Chapter 3

The church's work in these earlier days was simple enough, prayer-meeting Thursdays, then Wednesdays, and temperance meeting under McClellan and Campbell on Friday. But on Sunday, besides the two long church services there was Sunday school, morning and afternoon, and young people's meeting preceding the evening service.

When the sailing vessels were still along South Street, meetings were held on ships as opportunity offered.

In 1882 the interior of the church was papered and painted by Elder B. A. Carlan at a cost of less than $1,000. New cushions, carpets, etc., brought the total up to $1,564.

The one annual event was the Sunday school excursion, when all went on board a barge, which was towed by a tug to a grove on the sound or on the Hudson. Dancing was tabooed, but a "melodeon" was carted to the dock and hymns were sung. The tickets were fifty cents for adults, but Sunday school children were free. Robert S. Taylor, veteran secretary, was chief ticket seller, not only on the dock that morning, but in Wall Street for weeks before. The president of the Temperance Society once or twice put in an excursion just ahead of that of the Sunday school, and there was dancing. But this was generally disapproved.

Miss Fanny Crosby often came to the Primary in those days and many of her hymns were first sung there. Mr. Blackwood, her attendant, married Miss Devlin, the teacher of the class.

In those days Market and Henry Streets had many two-story and attic houses and in almost every one of those about the church people lived who went there.

Teachers whose names stand out about this time were: Hans Norsk, James Brown, Thomas Miller, William Stevenson, Evan Price, James Smith, William Gibson, Robert Pierce, Dr. Theodore A. Vanduzee, Jesse Povey, Mrs. B. C. Lefler, Mrs. S. M. Nelson.

The excursions gave rise to a committee of young people who started to provide amusements other than dancing: swings, songs, and so on. There came also an "executive committee" that asked many questions, and Dr. Hopper, in a courteous and kindly way answered them in full: that was the first report made to the congregation. Till then the annual meeting had consisted of reading the names of the subscribers who had contributed by means of the monthly envelopes, and the amounts they gave.

But Charles J. Lemaire could not understand why this excursion amusement committee should not become a permanent organization with literary purposes. Thus began the Lylian Association that for twenty years was a mainstay of the church and in its days of dire necessity was a vital factor. From it came the young men that in later years were trustees, and it was the opening wedge that was to transform the whole church work.

When two of the young men came to the trustees for permission for a literary society to meet weekly, it was questioned whether anything but religious meetings might be held in the building. But after serious reflection the two were made personally responsible for good order, provided always meetings were opened and closed with prayer.

In a day when the young people had no outlet whatever for their active spirits the Lylian Association became a training school for the church. The debates of that day will never be forgotten, notably when the Lylians wrested the laurel wreath from the Goldeys at Clarendon Hall, and that other one, when Dr. Hopper suddenly appeared at a meeting and after an impromptu debate "showing every evidence of being well prepared," as he said, some consciences were ill at ease.

Then there was the Gossip's Journal, provoking endless parliamentary wrangles, and perhaps helping to develop later on an editor. Memorable were the Young People's Conventions of 1886 and 1887, and Lylians will never forget the patriot Kromm, Spoopendyke Shreve, the poet laureate and a dozen others. The Fourth of July picnics at Pamrapo and Nyack are happy memories for many.

Like the old Market Street stoop with its fancy iron posts and rails the Lylian Association has seen its day, but it amply justified its existence.

When one Monday evening Mr. Pinkham, the church treasurer, announced to the Lylians the sudden death of Dr. Hopper, there was consternation and adjournment.

Andrew Beattie, a theological student, had been called before this as co-pastor. He was installed as pastor May 29, 1888, having been persuaded to give up his intention of going to the foreign field. Mr. Beattie lived down town, and his bachelor apartments on East Broadway were a gathering place for the young men, many of whom were in his Sunday school class. He with others worked out the system of quarterly written examination and grading that since 1888 have been uninterruptedly in force in the Sunday school, long before other schools thought of such things.

The school was flourishing with many young people as officers and teachers, all the activities of the church being centered on its nursery. The records were systematized, and articles in the church papers printed on the system, electric bells were installed, fire drills were inaugurated, discipline was rigid, visiting by teachers and districts was carefully regulated, the library given attention. Mr. Beattie returned to his first love, resigning after eight months to go to the foreign mission field. After years of greatest usefulness in Canton, China, his health necessitated his return. Dr. Beattie is with his family in California, where he is in charge of a Presbyterian orphanage.

V

Reverend Alexander W. Sproull followed Mr. Beattie on January 5, 1890, serving for three years. He had been Synodical Missionary in Florida. After leaving Sea and Land he was incapacitated for further active service. He died December 13, 1912.

