History of the Brooklyn Council of Churches

Chronology

List of Past Presidents

Significant Occasions and Celebrations
in the Lives of Brooklyn Churches

The Brooklyn Council of Churches originated as the “Brooklyn City Tract Society, Auxiliary to the American Tract Society.” The Brooklyn City Tract Society was founded as a branch of the American Tract Society in 1829 to “promote the interests of evangelical religion, by the systematic distribution within the bounds of Brooklyn of religious Tracts published by the American Tract Society; and to aid that Society, with all surplus funds, in extending its operations.” Originally focusing on the dissemination of religious literature and scripture, the Society soon expanded to offer religious services, and employed missionaries to extend their work throughout the City of Brooklyn. The Society’s name was changed in 1858 to “The Brooklyn City Mission and Tract Society” and in the same year its Constitution was amended to reflect this change.

The Society continued to prosper under its new name, employing both men and women as missionaries, and made active efforts to reach out to the underprivileged, including mothers and children, especially recent immigrants. Much of the Society’s work focused upon the idea of “American Christianity” with the hope of turning its wards into devout Christians and “reliable and helpful citizens.” Each missionary was charged with the task of visiting every tenement in his or her district, distributing literature and, if welcomed, establishing neighborhood prayer meetings.

In 1896 “The Woman’s Branch” of the Brooklyn City Mission and Tract Society was formally organized. Known as the “Women’s Auxiliary” from 1887 on, this division coexisted alongside the Society and “was to supplement the work of The City Mission, by taking up mission work to be done in homes among women and children. All Christian women were encouraged to join the Auxiliary, not necessarily to work as missionaries but to lend their prayers, influence, and financial support to the cause of missionary work.

The Society sponsored many activities aimed at drawing persons away from vices such as alcohol and gambling. Activities sponsored by the Society included lectures, Prayer Meetings, Bible Classes, and a Sewing School. The Society founded a “Floating Bethel” in 1893. This boat/meeting house was removed from the brothels and taverns of the waterfront and provided a space where sailors could come to read, write, rest, and pray.

In addition, the Society worked to “rescue the perishing” primarily through its City Mission Night Shelter for Homeless Men, which provided food, shelter, aid in obtaining employment, and religious services. The Society itself offered employment to many, running a broom factory and chair caning facility. These successful business ventures helped defray the costs of the Society’s charitable work.

As the Society continued to expand, it focused less on the dissemination of literature. Missionary work had become the Society’s primary function, and by 1906 it operated sixteen mission stations in Brooklyn. The Society chose to change its name accordingly in 1929, to the Brooklyn City Mission Society. The By-Laws were also amended declaring the Society’s objective, “to promote interdenominational missionary interests in the Borough of Brooklyn and to minister to the spiritual and material needs of the unfortunate.”

Shortly after this change in 1932, the Brooklyn City Mission Society took on the work of the Brooklyn Federation of Churches. The Federation had been established in 1920 to bring all Protestant denominations and races together in a cooperative effort to promote Christianity through religious education, social service, court work, and other venues. The two organizations operated side by side for many years, sharing a Secretary, Dr. Frederick M. Gordon, from 1926 to 1932. The Society again changed its name, this time to the Brooklyn Church and Mission Federation. The By-Laws of the Brooklyn City Mission Society were amended in accordance with the restructuring to declare a twofold objective:

1. To unite the Protestant Churches of Christ in Brooklyn for the prosecution of work that can better be done in union than in separation, and to secure a larger combined influence for the churches in all matters affecting the religious, moral and social welfare of the people, so as to promote the application of the law of Christ in every relation of human life.

2. To promote interdenominational missionary interests in the borough of Brooklyn, and to minister to the spiritual and material needs of the unfortunate.

The Federation continued to operate as such over the next decade, working throughout Brooklyn to reach out to a large, diverse, and changing community. With the Great Depression, the church had to rethink its mission, focusing more on service to the community and providing aid to those in need. Outreach during this time included mothers’ clubs, boys’ clubs, parole and court work, civic affairs conferences, industrial relations conferences, and population surveys. The Federation also began to focus on church unity, as it observed that cooperative efforts would “produce greater strength and a more definite program and positive results.”

