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Updated: June 17, 2025
When we were going to speak to the brethren, who manage the temporal affairs of Gideon Chapel, about giving up the pew-rents, having all the seats free, and receiving the free-will offerings through a box, a matter which was not quite settled on their part, as brother Craik and I had thought, we found that the Lord had so graciously ordered this matter for us that there was not the least objection on the part of these brethren.
On July 12 my pew-rents will come in. I swear to you that they HAVE NOT BEEN ANTICIPATED. Yours afflictedly, P.S. Would Jarndyce lend his name to a small bill at three months? You know him well, and I have heard that he is a man of benevolent character, and of substance. But "how hardly shall a rich man" you remember the text. LETTER: From Miss Harriet to M. Guy de Maupassant.
This brought an indignant protest from Deacon Goodsole, who is a strong advocate of the free-pew system. "Never," said he, "with my consent. Any pew-rent is bad enough. Trafficking in the Gospel is abominable at best. It shuts out the poor. Worse than that, it shuts out the godless, the irreligious, the profane the very men we want to catch. The pew-rents are too high now. We must not raise them."
But so sanguine, so reckless of human conditions had their theories made them, that they actually expected that parish rectors, already burdened with over-work and vestry quarrels nay, even that preachers who got their bread by pew-rents, and whose life- long struggle was, therefore, to keep those pews filled, and those renters in good humour should astound the respectable house- owners and ratepayers who sat beneath them by the appalling words: "You, and not the 'Visitation of God, are the cause of epidemics; and of you, now that you are once fairly warned of your responsibility, will your brothers' blood be required."
When I drew a picture of its great auditorium thronged with thousands of eager faces, Van Meter coolly interrupted me with the remark: "'We don't want such trash elbowing our old parishioners out of their pews. We've had too much of it already. With all your mob, the pew-rents have fallen off. "My first impulse was that of Christ when he took a whip in the temple. I wanted to knock him down.
Nay, I knew it to be a fact that sometimes it had not been convenient to individuals to pay the money when it had been asked for by the brethren who collected it. 3. Though the Lord had been pleased to give me grace to be faithful, so that I had been enabled not to keep back the truth when he had shown it to me; still, I felt that the pew-rents were a snare to the servant of Christ.
On the strength of that extraordinary subscription they had rushed into extraordinary expenditures with a looseness that was marvellous to behold. Here is the annual exhibit as it appears in the treasurer's report: BALANCE SHEET. Cr. Pew-rents $1,250.00 Sunday Collections 325.25 Received by a Ladies' Fair 113.34 Special Subscription 300.00 Dr. 1,988.59 Deficit $691.91
Two letters had arrived from Bristol. The brethren assembling at Gideon accept our offer to come under the conditions we have made, i.e., for the present to consider us only as ministering among them, but not in any fixed pastoral relationship, so that we may preach as we consider it to be according to the mind of God, without reference to any rules among them; that the pew-rents should be done away with and that we should go on, respecting the supply of our temporal wants, as in Devonshire.
Of this, he knew that twenty pounds came from Mr Bradshaw; and when the old man appointed to collect the pew-rents brought him the quarterly amount, and he found no diminution in them, he inquired how it was, and learnt that, although Mr Bradshaw had expressed to the collector his determination never to come to chapel again, he had added, that of course his pew-rent should be paid all the same.
About this time I began to have conscientious objections against any longer receiving a stated salary. My reasons against it were these: The salary was made up by pew-rents; but pew-rents are, according to James ii. 1-6, against the mind of the Lord, as, in general, the poor brother cannot have so good a seat as the rich.
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