Many times have I been maligned and my work misrepresented; but all such falsehood and persecution have turned out for my advantage and enlarged my work.
Whoever did escape it?
I was one summer in the pulpit of John Wesley, in London--a pulpit where he stood one day and said: "I have been charged with all the crimes in the calendar except one--that of drunkenness," and his wife arose in the audience and said: "You know you were drunk last night."
I saw in a foreign journal a report of one of George Whitefield"s sermons--a sermon preached a hundred and twenty or thirty years ago. It seemed that the reporter stood to take the sermon, and his chief idea was to caricature it, and these are some of the reportorial interlinings of the sermon of George Whitefield. After calling him by a nickname indicative of a physical defect in the eye, it goes on to say: "Here the preacher clasps his chin on the pulpit cushion. Here he elevates his voice. Here he lowers his voice. Holds his arms extended. Bawls aloud.
Stands trembling. Makes a frightful face. Turns up the whites of his eyes. Clasps his hands behind him. Clasps his arms around him, and hugs himself. Roars aloud. Holloas. Jumps. Cries. Changes from crying.
Holloas and jumps again."
One would have thought that if any man ought to have been free from persecution it was George Whitefield, bringing great ma.s.ses of the people into the kingdom of G.o.d, wearing himself out for Christ"s sake: and yet the learned Dr. Johnson called him a mountebank. Robert Hall preached about the glories of heaven as no uninspired man ever preached about them, and it was said when he preached about heaven his face shone like an angel"s, and yet good Christian John Foster writes of Robert Hall, saying: "Robert Hall is a mere actor, and when he talks about heaven the smile on his face is the reflection of his own vanity." John Wesley stirred all England with reform, and yet he was caricatured by all the small wits of his day. He was pictorialised, history says, on the board fences of London, and everywhere he was the target for the punsters; yet John Wesley stands to-day before all Christendom, his name mighty. I have preached a Gospel that is not only appropriate to the home circle, but is appropriate to Wall Street, to Broadway, to Fulton Street, to Montague Street, to Atlantic Street, to every street--not only a religion that is good for half past ten o"clock Sunday morning, but good for half past ten o"clock any morning. This was one of the considerations in my work as a preacher of the Gospel that extended its usefulness. A practical religion is what we all need. In my previous work at Belleville, N.J., and in Syracuse, I had absorbed other considerations of necessity in the business of uniting the human character with the church character.
Although the Central Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn of which I was pastor was one of the largest buildings in that city then, it did not represent my ideal of a church.
I learned in my village pastorates that the Church ought to be a great home circle of fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters. That would be a very strange home circle where the brothers and sisters did not know each other, and where the parents were characterised by frigidity and heartlessness. The Church must be a great family group--the pulpit the fireplace, the people all gathered around it. I think we sometimes can tell the people to stay out by our church architecture. People come in and find things angular and cold and stiff, and they go away never again to come; when the church ought to be a great home circle.
I knew a minister of religion who had his fourth settlement. His first two churches became extinct as a result of his ministry, the third church was hopelessly crippled, and the fourth was saved simply by the fact that he departed this life. On the other hand, I have seen pastorates which continued year after year, all the time strengthening, and I have heard of instances where the pastoral relation continued twenty years, thirty years, forty years, and all the time the confidence and the love were on the increase. So it was with the pastorate of old Dr. Spencer, so it was with the pastorate of old Dr. Gardiner Spring, so it was with the pastorate of a great many of those old ministers of Jesus Christ, of whom the world was not worthy.
I saw an opportunity to establish in Brooklyn just such a church as I had in my mind"s eye--a Tabernacle, where all the people who wanted to hear the Gospel preached could come in and be comfortable. I projected, designed, and successfully established the Brooklyn Tabernacle within a little over a year after preaching my first sermon in Brooklyn. The church seated 3,500 people, and yet we were compelled to use the old church to take care of all our active Christian work besides.
The first Brooklyn Tabernacle was, I believe, the most buoyant expression of my work that I ever enjoyed. It drew upon all my energies and resources, and as the sacred walls grew up towards the skies, I prayed G.o.d that I might have the strength and spiritual energy to grow with it.
Prayer always meets the emergency, no matter how difficult it may be.
That was the substantial backing of the first Brooklyn Tabernacle--prayer. Prayer furnished the means as well as the faith that was behind them. I was merely the promoter, the agent, of a company organised in Heaven to perpetuate the Gospel of Christ. It was considered a great thing to have done, and many were the reasons whispered by the worldly and the envious and the orthodox, for its success. Some said it was due to magnetism.
