HUMOURS OF CHURCH COLLECTIONS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2490, 4 December 1901, Page 70

HUMOURS OF CHURCH COLLECTIONS.

What could be happier than the reply ot the bishop who went to preach a smnon on behalf of a special collection in a country church one Sunday morning ! " I'm grieved that you should get such a breezy, blowy day to come here." said the resident clergyman, referring to the weather. " Tuts, tuts,"' replied his lordship. "What did I come here for but to rai&e the wind:' Someone wrote anonymously to Rowland Hill saying that he, the writer, -vas insolvent, and therefore in doubt as to -whether .or not iie could conscientiously contribute towards the church collection. .Would Mi Hill kindly express an opinion on Sunday first? Having read out the Jetter/^lowland Hill declared that the writer thereof certainly was not ntitJed or in a portion, to put anything in the i>laie. "But," he added, "I would strongly adxise everyone else to contribute, or his »eighbours will infallibly whisper to each ■ether regarding the person pas^ncr x \\g v plate, 'There goes the bankrupt.'" At the opening of a new church, +he officiating clergyman favoured the congregation with a minute description of °the structural features of the building in which tiey were assembled that morning for the first time. It was in the lonic style, he •{remarked, and then added : " Over the portico is a tower, ovei thai a cupola, and On the top of al] a mortgage, which last, tny brethren,"' the preacher concluded, "being contrary to the rules of architectural proportion, as laid down by Professor Vitluvius, I hope to see soon removed by a iberal collection." ■ There is some times an intimate know)»ige of human nature Jisplayed in the way that a collection announcement is nade to a congregation. A coloured preach e on one occasion said to his flock.?.

t£ We hab a collection to make clis mornin', but for de sake of your reputation, whichever o' you stole Mrs Jones's turkey must not put anything in de plate." One. who was present afterwards declared that "ever/ blessed niggah in de church came down most handsomely wi' de coppah«, ' which was exactly what the coloured preacher wanted.

After a little bit of humour there som jtimes follows a slight touch of sarcasm. At a game of nap Brown won, and Parson Robinson paid his loss in threepennier.. "Ha, ha, Robinson," said Brown, ' been robbing the church plate, eh!" "Ah," re plied the parson, "you recognise your miserable little contributions, do you? '

Not very long ago, in London, a preacher indulged in a little bit of sarcasm over j, small collection, and he did it very neatly. "When I look at the congregation,'' said he, "I ask where are the poor? and when I look at the collection I ask where <iv? the rich?" Small collections are, we fear, the cause of much sarcastic observation all round. A beadle was asked one day why the preacher had so often employed the expression "miserable sinners" in his prayers that morning. "Maybe the sma'ness o' the collection," was the beadle's practical but sarcastic reply.

The small collection is no doubt also to be held responsible for the address delivered by a clergyman in New York, whose congregation had the reputation of being wealthy but not liberal. This good man had been doing his bast to get poor people to 2ome to church, but he does not seem to have succeeded, if we read between the lines of the address referred to. "I have tried to reach the poor of this place," said the clergyman one Sunday morning, "and done everything I could to induce them to come to this church to break with us the bread of life. I infer from the amount of the collection — 7dol 35c — that they have come."

It must have bsen the frequency of the collections, small or great, in the Free Church that ultimately induced one of her members co return to the Establishment shortly after the Disruption. Meeting this member one day. his foimer minister remarked, " Aye, man, John, an' ye've left us. What might be 'your reason for thot? Did ye think it wa<-na a quid road we were gaun:" "Oh, I daurs-ay it was a quid eneuch road, an' a braw road; but, oh. man, the tolls weie unco high.'" — From "The Elder at the Piate," by Nicholas Dickson.