aid them, the extra price paid for the
best pews, and the sale of the vaults for burial in the church-yard.
Most of the pews being sold, the church is partly paid for. The next
point is to select a minister, and, after due trial, one is chosen. If
he be a man of eloquence and talent, and his doctrines acceptable to the
many, the church fills, the remainder of the pews are sold, and so far
the expenses of building the church are defrayed; but they have still to
pay the salary of the minister, the heating and lighting of the church,
the organist, and the vocalists: this is done by an assessment upon the
pews, each pew being assessed according to the sum which it fetched when
sold by auction.

I will now give the exact expenses of an American gentleman in Boston,
who has his pew in one of the largest churches.

He purchased his pew at auction for seven hundred and fifty dollars, it
being one of the best in the church. The salaries of the most popular
ministers vary from fifteen hundred to three or four thousand dollars.
The organist receives about five hundred; the vocalists from two to
three hundred dollars each. To meet his share of these and the other
expenses, the assessment of this gentleman is sixty-three dollars per
annum. Now, the interest of seven hundred and fifty dollars in America
is forty-five dollars, and the assessment being sixty-three--one hundred
and eight dollars per annum, or twenty-two pounds ten shillings sterling
for his yearly expenses under the voluntary system. This, of course,
does not include the offerings of the plate, charity sermons, etcetera,
all of which are to be added, and which will swell the sum, according to
my friend's statement, to about thirty pounds per annum. ["A great evil
of our American churches is, their great respectability or
exclusiveness. Here, being of a large size and paid by Government, the
church is open to all the citizens, with an equal right and equal chance
of accommodation. In ours, the dearness of pew-rent, especially in
Episcopal and Presbyterian, turns poverty out of doors. Poor people
have a sense of shame, and I know many a one, who, because he cannot go
to Heaven decently, will not go at all."--_Sketches of Paris by an
American Gentleman_.]

It does not appear by the above calculations that the voluntary system
has cheapness to recommend it, when people worship in a respectable
manner, as you might hire a house and farm of fifty acres in that Sta