life.

CHAPTER XI

A CHURCH IN THE GHETTO

About this time the old church of Sea and Land at the corner of Market
and Henry streets was to be put up for auction. The New York
Presbytery wanted to sell it and devote most of the money to the
building up of uptown churches. I was sent there by the missionary
society to hold the place until they got a good price for it. I
gathered the trustees around me--a splendid band of devout men, mostly
young men--and I did not need to tell them that it was a forlorn hope.
They already knew it.

We outlined a plan of campaign to save the church for that community,
and the result is that the church is there to-day. Of course, the
district is largely Jewish, but there were enough Gentiles to fill a
dozen churches.

It was inevitable that we should get in touch with the Jewish
children. We had a kindergarten, but made it known to the Jewish
community that we were not in the business of proselyting, and that
they need have no hesitation in sending their children to our
kindergarten, which was a great blessing to the whole community.
Sunday evenings in the spring and fall, I spoke to large congregations
of Jewish people from the steps of the church, on the spirit of Jewish
history--as to what it had done for the world and what it could still
do.

I think it was in the early part of 1893 that I began my work there.
It was the year of the panic, and the East Side was in a general state
of stringency and starvation. A group of ministers of various
denominations got together and devised a plan for a cheap restaurant
in which we were to sell meals at cost.

Probably for the first time in the history of New York, a Roman
Catholic priest, a Jewish rabbi, Presbyterian, Methodist and Baptist
pastors sat down around a table to talk over the welfare of the
people. A committee was formed, and I nominated the Catholic priest
for chairman. He was elected. The restaurant did not last very long,
and probably the chief good of the thing was the getting together of
these men. Difficulties, of course, came thick and fast. Kosher meat
for the Jews, fish for the Catholics on Friday, and any old thing for
the Gentiles, were the smallest of the difficulties to be overcome.

I was supported in my church work by a band of young men and women,
mostly from a distance, who gave their services freely, and in the
course of a year or two, we managed to increase the church membership
by a hundred or so