"Now," he said, "you don't care how we raise your salary, do you?"
"Of course not."
"Well, the Society's hard up this year and can only raise $1,600; but the church will raise the other $400, and I have one of them already promised."
This seemed a most unusual proceeding, but I was unsuspecting. A few months afterward this man, with tears in his eyes, said:
"Mr. Irvine, whatever happens you will be my friend—won't you?"
He was doing their work, and wincing under the load of it.
"Brother," I said, "when I know whether you are playing the rôle of Judas or John, I will be better able to answer you."
At the end of the year it all came out. I was literally fined $400 for attending that meeting.
As my term of service drew to a close, the workingmen who had joined the church during my incumbency got together. They were in a majority. A church meeting was called, and a motion passed to call a council of the other churches. The purpose of the call was to advise the church how to proceed to force its own Society to pay the pastor's salary. A leading minister drew up the call. All ministers knew the record of the church: only one minister in its history had left of his own accord. The council met. It was composed of ministers and laymen of other churches. Among the laymen was the president of the telephone company. I had publicly criticized the company for disfiguring the streets with ugly cross-bars that looked like gibbets. The president's opposition to me was well known.
The council, under such influence, struck several technical snags, and adjourned. The president of the council wrote me later that the president of the telephone company had advised him not to recall the council, and he had come to that decision.