desired. '"You have made your connection with us: we
understand you: we are no more strangers."
As I became more familiar with the congregation. T
found that there were two somewhat distinct but not
diverse t\-pes of mind in their response to truth. There
were those who quickly kmdled imder the reception of it.
and gave it free play in their o^m thinking, more atfected
by the quality of inspiration it might possess than by any
logical conclusion to Ix" drawn from it. Such preeminently
were Professor Roswell D. Hitchcock. Judge John K.
Porter, and Mr. Charles Collins, formerly of Hartford.
Connecticut, a genuine disciple of Dr. Bushnell. There
were others who absorbed the truth according to its im-
mediate adaptation to their spiritual needs. The general
characteristic of the congregation was its mental and
spiritual accessil'ility. Individuals and families came to
church imbued with the spirit of worship, and in a mood
to be appreciative of such further help as might be gained
from the service. The degree of this desire for help was
unexpected. It was especially noticeable among men in
public life and in the more exacting forms of business.
Judge Porter once remarked to me that, "Judged by the
TWO PASTORATES 77
test of the responsibilities public and private of those who
attended the church, there was no pulpit in the city which
had more direct access to the sources of public welfare."
During my pastorate, two mayors of the city were mem-
bers of the congregation. My persona-1 intimacy with
Mayor Wickham gave me unusual opportunity for the
knowledge of certain phases of the inner as well as public
life of New York. It was the consciousness of the fact to
which Judge Porter referred that led me to give to my
preaching so far as possible the tone of moral invigoration
and of spiritual quickening. I recognized the fact, of course,
and acted at fit times upon it, that the discussion of public
questions had a legitimate place in the pulpit, but the
essential thing as it seemed to me was to increase the moral
sensitiveness and to stimulate the moral purpose, of those
who had most to do with the intricacies and liabilities of
affairs. And it was at this point that I found, as I have
said, a ready response.
The same characteristic of accessibility obtained in all
the relations to the people. It made pastoral duty a
pleasure and in many cases a satisfaction. The homes of
the church stood open to one professionally on the basis
of personal friendship. And one could count upon an equal
accessibility in discussing measures in the interest of the
church, or in the solicitation of funds. Quickness of de-
cision and promptness in action greatly facilitated re-
ligious work. An illustration of a certain intimacy in the
religious life of the church was the midweek meeting in the
vestry, known in the churches of the city as the "lecture-
room." The name rightly described the nature of the mid-
week meeting. It was not altogether or chiefly a prayer
meeting. The chief feature was a pastoral "leqture" or
78 MY GENERATION
informal talk on subjects of deeper religious import.
The meeting was largely, at times very largely, attended
and allowed the most direct and intimate approach. I was
often surprised to note the attendance of those from the
congregation who were not members of the church, to
whom the service seemed to give spiritual satisfaction and
strength.
Naturally the pastoral relations open the way into
friendships, and at times into intimacies born out of the
deeper experiences of life; but outside these intimacies
and friendships it also opens the way into personal asso-
ciations of a more or less intimate character with men of
recognized public value. Every influential church in New
York has in its congregation men of distinction. The
Madison Square congregation held not a few such men,
some of whom I came to know in circumstances that
brought out very clearly the qualities which gave them
their place in the public thought. I may fitly refer in this
connection, for the impression made upon my own mind
by the extraordinary display of qualities, not unusual but
perhaps for that reason more impressive when exercised
in some superlative way, to two men of the congregation,
Cyrus W. Field and Samuel J. Tilden.
Mr. Field represented in this superlative way the type
of man "who brings things to pass." The tj^pe itself was
not unfamiliar in the period of material development fol-
lowing the Civil War, but no such example of it appeared
then, or has appeared since, as in the man who laid the
Atlantic cable. The original conception did not belong to
Mr. Field, but he alone grasped the idea with an unshak-
able purpose, and brought the bold adventure to reality.
It was ten years from the organization of the Atlantic
TWO PASTORATES 79
Telegraph Company to the completion of the enterprise.
