IX.

SUPPORT OF THE CLERGY

THIS suggestive and teeming pamphlet has now been several months before the churches, and we presume in the hands of almost all our ministers. We cannot suffer ourselves to think that so much practical wisdom, enforced by the earnest eloquence of Chalmers, can fail to influence for good a multitude of minds. We may not immediately see its effects, but the principles here suggested, the plans proposed, and the motives urged, must commend themselves to the judgment and conscience of the readers, and must induce them to act, or at least prepare them to act with greater intelligence and zeal, in the prosecution of the various enterprises in which, as a church, we are engaged.

We propose to select from the numerous topics here discussed, the support of the clergy, as a subject of a few remarks. That it is the duty of the church to sustain those who are engaged in preaching the gospel is not a disputed point. The apostle rests this obligation on the following grounds. 1. The general principle that labor is entitled to a reward, or, as our Saviour expresses it, the laborer is worthy of his hire. This principle the apostle reminds us, is recognized in all the departments of human life, and has the sanction of the law of God in its application even to brutes, for it is written: Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn. 2. It is a simple matter of commutative justice. If we have sown unto spiritual things, is it a great matter that we should reap your carnal things? If we do you a

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An Earnest Appeal to the Free Church of Scotland, on the subject of Economics. By THOMAS CHALMERS, D.D. First American from the Second Edinburgh Edition. Philadelphia: Presbyterian Board of Publication. 1847. Pp. 64.-PRINCETON REVIEW, July, 1847.

great good, is it unreasonable to expect you to do us a less ? 3. In all countries, and under all forms of religions, true or false, those who minister at the altar are partakers with the altar. 4. It is an express ordinance of Christ that they which preach the gospel should live by the gospel.

It is not, however, every one who preaches the gospel, who is entitled to the benefit of this ordinance. In many cases men, who by profession are lawyers, merchants, or mechanics, are at the same time preachers. Preaching, however, is not their vocation; it is not the work to which their time and talents are devoted. It is a service in which they occasionally engage as opportunity offers without interrupting their ordinary engagements. It is evident that such men, however laudable their motives, or however useful their labors, are not entitled by the ordinance of Christ to live by the gospel. Others, who by profession are preachers, who have been educated and ordained in reference to the sacred office, are at the same time something else, teachers, farmers, or planters. They unite with their vocation as preachers some lucrative secular employment. Sometimes this is a matter of choice; more frequently perhaps, of necessity; sometimes, as in the case of Paul, of disinterested self-denial, that they may make the gospel of Christ without charge. No one can doubt that there may be excellent and adequate reasons why a preacher should be a teacher or a farmer. Nor can it be questioned that every one has a right to judge of those reasons for himself, and to determine whether he will support himself, or throw himself on the ordinance of Christ. But he cannot do both. He cannot support himself and claim the right to be supported by the church. He throws himself out of the scope of the ordinance in question by devoting his time and talents to the work of self-support. The plain scriptural principle is, that those who devote themselves to the service of the church, have a right to be supported by the church; that those who consecrate themselves to preaching the gospel are entitled to live by the gospel. As this is a truth so plainly taught in the sacred Scriptures, and so generally conceded, it need not be discussed.

A much more difficult question is: What is the best method of sustaining the ministers of religion? In attempting to answer this question, we propose first to state historically and very

briefly the different methods which have been adopted for that purpose, and secondly to show that the duty in question is a duty common to the whole church.

As to the former of the two points proposed for consideration, it may be remarked that under the Mosaic dispensation, the Levites being set apart for the service of the sanctuary, had thirty-five cities with a circle of land of a thousand cubits around the walls, assigned to them, and a tithe of all the produce of the ground, of the flocks, and of the herds. The priests were supported by a tithe of the portion paid the Levites; by the firstfruits which, according to the Talmudists, were in no case to be less than the sixtieth of the whole harvest; by a certain portion of the sacrifices offered on the altar; by the price paid for the redemption of the first-born among men, and of those animals which were not allowed to be offered in sacrifice. They were moreover exempt from taxation and military duty. Such was the abundant provision which God ordained for the support of the ministers of religion.