In June 1946 the Federation “voted to amalgamate its program and activities with The Protestant Council of the City of New York to become the Brooklyn Division of the Council.” Although the Brooklyn Church and Mission Federation was not officially dissolved, the organization was now widely known as the Brooklyn Division of the Protestant Council of Churches. As such, the organization further shifted its focus to church unity and the future survival of the Protestant Church.

With the demographic changes of the early and mid twentieth century, the face of Brooklyn Protestantism had changed greatly. At the turn of the century, Protestants made up more than one-half of Brooklyn’s population. By 1950, Protestant Brooklynites had dropped to one-fifth of the total population. By the later half of the twentieth century, Protestants had become a religious minority within both the borough of Brooklyn and the city of New York, causing the church to reevaluate its position within the community. The Division expanded its field of social services to include work with veterans, hospital and jail chaplaincies, interracial projects, peace activities, and economic justice programs. The organization moved its focus toward social service and away from direct mission work, it strove to identify the church as an indispensable part of the community. In the late 1980s the body became known as “The Brooklyn Council of Churches.” The Council continued for the remainder of the twentieth century to use its influence as a united body with the community to strive for social reform to assist Brooklyn’s ever changing population.

Advocacy has included: Operation Breadbasket, Bank on Brooklyn (campaign against red-lining by banks), the emergency food distribution program, campaign against the In-Reming (seizing) of church property by the City of New York, support of the Burned Churches Fund of the National Council of Churches, repeal of the horrendous NYS fuel oil surcharge (tax) which had added 25% to your church fuel bill for many years, support of the clergy parking bill (A-60), successful opposition to the sale of Coney Island Hospital by NYC, opposition to apartheid (since it’s inception), handguns, sweatshops, excessive use of force by law enforcement, opposition to garbage collection fees for churches and fees for FDNY inspection of oil burners as well as Sunday morning FDNY fire inspections of churches, opposition to restrictive landmarking legislation of churches, opposition (unsuccessful) to the closing of St. Mary’s Hospital, removal of an indecent billboard from downtown Brooklyn and being the first voice city-wide against Sunday parking regulations. Sunday parking restrictions were removed on November 11, 2005.

We encourage your support. All churches who Profess Belief in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior are welcome to participate as members.

Past Presidents

Reverend James H. Eggleston, Pastor, Cappadocia Ministries

Reverend Dr. John L. Pratt, Sr., Pastor, Zion Shiloh Baptist Church

Reverend Dr. Harvey P. Jamison, Pastor, Glorious Trinity Baptist Church

Reverend Dan Ramm, Pastor, Flatbush Dutch Reformed Church

Reverend Richard A. Miller, Pastor, Holy Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church

Mr. Charles E. Batson, John Wesley United Methodist Church

Mrs. Adele S. Hester, Greater Zion Shiloh Baptist Church

Reverend F. Goldthwaite Sherrill, Rector, Grace Episcopal Church

Miss Myra M. Gregory, Berean Missionary Baptist Church

Reverend David Murray, Pastor, Bethlehem United Church of Christ

Reverend Charles VanderBeek, Pastor, South Bushwick Reformed Church

Reverend Neville N. Simmons-Smith, Pastor, South Congregational Church

Reverend Walter S. Keiller, Pastor, Church of the Ooen Dorr

Mr. George E. Lawrence, Flatland Ecumenical Committee

Mr. Gordon M. Brown, Methodist Hospital of Brooklyn

Reverend Dr. V. Simpson Turner, Pastor, Mt. Carmel Baptist Church

Reverend David M. Cory, Th.D., Pastor, Homecrest Presbyterian Church

Reverend Robert W Howard, Pastor, Christ United Methodist Church

Reverend Dr. J. Henry Carpenter, Pastor, Flatbush Presbyterian Church

Reverend Dr. Harry H. Kruener, Pastor, Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims

Reverend Dr. George A. Cosper, Pastor, Greenwood Baptist Church

Reverend John Lewis Zacker, D.D., Rector, St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church

