“No, deacon, my work is here for the South.”
“But, my dear man, in Boston, it would be for the whole nation, North and South. I ’ll tell you what we will do. Say you will come, and we will make your salary eight thousand a year. That’s the largest salary ever offered a Baptist preacher in America. You will pack our church with people, give us new life, and we can afford it. You will be a power in Boston, and a power in the world.”
The Preacher smiled and was silent. At length he said, “I appreciate your offer, deacon. You pay me the highest compliment you know how to express. But you prosperous Yankees can’t get into your heads the idea that there are many things which money can’t measure.”
“But we know a good thing when we see it, and we go for it!” interrupted the deacon.
“Believe me,” continued the Preacher, “I appreciate the sacrifice, the generosity, and breadth of sympathy this offer shows in your hearts. But it is not for me. My work is here. I don’t mind confessing to you that you have vastly pleased me with that offer. I ’ll brag about it to myself the rest of my life.”
“But Doctor, think how much greater power a generous salary will give you in furnishing your equipment for work, and in ministering to any cause you may have at heart,” pleaded the deacon.
“I don’t know. I have a salary of nine hundred dollars. With five hundred I buy books,—food, clothes, shelter, the companionship for the soul. The balance suffices for the body. I haven’t time to bother with money. The man who receives a big salary must live up to its social obligations, and he must pay for it with his life.”
“Doctor, there must be some tremendous force that holds you to such a decision in a village. It seems to me you are throwing your life away.”
“There is a tremendous force, deacon. It is the overwhelming sense of obligation I feel to my own people who have suffered so much, and are still in the grip of poverty, and threatened with greater trials. I can’t leave my own people while they are struggling yet with this unsolved Negro problem. Two great questions shadow the future of the American people, the conflict between Labor and Capital, and the conflict between the African and the Anglo-Saxon race. The greatest, most dangerous, and most hopeless of these, is the latter. My place is here.”
The deacon laughed. “You’re a crank on that subject. Come to Boston and you will see with a better perspective that the question is settling itself. In fact the war absolutely settled it.”