any appeals
are made, the clerical business beats all others, if we compare the
amount of investment with the size of the dividend. Relatively speaking,
the profits are magnificent. There are curates with only a workman's
wages, and of course they merit our deepest sympathy. It is quite
shocking to think that a disciple of the "_poor_ Carpenter of Nazareth"
has to subsist, and support his ten children, on such a miserable
pittance. It is a calamity which calls for tears of blood. But, on the
other hand, there are Archbishops with princely incomes, Bishops with
lordly revenues, Deans and Canons with fine salaries and snug quarters;
and between the two extremes of the fat bishop and the lean curate is a
long line of gradations, in which, if we strike an average, the result
is very far from despicable. It may be added that while the leading
Nonconformist ministers, at least in England, do not rival the great
Church dignitaries in the matter of income, they often run up to a
thousand a year and sometimes over it. Taking the average of their
incomes, we have no hesitation in saying it is beyond what they would
earn in the ordinary labor market. Still, so far as they are not paid
by the State, as the Church clergy _are_, we have no personal reason for
complaint. This is a free country--especially for Christians; and if
the lay disciples of the poor Carpenter like to pay his professional
apostles a fancy price for their work, it is no concern of ours from a
business point of view. Nevertheless, as the said apostles are _public_
men, who set up as other people's _teachers_, we have a right to express
an opinion as to the consistency between their preaching and their
practice.

Our gallant colleague, Joseph Symes, who is nobly upholding the
Freethought banner in Australia, once asked, "Who's to be Damned if
Christianity is True?" Certainly, he said, the clergy stand a fine
chance. They are more likely to go to Hades than the congregations they
preach to. On on average they are better off. They preach, or _should_
preach, the blessings of poverty, and the curse, nay, the damnableness,
of wealth. According to the teaching of Jesus, as we read it in the
Sermon on the Mount, and as we find it illustrated in the parable
of Dives and Lazarus, every pauper is pretty sure of a front seat in
heaven; and every man of property or good income is equally sure of warm
quarters in hell. But you do not meet parsons in workhouses, though some
o