USA > New York > New York City > A history of the Brick Presbyterian Church in the city of New York > Part 25
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t In turning over the undertaking at this point to the trustees, the committee said: "It is thought proper that the title shall be taken in your name, that the fund raised shall be paid into and drawn from your treas- ury, and that [it] be under your control, with no legal restraint upon you, and only on the honorary obligation (to be evidenced by suitable entries in your minutes) that the contribution shall never, unless in view of cir- cumstances which cannot now be foreseen, be diverted from the purpose for which it has been subscribed. The Brick Church has received a mis- sion at the hands of the donors represented by us. Time, which has worked such wonderful changes in the past of our city, may again compel a re- moval of the Brick Church. By this gift it is desired that the trustees shall feel committed to the application of these funds for the maintenance some- where of a Brick Church Mission so long as there shall be a Brick Church."
# Before the building began, it was proposed that the site be exchanged for one on Thirty-seventh Street, and the trustees were asked to supply $7,500, the difference in price, but they refused, deeming the site first chosen to be preferable.
§ A portion of the building had, however, been in use for several months before this. The opening of the Sunday-school had taken place on May 27th,
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street level, and reached through three entrances, was the church, adjoined by smaller rooms for church meetings and the pastor's study. Four staircases, one at each corner of the building, ascended to the Sunday-school room, which covered the entire upper story. Its lofty roof, large windows, and especially the commodious gallery at the south end, filled with the boys and girls of Mr. Barbour's intermediate department, made it a place that one remembers with peculiar pleasure.
Not long after the new building was occupied "the numbers in attendance had increased from the three hundred and twenty-five who were present at the opening service . .. to seven and eight hundred, the full capacity of the hall. The very first Christmas festival had an attendance of some fifteen hundred- nine hundred children and six hundred adults."* And, by the way, this was probably the very first time that the word "Christmas" was used officially in connection with the Brick Church. The year before, 1866, special exercises were, it is true, held in the mission school on Sunday, December 23d, but in the printed programme it was carefully described as "The Anniversary of the Brick Church Mission School," and not a word in the order of service, which ap- peared below, suggested in the slightest degree the beautiful story of Bethlehem. ¡ Apparently, however, the sight of those eager children's faces, and the ex- perience of their childish needs, had at last broken down the old objection to an observance which had
* "The Story of the Christ Church Work," p. 10.
t The hymns were "Saviour, like a Shepherd lead us," "Jesus loves me," "Am I a soldier of the Cross," "Jesus paid it all," and "Nearer, my God, to thee,"
THE BRICK CHURCH MISSION CHAPEL
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been supposed in earlier years to be unevangelical; for in December, 1867, the children were invited, not to a mere "Anniversary," but to a "Christmas Festival," and joined their voices in singing "This is Christmas Day" and "While Shepherds watched their flocks by night."
Coincident with the opening of the new chapel was the coming to the mission of the Rev. Joseph J. Lampe, whose pastorate there was to continue for nearly thirty years; and at the same time, another prerogative of an independent church was given to his congregation. It was then decided that those at the mission who desired to make a profession of their faith need no longer go to the Brick Church for this purpose, but might be received into membership of the Brick Church at the mission chapel; thus in every- thing except its government the mission became prac- tically an independent organization.
From this time the growth of the congregation there, both in strength and in members, was phe- nomenal. Not long after Mr. Lampe had taken up the work, so many names of applicants for church membership were presented by him to the session of the Brick Church, that at the close of the session meeting the ministers and elders were constrained to unite "in a season of special thanksgiving to God for his blessing on the mission."
One special feature of the work at this time calls for particular mention, a dispensary started in 1872. Like the sewing-school and the reading-room, already referred to, this was an early indication of the need of various forms of activity supplementary to the purely spiritual. This dispensary, for the assistance
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and relief of the sick poor of the church was, the ses- sion records tell us, " in charge of Dr. E. D. Morgan, Jr., who had generously tendered his services in con- nection therewith."* This work was continued at the mission for two years.