Reverend Dr. Floyd E. George, Pastor, Hanson Place Central United Methodist Church

Reverend Stanley Swan Slingerland, Pastor, Flatlands Dutch Reformed Church

Reverend Walter G.H. Jacobs, Rector, St. Augustine's Episcopal Church

Reverend Henri F. Gondret, Pastor, Grace Gospel Church

Reverend Linden Lindsay, Pastor, Cadman Memorial Congregational Church

Reverend J. Lane Miller, Pastor, Hanson Place Central United Methodist Church

Reverend Dr. John Emerson Zeiter, Pastor, Hanson Place Central United Methodist Church

Reverend Arthur Acy Rouner, Pastor, Cadman Memorial Congregational Church

Reverend Ernest A. Harding, Pastor, Messiah & Incarnation Lutheran Church

Reverend Dr. Gardner C. Taylor, Pastor, Concord Baptist Church of Christ

Reverend Oliver W. Powers, Pastor, St. Stephen's Lutheran Church

Reverend Henry A. Vruwink, Pastor, Flatbush Dutch Reformed Church

Reverend Dr. John Paul Jones, Pastor, Union Church of Bay Ridge

Reverend Dr. James Orlando Carrington, Pastor, First AME Zion Church

Reverend Kermit Castellanos, Rector, St. Bartholomew's Episcopal Church

Reverend Dr. Alfred Grant Walton, Pastor, Flatbush-Tompkins Congregational Church

Reverend Hugh Dwight Darsie, Pastor, Flatbush Christian Church, Disciples

Reverend Dr. Cornelius B. Muste, Pastor, Old First Reformed Church

Reverend Dr. Ralph Emerson Davis, Pastor, St. Mark's United Methodist Church

Reverend Dr. William F. Sunday, Pastor, Lutheran Church of the Good Shepherd

Reverend Dr. Phillips Packer Elliott, Pastor, First Presbyterian Church

Reverend Dr. Quentin T. Lightner, Pastor, Baptist Church of the Redeemer

Reverend Alfred V. Price, Rector, St. Philip's Episcopal Church, Dyker Heights

Reverend Hartley J. Hartman, Pastor, Andrews United Methodist Church

Reverend Albert E. Roraback, Pastor, Church of the Evangel, Congregational

Reverend Dr. Herbert H. Field, Pastor, Church of the Evangel, Congregational

Reverend Dr. George A. Clarke, Pastor, Emmanuel Baptist Church

Reverend Martin Paul Luther, Pastor, New Utrecht Reformed Church

Mr. Edward H. Wilson

Reverend Dr. Frank E. Simmons, Pastor, Spencer Memorial Presbyterian Church

Reverend Dr. Harold S. Miller, Pastor, Lutheran Church of the Incarnation

Reverend Dr. John Howard Melish, Rector, Holy Trinity Episcopal Church

Reverend Dr. Joseph Dunn Burrell, Pastor, Classon Avenue Presbyterian Church

Reverend Dr. John Langdale, Pastor, New York Avenue Methodist Church

Reverend Dr. J. Frederic Berg, Pastor, Bedford Presbyterian Church

Reverend Dr. Samuel Parkes Cadman, Pastor Central Congregational Church

Reverend John B. Summerfield, Pastor, Sands Street Methodist Episcopal Church

Alfred H. Porter, Esq., Pilgrim Congregational Church

Alfred S. Barnes, Esq, Pilgrim Congregational Church

William W. Wickes, Esq., Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church

Reverend Dr. Richard Salter Storrs, Pastor, Pilgrim Congregational Church

Reverend Benjamin C. Cutler, D.D., Rector, St. Ann's Episcopal Church

Reverend James S. 'Ichabod' Spencer, Pastor, Second Presbyterian Church

Bishop Charles Pettit McIlvaine, Rector, St. Ann's Episcopal Church

Significant Occasions and Celebrations in the
Lives of Brooklyn Churches

Dr. Samuel Parkes Cadman on
The Spiritual Value of Culture

The Rev. Dr. Samuel Parkes Cadman, pastor of the Central Congregational Church, Hancock street, near Bedford avenue, delivered the commencement address at Oberlin College on Thursday last. By request he incorporated much of it into his sermon yesterday morning in his own church. His subject was "The Spiritual Value of Culture." The address follows:

