Surely an unnecessary task has been assigned me. Our veterans' cause should need no advocate. The preacher is essential to our movement. Not one of the various phases of missionary work is independent of him. We should need no Church Extension, no State, no American, no Foreign board without the preacher. Our past growth, so wonderful, is due to a strong and consecrated ministry; and our future success will depend upon the power and the fidelity of a ministry increasing in numbers and in efficiency from year to year. Let us, therefore, pray the Lord of the harvest to send forth laborers into the harvest; and let us appeal to promising young men to devote themselves to a cause worthy of their most arduous and self-denying toil. When the Master sends out men to work, he says: "Whatsoever is right I will give thee." The church must do the same. "Know ye not that they who minister about sacred things eat of the things of the temple, and they who wait upon the altar have their portion with the altar? Even so did the Lord ordain that they who proclaim the gospel should live of the gospel."

      But the emoluments of the ministry are not such as to tempt men in this money-making age. The education, the mental endowments, and the general equipment necessary to success in this calling, would generally bring far greater financial rewards in any other profession or business. Sometimes a church realizes this and tries to deal justly with its preacher. But frequently the clerk or the mechanic receives a higher salary than his minister. Yet we demand that the minister shall spend much money and many years in preparation for his life-work, use a large part of his income for books, and live in a style that shall not offend the taste of the most fastidious of his congregation. Almost invariably, however, these noble men remain faithful, refuse to be allured by wealth offered in other fields, declare that they would not exchange their work for any other, and try to persuade the choicest young men in their churches to follow the calling that has rewarded them with poverty and hardships, often with ingratitude and persecution. Thank God for these heroic men! Thank God that they have faith in him who said, "The laborer is worthy of his hire," and believe that if they do not receive their reward in this life they will in that which is to come.

      "But preachers are such poor financiers;" "They ought to lay up for old age and the day of adversity," we are told. We are asked, "What do they do with their money?" Poor financiers! There is a reason! How little they have to [248] practice finance upon. Saving from the average preacher's salary seems to be out of the question. The man that has done it is a wonder. Perhaps this is well. It may be God's way of protecting the ministry from unworthy men. May the day never come when men will be drawn to this holy calling by the earthly rewards that it brings.

      Among the most valuable assets that come with age in the other professions are knowledge and experience; but these often count for little in that profession which has to do with men's immortal interests. Blessed is the man of God when he approaches the heights from which he can catch glimpses of celestial gory that never before had been granted him--glory that so inspires his soul as to give him new power to lead others up where they, too, may see the vision splendid! But, how sad it is, when his soul is on fire and his face aglow with that heavenly sight to discover that such experience and power, to bless God's children are set aside for the immaturity of untried youth. Young men of the ministry, successors to a generation of men fast going to their reward, we hail you with joy. You must increase, we must decrease. It will be given to you to lead the hosts of the faithful on to glorious victories, which, in happy moments, we have seen with almost prophetic vision. But, while we, in anticipation of that joyous time, crown you with laurels to-day, let us not forget the veteran who has made possible that day of future triumph.

      And who are these veterans? They are our brethren who have borne the heat and the burden of the day; who have built our churches and endowed our colleges; who have organized and sustained our missionary enterprises; who have preached faithfully the old gospel that we love and have baptized their converts by the hundreds and the thousands of those battle-scarred veterans who bear the marks of the Lord Jesus Christ upon them, I speak.

      Shall we leave our retired ministers unappreciated and neglected? That would be unchristian, barbarous. The state cares for its old soldiers; and civilized lands are beginning to pension the veterans of industry as well as the veterans of the sword. Cities provide for their schoolteachers who have outlived the time of service; and great business enterprises are doing the same for their disabled employees. Mr. Carnegie has set aside $20,000,000 for the benefit of retired educators. Even the faithful dumb brute is not forgotten in his old age. Cities are now sending their worn-out horses to green pastures and to comfortable barns as a reward for good service in younger days. Shall men be more humane to the faithful horse than we are to the faithful minister of Him whom we call Master?

      The church at Philippi had been planted by Paul, and the brethren there

MARK COLLIS.

remembered him with the tenderest affection. Before this, when he was at Thessalonica, and again when he was in Corinth, the Philippians had sent to minister to his necessities. Now the news comes that their beloved brother Paul is in Rome in distress. It is seven hundred miles away, an uncomfortable and perilous journey. But Paul is in trouble and in want, and their sympathy for this beloved servant of God overcomes all difficulties, and Epaphroditus is sent with the means to relieve the prisoner's necessities and with something better--messages of love and sympathy. That was ministerial relief in apostolic days.