As a cord or rope can bind bodies together, there may be an invisible cord binding souls. A magnetic man throws it over others as a hunter throws a la.s.so. Some men are surcharged with this influence, and have employed it for patriotism and Christianity and elevated purposes.
It is always a surprise to a great majority of people how churches are built, how money for which the world has so many other uses can be obtained to build churches. There are names of men and women whom I have only to mention and they suggest at once not only great wealth, but religion, generosity, philanthropy, such as Amos Laurence, James Lennox, Peter Cooper, William E. Dodge, Miss Wolfe, Mrs. William Astor. A good moral character can be accompanied by affluent circ.u.mstances.
In the "70"s and "80"s in Brooklyn and in New York there were merchants who had prospered, but by Christian methods--merchants who took their religion into everyday life. I became accustomed, Sabbath after Sabbath, to stand before an audience of bargain-makers. Men in all occupations--yet the vast majority of them, I am very well aware, were engaged from Monday morning to Sat.u.r.day night in the store. In many of the families of my congregations across the breakfast table and the tea table were discussed questions of loss and gain. "What is the value of this? What is the value of that?" They would not think of giving something of greater value for that which is of lesser value. They would not think of selling that which cost ten dollars for five dollars. If they had a property that was worth $15,000, they would not sell it for $4,000. All were intelligent in matters of bargain-making.
But these were not the sort of men who made generous investments for G.o.d"s House. There was one that sort, however, among my earliest remembrances, Arthur Tappen. There were many differences of opinion about his politics, but no one who ever knew Arthur Tappen, and knew him well, doubted his being an earnest Christian. Arthur Tappen was derided in his day because he established that system by which we come to find out the commercial standing of business men. He started that entire system, was derided for it then; I knew him well, in moral character A1.
Monday mornings he invited to a room in the top of his storehouse in New York the clerks of his establishment. He would ask them about their worldly interests and their spiritual interests, then giving out a hymn and leading in prayer he would give them a few words of good advice, asking them what church they attended on the Sabbath, what the text was, whether they had any especial troubles of their own.
Arthur Tappen, I have never heard his eulogy p.r.o.nounced. I p.r.o.nounce it now. There were other merchants just as good--William E. Dodge in the iron business, Moses H. Grinnell in the shipping business, Peter Cooper in the glue business, and scores of men just as good as they were.
I began my work of enlarging and improving the Brooklyn Church almost the week following my installation. My first vacation, a month, began on June 25, 1869, the trustees of the church having signified and ordered repairs, alterations and improvements at a meeting held that day, and further suspending Sabbath services for four weeks. I spent part of my vacation at East Hampton, L.I., going from there for two or three short lecturing trips. I find that I can never rest over two weeks. More than that wearies me. Of all the places I have ever known East Hampton is the best place for quiet and recuperation.
I became acquainted with it through my brother-in-law, Rev. S.L.
Mershon. His first pastorate was at the Presbyterian Church in East Hampton, where, as a young man, I preached some of my first sermons.
East Hampton is always home to me. When a boy in grammar-school and college I used to visit my brother-in-law and his wife, my sister Mary.
Later in life I established a summer home there myself. I particularly recall one incident of this month"s vacation that has affected my whole life. One day while resting at Sharon Springs, New York, walking in the Park of that place, I found myself asking the question: "I wonder if there is any special mission for me to execute in this world? If there is, may G.o.d show it to me!"
There soon came upon me a great desire to preach the Gospel through the secular printing-press. I realised that the vast majority of people, even in Christian lands, never enter a church, and that it would be an opportunity of usefulness infinite if that door of publication were opened. And so I recorded that prayer in a blank book, and offered the prayer day in and day out until the answer came, though in a way different from that which I had expected, for it came through the misrepresentation and persecution of enemies; and I have to record it for the encouragement of all ministers of the Gospel who are misrepresented, that if the misrepresentation be virulent enough and bitter enough and continuous enough, there is nothing that so widens one"s field of usefulness as hostile attack, if you are really doing the Lord"s work. The bigger the lie told about me the bigger the demand to see and hear what I really was doing. From one stage of sermonic publication to another the work has gone on, until week by week, and for about twenty-three years, I have had the world for my audience as no man ever had. The syndicates inform me that my sermons go now to about twenty-five millions of people in all lands. I mention this not in vain boast, but as a testimony to the fact that G.o.d answers prayer. Would G.o.d I had better occupied the field and been more consecrated to the work!