Another breach was made in the conservatism of the old church when one of the young trustees proposed to let the New York Kindergarten Association use the room rent free for a kindergarten, then new in the neighborhood. The older, wiser heads were gravely shaken at this remarkable innovation, but it came on March 31, 1892, and with it the beloved Anna E. Crawford as teacher. The fairy godmother who maintained it was Mrs. Francis G. Shaw, giving the kindergarten the name of her son, Robert Gould Shaw. It was a happy combination this, and the little boys became strong men in the memory of the young Colonel who gave his life at Fort Wagner at the head of the First Colored Regiment. They buried him disdainfully "with his niggers," but Robert Gould Shaw lived again in the lives of little boys trained to sacrifice at Sea and Land. Nor will the Colonel's sister be forgotten: Mrs. Charles Russell Lowell, who gave her young husband in the same cause and thereafter lived a life that merited William Rhinelander Stewart calling her "one of the most useful and remarkable women of the Nineteenth Century." Her spirit of service was renewed in the little girls of the Shaw Kindergarten. The beautiful bas relief by St. Gaudens on Boston Common is less of a memorial than the kindergarten in Henry Street.

Mrs. Shaw died December 29, 1902, having supported the kindergarten for eleven years.

Another departure was an open air meeting establisht by Mr. Sproull, gathering at the church door Sunday afternoons. First things are hard things.

But a storm was brewing. Uptown churches needed money, their pastors were influential in the denomination and it seemed to many good business to dispose of the Market Street church.

So, on March 13, 1893, Presbytery ordered the church sold, declaring, to comply with the Corning deed, that "missionary work in the church or in that locality was no longer expedient." The church pointed out that 29 of the 57 churches in New York Presbytery had received less members during the preceding year, 16 churches had fewer members, 14 churches raised less money, and that 6 churches made a worse showing than Sea and Land in every single item reported on. There were then only 4 Protestant churches for 60,000 people. The battle was on, and the bitterness of the Briggs trial had not yet subsided,--the same Briggs who as a young man belonged to Market Street church.

Mr. Sproull's small salary allowance was discontinued and he was forced to resign, July 1, 1893. Then came hard times, no friends, no minister, no funds. But when the tale of bricks was doubled Moses came.

It was in the shape of a legacy from Borella. That saint on his death in Africa had left his estate in America to the Church of the Sea and Land and the American Seamen's Friend Society jointly. If Borella had lived he could not have arranged it for a better time.

Meanwhile by an accident the press of the city gained the whole story from the church's viewpoint, and thereafter all the news reports were tinged favorably to the down-town church that insisted on living. There were illustrated articles on the church's history, caustic editorial comments, letters from correspondents, and everybody talked about the church. The ash barrels and the church doors had bills posted on them announcing that the Church of the Sea and Land would be sold at auction on April 19, 1893. The property, however, was withdrawn when the best offer was $15,000 short of what was expected. There was a lull.

In the spring of 1894 it became necessary to devise some means of helping the New York Presbyterian Church on 127th Street, which was buried by mortgages amounting to $118,000, about to be foreclosed. Sea and Land was to furnish part of this and a mortgage was suggested. The church trustees opposed this successfully, altho at first it was supposed their consent was not required. Without the knowledge of the church a sale was then again ordered January 18, 1895.

Preceding this, beginning October 1, 1894, the church had "affiliated" with the Madison Square Presbyterian church. As Presbytery had formally approved this the Madison Square church remonstrated vigorously thru Dr. Parkhurst, but feeling that Presbytery's action could not be relied on the Madison Square church withdrew at the expiration of its one year of affiliation.

Committees of prominent clergymen visited the church and were "warmly" welcomed. It was suggested that Sea and Land unite with other churches, but it is a singular fact that, as when the Reformed church disbanded, so now, not a single church is in existence that was then mentioned for a refuge. A case in point is the Allen Street Presbyterian church. They had sold their building near Grand Street and for a time worshipt in the Market Street church. But in spite of earnest solicitation they erected an unfortunate structure in an unfortunate location in Forsyth Street. After a short existence there they united with the Fourteenth Street church, and that church is no more!

Even the strong Madison Square church no longer preserves its identity.

Meanwhile work went on, at first in desultory fashion, two or three times the young men had to conduct services. But thru it all Dr. A. F. Schauffler, of the New York City Mission Society, was the church's consistent friend. His order to the city missionaries at the church to stay until the doors were shut was the one heartening feature of a time when the officers ordered the blue church flag raised and "no one from Sea and Land will ever take it down."

The Women's Branch always ably seconded these efforts under Mrs. Lucy S. Bainbridge and later Miss Edith N. White.

Instead of slowly dying out the work of the church gained momentum from day to day: Lodging house meetings, Sunday afternoon teas, free concerts, addresses by Gompers, McGlynn, Henry George, Parkhurst and others, sermons "against thugs in politics," and so on.

