with saloons, and black with coal smoke and
unwashed humanity. The church is quite strong in membership. The Year
Book gives it five hundred members last year, and it is composed almost
entirely of the leading families in the place. What I can do in such a
church remains to be seen. My predecessor there, Dr. Brown, was a
profound sermonizer, and generally liked, I believe. He was a man of the
old school, and made no attempt, I understand, to bring the church into
contact with the masses. You will say that such a church is a poor place
in which to attempt a different work. I do not necessarily think so. The
Church of Christ is, in itself, I believe, a powerful engine to set in
motion against all evil. I have great faith in the membership of almost
any church in this country to accomplish wonderful things for humanity.
And I am going to Milton with that faith very strong in me. I feel as if
a very great work could be done there. Think of it, Alfred! A town of
fifty thousand working men, half of them foreigners, a town with more
than sixty saloons in full blast, a town with seven churches of many
different denominations all situated on one street, and that street the
most fashionable in the place, a town where the police records show an
amount of crime and depravity almost unparalleled in municipal
annals--surely such a place presents an opportunity for the true Church
of Christ to do some splendid work. I hope I do not over-estimate the
needs of the place. I have known the general condition of things in
Milton ever since you and I did our summer work in the neighboring town
of Clifton. If ever there was missionary ground in America, it is there.
I cannot understand just why the call comes to me to go to a place and
take up work that, in many ways, is so distasteful to me. In one sense I
shrink from it with a sensitiveness which no one except my wife and you
could understand. You know what an almost ridiculous excess of
sensibility I have. It seems sometimes impossible for me to do the work
that the active ministry of this age demands of a man. It almost kills
me to know that I am criticised for all that I say and do. And yet I
know that the ministry will always be the target for criticism. I have
an almost morbid shrinking from the thought that people do not like me,
that I am not loved by everybody, and yet I know that if I speak the
truth in my preaching and speak it without regard to consequences some
one is sure to beco