ave tried, and
have always been grateful, a considerable virtue, especially when the
hearer was himself a little deaf to every one who admonished me. This
is really a matter that seriously concerns the very religion that
we preach. Everybody knows what the preaching tone is; it can
be distinguished the moment it is heard, outside of any church,
school-house, or barn where it is uplifted; but few consider, I believe,
of what immense disservice it is to the great cause we have at heart.
Preaching is the [78] principal ministration of religion, and if it be
hard and unnatural, the very idea of religion is likely to be hard and
unnatural, far away from the every-day life and affections of men. Stamp
upon music a character as hard, technical, unnatural as most preaching
has, and would men be won by it? I do not say that what I have mentioned
is the sole cause of the "preaching tone;" false ideas of religion have,
doubtless, even more to do with it. But still it is of such importance
that I think no church interior should be built without especial nay,
without sole reference to the end for which it is built, namely, to
speak in. Let what can be done for the architecture of the exterior
building; but let not an interior be made with recesses and projections
and pillars and domes, only to please the eye, while it is to hurt the
edification of successive generations, for two or for ten centuries. No
ornamentation can compensate for that injury. The science of acoustics
is as yet but little understood; all that we seem to know thus far is
that the plain, unadorned parallelogram is the best form. And even if
we must stick to that, I had rather have it than a church half ruined
by architectural devices. Our Protestant churches are built, not for
ceremonies and spectacles and processions, but for prayer and preaching.
And the fitness of means to ends that first law of architecture is
sacrificed by a church interior made more to be looked at than to be
heard in. [79] But to return: we were not long to occupy the pleasant
little church in Mercer Street, pleasant memories I hope there are of it
to others besides myself. On Sunday morning, the 26th November, 1837,
it was burned to the ground. Nothing was saved but my library, which was
flung out of the vestry window, and the pulpit Bible, which I have, a
present from the trustees.

The congregation immediately took a hall for temporary worship in the
Stuyvesant Institute, and directed i