ween Russia and the United
States.

In after years I was privileged personally to address the Czar and his
family, in a private audience, and questions of the Russian problem were
discussed; but the Jews flocked to America, and we welcomed them, and
they learned to be Americans very rapidly. Their immigration to this
country was a matter of religious conscience, in which Russia had no
interest.

A man's religious convictions are most important. I remember in October,
1882, what criticism and abuse there was of my friend Henry Ward
Beecher, when he decided to resign from the religious associations of
which he was a member. I was asked by members of the press to give my
opinion, but I was out when they called. Mr. Beecher was right. He was a
man of courage and of heart. I shall never forget the encouragement and
goodwill he extended to me, when I first came to Brooklyn in 1869 and
took charge of a broken-down church. Mr. Beecher did just as I would
have done under the same circumstances. I could not nor would stay in
the denomination to which I belonged any longer than it would take me to
write my resignation, if I disbelieved its doctrines. Mr. Beecher's
theology was very different from mine, but he did not differ from me in
the Christian life, any more than I differed from him. He never
interfered with me, nor I with him. Every little while some of the
ministers of America were attacked by a sort of Beecher-phobia, and they
foamed at the mouth over something that the pastor of Plymouth Church
said. People who have small congregations are apt to dislike a preacher
who has a full church. For thirteen years, or more, Beecher's church and
mine never collided. He had more people than he knew what to do with,
and so had I. I belonged to the company of the orthodox, but if I
thought that orthodoxy demanded that I must go and break other people's
heads I would not remain orthodox five minutes. Brooklyn was called the
city of churches, but it could also be called the city of short
pastorates. Many of the churches, during fifteen years of my pastorate,
had two, three, and four pastors. Dr. Scudder came and went; so did Dr.
Patten, Dr. Frazer, Dr. Buckley, Dr. Mitchell, Dr. Reid, Dr. Steele, Dr.
Gallagher, and a score of others. The Methodist Church was once famous
for keeping a minister only three or four years, but it is no longer
peculiar in this respect. Mr. Beecher had been pastor for thirty-six
years in Brooklyn when, in t