Checkley, and His Brothers.
By N. Y. Tribune
A good many criticisms, neither temperate nor just, have been called out from the secular press during the last few weeks by the death in Canada of a clergyman named Checkley. Our readers doubtless know the circumstances. The man's salary, a paltry pittance at best, was not half paid to him; there were five children and their mother to support; the family lived literally on bread for months. The father being a clergyman, and therefore prohibited from earning their living outside of his pulpit, and a gentleman, and therefore too proud to beg, gave his share of the scanty rations to the others, until one day he quietly lay down and died—from starvation. Now, it would not be easy, perhaps, to find in this country an exactly parallel case to this one; food is too cheap, for one reason, and congregations concern themselves too anxiously with the affairs of their pastors to let them die uninterrupted, for another. But, occasional glimpses of the financial system in use in the churches are equally astounding to practical outsiders. For example, in one of the most powerful religious bodies there is a fund set apart for the maintenance of aged and decrepit ministers—a fund which is invariably spoken of as an alms. In another denomination, two months ago, there might have been found on the luxuriously-cushioned pews of the stately churches appeals for donations of clothing, bedding, etc., new or half-worn, for the use of the families of poor clergymen in the church; and letters were published from the former, recipients of this sort of bounty, full of tearful gratitude for the half-worn clothes which evidently had come so opportunely to cover shivering bodies. Now, secular newspapers have nothing to do with the doctrines of religious denominations; neither is it their place to pronounce judgment on the abstract right or wrong of the dealings between the men in the pulpit and those in the pews; but they do have the right to an opinion on the common sense and policy of these dealings. Worse policy, we imagine, could hardly be devised than for an organization which requires the best work from the best class of men to pauperize them at the outset. An unmarried man, possibly, may be so possessed by divine zeal that he can preach with fervor when his stomach is empty and his body half clothed; but if it is his wife and children who are hungry and cold, it is not likely he can put them out of his mind enough to lead the souls of others to holy raptures of devotion. He is not worth the name of man if he can do it. If each different congregation in the sects acted as an independent body in business matters, this criticism would be impossible; but each sect forms a great financial corporation, and it is the salaries paid by these corporations, as a whole, which are so miserably deficient. The contrast is significant between the magnificent temples of the seaboard cities and the missionary on the frontiers with his pittance of $300 per annum. The church delights to call itself an army. What would be thought of the policy in a real army of spending millions on barracks for idle home-guards, and sending out a few starving, shivering men to meet the foe? The ill effects of such a course are seen in the West in the desertion of many able men from the ministry into the ranks of politicians, lawyers, and farmers. One of two things is necessary. Either let the minister, as in the first days of the church and in one or two sects nowadays, support himself by other means, preaching as the Spirit moves him, or let his salary be sufficient to relieve him from the incessant carking care for his family, which must hinder his usefulness, and, if it does not, in poor Checkley's case, shorten his life.—N. Y. Tribune.