Mr. Angus Clunas, General Treasurer, read the Annual Financial Statement of the Church, which covered from 31st March, 1909, to 31st March, 1910, and is printed elsewhere in the Magazine. Rev. D. Macfarlane moved, as follows:—“That the Synod adopt the Treasurer’s Report, acknowledge the Lord’s goodness in supplying the material necessities of the ministers and missionaries of this Church during the past year, commend anew to the generous sympathy of all members and adherents of the Church all the Church’s schemes, especially that of the Sustentation Fund, and offer the Synod’s thanks to the Treasurer and Auditors for their valuable services.” Mr. Macfarlane spoke briefly to each point in the motion, and recommended liberality to the cause.
Rev. J. R. Mackay, in seconding Mr. Macfarlane’s motion, said that there were three points which, as briefly as might be, he would like to make: (1) No one could think that the salary received by our ministers for the last few years, to wit, £140 per annum, was more than was needed, if ministers were to bring up families with that measure of outward respectability which has always been expected of the Scottish ministry. He was sorry to say that last year they were able to give only £135. As for our missionaries, he reckoned that their salaries were pitifully small. (2) He did not think, if the matter were urged in the proper way upon our people, that, in the present condition of the country, it would be really difficult to maintain an adequate sustentation both of ministers and of missionaries. He was inclined to think that upon the whole, those who, say through reading the Magazine, knew the needs of the Sustentation Fund, did their duty to this Fund. But there were many, and unless ministers and missionaries explained, and urged the matter upon them, they would never realise their responsibility in this regard. Let only the whole membership and adherentship of the Free Presbyterian Church take up this matter with knowledge and heartiness, and, without scarcely realizing it more a burden than at present, the problem which these immediately concerned in the Sustentation Fund find weighing upon them, would be at once solved.
(3) Some ministers and missionaries have a feeling that it is scarcely in keeping with the spirituality of their main function to be laying much emphasis upon people’s duty to the Sustentation Fund. This time last year he had tried to show from many Scripture examples how plain and urgent this duty is. He had recently been reading an appeal for the proper sustentation of the Ministry of the Reformed Church of Scotland which had been issued by that great reformer, John Knox, and he dared say that it was the most powerful, and pathetic, and urgent appeal on behalf of a Sustentation Fund which he had ever read. Take the following as a sample :—
“Let us consider, dear brethren, how carefully God commandeth in His law that the Levites, and such as served that material tabernacle, should be provided of sufficient livings, yea, let us consider with what plagues God punished Israel and Judah when His statutes and His servants were despised. Shall we think that the eternal God will spare us, if we be contemners of such as truly preach the Lord Jesus, or lawfully bear any charge within His Church? We may be assured that He will not. For as the body is more excellent than the shadow, and as the verity is to be preferred to the sign, so are the Ministers of the New Testament and their spiritual service to be preferred to the Levites, and their carnal ceremonies, the contempt, whereof, cannot but crave, at God’s hands, most severe punishment, because, as said is, the office of the one doth far excel the office of the other. They did but read the law, kill the sacrifice, slay the beasts, take off the skins, wash the flesh, and offer the same as was commanded in the law, and for such service were the tenthes, first fruits, and other duties appointed for their sustentation: but the Ministers of Jesus Christ have an office without all comparison more excellent, for they bring to us the glad tidings of salvation by the two-edged sword of God’s word, which is mighty in operation; they slay that old man that ever fights against God; they make his thought patent to his own confusion that the new man of God may take life. They wash the souls with the blood of Jesus Christ, which abundantly drops from their lips when truly they preach the virtue and effect of the death of Jesus Christ, and rightly use His sacraments, left to be used in His Church, to holders in remembrance of that so great a benefit.”
Mr. Mackay concluded by saying that he was far from meaning that ministers or missionaries should constantly be harping upon the theme of the Sustentation Fund, but that there were suitable occasions, as when notices of collections for this Fund had to be made, when we owed a duty to our Ministry and to our people in this connection.
The next business was the “Appointment of the Annual Collections.” The Rev. Neil Macintyre moved that the Collections be taken according to the following order: (1) Students’ Aid Fund—August; (2) Organisation Fund—December; (3) Church Building Fund—February; (4) Foreign Mission Fund—March; (5) Aged and Infirm Ministers, and Ministers’ Widows and Orphan’s Fund—June; (6) The Missionaries and Catechists’ Collection twice in the year ending 31st March, by book from house to house, at any date suitable for congregations. The motion was unanimously agreed to.