en, in these
gatherings, every heart seemed to partake of the gladness radiated by
the magnetic host and hostess; and all Europe seemed brighter because
of these homelike, social, Christian Sunday evenings which lighted up
the sojourn in Berlin. The effort now being made to build a permanent
and commodious church edifice for Americans in Berlin is a pressing
necessity.

Dr. Christlieb, the eminent Professor of Theology and University
Preacher in Bonn, asserts that the number of American students in
Berlin is now by far the largest congregated in any one place in
Germany. The number, as stated in 1888 by Rev. Dr. Philip Schaff, was
about four hundred, besides the numerous American travellers there
every year for a longer or shorter time. Seventeen denominations have
been represented in this church in a single year, and any evangelical
minister in good standing in his own church is eligible to election as
its pastor. From the beginning these union services have been entirely
harmonious; and Methodists, Congregationalists, Presbyterians,
Baptists, Lutherans, and Episcopalians have been chiefly active in
promoting them.

The churches of the royal suburb of Potsdam possess an interest quite
equal to that of those in Berlin. The Potsdam Garrison Church, in
general interior outlines, reminds one of some quaint New England
meeting-house of the early part of the eighteenth century. But here
the resemblance ceases. The ancient arrangement of windows and
galleries impresses one only at the moment of entering, attention
being presently diverted to the flags clustered on the gallery pillars
and on either side the pulpit, in two rows,--the lower captured from
the French in the wars with the First Napoleon, the upper taken in the
late contests with Austria and with Napoleon III. Altar-cloths and
other furnishings are heavily embroidered with the handiwork of
vanished queens. But the chief interest centres in the vault under the
handsome marble pulpit. In this vault, on the left, are the mortal
remains of the old Prussian King, Frederick William I.,--father of
Frederick the Great,--a character hard to understand, and interpreted
differently as one surveys him in the light of Macaulay's genius or
that of Carlyle. But one cannot help hoping that the final verdict
will be with the latter; and as we stand in this solemn place, memory
recalls the day--the midnight, rather--when this same oak coffin, long
before the death of the King made