The Club Smoking Room

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XL, Issue 10, 7 March 1908, Page 6

The Club Smoking Room

By

HAVANA

1 NOTICE,” remarked the barrister, ‘‘that both Maori and Methodist are protesting against the smallness of clerical stipends, and that the Anglican bishops the world over are bewailing the scarcity of candidates for ordination, and the steady decrease in the number of graduates. The wonder to my mind is that they ever get any men at all. Not only do the clergy get miserable pay, but what they do get is always uncertain. A family or two moving from a parish, a succession of wet Sundays, or a dozen other causes over which they have no control, may reduce almost to vanishing point the beggarly pittance allowed them by their Hock. Then, their stipend has often to be raised by appeals to the charity of the congregation, by bazaars, concerts, and socials, or by endeavouring to secure large congregations, and, consequently, increased offertories, by musical attractions introduced into the church services. In my own profession, a man is always assured of his bread and butter, and he has a chance of rising to something good. A parson’s chances of obtaining a bare existence are always precarious, and neither genius, ability, nor hard work will ever enable him to be assured of a competency, much less obtain an income at all adequate to his position. The Anglicans, who are supposed to be the wealthiest body, are, I believe, the most niggardly as regards the stipends they pay their clergy.” © © © ’T fancy,” put in the journalist, “that it would be a revelation to some people if they knew how some of the clergy are paid. I know one man, who is married and has a family, who is paid tne princely sum of £5O a year. He has a house, which he built himself, and a small garden, in which he grows vegetables. But he has not a penny beyond his £5O, and he has not been able to make any provision for the future. I know another who has £7O, and another who has attained to the comparatively large income of £9O. And out of this they are expected to subscribe to everything that is going, to keep open house for the whole parish, to help the sick and indigent, to be always well dressed, and maintain a good social position, and to provide for the keep of a horse, and sometimes a buggy. Goodness knows how they do it. Many of them, I believe, are literally starving. I remember once I was subediting the country notes for a paper, and we got a paragraph about a social given to the vicar of tne parish. It said how highly he was esteemed by everybody, how hard he had worked, and how greatly the whole district had benefited by his labours. The people of the place, it went on to say, were one and all devoted to him, and would do anything for him. The next paragraph vouchsafed the information that the stipend for the preceding twelve months was £45 in arrears. and there was very little prospect of its being paid. I altered the local colouring a bit, and stuck the par in the funny column. I got in a bit of a row over it, but I really couldn't help it. It was th* l finest ph i e of uneouscious humour 1 had seen fur some time.”

“If you really want to see something of the methods of church finance,” replied a prominent business man, “you must wait till you are elected Churchwarden. I held that office once in a parish where we had one of the best vicars I have ever met. Everybody had the greatest respect for him, and one and all professed themselves as willing to do anything in the world for him. It happened that just at this time our finances got into low water through two of our best supporters leaving the district, and through an unprecedented spell of wet weather and decreased congregations. My fellow-Churchwarden and I accordingly had to canvas the parish for extra subscriptions towards the stipend fund. We naturally expected generous support. But we were met with either flat refusals or grudging doles. Some who had been loudest in their praise of the vicar began to discover unsuspected faults in his character as soon as they were asked for an extra half-crown or so. I tell you it fairly sickened me, and I determined I would never take the job on again. I would sooner see a son of mine cracking stones on the road, or see him a gumdigger, than see him a parson. The poorest labourer can at least maintain his self-respect, but I’m blowed if you dsn when you have to cadge for your pay like any- beggar at’ the street corner.” (Lu. ■*’.;*! ffi © © Tfi I'AiS'S “I think,” interrupted a well-known member of Synod, “that in the Church, as in other walks of life, we do not sufficiently encourage native talent. When any living which offers anything like reasonable pay falls vacant, a man from Home is selected to fill it. These men only come out for five years, and then they go back again. The New Zealander is relegated to the back-bloeks without a hope or prospect of ever getting anything better. Goodness knows, there is little enough in any case that a man can attain to; even the best of what we facetiously call ‘livings’ are not livings in any real sense of the word. But there are a few parishes that provide a man with enough to keep him in food and raiment, and it is rather hard on men who have been all their life in the colony that these parishes should invariably be given to outsiders. We have nothing to stimulate a man’s ambition, and you cannot offer a man any promotion worth having, because financially a curate is probably much better off than a vicar, and it is no surprise to me that our men are leaving the colony for other parts of the world, or that the supply of candidates is diminishing so rapidly. People expect the clergy to be well educated, to be of good social position, to have taken a good degree at Oxford or Cambridge, to be well read in all the latest thought of the day, to be orators, and to be given to an unstinted hospitality. • the same time, they expect them to live on less than many people woidd vlevote to the keep of a horse or a large dog. I fancy <• ey think a parson is like a greyhound—that he can’t be properly trained unless all Ills libs are showing.”

“There is no doubt,” said the padre, “that the supply of university graduates for the Church s falling off year by year. For a brilliant man, with intellectual and oratorical gifts, to enter the ministry means a very great sacrifice of worldly prospects. At the Bar, in the Senate, or in almost any walk of life, you will find that intellect, education and eloquence, combined, lead on to fortune, success and fame. In the Church they lie neglected, and their possessor is left to starve. Unless we are to have a celibate clergy, a man must consider his wife and family as well as himself. There never was a time when tnere was more need for highly-trained and educated men in the Church. The intellectual portion of the laity are being left as sheep without a shepherd, wnilst the clergy, for the most part, show a tendency to fall back on dogma and authority, rather than on making an attempt to honestly meet the difficulties so many feel. There will always be men willing to devote their lives and talents to the cause of true religion, whatever worldly sacrifice such devotion may involve, but you cannot expect parents to encourage their sons to think of taking up the work of the ministry, and to spend hundreds', or, it may be, thousands, of pounds on their education, when the only prospect ,is the, prospect of starvation. I do feel most strongly that we want to get the pick.of our own men, and hot rely dh men from' Home, and that wjj ( want to,offerthem more encouragement than we do. The Presbyterihns are doing their utmost to raise the standard of educational requirements for their ministers, and to give them fairly adequate stipends. So are most of the Free Churches. Unless the Church of England makes a similar effort there is a grave danger that she will lose the intellectual pre-eminence that she has so long enjoyed.”