The following summer, or rather early spring, I requested an extension of my vacation time, in order to carry out a plan to visit the "Old World." As the trustees of the church considered that the trip might be of value to the church as well as to myself, I was given "leave of absence from pastoral duties" for three months" duty from June 18, 1870.
All that I could do had been done in the plans in constructing the new Tabernacle. I could do nothing by staying at home.
I have crossed the Atlantic so often that the recollections of this first trip to Europe are, at this writing, merely general. I think the most terrific impression I received was my first sight of the ocean the morning after we sailed, the most instructive were the ruins of church and abbey and palaces. I walked up and down the stairs of Holyrood Palace, once upon a time considered one of the wonders of the world, and I marvelled that so little was left of such a wonderful place. Ruins should be rebuilt.
The most spiritual impression I received was from the music of church organs in the old world.
I stopped one nightfall at Freyburg, Switzerland, to hear the organ of world-wide celebrity in that place. I went into the cathedral at nightfall. All the accessories were favourable. There was only one light in all the cathedral, and that a faint taper on the altar. I looked up into the venerable arches and saw the shadows of centuries; and when the organ awoke the cathedral awoke, and all the arches seemed to lift and quiver as the music came under them. That instrument did not seem to be made out of wood and metal, but out of human hearts, so wonderfully did it pulsate with every emotion; now laughing like a child, now sobbing like a tempest. At one moment the music would die away until you could hear the cricket chirp outside the wall, and then it would roll up until it seemed as if the surge of the sea and the crash of an avalanche had struck the organ-pipes at the same moment. At one time that night it seemed as if a squadron of saddened spirits going up from earth had met a squadron of descending angels whose glory beat back the woe.
In Edinburgh I met Dr. John Brown, author of the celebrated "Rab and his Friends." That one treatise gave him immortality and fame, and yet he was taken at his own request to the insane asylum and died insane.
"What are you writing now, Dr. Brown?" I said to him in his study in Edinburgh.
"Oh, nothing," he replied, "I never could write. I shall never try again."
I saw on his face and heard in his voice that melancholy that so often unhorsed him.
I went to Paris for the first time in this summer of 1870. It was during the Franco-German war. I stood studying the exquisite sculpturing of the gate of the Tuileries. Lost in admiration of the wonderful art of that gate I knew not that I was exciting suspicion. Lowering my eyes to the crowds of people I found myself being closely inspected by government officials, who from my complexion judged me to be a German, and that for some belligerent purpose I might be examining the gates of the palace.
My explanations in very poor French did not satisfy them, and they followed me long distances until I reached my hotel, and were not satisfied until from my landlord they found that I was only an inoffensive American. Inoffensive Americans were quite as welcome in Europe in 1870 as they are now. I was not curious of the signs I found anywhere about me of aristocratic grandeur, of the deference paid to lineage and ancient family name. I know in America some people look back on the family line, and they are proud to see that they are descended from the Puritans or the Huguenots, and they rejoice in that as though their ancestors had accomplished a great thing to repudiate a Catholic aristocracy.
I look back on my family line, and I see there such a mingling and mixture of the blood of all nationalities that I feel akin to all the world. I returned from my first visit to Europe more thankful than ever for the mercy of having been born in America. The trip did me immeasurable good. It strengthened my faith in the breadth and simplicity of a broadminded religion. We must take care how we extend our invitation to the Church, that it be understandable to everyone.
People don"t want the scientific study of religion.
On Sunday morning, September 25, 1870, the new Tabernacle erected on Schemerhorn Street was dedicated to the worship of Almighty G.o.d. It was to my mind a common-sense church, as I had planned it to be. In many of our churches we want more light, more room, more ventilation, more comfort. Vast sums of money are expended on ecclesiastical structures, and men sit down in them, and you ask a man how he likes the church: he says, "I like it very well, but I can"t hear." The voice of the preacher dashes against the pillars. Men sit down under the shadows of the Gothic arches and shiver, and feel they must be getting religion, or something else, they feel so uncomfortable.
We want more common sense in the rearing of churches. There is no excuse for lack of light when the heavens are full of it, no excuse for lack of fresh air when the world swims in it. It ought to be an expression, not only of our spiritual happiness, but of our physical comfort, when we say: "How amiable are Thy tabernacles, O Lord G.o.d of Hosts! A day in Thy courts is better than a thousand."
