Books: Lessons in Life, For All Who Will Read Them
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T.S. Arthur >> Lessons in Life, For All Who Will Read Them
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"This must not be," said he to himself, as he walked thoughtfully
homeward. "They are making themselves unhappy, and preventing a
concert of useful efforts for good in society, and all for nothing.
I will try again to reconcile them; perhaps I may be more successful
than before."
So, on the next day, the old gentleman made it his business to call
upon Arnest, who expressed great pleasure in meeting him.
"I noticed," said Mr. Wellford, after he had conversed some time,
and finally introduced the subject of the meeting on the previous
evening, "that your intercourse with the secretary was exceedingly
formal; in fact, hardly courteous."
"I don't like Marston, as you are very well aware," replied Arnest.
"In which feeling you stand nearly alone, friend Arnest. Mr. Marston
is highly esteemed by all who know him."
"All don't know him as I do."
"Perhaps others know him better than you do; there may lie the
difference."
"If a man knocks me down, I know the weight of his arm much better
than those who have never felt it."
"Still nursing your anger, still harbouring unkind thoughts! Forgive
and forget, my friend--forgive and forget; no longer let the sun go
down upon your wrath."
"I can forgive, Mr. Wellford--I do forgive; for Heaven knows I wish
him no harm; but I cannot forget: that is asking too much."
"You do not forget, because you will not forgive," replied the old
gentleman. "Forgive, and you will soon forget. I am sure you will
both be happier in forgetting than you can be in remembering the
past."
But Arnest shook his head, remarking, as he so--"I would rather let
things remain as they are. At least, I cannot stoop to any
humiliating overtures for a reconciliation. When Marston outraged my
feelings so wantonly, I wrote him a pretty warm expression of my
sentiments in regard to his conduct. This gave him mortal offence. I
do not now remember what I wrote, but nothing, certainly, to have
prevented his coming forward and apologizing for his conduct; but he
did not choose to do this, and there the matter rests. I cannot
recall the angry rebuke I gave him, for it was no doubt just."
"A man who writes a letter in a passion, and afterwards forgets what
he has written," said Mr. Wellford, "may be sure that he has said
what his sober reason cannot approve. If you could have the letter
you then sent before you now, I imagine that you would no longer
wonder that Marston was offended."
"That is impossible; without doubt, he burned my note the moment he
received it."
Mr. Wellford tried in vain to induce Arnest to consent to forget
what was past; but he affirmed that this was impossible, and that he
had no wish to renew an acquaintance with his old friend.
About the same time that this interview took place, Marston was
alone, thinking with sad and softened feelings of the past. The
letter of Arnest was before him; he had turned it over by accident.
"He could not have been himself when he wrote this," he thought. It
was the first time he had permitted himself to think so. "My words
must have stung him severely, lightly as I uttered them, and with no
intention to wound. This matter ought not to have gone on so long.
Friends are not so plentiful that we may carelessly cast those we
have tried and proved aside. He has many excellent qualities."
Pride came quickly, with many suggestions about self-respect, and
what every man owed to himself.
"He owes it to himself to be just to others," Marston truly thought.
"Was I just in failing to apologize to my friend, notwihstanding
this offensive letter? No, I was not; for his action did not
exonerate me from the responsibility of mine. Ah, me! How passion
blinds us!"
After musing for some time, Marston drew towards him a sheet of
paper, and, taking up a pen, wrote:
"MY DEAR SIR:--What I ought to have done years ago, I do now, and
that is, offer you a sincere apology for light words thoughtlessly
spoken, but which I ought not to have used, as they were calculated
to wound, and, I am grieved to think, did wound. But for your note,
which I enclose, I should have made this apology the moment I had an
opportunity. But its peculiar tenor, I then felt, precluded me from
doing so. I confess that I erred in letting my feelings blind my
cooler judgment.
"Your old friend, MARSTON.
"To Mr. Herbert Arnest."
Enclosing the note alluded to in this letter, Marston sealed, and,
ringing for an attendant, despatched it.
"Better to do right late than never," he murmured, as he leaned
pensively back in his chair.
"Let what will come of it, I shall feel better, for I will gain my
own self-respect, and have an inward assurance that I have done
right,--more than I have for a long time had, in regard to this
matter at least."
