consider. This
concerned the future of the new Tabernacle.

In consequence of perpetual and long-continued outrages committed by
neighbouring clergymen against the peace of our church, the Board of
Trustees of the Tabernacle addressed a letter to the congregation
suggesting our withdrawal from the denomination. I regretted this,
because I felt that the time would soon come when all denominations
should be helpful to each other. There would be enough people in
Brooklyn, I was sure, when all the churches could be crowded. I
positively refused to believe the things that my fellow ministers said
about me, or to notice them. I was perfectly satisfied with the
Christian outlook of our church. I urged the same spirit of calm upon my
church neighbours, by example and precept. It was a long while before
they realised the value of this advice. In the spring of 1879 my friend
Dr. Crosby, pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church at the corner of
Clinton and Fulton Streets, was undergoing an ecclesiastical trial, and
an enterprising newsboy invaded the steps of the church, as the most
interested market for the sale of the last news about the trial. He was
ignominiously pushed off the church steps by the church officers. I was
indignant about it. (I saw it from a distance, as I was coming down the
street.) I thought it was a row between Brooklyn ministers, however, and
turned the corner to avoid such a shocking sight. My suspicions were not
groundless, because there was even then anything but brotherly love
between some of the churches there.

A synodical trial by the Synod of Long Island was finally held at
Jamaica, L.I., to ascertain if there was not some way of inducing church
harmony in Brooklyn. After several days at Jamaica, in which the
ministers of Long Island took us ministers of Brooklyn across their
knees and applied the ecclesiastical slipper, we were sent home with a
benediction. A lot of us went down there looking hungry, and they sent
us back all fed up. Even some of the church elders were hungry and came
back to Brooklyn strengthened.

It looked for awhile after this as though all clerical antagonisms in
Brooklyn would expire. I even foresaw a time coming when Brothers
Speare, Van Dyke, Crosby and Talmage would sing Moody and Sankey hymns
together out of the same hymn-book.

The year 1880 began with an outbreak in Maine, a sort of miniature
revolution, caused by a political appointment of my friend Governor
Garc