Meanwhile, the Sunday-school which had been from the beginning, and continued to be, the founda- tion of the work, was enjoying great prosperity. For this it was indebted, under God, to the unselfish de- votion of the workers and especially to Mr. John E. Parsons, who, during all these years and until 1877, was at its head. "For twenty years he has occupied that post," said the session, in reluctantly accepting his resignation, "He has been enabled by the good providence of the Head of the Church to gather around him a devoted band of Christian workers. By the inspiration derived from his own energetic leadership these teachers formed and maintained one of the most extensive and flourishing missions in the city. The regularity, devotion, and wise management of the superintendent were exemplary to all asso- ciated with him, and the estimate which the friends of the mission have formed, during a long contin- uance of years, of Mr. Parsons' work, has been
* In a memorial address on the life of Dr. Morgan, delivered by Dr. C. R. Agnew before the Medical Society of the County of New York, the fol- lowing reference is made to this enterprise: Dr. Morgan "graduated from Bellevue Hospital Medical College in 1871. He soon opened an office on the west side of the city, near the quarters of the poor, and from that mo- ment until broken down in health, in the spring of 1879, devoted himself, as the writer of this very well knows, to the unpaid care of the sick poor. I take back that word 'unpaid.' He got his reward; for although he, with exemplary reticence and meekness, tried to hide his beneficence from the gaze and applause of his fellow-men, it was seen, we must believe, by One who never allows a cup of cold water even to be given, in true charity, to a sufferer without a note in his book of remembrance."
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heightened by the consideration that it was sustained throughout the severe and growing pressure of pro- fessional duties." During this whole period, we are reminded by the present pastor of Christ Church, " the school met in both morning and afternoon ses- sions. These long years of exacting service, the many hours of the Sabbaths which he used, not for rest, but for the Master's service, the energy and intelli- gence with which he directed the work of the school, should insure to Mr. Parsons a grateful memory among the people of Christ Church, while his exam- ple of consecrated service should be an inspiration to us all."* For the subsequent development of this whole enterprise, we must wait until we reach a later chapter of the history.
In January, 1875, Dr. Murray expressed his desire to resign from the Brick Church pastorate that he might accept a call to the Chair of Rhetoric and Eng- lish Literature in Princeton College. The affection with which the congregation regarded him was very deep, and they had learned to prize very highly the intellectual and spiritual quality of his ministrations. One or two concrete facts will serve to suggest the esteem with which he was regarded. In 1868, when he had been pastor but three years, his salary was raised to $8,000,; a very emphatic indication of the
* "The Story of the Christ Church Work," p. 11.
t It will be interesting to note, as an indication of the make-up of the church at this time, the names of those present at the meeting of men of the congregation at which this increase was voted. They were: Hon. E. D. Morgan, Messrs. White, Ely, Gilman, Dunning, Nixon, Bennet, Josce- lyn, Black, Griswold, Parsons, Comstock, West, Knapp, Paton, Spofford, Downer, Sperry, Faxon, Parish, Hull and Lord.
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value that was placed upon his services. In the next year another act of the congregation showed with equal clearness their personal attachment to him. They gave him, on their own initiation, a leave of absence for five months that he might cross the ocean "for purposes of culture and relaxation"; and as in the case of Dr. Spring, many years before, his depart- ure was made the occasion of expressing in words the affection of the congregation .* It was impossi- ble they said, to express fully "the feeling of attach- ment, respect, and confidence with which our people are most closely bound to you. We truly compose but one Christian family, guided, as we believe, by God through means of your ministry, on which a great blessing has been bestowed."
As the years passed, these sentiments were still further strengthened, and it is evident from the records, that his friends of the Brick Church learned with sincere sorrow of his proposed resignation and departure to Princeton. He, on his part, was for many reasons most loath to go. He said with feeling that his ten years in the Brick Church had been the happiest of his life. But the work which had been offered to him at the college had peculiar attractions for him, and there were, moreover, reasons why his departure from New York had come to appear de- sirable, if not necessary. "The large executive busi- ness and the distracting details of his office [in the Brick
* The regular summer holiday at the time of Dr. Murray's coming to New York consisted of six weeks. It may be added here that during the pastor's absence it was customary to hold union services with a neighbor- ing church, and we note with special interest that the records at this time speak repeatedly of such an arrangement between the Church of the Cove- nant and the Brick Church.
