régime in which poverty and trouble and distress could never gain a foothold.
It was not only the guilds of the church that suffered for lack of money; the church itself was deplorably short of funds. Receipts from pew rents had fallen off sadly. Pewholders, reminded of their obligations, replied that those obligations were conditioned on the preaching of the gospel of Jesus Christ, and not the gospel of Karl Marx, from the pulpit of Christ Church. The alms-basins which in the old days had been presented at the altar heaped with the bank bills placed thereon by the wealthy and the well-to-do, came now, sparsely lined instead, with the nickels and the pennies of the poor. And while widows' mites might be gloriously acceptable in the eyes of God, it needed vastly more of them than were received to carry on successfully the activities of Christ Church. The Episcopal and Convention Fund assessment was hopelessly in arrears; so was the missionary allotment; even the rector's salary was in jeopardy by reason of the lack of funds. When that salary was paid to him he found it necessary to use a good part of it to relieve cases of destitution, and to meet other emergencies which could not, in these days, otherwise be met. But he did not complain. He simply set about to see what he could personally do without, and he admonished his wife that the cost of living at the rectory would need to be reduced. On the following Sunday, after reading the announcements, he called the attention of the congregation to the fact that, owing to the withdrawal of financial support by many members of the parish, the funds of the church, available for carrying on its work, had been exhausted, and the treasury was facing a serious deficit. He therefore appealed to all attendants on the services, and to all those interested in supporting the activities and maintaining the dignity of Christ Church, to be liberal in their contributions, that the Lord's work might be unhampered and undiminished.