"The danger of college life to-day is in mediocrity. There is less distinction now than formerly in being a graduate. Our homes and streets swarm with them. There is more likelihood of dwelling on the ocmmon level, since that level is higher than it was. But not the less does the constant ascendancy of life call for your elevation in individuality, in aim and in achievement. The charm of novely is past, the very abundance of our academic privileges is sometimes a barrier to stern and deeper discipline. We must not cease to conspire with each returning day, to insist upon a new bias and a fresh authority, for those eternal truths toward which the whole creation moves and of which you are the representatives and the advocates.

"When the prophey speaks of how great men and women benefit human life he shows that they serve the race by arresting the drift, even as the desert rocks dams back the choking waste of sand. On the most distant horizon of history, in dim legends, in folk-lore, in song and story, we discern the evidences of this audacity. Generally the bold ones paid the penalty their temerity excited. Like the ancient banner which meant victory to the cause, but death to the bearer, so they made their protest and sealed it with sacrifice. But the philosophy of the past and all its healing of hurt and proclamation of gospel reveals dependence upon great characters, whose discernment substituted true for conventional morality, whose effort removed the accretions of error whic hlesser men had cast upon the eternal difference God has set between right and wrong. The abolition of slavery, the emancipation of women, the essential nobility of labor, the cleansing of social fountains, the removal of the relics of barbarism and the wrongs of civilization, the purification of speech and the triumphs of art and science and literature have been largely accelerated, when not actually caused, by free individuality moving under the compulsion of love and righteousness. Unto this end Oberlin stands appointed to emphasize the spiritual value of culture.

"Perhaps it will be better understood if we define our terms. Matthew Arnold was a man seriously impaired by prejudice and insular assurance, but his every word on the question of culture, is worthy of careful consideration. He rebuked John Bright for his fling at the friends and preachers of culture. He severely arraigned Frederck Harrison, the brilliant leader of the positivist school, for his statement that the very silliest rant of the day was the rant about culture. But if we remember the medieval tinge of some English schools the strictures of these men can be read in a new light. These schools suffered not coeducation, the resented science, they emphasized some useless studies. The unreal assumptions, the sickly cast, the absence of sympathy, the inertness and apathy against which John Bright protested, have damaged the influence of the den and the academic.

"But Dr. Arnold is stronger in his positive account of what culture really means that he is in his negative criticism. It is a desire to stagment the excellency of our own mixture to render an intelligent being more intelligent, having its origin, not in curiosity, as we use that term, but in a love of perfect life. Two sentiments are pervasive. First, the scientific passion for well ordered knowledge, and again the divine passion for doing good. To see, to learn the truth and make the truth the prevailing power of all life. This is culture, according to the apostle of sweetness and light. Simply to cherish these things for ourselves, to disassociate the one sentiment from the other, is a proceeding fraught with disaster. And this disaster. And this stands related vitally to all spiritual forces, because the conclusion they reach is an identified one. It is religion in its pregnant sense, and I am using the terms because they are different in meaning as much as for mental convenience.

"The final word of the Book of Books declares that the kingdom of God is within you. You are asked to make endless additions to self, in expansion of powers, in growth, in wisdom and beauty, and to reach this ever removing state the college has been instituted. But the expansion must be a general one. If you refuse to keep what you have by constantly bestowing it on those who have it not, you will not lose it. It is a twice blessed state, it blesseth him that gives and him than takes.

