Part 4 (1/2)

Like the old Market Street stoop with its fancy iron posts and rails the Lylian a.s.sociation has seen its day, but it amply justified its existence.

When one Monday evening Mr. Pinkham, the church treasurer, announced to the Lylians the sudden death of Dr. Hopper, there was consternation and adjournment.

Andrew Beattie, a theological student, had been called before this as co-pastor. He was installed as pastor May 29, 1888, having been persuaded to give up his intention of going to the foreign field. Mr.

Beattie lived down town, and his bachelor apartments on East Broadway were a gathering place for the young men, many of whom were in his Sunday school cla.s.s. He with others worked out the system of quarterly written examination and grading that since 1888 have been uninterruptedly in force in the Sunday school, long before other schools thought of such things.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Andrew Beattie]

The school was flouris.h.i.+ng with many young people as officers and teachers, all the activities of the church being centered on its nursery. The records were systematized, and articles in the church papers printed on the system, electric bells were installed, fire drills were inaugurated, discipline was rigid, visiting by teachers and districts was carefully regulated, the library given attention.

Mr. Beattie returned to his first love, resigning after eight months to go to the foreign mission field. After years of greatest usefulness in Canton, China, his health necessitated his return. Dr. Beattie is with his family in California, where he is in charge of a Presbyterian orphanage.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sunday School Room of Old 61]

V

[Ill.u.s.tration: Alex. W. Sproull]

Reverend Alexander W. Sproull followed Mr. Beattie on January 5, 1890, serving for three years. He had been Synodical Missionary in Florida.

After leaving Sea and Land he was incapacitated for further active service. He died December 13, 1912.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Col. Robert G. Shaw]

Another breach was made in the conservatism of the old church when one of the young trustees proposed to let the New York Kindergarten a.s.sociation use the room rent free for a kindergarten, then new in the neighborhood. The older, wiser heads were gravely shaken at this remarkable innovation, but it came on March 31, 1892, and with it the beloved Anna E. Crawford as teacher. The fairy G.o.dmother who maintained it was Mrs. Francis G. Shaw, giving the kindergarten the name of her son, Robert Gould Shaw. It was a happy combination this, and the little boys became strong men in the memory of the young Colonel who gave his life at Fort Wagner at the head of the First Colored Regiment. They buried him disdainfully ”with his n.i.g.g.e.rs,” but Robert Gould Shaw lived again in the lives of little boys trained to sacrifice at Sea and Land.

Nor will the Colonel's sister be forgotten: Mrs. Charles Russell Lowell, who gave her young husband in the same cause and thereafter lived a life that merited William Rhinelander Stewart calling her ”one of the most useful and remarkable women of the Nineteenth Century.” Her spirit of service was renewed in the little girls of the Shaw Kindergarten. The beautiful bas relief by St. Gaudens on Boston Common is less of a memorial than the kindergarten in Henry Street.

Mrs. Shaw died December 29, 1902, having supported the kindergarten for eleven years.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Shaw Memorial Kindergarten]

Another departure was an open air meeting establisht by Mr. Sproull, gathering at the church door Sunday afternoons. First things are hard things.

But a storm was brewing. Uptown churches needed money, their pastors were influential in the denomination and it seemed to many good business to dispose of the Market Street church.

So, on March 13, 1893, Presbytery ordered the church sold, declaring, to comply with the Corning deed, that ”missionary work in the church or in that locality was no longer expedient.” The church pointed out that 29 of the 57 churches in New York Presbytery had received less members during the preceding year, 16 churches had fewer members, 14 churches raised less money, and that 6 churches made a worse showing than Sea and Land in every single item reported on. There were then only 4 Protestant churches for 60,000 people. The battle was on, and the bitterness of the Briggs trial had not yet subsided,--the same Briggs who as a young man belonged to Market Street church.

Mr. Sproull's small salary allowance was discontinued and he was forced to resign, July 1, 1893. Then came hard times, no friends, no minister, no funds. But when the tale of bricks was doubled Moses came.

It was in the shape of a legacy from Borella. That saint on his death in Africa had left his estate in America to the Church of the Sea and Land and the American Seamen's Friend Society jointly. If Borella had lived he could not have arranged it for a better time.

Meanwhile by an accident the press of the city gained the whole story from the church's viewpoint, and thereafter all the news reports were tinged favorably to the down-town church that insisted on living. There were ill.u.s.trated articles on the church's history, caustic editorial comments, letters from correspondents, and everybody talked about the church. The ash barrels and the church doors had bills posted on them announcing that the Church of the Sea and Land would be sold at auction on April 19, 1893. The property, however, was withdrawn when the best offer was $15,000 short of what was expected. There was a lull.

In the spring of 1894 it became necessary to devise some means of helping the New York Presbyterian Church on 127th Street, which was buried by mortgages amounting to $118,000, about to be foreclosed.

Sea and Land was to furnish part of this and a mortgage was suggested.

The church trustees opposed this successfully, altho at first it was supposed their consent was not required. Without the knowledge of the church a sale was then again ordered January 18, 1895.

Preceding this, beginning October 1, 1894, the church had ”affiliated”