Relieved in mind, Marston commenced looking over some papers in
reference to matters of business then on hand, and was soon so much
absorbed in them, that the subject which had lately filled his
thoughts faded entirely therefrom. Some one opened the door, and he
turned to see who was entering. In an instant he was on his feet. It
was Arnest.
The face of the latter was pale and agitated, and his lips quivered.
He came forward hurriedly, extending his hand, not to grasp that of
his old friend, but to hold up his own letter that had been just
returned to him.
"Marston," he said, huskily, "did I send you _this_ note?"
"You did," was the firm but mild answer.
"Thus I cancel it!" And he tore it into shreds, and scattered them
on the floor. "Would that its contents could be as easily
obliterated from your memory!" he added, in a most earnest voice.
"They are no longer there, my friend," returned Marston, with
visible emotion, now grasping the hand of Arnest. "You have wiped
them out."
Arnest returned the pressure with both hands, his eyes fixed on
those of Marston, until they grew so dim that he could no longer
read the old familiar lines and forgiving look.
"Let us forgive and forget," said Marston, speaking in a broken
voice. "We have wronged each other and ourselves. We have let evil
passions rule instead of good affections."
"From my heart do I say 'Amen,'" replied Arnest. "Yes, let us
forgive and forget. Would that we had been as wise as we now are,
years ago!"
Thus were they reconciled. And now the question is, What did either
gain by his indignation against the other? Did Arnest rise higher in
his self-esteem, or Marston gain additional self-respect? We think
not. Alas! how blinding is selfish passion! How it opens in the mind
the door for the influx of multitudes of evil and false suggestions!
How it hides the good in others, and magnifies, weakness into
crimes! Let us beware of it.
"Reconciled at last," said old Mr. Wellford, when he next saw Arnest
and heard the fact from his lips.
"Yes," replied the latter. "I can now forget as well as forgive."
"Rather say you can forget, _because_ you forgive. If you had
forgiven truly, you could have ceased to think of what was wrong in
your friend long ago. People talk of forgiving and not forgetting,
but it isn't so: they do not forget because they do not forgive."
"I believe you are right," said Arnest. "I think, now, as naturally
of my friend's good qualities as I ever did before of what was evil.
I forget the evil in thinking of the good."
"Because you have forgiven him," returned Mr. Wellford. "Before you
forgave him, your thought of evil gave no room for the thought of
good."
Mr. Wellford was right. After we have forgiven, we find it no hard
matter to forget.
PAYING THE MINISTER.
"MONEY, money, money! That's the everlasting cry! I'll give up my
pew. I won't go to church. I'll stay at home and read the Bible. Not
that I care for a few dollars more than I do for the dust that blows
in the wind; but this selling of salvation for gold disgusts me. I'm
sick to death of it!"
"But hear, first, Mr. Larkin, what we want money for," said Mr.
Elder, one of the vestrymen of the church to which the former
belonged. "You know that our minister's salary is very small; in
fact, entirely insufficient for the maintenance of his family. He
has, as might be supposed, fallen into debt, and we are making an
effort to raise a sufficient sum to relieve him from his unpleasant
embarrassment."
"But what business has he to go in debt, Mr. Elder? He knows the
amount of his income, and, as an honest man, should not let his
expenses exceed it."
"But you know as well as I do that he cannot live on four hundred
dollars a year."
"I don't know any such thing, friend Elder. But I do know, that
there are hundreds and thousands who live on much less, and save a
little into the bargain. That, however, is neither here nor there.
Four hundred dollars a year is all this parish can afford to pay a
minister, and that Mr. Malcolm was distinctly told before he came.
If he could not live on the salary offered, why did he come? Mr.
Pelton never received more."
"Beg your pardon, Mr. Larkin. Mr. Pelton never received less than
seven hundred dollars a year. There were always extra subscriptions
made for him."
"I never gave any thing more than my regular subscription and
pew-rent."
"It is more than I can say, then. In presents of one kind and
another and in money it never cost me less than from fifty to
seventy-five dollars a year extra. Having been in the vestry for the
last ten years, I happen to know that there was always something to
make up at the end of the year, and it generally came out of the
pockets of a few."
"Well, it isn't right, that is all I have to say," returned Mr.
Larkin. "A minister has no business to saddle himself upon a
congregation in that way for less than his real weight. It's an
imposition, and one that I am not going to stand. I'm opposed to all
these forced levies, from principle."