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Church] and, above all, the glaring publicity in which of necessity he did his work, for a man of his tem- perament, were hard, and they wore upon him." *
The session acquiesced in his resignation with great reluctance. "Did we yield to our own de- sires," they said, "or to our views of what the inter- ests of the church dictate, we should without dissent feel it impossible to agree to Dr. Murray's request." But the most emphatic and expressive protest against the acceptance of Dr. Murray's resignation was that which was presented to the session in the name of the children of the church, as soon as the unwelcome news reached the ears of the people. This letter, though it was not the production, we may suppose, of the youthful signers themselves, did express the thoughts of the parents in regard to Dr. Murray's beneficent influence upon their children, and their belief that upon the boys and girls he had made a definite and favorable impression. This in itself was surely no small commendation of his ministry.
"We feel," the letter to the session says, after a brief introduction, "that we, the children of this church, who have been so blessed with his instruc- tions, always so full of affectionate, earnest, and prayerful solicitude for our best good, so tenderly striving to win us to the truth, cannot rest without earnestly begging you to reconsider your action in this matter. We beg you to consider the blessing we have in the prayers and instructions of the pulpit, ever given in language so rarely fitted to guide the young mind to all that is pure and elevated in thought and. action, while it is so fully in the spirit of the
* "James O. Murray," by John De Witt, p. 26.
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meekness and tenderness of our blessed Saviour. We beg you to compare it with much of the instruc- tion of the present time, so unsuited to the dignity and solemnity of the sacred desk. We also beg you to consider our loss in not only losing these sacred instructions, but also the devoted, affectionate, and earnest efforts that Mrs. Murray and the family have made for our pleasure and improvement in all respects. *
"And, dear Sirs, in view of these considerations, to our minds and hearts more weighty than we have power to express, we pledge ourselves that, if we may be blessed with the continuance of the labors and instructions of our beloved pastor, we will stand by you and him by every effort we can make to sus- tain you in enlarging the church, by striving by our example and effort to bring others into the Sabbath- school, and in seeking to win them to the enjoyments of the same rich privileges that have been our own, and of which we earnestly hope we may not now be deprived; and beg you to use all your influence and efforts to persuade Dr. Murray to reconsider his resignation, both as a session and as individuals; in proof of which, with great respect, we hereto affix our names."
We may be sure that after such an appeal as this, the like of which it is safe to say, not many pastors have received in relinquishing their charges, Dr. Murray would, if possible, have reversed his action, refused the alluring call to Princeton, and taken up
* Mrs. Murray had been one of the founders of the "Children's Society," as was related in the last chapter. In memory of this service ren- dered by her, the Murray Kindergarten, when started at the mission in 1891, was named in her honor.
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once more the work for the grown people and the children of the Brick Church. But this was clearly an act that he felt to be neither wise nor right. The most that he could do was to continue for a time to occupy his old pulpit, and this he did for nine months until the beginning of October, but then at length the time came for good-bye and Godspeed. *
Such work, however, as he had done, does not perish when the worker is called away to another field. Writing twenty years later, one of his success- ors in the Brick Church thus paid his tribute to Dr. Murray: "A scholar of fine literary attainments, a Christian gentleman of the most beautiful charac- ter, and a preacher of profound spirituality, the in- fluence of his ministry still abides in the church." t
* He spent the rest of his life in the service of Princeton as Professor and Dean, highly influential and greatly beloved. He died in 1899.
t Dr. van Dyke, "An Historic Church," p. 24.
·
CHAPTER XX
A MINISTER FROM ABROAD : 1876-1882
"What is the result of my ministry amongst you? I am not careful for you to answer in respect to external things. A growing congregation, an extending interest, a public reputation-these are small matters compared with the effect of that ministry in your hearts and lives."-LLEWELYN D. BEVAN, Pastoral Letter, 1878.
"Moreover, concerning a stranger that is not of thy people Israel, but cometh out of a far country, for thy name's sake."-1 Kings 8 : 41.
