In dealing with money which in any sense is public, no care can be too great. In a case well known to me, a Clergyman imperilled his whole influence, to the verge of ruin, by the simple but effectual process of allowing money collected for a church-object to be mixed and "muddled" with his private funds. He was not business-like, and he was not at all well off. And somehow, when the time of reckoning came, the money had melted, he knew not whither. Strenuous exertions on the part of friends replaced privately the missing collection; but it was only just in time. I have often heard our Indian Missionaries say how great and frequent is the difficulty raised by the apparent incapacity of some otherwise excellent native Pastors to keep public and private money apart. They mean all that is honourable; but a friend comes in begging for a loan, and there is the church fund at hand, and of course the sum taken shall be soon repaid, and of course it is _not_ repaid. But such difficulties are not confined to India. The native Pastors of England have great need to take heed unto themselves.
If possible, let us make our lay parochial friends our secretaries, and above all our treasurers. But if it must be otherwise, and often it must be, let us take heed, at any cost of pains. To do so may be overruled to win a positive influence for the Clergyman. I well remember a dear friend of mine telling me, with loyal pleasure, of his holy and devoted Vicar's care in this direction, and its power over the keen-sighted and not always friendly members of the school-committee in his great parish. Every item of the books was accurate; every halfpenny of receipts accounted for. Men could find no fault in that Clergyman save concerning the Law--and the Gospel--of his God.
Perhaps I need only allude in passing to that crude sort of temptation put so freely before us Clergy, the circular advertisement of the mine which is to pay twenty per cent., or of the company just formed (I have such a circular in my possession, and keep it sacredly,) to promote the construction of a new projectile which shall make war more horrible than ever; one condition to the success of the Clergyman's investment being, of course, that war, thus made more horrible than ever, shall also be as frequent and continuous as possible. But the schemes announced in these circulars are very various in character; good, indifferent, and bad. Need I say that, as a very safe rule, they must all be viewed as bad from the point of view of the young Clergyman's (or indeed of the Clergyman's) purse? It is a truism to remark that high interest means low security; but even a truism can bear occasional repetition when it has to do with a good man's whole life and work, and when the oblivion may mean acute or chronic misery. Such investments are for us a form of gambling, almost as much so as the shameless circulars which we sometimes receive from foreign cities, announcing the possibility of clearing a fortune at one stroke by a turn of the lottery machine. Does the sending of such missives to the English Clergy mean that English Clergymen sometimes answer them? If so, I say that it is strictly impossible that the man who so answers, whether he loses or wins, can also be walking with God, and so working that the Lord works with him. So far as such acts go, he is acting an awfully untrue part, and his Master knows it. Let us take heed unto ourselves.