"I rather think the first error is on the side of the congregation,"
said Mr. Elder. "I think they are not only to blame, but really
dishonest, in fixing upon a sum for the support of a minister that
is plainly inadequate to his maintenance. Here, in our parish, for
instance, a thousand dollars might be paid to a minister with the
greatest ease in the world, and no one be oppressed by his
subscription. And yet, we are very content and self-complacent in
our niggardly tender of four hundred dollars."
"A thousand dollars! I don't believe any minister ought to receive
such a salary. I have no notion of tempting, by inducements like
that, money-lovers into the sacred office."
"Pardon me, Mr. Larkin, but how much does it cost you to live? Not
less than two thousand five hundred dollars a year, I presume."
"But I don't put my expenses alongside of the minister's. I can
afford to spend all that it costs me. I have honestly made what I
possess, and have a right to enjoy it."
"I didn't question that, Mr. Larkin. I only turned your thoughts in
this direction, that you might realize in your own mind how hard it
must be for a man with a family of three children, just the number
that you have, to live on four hundred dollars a year."
But the allusion to matters personal to Mr. Larkin gave that
gentleman a fine opportunity to feel offended; which he did not fail
to embrace, and thus close the interview.
This was Mr. Elder's first effort to obtain a subscription for
paying off the minister's debt. It quite disheartened him. He had
intended making three calls on his way to his store that morning,
for the purpose of trying to raise something for Mr. Malcolm; but he
felt so discouraged by the reception he had met with from Mr.
Larkin, that he passed on without doing so. Near his store was a
carriage repository. The owner of it put his hand upon his shoulder
as he was going by, and said, "Just step in, I want to show you
something beautiful."
Mr. Elder went in, and was shown a very handsome and
fashionably-made carriage, with all the modern improvements.
"This is something very elegant, certainly. Who is it for?"
"One of the members of your church."
"Ah?"
"Yes. It is for Larkin."
"Indeed! How much does it cost him?"
"Eight hundred dollars."
"He ought to have a fine pair of horses for so fine a carriage."
"And so he has. He bought a noble span, last week, for a thousand
dollars."
Mr. Elder said what he could in praise of the elegant carriage; but
he couldn't say much, for he had no heart to do so. He felt worse
than ever about the deficiency in Mr. Malcolm's salary. On the next
day he was in better spirits, and called in upon one of the members
of the church, as he passed to his store. He stated his errand, and
received this reply--
"I'll tell you what, Mr. Elder, I am of Larkin's opinion in this
matter. If our minister agreed to come for four hundred dollars, he
should stick to his contract. He's no business to go in debt, and
then call upon us to get him out of his difficulties. It isn't the
clean thing. I don't mind a few dollars any more than you do; but I
like principle. I like to see all men, especially ministers, stick
to their text. Malcolm knew before he came here what we could afford
to give him, and if he couldn't live upon that, he had no business
to come. That's what I think of it, and I always speak out my mind
plainly."
Mr. Elder made no more begging calls on that day. But he tried it
again on the next, and found that Larkin had been over the ground
before him, and said so much about "the imposition of the thing,"
that he could do little or nothing. There was a speciousness about
Larkin's manner of alluding to the subject, that carried people away
with him; particularly as what he said favoured their inclination to
keep a tight hold on their purse-strings. He was piqued with Elder,
and this set him to talking, and doing more mischief than he thought
for.
The Rev. Mr. Malcolm was a man of about thirty years of age. He had
taken orders a couple of years previous to the date of his call to
the parish where he now preached. At the time of doing so, he was
engaged in teaching a school; from which he received a very
comfortable income. The bishop who ordained him recommended the
parish at C--, when Mr. Pelton left there, to apply for Mr.
Malcolm; which was done. The latter was an honest, conscientious
man, and sincere in his desire to do good in the sacred office to
which he believed himself called. When the invitation to settle at
C--came, he left home and visited the parish, in order that he
might determine whether it was his duty to go there or not. On his
return, his wife inquired, with a good deal of interest, how he
liked the place, and if he thought he would go there.
"I think I shall accept the call," said he. This was not spoken with
much warmth.
"Don't you like the people?" inquired Mrs. Malcolm.
"Yes; as far as I saw them, they were very pleasant, good sort of
people. But the salary is entirely too small."