Eight years of silence intervened between the broken
message which passed over the first cable, and the final
accomplishment of unbroken communication between the
continents — years of persistent effort, but of equally
persistent failure, including bankruptcy, but years clos-
ing in triumphant success. This mastery of failure was
Mr. Field's distinction. Adjectives commonly applied to
one capable of this kind of success — persistent, indefati-
gable, indomitable — do not define his capacity, or explain
the great event in his career. Back of all the energies of
his nature was the faith that constantly visualized the
end in view, and a will that never for a moment lost
control of the means for its attainment.
When I first knew Mr. Tilden, he was passing through
the ordeal of surrendering the Presidency which had
seemed to be within his grasp. Out of one hundred and
eighty-five electoral votes necessary to a choice in the
election of 1876, he held one hundred and eighty-four
in undisputed right. Of the votes claimed by his oppo-
nents, nineteen were in dispute, which, if entirely allowed,
would complete the number necessary for a choice.
Eighteen of these were from the States of Louisiana,
South Carolina, and Florida, localities where the political
atmosphere was charged with fraud, and one was from
Oregon. To a mind like that of Mr. Tilden, trained to
respect for constitutional methods, and exercised in the
detection of fraud through his exposure of Tammany,
the resort to a compromise political commission to pass
upon the votes in dispute seemed a wide departure from
the Constitution, while the finding of the commission
seemed to him utterly at variance with the legal evidence.
8o MY GENERATION
Nevertheless Mr. Tilden determined to abide by the de-
cision of the commission, and forbade his friends and his
party to resist. His conduct was a most remarkable ex-
hibition of self-control, perhaps the most remarkable in
the political history of the nation, undemonstrative, but
wonderfully impressive. As I saw what it meant to him
and realized its meaning to the country in the crisis through
which it was passing, I understood the recorded wisdom
of the old-time morahst, "Better is he that ruleth his
spirit than he that taketh a city." When I went back some
six years after leaving New York to conduct the services
at the funeral of Mr. Tilden at his country home at Gray-
stone-on-the-Hudson, I was impressed with the sincerity
of the homage paid to him by the vast company of public
men there assembled, from President Cleveland and his
immediate associates to the eminent citizens of the city
and of the State.
Of the men with whom I came into professional as well
as personal relation, no one awakened so deep an affection
or exerted so great an influence over me as Roswell D.
Hitchcock, to whom I have already referred as a member
of the congregation. Dr. Hitchcock was a man of wide
and genuine learning, but still more remarkable for his
mental and spiritual insight. He saw religious truth in
clear perspective and in just proportion. As a church his-
torian he knew and honored the historic Church, but he
lived in the full freedom of the spirit. His independence
could rise, if there was occasion, into courage. He was
broadly and fearlessly progressive. Personally he was
capable of sharing the riches of his mind and heart. His
friendship had the reality and the charm of intimacy.
Though several years my senior he never allowed the inter-
TWO PASTORATES 81
veiling years or the wisdom for which these stood, to create
the slightest impression of conscious superiority. He was
to me a most lovable man, not in spite of his great intel-
lectual gifts, but because of them. I felt whenever I talked
with him that I had access to the whole man. It was to me
of great signijQcance in the following years that this in-
timacy of personal friendship was in no sense dependent
on frequent contact. The letters w^hich came to me at
Andover until his death bore the marks of the same rare
and quickening friendship.
Professional intimacies were furthered by a semi-social
and religious club known as Chi Alpha, composed of lead-
ing ministers, professors, and journalists from aflBliated
churches. It met every Saturday evening and preserved
its social character by meeting in the homes of its mem-
bers.
It frequently entertained distinguished visitors from
abroad. At that period — among the seventies — the re-
ception of churchmen, like Dean Stanley and Canon
Farrar, Dr. Parker, of the City Temple, London, Dr.
Dale, of Birmingham, and various Scotch leaders, was
more frequent and more natural than that of literary men.
The visit of Dickens, and Thackeray, and even of Matthew
Arnold, had somewhat the aspect of a commercial ad-
venture. The visits of these and like guests were seldom
disconnected from lecturing tours. Chi Alpha was one of
the oldest of the professional clubs of the city, having
been founded in 1828.