Under the new dispensation, our Lord, while explicitly enjoining the duty, left his people free as to the mode in which it should be discharged. From the record contained in the Acts of the Apostles, several facts bearing on this subject may be learned. First, that a lively sense of the brotherhood of believers filled the hearts of the early Christians, and was the effect of the presence and power of the Holy Spirit. Secondly, that in consequence of this feeling of brotherhood, they had all things in common. The multitude of them that believed, we are told, were of one heart and of one soul; neither said any of them that aught of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common; neither was there any among them that lacked. Acts ii. 41, 47. Such was the effect of the vivid consciousness of the union of believers as one body in Christ Jesus. And such is the uniform tendency of that consciousness, manifesting itself in the same manner in proportion to its strength. Experience, however, soon taught these early Christians that they were not perfect, and that it was not wise to act in an imperfect and mixed community on a principle which is applicable only to one really pervaded and governed by the Spirit of God. As the church therefore increased, and came to include many who were Christians only in name, or who had but little of the Spirit of Christ,

the operation of this feeling of brotherhood was arrested. It would have been destructive to act towards nominal as towards real Christians, towards indolent and selfish professors as though they were instinct with the Spirit of God. This is the fundamental error of all the modern systems of communism. They proceed on the false assumption that men are not depraved. They take for granted that they are disinterested, faithful, laborious. Every such system, therefore, has come to naught, and must work evil and only evil, until men are really renewed and made of one heart and of one soul by the Spirit of God. In the subsequent history, therefore, of the apostolic church, we hear no more of this community of goods. The apostles never commanded it. They left the church to act on the principle that it is one only so far as it was truly one. They did not urge the outward expression a single step beyond the inward reality. The instructive fact, however, remains on record that the effusion of the Holy Spirit did produce this lively sense of brotherhood among Christians, and a corresponding degree of liberality.

A third fact to be learned from the history given in the Acts, is that the early Christians looked upon their religious teachers as the proper recipients and distributors of the common property of the church. They who were the possessors of houses or lands sold them and brought the prices of the things that were sold and laid them down at the apostles' feet; and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need. It is obvious that this arrangement supposes an eminently pure state of the church, and would be intolerable in any other. It is also obvious that as the church enlarged, an amount of secular care would thus be thrown on the ministers of religion utterly incompatible with due attention to their spiritual duties. A new arrangement was therefore soon adopted. The apostles said: It is not reasonable that we should leave the word of God to serve tables. Wherefore, brethren, look ye out among you seven men of honest report, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business. An example was thus early set of confiding to laymen, i. e., to those who do not minister in word and doctrine, the secular concerns of the church. And no man can estimate the evil which in subsequent ages flowed from the neglect of this example. If in human governments, it is considered essential to the liberty and welfare of the people, that the

sword and purse should be in different hands; it is no less essential that in the church the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, sharper than any two-edged sword, and the moneypower should not be united. It was this union which proved in after ages one of the most effectual causes of the secular power of the clergy and of the corruption of the church.

From what has been said, it is plain that during the lives of the apostles, the ministry was sustained by the voluntary contributions of the churches. As the church increased and became more compact as a visible society, this matter assumed a more regular shape. It seems from the beginning to have been the. custom for the believers to bring certain gifts or offerings whenever they assembled for the celebration of the Lord's Supper. A custom which in one form or another is continued in most churches, our own among the number, to the present time. As in the early church the Lord's Supper appears to have been a part of the regular service of every Lord's day, those contributions were of course weekly. Besides this, there was from a very early period a regular and larger contribution made every month. It appears also that the early Christians inferred from the identity of the church under the two dispensations, that it was no less the duty of the people of God now than formerly to devote the first-fruits of the earth and a tenth of their income to his service. Long before the payment of tithes was enforced by law, it had thus become a common and voluntary usage. All these contributions were, in each church, thrown into a common stock under the control first of the deacons, afterwards of the pastor. The amount of the sum thus raised of course varied greatly with the size and wealth of the several churches. And as the pastors of the chief towns gradually became prelates, having many associated and dependent congregations connected with the metropolitan church, this common fund was divided into three portions, one for the bishop, one for the clergy, and one for the poor. The bishop gradually acquired the control of this fund, and in the Synod of Antioch, A.D., 341, his right to its management was distinctly asserted. Thus also in what are called the Apostolic Constitutions, can. 41, the right of the bishop in this matter is placed on the ground that he who is entrusted with the care of souls may well be trusted with their money. Si animæ hominum