a, seats
twenty-nine hundred; the Academy of Music, Brooklyn, twenty-four
hundred and thirty-three; Academy in New York, twenty-four hundred and
thirty-three; the Grand Opera House, Cincinnati, twenty-two hundred
and fifty; and the Music Hall, Boston, twenty-five hundred and
eighty-five.

But greater than the building is the spirit that pervades it. The
moment one enters the vast auditorium with its crimson chairs, its
cheery carpet, its softly tinted walls, one feels at home. Light
filters in through rich windows, in memory of some member gone before,
some class or organization. Back of the pulpit stands the organ, its
rich pipes rising almost to the roof. Everywhere is rich, subdued
coloring, not ostentatious, but cheery, homelike.

Large as is the seating capacity of The Temple, when it was opened it
could not accommodate the crowds that thronged to it. Almost from the
first, overflow meetings were held in the Lower Temple, that none
need be turned away from the House of God. From five hundred to two
thousand people crowded these Sunday evenings in addition to the large
audience in the main auditorium above.

The Temple workers had come to busy days and large opportunities. But
they took them humbly with a full sense of their responsibility, with
prayer in their hearts that they might meet them worthily. Their
leader knew the perils of success and with wise counsel guided them
against its insidious dangers.

"Ah, that is a dangerous hour in the history of men and institutions,"
he said, in a sermon on the "Danger of Success," "when they become too
popular; when a good cause becomes too much admired or adored, so that
the man, or the institution, or the building, or the organization,
receives an idolatrous worship from the community. That is always
a dangerous time. Small men always go down, wrecked by such dizzy
elevation. Whenever a small man is praised, he immediately loses
his balance of mind and ascribes to himself the things which others
foolishly express in flattery. He esteems himself more than he is;
thinking himself to be something, he is consequently nothing. How
dangerous is that point when a man, or a woman, or an enterprise has
become accepted and popular! Then, of all times, should the man or the
society be humble. Then, of all times, should they beware. Then, of
all times, the hosts of Satan are marshaled that by every possible
insidious wile and open warfare they may overcome. The weakest hour in