U NTIL 1876, the Brick Church had owned no parsonage, nor had it felt the need of one until the more frequent changes in the pas- torate, combined with the increased difficulty of ob- taining a residence in the neighborhood of the church, brought the matter into special prominence. At the initiation of Mr. Morgan, at this time presi- dent of the board of trustees-"Governor" Morgan, as he was always called *- an opportunity to secure No. 14 East Thirty-seventh Street was improved, and the house, "together with the mirrors, console tables, gas fixtures, and white patent shades," was purchased for $35,100. The furnishings increased this outlay by about $5,000, and the entire sum was borrowed by the trustees, largely by a mortgage on the property. This added nothing, however, to the annual burden of the church, since the pastor's salary would, of course, be proportionately reduced, } while
* He had held that office in New York State for two terms, beginning in 1858.
* From $8,000 to $6,000.
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to the new pastor himself the provision of a suitable and commodious house, ready for his use, would be a great convenience.
The man chosen to be the first occupant of this parsonage was the Rev. Llewelyn D. Bevan, LL.B., of London, England. *
He was pastor of the congregation which wor- shipped in the church on Tottenham Court Road, known as Whitefield's Chapel, ; having been erected in 1756 by the same George Whitefield whose preach- ing exerted a strong influence on the religious devel- opment of the first pastor of the Brick Church, as has been described in an earlier chapter; but except for this coincidence of association the new pastor was a complete stranger, and to the country as well as to the church that had called him.
This going abroad for their minister had no doubt been suggested to the Brick Church officers by the example of other churches, for there were at that time a singularly large number of foreign ministers in New York pulpits. "It must be somewhat discour- aging to our native preachers," said an editorial in one of the newspapers, "to find so many leading pulpits taken possession of by ministers brought from abroad. . .. We have already, in New York, Dr. John Hall at the great Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church, the most popular preacher in the city, and a north of Ireland Scotchman; Dr. Ormiston,į of
* He was called on October 4th, 1876, his letter of acceptance was dated November 16th, and he was installed on January 16th, 1877.
t It was replaced in 1899 by a new building now known as the White- field Memorial Church.
# In 1864, when he was settled in Hamilton, Canada, he was consid- ered for the associate pastorate of the Brick Church.
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the Fifth Avenue Collegiate Dutch Reformed Church, an eloquent sermonizer and a thorough Scotchman; and Dr. Taylor, at the Broadway Tabernacle, also a very gifted preacher and also a Scotchman, and now the old Brick Church on Fifth Avenue follows its neighbors in sending abroad for a pastor. . . Our theological seminaries," this editorial adds, "must be turning out indifferent preachers, if the in- stances we have named-and they are only a part of the number-prove that, in order to get ministers whose sermons shall be satisfactory to critical con- gregations, the wealthiest churches must send across the Atlantic for them."
It was, however, no mere following of a fashion that influenced the people of the Brick Church in calling Mr. Bevan. They had strong grounds for their belief that in him they had found an exceptionally able preacher and pastor. He had for more than seven years worked in London with great success, as his parishioners there testified in commending him to his new charge. "We in sorrow submit [to his de- cision]" they said, "and transfer him to your love. We pray earnestly that the loss we hereby sus- tain may prove the gain of the whole Church." Mr. Bevan had also been a prominent supporter of the Working Men's College in Great Ormond Street, * founded by his friend the Rev. Frederick Denison Maurice, t and a letter from the Council of the New College, London, "to the officers and members of the Presbyterian Church usually assembling for
* Moved to Crowndale Road in 1905.
t Especially, the Bible class, which Mr. Maurice had begun, but which had been dropped at his departure, was reestablished and successfully carried on by Mr. Bevan.
€
LLEWELYN D. BEVAN
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worship in the old Brick Church, New York," ex- pressed in a very emphatic way the regret with which such institutions, quite outside of his own church, viewed Mr. Bevan's departure from London.