The following letter, written to the Secretary on the
occasion of the eighty-sixth anniversary of the Club,
gives a glimpse of the ordinary meetings at the time of
my active membership:
82 MY GENERATION
November 25, 1914
Dear Dr. Webster:
In response to your invitation, I send you greetings from the
Chi Alpha of thirty-five to forty years ago. Possibly some of the
original members were living at that time, but I have no re-
membrance of any known as such. One of the early habits of
the society, which I see by your present order of exercises has
been discontinued, was then in force — supper was served then
as now at six o'clock, but it was put between the social hour
and the hour or evening of discussion. I suppose that this was
a survival of the state of mind which gave us in its time the
"New York Observer" in two well-separated compartments.
The social hour was the hour of the wits and the story-tellers.
Dr. Irenaeus Prime was by far the most delightful story-teller,
though perhaps Dr. Rogers, of the Reformed Dutch Church on
Twenty -first Street, was the sharper wit. I recall the beginning
of one of Dr. Prime's stories, which promised to be one of his
best, but which never came to a conclusion. Dr. Prime had
reached the point where he had introduced the man's mother-
in-law, when, yielding to the temptation to play with his story,
he remarked by way of parenthesis — "It was his mother-in-
law by marriage." "Oh," said Dr. Rogers, "a new kind." The
story, as I have said, was never finished. Chi Alpha was abund-
antly satisfied with the discovery of a new way of estabhsliing
this domestic relationship.
The most serious discussion in Chi Alpha which I remember
started from an incidental statement by Professor Shedd —
"God must be just, He may be merciful." The statement in-
stantly aroused much feeling, which was intensified by a subse-
quent remark of Dr. Chambers, contrasting the depth of the
mind of St. Paul with that of the Apostle John. Any one who
may have known Dr. Prentiss and his passionate feeling toward
the Apostle John can understand how such a comparison would
strike his sensitive and chivalrous nature. I think that I never
saw Chi Alpha thrown into the like intellectual commotion. The
discussion thus started ran through three or four consecutive
meetings. I am quite sure that my old neighbor and friend. Dr.
TWO PASTORATES 83
Vincent, will recall the discussion, as we commented on it each
evening on our way home. As I mention some of those who car-
ried on the discussion you will have little difficulty, even at this
time, in arranging them according to their theological sympa-
thies — Dr. William M. Paxton, Dr. Howard Crosby, Professors
Schaff and Hitchcock, Dr. Adams, Dr. Hall, Dr. William M.
Taylor, Dr. George B. Cheever, and Dr. Cuyler. It goes without
saying that the five-minute limit in debate was not then in vogue.
The discussion was closed with a paper of remarkable lucidity,
by Dr. Prentiss, on the question, "What is fundamental in the
nature of God?" Some years afterwards I tried to get the paper
for publication in the " Andover Review," but Dr. Prentiss felt
that it was too vitally related to the discussion to warrant its
publication, so far removed from its original motive and en-
vironment.
I beg you to tender my affectionate greetings to the present
members of Chi Alpha, many of whom I knew in those earlier
days of our fellowship, and others of whom I know in ways of
personal friendship.
I am
Most cordially and fraternally yours
William Jewett Tucker
To the Rev. George S. Webster, D.D.
Secretary of Chi Alpha
Notwithstanding the wide range of personal associa-
tions incident to a New York pastorate, and the inspiring
opportunity which it offers through the pulpit, it has its
sharp limitations. These limitations are largely the result
of the physical conditions which determine the social life
of the city. The configuration of the city virtually classifies
its population socially. It divides the Protestant popula-
tion between church and chapel. A certain segregation is
enforced through residence. Class and neighborhood are
synonymous terms in defining the church relations of a
family. The distinction goes deeper. It classifies the moral
84 MY GENERATION
and spiritual experiences of those living under these dif-
ferent conditions. The burdens, the temptations, and
many of the sorrows of the poor are not those of the rich.
