PAYING THE MINISTER

Those early men of the cloth couldn’t have answered the call to preach the word of God based on the financial remuneration. A meal, a place to sleep, and a stable for his horse was a substantial portion of the pay of early missionaries as they moved among the people. Many of the early settled Presbyterian ministers held land and farmed to support their fami- lies. It was a hard life attempting to minister to a sparse congregation spread out over miles of rough wooded terrain with only the most primi- tive sources of transportation. The early Methodist Preachers were not to have gardens as time spent on their care would take away from their

church work. Rev. John MacLeod in his writing Excerpts From Early Presbten'anism 021 Prince Edward Island, told of Rev. S. Patterson who was the first settled

minister in Bedeque, 1826:

The congregation being small and widely scattered was unable to give their minister a large salary or even that necessary for a comfortable living, but Mr. Patterson, with true apostolic zeal and self denial helped the people to bear their burdens, teaching school and laboring with his hands that he might be the less burdensome to them and that they might enjoy the blessing of a preached gospel. In the latter part of his ministry the congregation had so increased in numbers and in wealth that they were able to minister to the comfort of their pastor. Though his stipend never was large, yet for many years he gave the one-tenth, and for the last few years of his ministry the one-fifth of his

annual income for religious and benevolent purposes.6

The minister at Alberton, serving the whole western end of Prince County (1850), was paid a stipend of $324 — paid partly in cash and partly in produce. 7

While the earliest Richmond Bay session minutes available never refer to the amount of stipend the minister was paid, there was reference to congregation members being brought before the session for having failed

to pay the stipend.

120 LOT 16 UNITED CHURCH AND ITs PEOPLE