"How much?"
"Four hundred dollars a year, and the parsonage--a little affair,
that would rent for about a hundred dollars."
"We can't live on that," said Mrs. Malcolm, in a disappointed tone;
"it is out of the question."
"No, certainly not. But I am assured that at least seven or eight
hundred will be made up during the year. This has always been done
for Mr. Pelton and will be done for me, if I accept the call."
"That might do, if we practised close economy. But why do they not
make the salary seven or eight hundred dollars at once? It would be
just the same to them, and make the minister feel a great deal more
independent."
"True; but we must let people do things in their own way. We can
live on seven hundred dollars, and I therefore think it my duty to
give up my school, and accept the call."
"No one, certainly, can charge you with sordid views in doing so,
for your school yields you now over a thousand dollars, and is
increasing."
"I will try and keep my mind free from all thought of what people
may say or think," returned Mr. Malcolm, "and endeavour to do right
for the sake of right."
The wife of the Rev. Mr. Malcolm fully sympathized with her husband
in his wish to enter upon the duties of his sacred calling, and was
ready to make any sacrifice that could be made in order to see him
in the position he so much desired to occupy. She did not,
therefore, make any objection to giving up their pleasant home and
sufficient income, but went with him cheerfully to C--, and there
made every effort to reduce all their expenses to their reduced
means of living.
It is a much easier thing to increase our expenses than to reduce
them. We get used to a certain free way of living, and it is one of
the most difficult things in the world to give up this little
luxury, and that pleasant indulgence, and come right down to the
meagre necessaries of life. This fact was soon apparent to Mr. and
Mrs. Malcolm; but they were in earnest in what they were about, and
practised the required self-denial. Their expenses were kept within
the limits of seven hundred dollars, the lowest sum that had been
named.
At the end of the first three months, one hundred dollars were paid
to the minister. When he gave up his school, he sold it out to a
person who wished to succeed him, for two hundred dollars. The
expense of removing to C--, and living there for three months, had
quite exhausted this sum. Mr. Malcolm paid away his last dollar
before the quarter's salary was due, and was forced to let his
bread-bill and his meat-bill run on for a couple of weeks; these
were paid the moment he received his salary.
"I don't like these bills at all," said he to his wife, after they
were paid. "A minister should never owe a dollar; it does him no
good. Above all things, his mind should live in a region above the
anxieties that a deficient income and consequent debt always
occasion. We must husband what we have, and make it go as far as
possible."
By the end of two months, the hundred dollars were all expended; but
not a word had been said about the additional three or four hundred
that had been promised, or that Mr. Malcolm fully believed had been
promised. Bills had now to be run up with the baker, grocer, and
butcher, which amounted to nearly fifty dollars when the next
quarter's salary was paid.
Mr. Malcolm did not doubt but the additional amount promised when he
consented to accept the call would be made up; still he could not
help feeling troubled. If things went on as they were going, by the
end of the year he would be in debt at least two hundred dollars;
and, of all things in the world, he had a horror of debt.
During this time, he was in familiar intercourse with the principal
members of his church, and especially with the leading vestrymen who
held out inducements to him beyond the fixed salary; but no allusion
was made to the subject, and he had too much delicacy to introduce
it.
At last, matters approached a climax. The minister was about two
hundred dollars in debt, and bills were presented almost every week,
and their settlement politely urged. This was a condition of things
not to be endured by a man of Mr. Malcolm's high sense of right and
peculiar delicacy of feeling. At length, after lying awake for half
of the night, thinking over what was to be done, he came to the
reluctant conclusion that it was his imperative duty to those he
owed, to mention the necessities of his case to the vestry, and
learn from them, without further delay, whether he had any thing
beyond the four hundred dollars to expect.
The hardest task Mr. Malcolm had ever performed was now before him,
and he shrunk from it with painful reluctance. But the path of duty
was plain, and he was not a man to hold back when he saw his way
clear. If there had been any hesitation, an imperative dun received
before he sat down to breakfast, and another before nine o'clock,
would have effectually dispelled it.
Mr. Malcolm went to the store of Mr. Elder, one of the vestrymen,
and found him quite busy with customers. He waited for half an hour
for him to be disengaged, and then went out, saying, as he passed
him at the counter, that he would call in again.