"Further, the gracious mingling of those elements in the due proportion saves from the excess against, which the Greeks masters warn us. Any neglect destroys the equipoise. The religious forces to-day need the grace, the geniality, the freedom of ths scholarly spirit, and scholarship needs the impulse of consecration, which devotion of God and man supplies. Sometimes these two elements have received names derived from the national exponents. They have been called hellenism and helbraism -- the tendencies toward perceiving, knowing, and also toward doing. But such distinctions should be carefully guarded; they are all absorbed in the sublime monotony of righteousness, which is the essential, the final, the supreme law of development for the individual, the nation, and the face. Wealth, arms, art, trade, government, must take their chance under that sovereign governance, and they should be cherished in the proportion of their service unto this end. Conscience is more than taste and moral blamelessness to be preferred before the cleverness of the senses; harmonized passions are the sweetest music and the purest delights are in the train of a profound and practical moral sense. When Mr. Arnold says that culture goes beyond religion, as religion is generally conceived by us, he indulges in specious talk which cannot fail to prove fatal to all good issues. The melancholy examples which show failure on a large scale because of the unwillingness or inability of nations to maintain the priority of God and His laws in their systems of knowledge were well known to this pleader. The world could not live by an incomplete message in the past. It needs the whole truth to-day. Holiness is wholeness, and wholesomeness, too, the standard, when rightly understood, of complete harmonious perfection.

"There is at present an aloofness from popular religion upon the part of earnest, thoughtful men. True this unfortunate condition is not without its brilliant exceptions, for which we feel profoundly grateful toward separateness upon the part of the learned and the wise. I sometimes wonder if we have not left the truth at some vital points quite as much as these people, and I opine that a mutual understanding would be beneficial to all concerned. But a truce to the painful query. Is it an outgrowth of this discussion to be mentioned in passing?

"The spiritual value of culture in mental discipline is an offset to the material and superficial estimates of this wealthy age. The possession of the atmosphere by the mind, the filling of it with principles and song and music, these were a more enduring possession for Germany than her conquests of a later day. England's coal fields may become exhausted but her glory in Shakespeare and Milton, Tennyson and Browning, cannot fade. Our true greatness is not in braggart shouts concerning power and resources, but in the strength and dignity and inspiration of our social countenance set against any wrong. The inestimable service you render others by patient self mastery and painful toil is felt wherever you move as a corrective for that fatal superficiality of temper which breeds cheap men, cheap thinking, cheap phrases, cheap hymns, cheap everything, and reinforces the burden of shoddy product beneath which we groan. The indirect influence of such sacrificial labor upon the world is an unexplored realm. And you can have no evangel for others which has not cost you weary toll. A few choice, close thinkers formed a band which liberated Europe. They were the noiseless forces overwhelming ancient traditions, and no man can write the history of modern days without continually recognizing their efforts. But they could not have done this were they not first the masters of themselves.

"So, let us cheerfully accept the drudgery of thinking, the unfamiliar as against the common, the hard work and unremitting sweat of brain which brings your thought and aim to heel at call. In such efforts, renewed daily, the fog lifts, the illusions scatter, you see men as trees walking and the first meaning of 'ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free' dawn across the soul. When the real temper of mind and heart necessary to knowledge and growth and service has been acquired, you perceive in the studies you follow the hidden secrets they will reveal only to the initiated.

"Take art, which is praise, dealing with beauty only, as science and literature deals with facts, and what to know, so art teaching us what to feel and enjoy rightly. In its constructive side the artist finds joy in the power given him to manifest God's glory; on the interpretive side He brings to others an intelligent appreciation and even rapture in the works of the Supreme.

"The world's no blot nor blank when thus laid hold of by cultured processes. Its meanings are our meat and drink. No glory passes away from the earth when we view it with clarified vision. The light of common day is the same radiance undimmed in splendor which first glided the solitary peak with the torch of dawn. And when we recognize that no bush, nor flower, nor river, nor the ground on which we tread, but is a divine thought, throbbing with the presence of God, then that sense of sacred unity will throw on the canvas its own beauty and give new meaning to the chisel which reveals the heart of marble.

"Bishop Westcott shows us that Christian art, through the fact of the incarnation, has given a wholly new significance to all nature and to all life. It has brought a sacramental element into all that touches our senses and its special aim is to realize beauty in life in the light of faith, to find in humanity and nature, despite ravages, the clew to the events which is creation's crown, that the word became flesh. Manhood is not, for the Christian artist, as it was for the Greek, the final type of the highest, but a sign and a pledge of the spiritual destiny of the finite. Here all rudimentary powers require seriousness and cultivation; here, as it seems to me, is the hope of this great pursuit, its redemption from folly, its cleansing from stain; here is the spiritual crown of mechanical methods and cultured means, and here, as everywhere, the unity I am trying to enforce most signally prevails.

