nson called him a mountebank. Robert Hall
preached about the glories of heaven as no uninspired man ever preached
about them, and it was said when he preached about heaven his face shone
like an angel's, and yet good Christian John Foster writes of Robert
Hall, saying: "Robert Hall is a mere actor, and when he talks about
heaven the smile on his face is the reflection of his own vanity." John
Wesley stirred all England with reform, and yet he was caricatured by
all the small wits of his day. He was pictorialised, history says, on
the board fences of London, and everywhere he was the target for the
punsters; yet John Wesley stands to-day before all Christendom, his name
mighty. I have preached a Gospel that is not only appropriate to the
home circle, but is appropriate to Wall Street, to Broadway, to Fulton
Street, to Montague Street, to Atlantic Street, to every street--not
only a religion that is good for half past ten o'clock Sunday morning,
but good for half past ten o'clock any morning. This was one of the
considerations in my work as a preacher of the Gospel that extended its
usefulness. A practical religion is what we all need. In my previous
work at Belleville, N.J., and in Syracuse, I had absorbed other
considerations of necessity in the business of uniting the human
character with the church character.

Although the Central Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn of which I was
pastor was one of the largest buildings in that city then, it did not
represent my ideal of a church.

I learned in my village pastorates that the Church ought to be a great
home circle of fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters. That would be a
very strange home circle where the brothers and sisters did not know
each other, and where the parents were characterised by frigidity and
heartlessness. The Church must be a great family group--the pulpit the
fireplace, the people all gathered around it. I think we sometimes can
tell the people to stay out by our church architecture. People come in
and find things angular and cold and stiff, and they go away never again
to come; when the church ought to be a great home circle.

I knew a minister of religion who had his fourth settlement. His first
two churches became extinct as a result of his ministry, the third
church was hopelessly crippled, and the fourth was saved simply by the
fact that he departed this life. On the other hand, I have seen
pastorates which continued year after year, all the time