Dakota He has had l repeated offers of twelve or fifteen 1 hundred dollars to accept pastorates in another denomination or to engage in | secular work, but from sense of duty to Christ and loyalty to the Pilgrim polity he has steadfastly labored on ir our fellowship. Now he is growing old and hard of hearing, No church wants a deaf pastor. So he finds himself shelved, at the age of sixty. What has he to look forward to? Is he not justly entitled to some practical recognition from the great denomination which he has served so long and we'll?
 | His case is not peculiar, not specially distressing, nor does it stand alone For seventy years our Congregations churches through this society have beer sending to the front the heroes whom Brother Puddefoot calls the Minute men on the Frontier. Some of these | veterans are older than the society it. self and have spent half century 1T it's service. But not until within tht past ten years have we thought i
 worth while to provide for their neces
 sities in old age.
 The origin and progress of our worl
 may be stated briefly thus: About ter
 years ago a bequest of ten thousand
 dollars was received by the trustees O
 the National Congregational council a.
 the beginning of a permanent ministe
 rial relief fund A committee appoint
 ed seven years ago increased it by thei
 volunteer efforts in three years to $25,
 coo. Four years ago a secretary wa
 appointed to give his whole time to it
 and notwithstanding the hard times, b,
 the favor of God and His people tn
 fund has grown, by the last nationa
 $S2, ,500. To-day it is $90,000. At frs
 we could aid only six families. To-da.
 we are ministering to more than thirty
 from Massachusetts to California, ant
 from Alabama to North Dakota. Tw'
 of these are foreign missionary fami
 lies, and the rest, with hardly an ex
 ception, have spent their lives upol
 home missionary fields. We do not per
 init these veterans to be humiliated b.
 the thought that this help is charity
 We tell them that it is a little pension
 all too tardily bestowed in recognition
 of honorable lifelong service in tn
 Lords army.
 MT. President: Most of our cores
 pondence and work are confidential.
 delicacy did not seal our lips, and l ti,,oo ,,erp,itted xue I,o11l6 talI uoI, S11o1