"The fascination for the scenes and haunts of the older portions of the world is not because their native beauties are superior to those more recently known. The Alps are not above the Andes and the Rockies in this respect. Rather it is because in these great books of God we have no longer conned and the light of this interpretation is more concentrated upon the Rhine then upon the Hudson. And when our sceneries are spiritualized, and indeed, they are in part, as by Whittier in New England, they will be afresh invested with new delights and praises. Surely the words of Pericles should be ours too, possessing the country we do. "We are devoted to beauty, while we guard frugality; we are devoted to wisdom without the loss of manliness.' And when the soul has reached these treasures thus placed before it, the man and the woman will find no rest until their life corresponds with their patrimony.

"The spiritual value of literature; what a theme, with unsuspected heights and depths. I mention it since for mention it clamors, but any reference must be bare and fragmentary. So rich and suggestive are the various enticements of this topic, one is tempted to linger. Yet finals ends can only be attained by final means, and compromise here is frequent and sometimes it sullies the record. Popular education has been set back by tawdry books. Knowledge has been laid waste for by a spread of ephemeral and harmful literature. We may not share the taste of an old Highland deerstalker, but we can admire it. He lived fifteen miles from human intercourse and the good Bishop of Stepney asked if he might send him some magazines with which to employ the long winter evenings. 'No,' he replied, 'I have not wish for light stuff such as that, but could you get me a copy of the Sermons of Jonathan Edwards?' And then he added, 'He gives such a grand account of the scheme of redemption!' Such words echo in the heart of a true student. They should warn us that there is a sinister side to the shield, when we expatiate on the infinite blessings of literature. Think of the misuse of books, the debilitating waste of brain, in aimless, promiscuous reading or even in the poisonous inhalation of mere garbage. No book can be more than the man who wrote it; it may be less, and many are not desirable companions. Art we not in danger of seeking stimulus rather than solidity, of stuffing our minds with the trivial or the merely curious, of neglecting the nutritive elements of reading and the spiritually sustaining; of reading about Milton and Goethe rather than reading them, of dallying with the books of the day rather than pondering over the books of the ages, the precious heirlooms of our race?

"An impotent veracity for desultory information must be subdued, the abiding must be sifted from the evanescent parts of knowledge. Then comes discrimination, choice, system, comprehension, fitness and the highest contact, the finding of the very eye of God, so to speak, for every girl and woman before me. Our stately Milton said, 'As good almost kill a man as kill a good book.' In the great republic of letters the spirit of freedom and equality prevails: here is seen the inmost min of man, apart from shrouding mantle and disguise, no introduction is needed. We hear Johnson moralize and Burke perorate and Wordsworth muse on the dewy hillside and Scott tell his necromancers without asking leave or paying toll. And out of this wondrous realm there come trooping all the gracious and blessed forces which have spun electric thoughts from mind to mind, dissolved barriers, plucked down the mighty and exalted the humble and the weak. And since no volume can endure which does not respect the sanctions of divine law and reverence truth in its innermost parts, one may easily see the spiritual value of a knowledge of literature pursued in right lines.

"Theology finds vent in fiction, in the doctrines of the conscience as you have it in 'Romola' and 'The Scarlet Letter.' George MacDonald and Mrs. Humphry Ward expound their religious systems or lack thereof, in the form of a tale. The best and purest Christian optimism flows out of Browning's deep springs of though. Tennyson's services to the faith in his 'In Memoriam' can be dimly seen now he is gone, when you read his biography. He saved Oxford from agnosticism by this single poem, as surely as Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe doomed slavery by a second rate novel and James Russell Lowell smooth the nation's conscience with his glorious verse. Why should I linger to demonstrate further the value of culture as a spiritual force, or the spiritual value of the forces of culture, take it as you will? I can but hint at the revolution in the attitude of scientific thought in the past ten years. Had I stood here a decade ago these hints would have been denied by the trend of opinion among cultured scientists. They are not denied to-day. She has discovered her sheer inability to cast out God from her thinking, and the utterances of Professor Romanes, the later words of even Mr. Huxley, and the last word of Mr. Spencer would indicate that the tidal wave of materialistic agnosticism which threatened to become a mania is lowering its crest.

