Middletown transcript., 1915-10-16
lCommunicatedl
MONEY VS.. THE GOSPEL

Not since Judge Sewell upon the
collapse of the witehcraft delusion
in the middle of the seventeenth cen
tury, stood up in Old South Church in
Boston and confessed his shameful part
in that madness, has so humlliating a
confession been made by public char
acter as that of the brilliant pastor of
Plymouth Church, Brooklyn, Rev. DIR.
Newell Dwight Hills, wherein he ac-
cused himself of having forsaken his
proper work of saving souls to amass
riches.
In his utter self abasement DR.. Hills,
who had failed for about $10O, 900. de-
clared
''there are home missionaries and
foreign missionaries and social set
tiers and nelghborhood visitors
whose very shoe latchets, l am not
worthy to stoop down and unloose."
We much fear it was solely his de-
pleted bank account that thus softened
the conscience of the reverend specula-
tor. However, his case and his plain
spoken words of f-condemnation,
point a moral the churches and many
money-loving ministers of the gospel.
big and little, may well heed.
That the clergy as class have lost
prestige and influence, is so patent
fact that few will have the hardihood
to dispute it. Not only these high
salaried clerical big guns who like DIR.
Hills are dabbling in stocks and other
schemes to get hasty wealth, are max
ing merchandise of the gospel, but
everywhere throughout the churches in
all denominations alike, with compara-
lively few exceptions, there is disclosed
among clergymen love of money, and
a desire to get big salaries that is sadly
undermining their usefulness and power
among the unconverted, and is also
proving a snare to these ministers them
selves.
Once the ministry was looked upon as
''sacred calling, 'holy office" to
which for purposes of pure spiritual
altruism-the mere love of other mems
souls-men were called by the Spirit of
God, often like Paul, against their wills
with ''Woe is me if preach not the
Gospel moving them to a decision.
In those days ministers had a great
power over men, and their words in the
pulpit or in private speech in any COM
munity swayed mems actions something
like the prophets of old when they
spoke. They were universally looked
up to as models in conduct, as moral
teachers divinely sanctioned to recall
to virtue and to God, the rest of men
busted with worldly things overmuch.
All this today is greatly changed.
The ministry, thanks to these unseemly
scrambles for fat salaries and to the
cankering commercialism Of the hour,
is now commonly looked upon as busi-
ness, as a money making profession,
no worse, no better, than the practice
of law or medicine.
To no other single cause is this decay
in the reputation and power of the
ministry more due than to the pro-
fessional revivalist.
Take Billy Sunday, for instance, re-
ceiving for his six or eight months
preaching campaign 5000, 900 a year
and upwards.
| DR.. Slough, though he tried hard to
dodge the admission by claiming that
his wife like Sundays managed his
money matters, was forced on cross
examination in the suit against him for
libel to admit that he was making at
east $4,000 year.
And ''the woods is full of them;" the
itch among clergymen to make big
money! is working great injury to them
and to their congregations.
Test the religious teachers and heroes
of the past by this modern high salaried
ministry, which is very generally de-
tended, and you will realize that the
very plth and marrow of the Gospel is
SACRIFICE, all the way down from the
Son of God expiring upon Calvary to
His humblest worker who, we are told
in the Word of God, may live by his
ministry ry"-not get rich.
Can you imagine the devout and conse.
Grated st. Paul, whose words, enforced
by his utterly self-sacrifcing life, are
the deathless inspiration of the cen.
turies, with fat bank account OF
$50, 600, at Damascus? Or St Peter.
} another beacon light of religious truth,
with $4,000 in golden shekels laid up al
Jerusalem among the money changers
whom his Master drove out of the
; temple? Never Had St. Paul or St.
) Peter gotten Billy Sundays fat salary.
or even tithe of it, it may well be
they would never have been heard of
certainly, the whole world would moi
today be sitting at their feet as the
e greatest religious teachers of the Chris
tian dispensation. LAYMAN
/