A permanent accomplishment of the nine months' intense regime of Alexander F. Irvine was the starting of _The Sea and Land Monthly_, the first number of which appeared in October, 1893. With characteristic impetuosity Mr. Irvine launched it, and it has been afloat for more than a quarter century.

The _Monthly_ has been a great storehouse: not only did it give from month to month the happenings at the church, but it brought to later generations an appreciation of the goodly heritage of years that had gone before.

The vital events in the congregation's history were recorded, but so was the personal history of its people. The coming of little messengers to the homes, their baptism, their reception into the church, their marriage, their death. Then began another cycle like unto the first.

And the _Monthly_ kept alive the interest of many a Sea and Lander who was adrift. It gave account of its stewardship to the friends of the church who supported its work. Few churches ever publish with such detail the annual reports as does Sea and Land.

Many are the kind words from near and far that have been said about the _Sea and Land Monthly_.

VI

But if the Madison Square church withdrew officially it left behind more than the old church ever expected. It was a young man who, in October, 1894, reported to the Sunday school superintendent as coming from Madison Square. He was John Hopkins Denison, a grandson of Mark Hopkins, of fine New England stock. He had come to New York to become Dr. Parkhurst's assistant when he was making war on Tammany. Those were the days of the City Vigilance League, when unsavory revelations were necessary to effect a change in city government. There was a meeting which crowded the old church to the second galleries when Dr. Parkhurst spoke. It was a noble battle and not without its dangers.

So when the Madison Square church went, Mr. Denison staid, and he was a prodigious worker. The quarters in the tower were enlarged for there were many visitors who bunked there.

Mr. Denison set out to prove the right of the church to existence and he did it. He did more: he brought no end of friends that remained to the church. The thought of Cuyler to establish a mission, of Parkhurst to affiliate the church with a stronger one, was developed under Denison into an organization amply supported by the whole church, working out by itself its own local problems. It was no longer a self-evident proposition that a church not able to support itself must go.

One of the early steps was the establishment of a church house at 52 Henry Street. Mr. Denison said: "It was not an institution--it was not even a settlement; it was simply a house where people lived. The time is gone by for men and women to come down as outsiders and pry into the homes of poverty and sin, and then return to their own life far away. One must live in a community, one must be a neighbor."

Mr. John Crosby Brown was the munificent friend who made the house possible, Miss Mae M. Brown being a deeply interested resident there. Mrs. Rockwell was in charge, then Miss Eleanor J. Crawford. It was the center for all social activities, tastefully fitted up, the ladies working at the church living on the upper floors. In the same house Sea and Land people had lived for many years: the Stevensons, the Boyces, Miss McGarry.

In 1906 the building was torn down and other arrangements had to be made. For a time apartments were occupied at 138 Henry Street and 51 Market Street.

The Fresh Air Work, too, was put on a permanent basis. Besides making the church the local station for the Tribune Fresh Air Fund, houses were rented at Rockaway for five years, later at Huntington, until in a more recent time Staten Island property was bought. Later years saw an extension of this work to Schenectady, where Dr. Bigelow of blessed memory headed it.

Under the auspices of William W. Seymour,--of course he was not mayor of Tacoma then,--the first boys' camp was establisht at North Hero, Vt., and is still a glorious memory. The girls were welcomed at Litchfield and Saybrook.

Not only did money flow in readily, but it was quite the thing for young ministers and theological students to spend a year, a summer or a winter at Sea and Land, and they did not study books: they worked on men and women at all hours. If some wretch got into trouble some one to whom he was assigned had not been vigilant enough. Before Hoover made a world reputation for himself, Denison studied food economics, and he proved it by having the group live on a minimum allowance. Then he preached on what was economical living.

The most prominent men spoke in the church: Dr. Paton from the New Hebrides; Dr. Grenfell from Labrador, Dr. Van Dyke and a hundred others.

University extension ideas were anticipated in courses of study, the men of the church were put to work writing independent Sunday school lessons, the teachers had pedagogical talks and studied Biblical masterpieces. The girls were taken to sing in Rutgers Square and it was not always safe to do it either. The Upper Room was establisht in Rutgers Street, then the Lighthouse in Water Street, a fine stereopticon was in frequent use. The Men's Club, under George M. Bailey, prospered like the green bay tree, drawing men of all classes. A design for a church flag was adopted. Sports were encouraged. Numerous clubs were organized, among them the Good Time Club, also the Penny Provident and the Helping Hand. Nursing was taken up; sewing and cooking classes, model flats and cottage meetings started. Magazine and newspaper articles commented on unusual sermons, such as the one on the balloons. Addresses at Northfield, Silver Bay and other places called attention to the church's work in ever-widening circles, Hamilton House came into being, but without organic connection with the church.