This exclusion of poverty with its attendant evils from
homes in the distinctively church localities creates a re-
stricted field of pastoral service, and puts the special
work of what is known as "social service" at a second
remove from the pastorate. I am well aware, in saying
this, of the liabihty of a "break" in the environment
which may cause a sudden inflow of the turbid stream
of the outer life into the more protected regions. It was
just such a break in the environment of the Madison
Square Church, which Dr. Parkhurst records in "Our
Fight with Tammany" (pp. 4, 5), that led him to assume
the presidency of the Society for the Prevention of Crime
and to carry on his masterly campaign against the organ-
ized and officially supported vice of the city. And yet how
exceptional and almost casual this splendid service appears
from his reference to the pastoral incident which gave rise
to it. "Somewhat prior to my first connection with the
Society, I had become knowing to a condition of things
throughout the city of which during all the years of my
residence in town up to that date I had been ignorant, and
of which, except for a special cause, I should probably
have continued ignorant."
A further limitation upon the continuous power of the
average pastorate lies in the impermanency of the local
church life of the city. This limitation is due to the same
general cause as the social segregation to which I have re-
ferred. Owing to the rapid movement of the church pop-
ulation within the narrow limits fixed by the configuration
of the city, a church can hardly expect really to command
TWO PASTORATES 85
a given locality for more than a generation ; that is, a gen-
eration represents the ordinary allowance of time between
the taking of a favorable location at the flood tide, and
the ebb tide which leaves the church to struggle with the
decline in numbers and finally to succumb to it. The Mad-
ison Square Church occupied Madison Square in 185^. In
1906 it had become necessary to take into serious consid-
eration the question of removal. A bold attempt was made
to retain its site on the Square by taking advantage of a
favorable offer of purchase by the Metropolitan Life In-
surance Company, which had crowded the church to a
corner in the enclosure of its own building, and by building
a unique and most attractive church edifice on the op-
posite comer of Twenty-fourth Street.^ The attempt, how-
ever, has not enabled the church to hold the site. As I am
now writing (1918) a plan is under way for effecting a
consolidation of the Presbyterian churches in proximity
to one another below Thirty-fourth Street, — the Old
First Church at Fifth Avenue and Eleventh Street, the
University Place Church, and the Madison Square Church.
Owing to the effect of the recent act for "zoning" the city,
a new permanency has been given to the residential region
around Washington Square and lower Fifth Avenue, as
against the region about Madison Square. Should the pro-
posed plan be carried out, as now seems probable, the
new Madison Square Church will be sold, and the church
itself will survive only as a component part of an im-
pressive consolidation, especially of church property and
endowments — a fate on the whole insuring more per-
manency than usually befalls a New York church in an
1 The original church was by Upjohn, of Gothic design; the new church, by
McKim, Mead & White, the main features of which are a "bold portico and
front and a dome."
86 MY GENERATION
attempt at continuous separate existence. (Since the above
was written this consolidation has actually taken place
and the sale of the Madison Square Church edifice has
been effected.) The identity of the local church in the city
has thus far been best preserved under the Episcopal sys-
tem of supervision, or under the collegiate system con-
trolling certain of the Dutch Reformed churches sup-
ported by original land grants. Presbyterianism has hardly
proved equal to this perpetuation of the life of the local
church. It was a favorite theory of Mr. George W. Lane,
of the Madison Square Church, that a strong church
should select, in advance of any sign of decline, a location
to which it might in due time remove, while yet in its
strength able also to maintain by endowment and annual
allowance the position from which the main church had
advanced. A line of church holdings would thus be
established, following the succession prescribed by the
peculiar configuration of the city.
In the spring of 1879, in the fifth year of my pastorate,
I received an invitation to the chair of Homiletics in
Andover Theological Seminary, the invitation having in
view the further object of my taking part in the recon-
struction of the Seminary then impending. Three years
before I had been asked by Dr. Edmund R. Peaslee, of
New York, and Governor Cheney, of New Hampshire,
representing the Trustees of Dartmouth College, if I
would consider an invitation to the presidency of the
college. As I had then been so little time in the pastorate
of the church, and as the educational work proposed was
at a second remove at least from the specific work of the
ministry, I declined the proposal, little foreseeing, how-
ever, that fifteen years later I should be brought to this
TWO PASTORATES 87
position by way of Andover. The invitation to the chair
at Andover raised at once, and in its broad aspects, the
question of the relative significance under the conditions
then existing of the pastoral and the educational branches
of service in the ministry. It was to me a very serious
question, becoming more serious the more I considered it.
