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PAGE 6

Which Is The Liberal Man?
by [?]

“That is to say, starve decently, and make no fuss,” replied the other.

“Nonsense! Who talks of starving, when provision is as plenty as blackberries? I tell you I understand this matter, and know how little a man can get along with. I’ve tried it myself. When I first set out in life, my wife and I had not a pair of andirons or a shovel and tongs for two or three years, and we never thought of complaining. The times are hard. We are all losing, and must get along as we can; and Mr. Stanton must bear some rubs as well as the rest of us.”

“It appears to me, Mr. C,” said the waggish gentleman aforesaid, “that if you’d put Mr. Stanton into your good brick house, and give him your furniture and income, he would be well satisfied to rub along as you do.”

“Mr. Stanton isn’t so careful in his expenses as he might be,” said Mr. C., petulantly, disregarding the idea started by his neighbor; “he buys things I should not think of buying. Now, I was in his house the other day, and he had just given three dollars for a single book.”

“Perhaps it was a book he needed in his studies,” suggested the old gentleman who began the conversation.

“What’s the use of book larnin’ to a minister, if he’s got the real spirit in him?” chimed in a rough-looking man in the farthest corner; “only wish you could have heard Elder North give it off– there was a real genuine preacher for you, couldn’t even read his text in the Bible; yet, sir, he would get up and reel it off as smooth and fast as the best of them, that come out of the colleges. My notion is, it’s the spirit that’s the thing, after all.”

Several of the auditors seemed inclined to express their approbation of this doctrine, though some remarked that Mr. Stanton was a smarter preacher than Elder North, for all his book larnin’.

Some of the more intelligent of the circle here exchanged smiles, but declined entering the lists in favor of “larnin’.”

“O, for my part,” resumed Mr. C., “I am for having a minister study, and have books and all that, if he can afford it; but in hard times like these, books are neither meat, drink, nor fire; and I know I can’t afford them. Now, I’m as willing to contribute my part to the minister’s salary, and every other charity, as any body, when I can get money to do it; but in these times I can’t get it.”

The elderly gentleman here interrupted the conversation by saying, abruptly, “I am a townsman of Mr. Stanton’s, and it is my opinion that he has impoverished himself by giving in religious charity.”

“Giving in charity!” exclaimed several voices; “where did he ever get any thing to give?”

“Yet I think I speak within bounds,” said the old gentleman, “when I say that he has given more than the amount of two thousand dollars yearly to the support of the gospel in this state; and I think I can show it to be so.”

The eyes of the auditors were now enlarged to their utmost limits, while the old gentleman, after the fashion of shrewd old gentlemen generally, screwed up his mouth in a very dry twist, and looked in the fire without saying a word.

“Come now, pray tell us how this is,” said several of the company.

“Well, sir,” said the old man, addressing himself to Mr. C., “you are a man of business, and will perhaps understand the case as I view it. You were speaking this evening of lawyer Lennox. He and your minister were both from my native place, and both there and in college your minister was always reckoned the smartest of the two, and went ahead in every thing they undertook. Now, you see Mr. Lennox, out of his talents and education, makes say three thousand a year. Mr. Stanton had more talent, and more education, and might have made even more; but by devoting himself to the work of the ministry in your state, he gains, we will say, about four hundred dollars. Does he not, therefore, in fact, give all the difference between four hundred and three thousand to the cause of religion in this state? If, during the business season of the year, you, Mr. C., should devote your whole time to some benevolent enterprise, would you not feel that you had virtually given to that enterprise all the money you would otherwise have made? Instead, therefore, of calling it a charity for you to subscribe to your minister’s support, you ought to consider it a very expensive charity for him to devote his existence in preaching to you. To bring the gospel to your state, he has given up a reasonable prospect of an income of two or three thousand, and contents himself with the least sum which will keep soul and body together, without the possibility of laying up a cent for his family in case of his sickness and death. This, sir, is what I call giving in charity.”