In short, Mr. Denison's compelling personality and enormous capacity for work put others to work, so that in the summer of 1895 9,546 persons were brought together in the old church in five weeks.

So men and women came and went, some of them wrote books and magazine articles about the work with more or less accuracy. Mr. Denison's own poems were more appreciated by those who knew.

The force of it all was irresistible, and so the last trace of opposition in Presbytery and elsewhere disappeared. On November 11, 1895, the sale of the property was called off, and $2,000 a year paid for three years. Ever since Presbyterians and others have been proud of the outpost the united church is maintaining at Market and Henry Streets. It is a happy memory that all of the men who in Presbytery supported sale resolutions became staunch friends of the church.

Mr. Denison was not ordained when first he came to Market Street, but this was done later at Williamstown in the College Chapel. On entering New York Presbytery his installation as regular pastor of the Church of the Sea and Land was effected March 23, 1899.

In 1894 Mrs. Shaw spent considerable money fixing up the lecture room and in 1896 a new roof was put on the church at an expense of $600.

Mr. Denison made a tour of the world, being absent from November, 1900, to October, 1901.

Among the men working under Mr. Denison was Horace Day, a young theological student who gave his life after a brief but intense period of work.

In Mr. Denison's time, too, falls the best work of Mrs. Eliza E. Rockwell. She was indefatigable, beloved of many, none too far gone to merit her attention, nothing too hard to do. She, too, laid down her life as a sacrifice. Even Mr. Denison's book, "Beside the Bowery," insufficiently tells the full measure of her devotion for the thirteen years she was at Sea and Land. Her last message to the trustees was: "I died in harness." It was on March 14, 1908.

One of the men of that day was Edward Dowling. As a tinker he wandered about distributing tracts, speaking the word in truth, and returning during the winter to be factotum in the tower. In that kindly old soul few guessed the old fighter in India. Did he really know the place where priceless treasures were hid beside an old idol?

One of the men in whom united the Sea and Land of the staid old ways and the boundless energy of later days was John Denham. He lived to see the day when the boy in the primary of the school of which he was superintendent for years sat beside him in the session. He was the living embodiment of that perennial spirit in the Church of Christ which ever adjusts itself to new conditions and never loses sight of its main object.

Mr. Denham's strong point was with the older people. It was characteristic to have him read his Bible, quietly take up his hat nearby and pay a visit.

When on February 4, 1910, John Denham went home to the Master whom he had served thru a long life the younger men first felt the burden of things: the senior elder was no more. He had held open the door of the church for many a one and they had entered in.

Mr. Denison left the church December 31, 1902, to take up work in Boston. It was a great loss, but as one of the officers said: "What shall we do when Mr. Denison leaves? Why, what we always do at Sea and Land: the best we know how."

Dr. William Adams Brown said: "None know better than the people of Sea and Land how costly the contribution which they have been called to make to the spiritual welfare of a sister city."

It was H. Roswell Bates, who, in the Spring Street Presbyterian church, worked out Mr. Denison's plans, as he had helped to formulate them at the old Market Street church while he was resident there.

VII

Mr. Denison was succeeded by his assistant, William Raymond Jelliffe. They had been close friends, Mr. Jelliffe leaving business and entering the ministry while at Sea and Land. He was ordained June 7, 1900, having been at the church since May, 1893. He left December 31, 1905, to join Mr. Denison in Boston, and later came to the Madison Avenue Presbyterian church as assistant. Mr. Jelliffe did fundamental work with the Young People's Society, that has been a staunch support of the church ever since.

Rev. Orrin Giddings Cocks next headed the church's work. In his time the financial affairs of the church were further strengthened and Mr. Cocks is still an officer of the church which he has served many years.

Following the custom, Mr. Cocks' assistant, Rev. Russell Stanley Gregory, next directed the work, being ordained June 25, 1908, and taking charge at the close of the year. He was at the church ten years.

In 1909 the old Consistory Building was torn down. It held precious memories for many, for in spite of its limitations it had in its 66 years given a service that had included about everything one could imagine connected with church work. It had sheltered Sunday school, Lylians, innumerable clubs, a kindergarten, not to speak of the earlier days when prayer-meetings, school, temperance and Young Men's Christian Association meetings exerted an influence that went out far beyond its narrow walls. Even the stoop that had been worn by many feet, some very little, had caused a poet to sing. It all went.

The new building that took its place was splendidly planned by Cady & Gregory. It houses every activity of a modern church. Club rooms for girls, boys and men, gymnasium, showers, kitchens, kindergarten rooms, first-aid rooms, and quarters for the ladies in residence. There is a roof garden where on hot summer evenings services and other gatherings may be held.