He himself could not but feel the greatest sorrow in leaving such an important and prosperous field of work. "The step which I have thus taken," he said in his letter of acceptance, "is fraught with serious issues. I leave here a broken-hearted people whom I have gathered together in the name of the Lord, a large and perfectly united communion. There are many duties within the church, with others belong- ing to our denomination and our country, which I hereby lay down. I need the grace of the Master, the help of the Holy Spirit, and the sympathetic asso- ciation of a loving people. That these should be mine is my hourly prayer."
Personally Mr. Bevan had many peculiarly attrac- tive qualities; "gifted, generous, vigorous, warm- hearted,"* thus his successor in the Brick Church has described him. He was a Welchman, as his name betokens, and he had, in full measure, the zeal and enthusiasm, the ready utterance, and the impulsive affections of that interesting race. In social inter- course he was genial and human, a man sure to make friends of those with whom he was closely associated.
In spite of all that he was leaving behind and the inevitable hardship involved in taking up his work in a foreign land among a strange people, he came nevertheless with great courage and hope. One large element, probably, in his enthusiasm-it had
* " An Historic Church," p. 24.
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also been a large element, no doubt, in his decision to make the change-was the thought that he was com- ing to a new country, where he could bear a more influential part in laying the foundations of the later life of the people, than was possible in England. That was the kind of work to which he was especially drawn, and, we may add, for which he was fitted in a marked degree, as has been proved by his striking career in Australia in later years, where, it is re- ported, he has been an important factor not only in the religious, but in the social and political life of the Colony.
But it must be added that Mr. Bevan had appar- ently overstated to himself the newness of the field to which he was coming. He knew, of course, that the Brick Church represented, not the pioneer life of nineteenth-century America, but an older and more settled portion of its society. Indeed, the letter quoted above, in which the New College, London, commends him to "the old Brick Church," suggests that he and his English friends had noted-with a genial smile, perhaps-the antiquity, from the American point of view, of the church whose call he had accepted. Nevertheless, as was natural for a citizen of the old world, he evidently had assumed that even the oldest things in America must still be in the formative period.
It is not difficult to see that he was genuinely sur- prised and disappointed when the real conditions became apparent to him, when he discovered that, far as New York life was from representing a vener- able civilization, it was almost equally removed from that youthful state in which any determined and courageous worker can become a founder of social
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and political institutions, the architect of the future on a large scale.
In an interview published on the eve of his return to England, Mr. Bevan, in a frank and interesting way, described the facts of the case as he had seen them and their effect upon himself. "Your profes- sional men," he said, "especially clergymen, seem to be restricted to purely professional work in a fashion that we do not dream of in London. Here . . . [the clergyman] is outside of politics entirely: he is not expected to lecture much, not expected to concern himself with social questions, and not expected to concern himself much with education, justice, or tem- perance. To a Londoner this seems all wrong, but it is useless to question it. . . . Clergymen [in America] are well paid and kindly treated, but they are not ex- pected to work for the good of their fellow-men, ex- cept in certain defined lines. In England the clergy of the Establishment are frequently justices of the peace. We of the non-Conformist party are members of the School Board, Public Works, and so forth, and take a part in all public movements. . .. You Americans are far more conservative than English- men. . . . I was asked to go to a great meeting on a public topic soon after I got here, to find that all I was expected to do was to open the meeting with a prayer and close it with a benediction. I was dumfounded." *
While this statement may seem to an American to be somewhat exaggerated, it must be confessed that
* From the "Evening Post," March 6th, 1880. To some other statements in the interview, not quoted in the text, Mr Bevan took exception in a letter printed in the "Post" on March 8th. He accepted the rest as in substance an accurate report of "a very informal conversation."
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it contained a certain amount of truth. In many re- spects, the field of public life in New York at that time was, as Mr. Bevan says, more difficult of en- trance for any but politicians than it was in London. Moreover, the work of the Brick Church was so ex- acting and its standards of pastoral efficiency, espe- cially in the matter of preaching, were so high, that its pastor would find almost all his time and energy exhausted in the performance of his parish duties. It would be difficult for him to go outside of that more limited sphere and engage effectively in public affairs without some slighting of the work of his own parish. In all this Mr. Bevan not unnaturally found cause for disappointment.
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