      We plead for the ancient order of things. Why, ministerial relief belongs to this ancient order. It is an essential part of primitive Christianity. Insist upon the form and the spiritual significance of baptism; restore the Lord's Supper to the place where it belongs as the center, the heart of our worship on the Lord's Day; refuse to be called by any name but the divine name of our glorified Leader; but neglect to restore this holiest and tenderest ministry of New Testament time, and we may find our zeal for apostolic things has counted for very little with Him who [249] will say on that great day, "Inasmuch as you did it not to these my brethren, you did it not to me."

      How often we read that the Saviour reached forth his hand and touched this one and that; and at his touch the deaf heard, the dumb spake, the blind saw, lepers were cleansed, the dead were raised, and burdens were lifted from human hearts. To-day, the Saviour's hand is the hand of the church. Here is an old man; once he was a faithful minister, he built up the cause of the Master, and the people seemed to love him. But the day came when his services were less in demand. He moved to where he thought he could do something for the cause that he loved. He had never received a large salary. . . . In his struggle for independence he has slipped down, a little at a time. Now no church wants him. Perhaps he says, "Thank God, wife is spared all this; she is at rest in the old churchyard." Poor old man!

      But think of something even more pathetic. Behold an aged woman, for many years the companion of a faithful man of God who long since has gone to his eternal reward. Her wisdom was his counselor; her sympathy his solace. How often would he have given up in the struggle had it not been for her faith and courage. His voice was heard in the councils of the brethren, hers only in the quiet of the home; his name was recorded in the archives of a great religious people, hers only in the Lamb's book of life. But God knows; and in that day it will not be forgotten that that minister's usefulness was largely due to the self-denial and the suffering of the little woman at home. Now she takes a few flowers every week to the unmarked grave in the little cemetery, and then she goes to her lonely home and thinks of the days gone by, of the brethren who praised her hospitality and told her how great and good a man her husband was. How happy was she then! Now she asks, "Do they forget?"

      But I must refrain. To enumerate such cases would reflect on a generous brotherhood that is stretching out its hand of ministerial relief to assist many of these men and women whose debtors we are. What expressions of gratitude come from those who are enjoying this fellowship in their declining years! Here is one: "Your letter containing the check was received yesterday. Oh! it was a heaven-sent boon. I had just spent my last dollar for fuel, and all seemed so dark and gloomy to us--wife and me. I am truly grateful to you and those who help in this loving ministry." Another says: "It is not pleasant at the end of a long, active and laborious life to be obliged to appeal to the brethren for the means to keep me and mine from actual destitution. But I do not complain. My Lord and Master, at his birth, had not clothing to cover his infant limbs, and was buried at the expense of others. Why should I ask to be above my Lord?"

      The aged widow of a preacher tells that she lives in her own little home, and the twenty-five dollars a quarter keeps the wolf from the door. The wife of an aged minister tells how her husband, feeble in mind and in body, at times can hardly remember his own children, and is kept from sheer destitution by this fund. One, with a cheerful philosophy, says that the increased expense of living is equalized by diminishing wants as age advances. Another writes: "This comes indeed as from our Father's hand, and it is but another evidence of his unbounded love and mercy through all this time of trouble." And still another says: "How I wish that I could give to this blessed work of ministerial relief instead of receiving from it! The little that I gave in former days has returned to me a hundred-fold."

      These expressions of gratitude, of hope, of courage, of good humor, of faith and contentment, reveal the character of the men and the women who write them. What a privilege it would be to minister in person to these saints; to sit in their humble abodes and talk to them about the good old days; to leave the means of supplying a few temporal necessities, and to go away knowing that their benedictions were resting upon my head. But this privilege I can not enjoy. The Board of Ministerial Relief, however, steps in and offers to become my agent. It searches out my brother in need; it is not ashamed of his bonds; and it oft refreshes him with words of sympathy [250] and with material comforts. If I say to this Board, "Here are the means to provide fuel and food and clothing and shelter; a physician, a nurse and medicine; aye, and an honorable Christian burial when the end comes; go, with ready feet, a warm heart and words of good cheer to my needy brother," then the act is mine and the Master says, "You have done it unto me."

[CCR 248-251]