Part 2 (1/2)

But the indefatigable Cuyler postponed the evil day, and for seven years of intensest activity he remained in Market Street.

To quote Dr. Cuyler: ”I looked around me and saw there were a good many substantial families that could support a church and East Broadway swarmed with young men.”

”Here was the lord of the manor, the nephew of Colonel Rutgers, Wm. B.

Crosby. What a devoted Christian he was. His good old gray head moved up to the pew every Sunday, rain or s.h.i.+ne. There was a deacons' pew, and in the center sat the best-known man in New York, Judge Joseph Hoxie. When we said the creed and n.o.body joined he shouted it, and in song his voice was heard above the choir. There sat Jacob Westervelt, the mayor of New York, and he boasted that he was the only member of the Dutch Church who could read a Dutch Bible.”

[Ill.u.s.tration: Theodore Ledyard Cuyler]

The galleries were packed with young men. One, a young Irish boy, Robert McBurney, became the great secretary of the Young Men's Christian a.s.sociation. Charles Briggs was another young member, and around him later raged the bitterest theological controversy of the century.

During the summer of 1854 the service was changed to 4 P. M., 7:30 being resumed in September.

In 1855 the seats in the gallery were changed from four rows to three rows, and the infant school was held in the ”scholars' gallery” of the church. The low seats are still in the second gallery.

A stove was put in, too, as the heating was not satisfactory.

In 1855, A. D. Stowell came as Bible cla.s.s teacher at a salary of $12 per month.

Dr. Cuyler rightly referred to it as a busy old hive, for from Market Street church emanated some of the greatest religious movements of the century.

Howard Crosby, son of William B. Crosby, and brought up in the Market Street church, was the first president of the Young Men's Christian a.s.sociation. Cuyler became interested in it the second year of its existence in New York, and during his long lifetime he never ceased to work for it. But if the church had done nought else than bring Robert McBurney to the a.s.sociation it would have been amply repaid. The master spirit in the a.s.sociation for thirty years McBurney's name is written in golden letters in the city's history. Morris K. Jesup and William E. Dodge, life-long friends of the church, were early a.s.sociation supporters.

A work typical of Market Street church was the Fulton Street prayer-meeting, started by Jeremiah C. Lamphier, who sang in the church choir. Dr. Cuyler credits this with being the first move in the tremendous revival that from 1856 to 1858 swayed the city, and went on to other cities, gathering momentum. Cuyler says: ”In three or four weeks the revival so absorbed the city that business men crowded into the churches from 12 to 3 each day, and when Horace Greeley was asked to start a new philanthropic enterprise he said: 'The city is so absorbed with this revival that it has no time for anything else.'”

Market Street church gathered in 150 new members, and 1859 was one of the glorious ones in the history of the church.

Mr. Lamphier died December 26, 1898.

In the Temperance cause, Dr. Cuyler was also a ceaseless worker. From 1851 to 1857 he was in close alliance with Neal Dow, then at the height of his fame as a prohibition advocate.

Another organization that had an earnest supporter in Dr. Cuyler was the Christian Endeavor Society, tho Cuyler gives all the credit for its fatherhood to Rev. F. E. Clarke.

In a day when such things were not common Market Street church got deeply into matters civic. ”The most hideous sink of iniquity and loathsome degradation was in the then famous Five Points,” Baxter, Worth, Mulberry, Park Streets, not far from the church. An old building, honeycombed with vaults and secret pa.s.sages, called the Old Brewery, was the center of a locality that boldly flouted the police. Indeed, for years the Old Brewery was a harbor of refuge for any criminal, for the law never reached him there, nor were the Five Points ever a safe place to walk thru. At night no one dared be seen there. For some years the Five Points had played a physical part in the elections, and many a riot had its inception there.

Then the city put thru Worth Street, formerly known as Anthony Street, after a Rutgers, and the Old Brewery Mission was establisht there. Thru Mrs. Pease, a member of the Market Street church, whose husband was the brave projector of the Five Points House of Industry, the church became interested in improving conditions. When Mr. Pease went south, his place was taken by Benjamin R. Barlow, one of the Market Street elders.

In his autobiography, Dr. Cuyler tells how he ”used to make nocturnal explorations of some of those satanic quarters” to keep public interest awake in the mission work at the Five Points. New Yorkers who remember the House of Industry of thirty years ago and who now look at Mulberry Bend Park may well thank the old Market Street church that the Cow Bay, Bandit's Roost, the Old Brewery and Cut Throat Alley are things of the past, and that the Five Points are known to this later day only as a name. No second Charles d.i.c.kens will cross the ocean to tell us that ”all that is loathsome, drooping and decayed is here.”

[Ill.u.s.tration]

Few men have been in touch with so many public movements as Dr. Cuyler.

He was the personal friend of statesmen, churchmen, professors, lecturers, teachers, philanthropists, diplomats, poets and presidents.

And as was the minister so were the people of the Market Street church: forward in every movement for the betterment of mankind, the coming of the kingdom. Some of the best families of New York were connected there, and as fathers bought pews for the sons when they married it was a family church. These names are frequent: Duryee, Crosby, Mersereau, Brinkerhoff, Poillon, Zophar Mills, Ludlam, Suydam, Westervelt, Waydell, Chittenden, Bartlett, McKee, Purdy and a host of others.

Small wonder that from among men like these great inst.i.tutions should come, that the Park Bank and the Na.s.sau Bank should be founded by Market Street church men. The annual pew rents were $5,000, then a large sum.

Perhaps it was their very farsightedness that made the people of the church think of moving uptown. The ”brownstone front” was drawing people northward, and Dr. Cuyler started a movement ”to erect a new edifice on Murray Hill, and to retain the old building in Market Street as an auxiliary mission chapel.” Subscriptions were secured, William E. Dodge heading the list. But the new site at Park Avenue and Thirty-fifth Street did not find favor, and many were opposed to the whole project, so when in 1860 the consistory was to vote the first payment, the whole enterprise failed by one vote.

Dr. Cuyler said he would thank the good old man who cast that vote--Meade was his name--if he ever met him in the other world. He resigned from Market Street church, his ministry ending April 7, 1860, and accepted a call from the little Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church in Brooklyn. His friend, Henry Ward Beecher, did not see how he could get a congregation there, but after many years of ever-increasing usefulness Mr. Beecher lived to say to Dr. Cuyler: ”You are now in the center, and I am out on the circ.u.mference.”