I had become directly interested in the aims and problems
of young men studying for the ministry, through the
attendance of many of the students of Union Theolog-
ical Seminary at the Madison Square Church. But the
large, and as it proved to be the determining, factor in the
ultimate decision was my conviction that the more im-
portant issues which were to affect the ministry and the
Church lay within the sphere of education. In the midst
of the experiences attending the discharge of pastoral
duties, and more particularly in the midst of the daily
studies in preparation for the pulpit, questions would
arise out of the intellectual and moral changes taking
place in the new world of thought and action for which
little time could be found for any satisfying answer. It was
evident that a process of reconstruction was going on in
which, if one was to take part at all, he must have a place
nearer the sources. And the necessity for the closer range
of thought was equally apparent, whether one considered
the critical or the social questions which were fast becom-
ing the problems of modern Christianity. It was under
this conviction of the need of a nearer approach to the
distinctive religious issues of the time, and in the hope of
accomplishing the larger service for the ministry through
those who were entering, or who might be led to enter it,
that I decided to exchange the pastorate for the pro-
fessorship to which I was called. In the view which I took
88 MY GENERATION
of the religious situation the step from the church to the
Seminary was a forward step — my response to the de-
mand of religious progress.
The changes necessitated by this decision could not be
carried out without much occasion for sincere regret, and
at certain points without a very definite sense of loss.
There was the surrender of the pastorate with its incen-
tives to spiritual activities; there was the separation from
the church, in itself a painful process, intensified by the
reluctance of the church to accept my resignation; ^ and
* Among the notices of the press in regard to the resignation from the Madison
Square Chm-ch, the following report of the meeting attending the acceptance of
the resignation is taken from the New York Tribune under date of October 9,
1879:
" At a meeting of the members of the Madison Square Presbyterian Church
last evening, the resignation of their pastor, the Reverend W. J. Tucker, D.D.,
who has received a call to the Bartlett Professorship of Preaching at Andover
Theological Seminary, was tendered and accepted. There was a large number
present. Dr. Tucker, in offering his resignation, remarked that it was already
well known to them all that he had had under very serious thought during the
summer the question of a change from the pastorate to work for the ministry.
He said that the ministry in its claims ought to have a wider hearing among
young men. The great increase in the means of moral influence demanded this.
'We seem about to enter, in religious life and thought,' he added, 'upon a period
of great constructive energy. I believe that we have before us a season, not of
contention or of apology, but of gro^Nlh and construction. . . . However reluc-
tant, therefore, one might otherwise be to listen to this call, he cannot deny the
claims of its timeliness. And it is only for such reasons as these, which but partly
express my own convictions, that I can bring myself to ask you for your consent
to my entering upon this work, and to request, as I do now, that you will accept
my resignation in the pastorate of this church.'
"Dr. Tucker closed his address with some words of deep feeling upon the cor-
dial relations which had existed between his church and himself. George W. Lane
was then made chairman of the meeting and Charles H. Woodbury secretary.
Resolutions were adopted expressing deep regret at Dr. Tucker's leaving the
pastorate, and speaking of his work and his personal qualities in the highest
terms.
" Remarks were then made by the Reverend William Adams, D.D., first pastor
of the church, the Reverend Roswell D. Hitchcock, D.D., the Honorable William
E. Dodge, and Professor Theodore W. Dwight.
"Dr. Adams said that he concurred most heartily in the resolutions. He could
sympathize with Dr. Tucker in his request, for he had once taken a similar step.
His personal relations with Dr. Tucker had been peculiarly pleasant.
TWO PASTORATES 89
there was the sundering of many ties of personal and
family friendships; to which I may properly add my regret
in leaving New York. There was a sincerity in its social