"Oh, dear!" he murmured to himself, with a long-drawn sigh, as he
emerged upon the street, "is not this humiliating? If I had engaged
for only four hundred dollars a year, I would have lived on bread
and water rather than have exceeded my income; but at least seven
hundred were promised. It was, however, an informal promise; and I
was wrong, perhaps, in trusting to any thing so unsettled as this.
Of course, it will be paid to me when I make known my present
situation; but the doing of that I shrink from."
"Mr. T--was here again for his bill," were the first words that
saluted the ears of the minister when he returned home.
"What did you say to him?" he asked.
"I told him that you would settle it very soon. He said he hoped you
would, for he wanted money badly, and it had been running for some
time."
"He was rude, then!"
"A little so," replied the wife, in a meek voice.
Mr. Malcolm paced the floor with rapid steps; he felt deeply
disturbed.
An hour afterwards, he entered the store of Mr. Elder, and found the
owner disengaged. He did not linger in preliminaries, but approached
the subject thus:--
"You remember, Mr. Elder, that in the interview I had with you and
two of the vestry previous to my accepting the call of this parish,
you stated that my income would not be limited to the four hundred
dollars named as the minister's salary, which I then told you was a
smaller sum than I could possibly live upon?"
Mr. Elder exhibited a momentary confusion when the minister said
this; but he immediately replied--"Yes, I believe something was said
on that subject, though I have not thought of it since. We always
had to make up something for Mr. Pelton, and I suppose we must do
the same for you, if it is necessary. Do you find your salary
inadequate?"
"Entirely so; and I knew it would be inadequate from the first. It
is impossible for me to support my family on four hundred dollars;
and had I not been assured that at least three or four hundred
dollars extra would be made up during the year, I never would have
dreamed of accepting the call. It has been a principle with me not
to go in debt; and since I have been a man, I have not, until this
time, owed a dollar; and should not have owed it now, had I
received, since I have resided in C--the income I fully expected."
Mr. Malcolm spoke with warmth, for he felt some risings of the
natural man at the indifference with which a promise of so much
consequence to him had been disregarded.
"How much do you owe?" inquired the vestryman.
"About two hundred dollars."
"Indeed! so much?"
A bitter remark arose to the minister's lips, but he forced himself
to keep silence. He was a man, with all the natural feelings of a
man.
"Well, I suppose we must make it for you somehow," said Mr. Elder,
the tone in which he spoke showing that the subject worried him.
"Are any of the demands on you pressing?" he inquired, after a
pause.
"All of them are pressing," replied the minister. "I am dunned every
day."
"Indeed! That's bad!" returned Mr. Elder, speaking with more real
kindness and sympathy than at first. "I am sorry you have been
permitted to get into so unpleasant a situation."
"It certainly is very unpleasant, and entirely destroys my peace.
Were I not thus unhappily situated, I should not have said a word to
you on the subject of my salary."
"Don't let it distress you so much, Mr. Malcolm. I will see that the
amount you need is at once made up."
The minister returned home, disturbed, mortified, and humiliated.
"If this is the way they pay their minister," he remarked to his
wife, after relating to her what had happened, "it is the last year
that I shall enjoy the benefits of their peculiar system. But little
good will my preaching or that of any one else do them, while they
disregard the first and plainest principles of honesty. There is no
lack of ability to give a minister the support he needs; and the
withholding of that support, or the supplying of it by constraint,
shows a moral obtuseness that argues but poorly for their love of
any thing but themselves. I believe that the labourer is worthy of
his hire; that when men build a church and call a minister for their
own spiritual good, they are bound to supply his natural wants; and
that, if they fail to do so, it is a sign to the minister that he
ought to leave them. Some may call this a selfish doctrine, and
unworthy of a minister of God; but I believe it to be the true
doctrine, and shall act up to it. It does men no good to let them
quietly go on, year after year, starving their ministers, while they
have abundant means to make them comfortable. If they prize their
wealth higher than they do spiritual riches, it is but casting
pearls before swine to scatter even the most brilliant gems of
wisdom before them; and in this unprofitable task I am the last man
to engage. I gave up all hope of worldly good, in order to preach
the everlasting gospel for the salvation of men. In order to do this
successfully, my mind must be kept free from the depressing cares of
life, and there must be something reciprocal in those to whom I
minister in heavenly things. If this be not the case, all my labour
will be in vain."
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