My dedication sermon was from Luke xiv. 23, "And the Lord said unto the servants, go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in that my house may be filled." The Rev. T.G. b.u.t.ter, D.D., offered the dedicatory prayer. Other clergymen, whose names I do not recall, were present and a.s.sisted at the services. The congregation in attendance was very large, and at the close of the services a subscription and collection were taken up amounting to $13,000, towards defraying the expenses and cost of the church.
In less than a year later the congregation had grown so large and the attendance of strangers so pressing that the new church was enlarged again, and on September 10, 1871, the Tabernacle was rededicated with impressive services. The sermon was preached by my friend the Rev.
Stephen H. Tyng, D.D. He was a great worker, and suffered, as many of us in the pulpit do, from insomnia. He was the consecrated champion of everything good, a constant sufferer from the lash of active work. He often told me that the only encouragement he had to think he would sleep at night was the fact that he had not slept the night before. Insomnia may be only a big word for those who do not understand its effect. It has stimulated intellectuality, and exhausted it. One of the greatest English clergymen had a gas jet on each side of his bed, so that he might read at nights when he could not sleep. Horace Greeley told me he had not had a sound sleep in fifteen years. Charles d.i.c.kens understood London by night better than any other writer, because not being able to sleep he spent that time in exploring the city.
I preached at the evening service from the text in Luke xvi. 5: "How much owest thou unto my Lord?" It was a wonderful day for us all. Enough money was taken in by collections and subscriptions at the morning and evening services to pay the floating debt of the church. We received that one day $21,000.
I quote the following resolution made at a meeting in my study the next Thursday evening of the Session, from the records of the Tabernacle:
"In regard to the payment of the floating debt of this church and congregation, the Session adopted the following resolution, viz.:--
"In view of the manifest instance that G.o.d has heard the supplications of this people regarding the floating debt of the Church, and so directed their hearts as to accomplish the object, it is therefore resolved that we set apart next Wednesday evening as a special season of religious thanksgiving to G.o.d for his great goodness to us as a Church, in granting unto us this deliverance."
I reverently and solemnly believe the new Tabernacle was built by prayer.
My congregation with great munificence provided for all my wants, and so I can speak without any embarra.s.sment on the subject while I denounce the n.i.g.g.ardliness of many of the churches of Jesus Christ, keeping some men, who are very apostles for piety and consecration, in circ.u.mstances where they are always apologetic, and have not that courage which they would have could they stand in the presence of people whom they knew were faithful in the discharge of their financial duties to the Christian Church. Alas, for those men of whom the world is not worthy!
In the United States to-day the salary of ministers averages less than six hundred dollars, and when you consider that some of the salaries are very large, see to what straits many of G.o.d"s n.o.blest servants are this day reduced! A live church will look after all its financial interests and be as prompt in the meeting of those obligations as any bank in any city.
My church in Brooklyn prospered because it was a soul-saving church. It has always been the ambition of my own church that it should be a soul-saving church. Pardon for all sin! Comfort for all trouble! Eternal life for all the dead!
Moral conditions in the cities of New York and Brooklyn were deplorably bad during the first few years I went there to preach. There was an onslaught of bad literature and stage immorality. For instance, there was a lady who came forth as an auth.o.r.ess under the a.s.sumed name of George Sand. She smoked cigars. She dressed like a man. She wrote in style ardent and eloquent, mighty in its gloom, terrible in its unchast.i.ty, vivid in its portraiture, d.a.m.nable in its influence, putting forth an evil which has never relaxed, but has hundreds of copyists. Yet so much worse were many French books that came to America than anything George Sand ever wrote, that if she were alive now she might be thought almost a reformer. What an importation of unclean theatrical stuff was brought to our sh.o.r.es at that time! And yet professors of religion patronised such things. I remember particularly the arrival of a foreign actress of base morals. She came intending to make a tour of the States, but the remaining decency of our cities rose up and cancelled her contracts, and drove her back from the American stage, a woman fit for neither continent. I hope I was instrumental to some degree in her banishment. We were crude in our morals then. I hope we are not merely civilised in them to-day. I hope we understand how to live better than we did then.
Scarcely a year after the final dedication of our Tabernacle in 1871 it was completely burned, just before a morning Sabbath service in December, 1872.
I remember that Sabbath morning. I was coming to the church, when I saw the smoke against the sky. I was living in an outlying section of the city. I had been absent for three weeks, and, as I saw that smoke, I said to my wife: "I should not wonder if that is the Tabernacle"; at the same time, this was said in pleasantry and not in earnest. As we came on nearer where the church stood, I said quite seriously: "I shouldn"t wonder if it is the Tabernacle."