III.

SALARIES OF EMPLOYÉS IN TRADE AND COMMERCE, ETC.

The following are examples taken from large establishments in different commer cial towns:

Average Salaries of Heads of Departments in certain Commercial Houses.

As regards the increase of the country's wealth generally, it may be sufficient to state one fact, that whereas the amount of assessible income, from property or otherwise, for the Property and Income-Tax in Scotland in 1842, was twenty-one millions, it is now thirty-nine millions, having thus nearly doubled since the period of the Disruption.

With the facts before us which these statistics so conclusively estab lish, there are surely some very grave questions which we ought to be putting to ourselves. There are questions such as these:-If all kinds of secular labour are receiving a constantly and largely increasing remuneration, is it either right or safe that the spiritual labour of the Chris tian ministry should be left to stand out as the solitary and glaring exception to this otherwise universal rule? Can we reasonably anticipate that, under such a state of things, we shall continue to obtain the requisite supply of the kind of men the Church more than ever needs for the doing of her sacred and all-important work? Can we expect any Church that sows so sparingly of its own carnal things, to reap otherwise than sparingly of God's spiritual things? Truly the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light. They do not grudge the outlay which they know to be necessary to the success of their worldly undertakings. They are thoroughly alive to the fact, that if they are to have men of the requisite skill and character to do their work, they must meet the conditions in the shape of remuneration, on which, in the long-run, all such arrangements proceed.

In assuming, as I now do, in taking up this line of argument, that the principle, so universally acknowledged and acted on, in all secular affairs, has a direct and legitimate application to service in the Christian Church, am I thereby secularising the Christian ministry? If so, an inspired apostle has done it before me. For who does not know that, in the 1st Epistle to the Corinthians, a whole chapter is expressly devoted to this very object, of proving and proclaiming and pressing home on the conscience and the conviction of the members of the Christian Church, the substantial identity of the principle which regulates the remuneration of secular labour, with the principle which ought to regulate the remuneration of the spiritual service of the gospel ministry. Paul, in that chapter, singles out the soldier, the husbandman, the shepherd; and after speaking of the sustenance they receive as a right so obviously reasonable

and just as to need not even a word to be said in its support, he transfers the whole argument at once from the field of the world to the field of the Church, and he applies it thus :-"Do ye not know that they which minister about holy things live of the things of the temple; and they which wait at the altar are partakers with the altar? Even so hath the Lord ordained that they which preach the gospel should live of the gospel." There is, indeed, a sentimental and utterly spurious spirituality which either is, or affects to be, greatly shocked at hearing such things spoken of at all. The best and noblest of all kinds of spirituality is that which renders it unnecessary to speak of them; and which, by promptly, cheerfully, liberally complying with Christ's own ordinance, having freely received, freely gives.

But, on the other hand, let it not for a moment be supposed that, in thus pleading for the just claims of the ministry, I am letting down or putting aside those higher motives by which all who join it ought to be chiefly moved. There is a very searching and solemn question upon this point put, at his ordination, to every minister of our Church :-" Are not zeal for the honour of God, love to Jesus Christ, and desire of saving souls, your great motives and chief inducements to enter into the functions of the holy ministry, and not worldly designs and interests ?" Alas, for the minister who cannot say "Yea" to that question with a good and honest heart. At the same time, there is surely nothing, either in the terms of that question, or in the nature of the case, to make it unsuitable for those whom the Church is asking to devote themselves to its service, to inquire and consider how far the Church is doing her part, in so providing for their support as that, if they take her sacred service in hand, they shall at least be placed in a position to go about their work without being burdened and distracted with the constant pressure of worldly anxieties and cares. Parents, we may be certain, will and do inquire and consider as to these things, in deciding how far they will use the great influence they so rightfully possess in encouraging even pious, gifted, and every way hopeful sons, to take that work in hand. These sons themselves the more thoughtful they are, and the more they realise the difficulties and responsibilities of the ministerial office-will be the more alive to the formidable hindrances to efficiency and success, in the discharge of its sacred and arduous duties, which straitened circumstances and pecuniary difficulties must inevitably interpose. There are men, it is true, to whom even the lowest and most adequate provision our Church has ever made for any of her ministers would present no discouragement at all. There are men in every community on a level with such a state of things, and to whom our present equal dividend, small as it is, might even wear the aspect of a prize. There always have been, and there always will be, Levites "going to sojourn where they may find a place," and to whom the "ten shekels of silver by the year, and the suit of apparel, and the victuals," given by the man of Mount Ephraim to the Bethlehemite in the days of old, will be tempting entertainment. But these are not the men the Free Church would like to see in her pulpits. If, however, we would really desire to have, or be warranted to ask and expect from God, a continuation of men of altogether another class, of able ministers of the New Testament, of spiritual workmen who shall not need to be ashamed of the Church, nor the Church of them, we must do our duty towards them. We expect our ministers to be thoroughly

educated men-men who have passed through a long, laborious, and expensive training, for the places they are to fill-men qualified by their culture and character to mingle advantageously with all classes of their people. But what right have we to cherish any such expectations, if, after they have spent ten or twelve years of their life in fitting themselves for so important and difficult a position, they find a no higher remuneration awaiting them, in so far as the means of supporting them and their families are concerned, than would be offered to a common countinghouse clerk, or to many a skilled artisan? This is plain speaking-to some, perhaps, it may be unpalatable speaking; but it needs to be heard. Great interests, not in this Church only, but in almost every true Church in Christendom, are at this moment depending on the sincerity and earnestness with which this question shall be taken up and dealt with by the people of God.

It can hardly be necessary for me to say that I have gone at such length into this part of my subject, not because I had any doubt as to either the intelligence and the sympathy of the members of this House regarding it. I have done so only because I have been hoping and aiming, through this Assembly, to speak to and to arouse the Church at large. And, for that purpose, there is only too much cause to believe that a special and urgent appeal is imperatively required.

But I must now address myself more immediately to the exposition of the particular method of augmenting the fund for the support of the ministry which is embodied in the proposal at present before you. It will be seen at once, from the terms of the third of the resolutions, according to which the scheme, if adopted, is to be carried out, that not only is it not to touch or to unsettle our existing equal dividend, but that it is meant, on the contrary, both to increase the amount and to strengthen the stability of that equal dividend. I, for one, am, and have always been, decidedly in favour of a solid equal dividend as the basis and backbone of our financial system. But I am nɔt, and never was, in favour of an equal dividend to which there was to be no limit, and which should prohibit and exclude the introduction of all other means of increasing the stipends of our ministers. Had our Church been unwise enough to commit itself to any such communistic extravagance, our financial system would have gone to pieces long ago. Our whole system of supplements, which has existed ever since 1843, is a sufficient and conclusive proof that our Church never intended the equal dividend to be the one only source of ministerial support. The utmost extent to which our Church has ever engaged to carry the equal dividend system is £150. To that engagement my proposal is that the Church should adhere. It is an engagement, as we all know, and as has been already pointedly adverted to, which we never yet fully succeeded in making good. Nay, more; if there be anything which our past experience has proved, it is this-that we shall never be able to make good that engagement unless we can bring some force into play that will give fresh life and impart a new and abiding impulse to our Sustentation Fund scheme. This, at least, I can venture with confidence to say, that, aided by one of the largest, the best attended, the most united, the most intelligent and earnest-minded committees of which this Assembly and this Church enjoys the services, I have done my best to raise the equal dividend to the amount at which the Church has so long been aiming; and the