"We advocate that each life grow on its own root, and that root should be deeply fastened in God. We believe self-knowledge leads to self-reverence, self-control, and these conduct life to sovereign power. And above all we hold true to the Christian interpretation of life, to seek to know, to learn, to love, to serve, to die, as John Richard Green said, learning to die as Jesus did, loving, these are our ultimates. The busy world swallows up our graduates year by year, but the soul instilled here finds its familiar outside and works and waits in mingling of labor and of faith for the new day.

"When John Richard Green spent an evening with Gladstone he says of him: 'I felt proud of my leader, because he was so noble of soul.' Let us so live and act here that we may keep the soul of this nation alive and masterly. This is the supreme care for which God invested you with life and sex and peculiar facilities. Others are seeking lower ends; some in anarchy would destroy all. But we go out from these cloistered retreats to maintain the spirit of a mighty people, to give it force, direction, courage, purity and Godward aim. And this can be a common pursuit until the manhood and womanhood of America, free without license, and fearless without pride, and tender without maudlin weakness, becomes the revelation and crown of culture in spiritual realms.

Dr. Cadman will not be in his pulpit again until the second Sunday in September. He and his family sail on Friday for England. During July and August the Central and Tompkins Avenue Congregational will hold union services.

Publication: Brooklyn Eagle; Date: January 30, 1902

Close of a Week's Celebration in the Concord
Baptist Church -- Addresses by Clergymen

The fiftieth anniversary of the Concord Baptist Church, which began on Sunday evening last in the church edifice, was brought to a close last night by a grand jubilee service, in which a number of ministers and choirs from neighboring churches took part.

The services opened with an organ voluntary, which was followed by prayer by the Rev. Dr. Edwards of St. Phillip's Baptist church, Port Richmond, S.I., who had been ordained in the church on Tuesday, May 4, last. The choir of the church followed with the anthem, "Great and Marvelous." The Rev. William T. Dixon, pastor of the church, made a brief address of welcome.

The next address was deliverd by the Rev. W.A. Alexander of Tarrytown, N.Y., who spoke of the questions, "Are Our Churches a Necessity?" He said that it was claimed by some that the establishment of churches for the colored people caused the fostering of prejudice and the perpetuation of misunderstanding. This he did not believe. Mr. Alexander was compelled to cut his address short by the tinkling of the bell, which told him that his time was up.

The Rev. A.J. Henny of the Nazarean Congregational church followed with an address on "Sociability in Our Churches." He said that Christ's sermons dwell on two things, love and respect of God, and also love and respect of man. By man's fall these attributes warred against one another, and it was the church's duty to bring man to his former place. In order to bring success to the church it was necessary to have sociability and all Christians should dwell together as in one church.

The choir of the Siloam Presbyterian church then sang "Calm on the Listening Ear," and Rev. L. Joseph Brown of the Berean Presbyterian church was introduced. he advocated the need of more spirituality in the churches and said that the words of Christ were useless unless the people were born again by water and the holy spirit.

"What the Church Should Do for the World," was the subject assigned to the Rev. G.F. Miller of St. Augustine's P.E. church. Dr. Miller stated that he had traveled ninety........

St. Augustine's boys' choir followed Mr. Miller and sang "Holy, Holy, Holy," with fine effect. The Rev. Dr. R.I. Gaines spoke of how strangers should be treated in the church. The church that was not hospitable would not live long. Every church should have a lookout committee that would take care of strangers and mank them welcome.

The Rev. J.M. Proctor of the Union Bethel A.M.E. church said that more liberality was necessary. The support of the church was part of the divine service. It wsa just as much the duty of the people to contribute financially as to enjoy the sermon or take part in the service.

After Mme. Wilson sang a solo Dr. Dixon introduced T. McCants Stewart who spoke on "Law and Gospel." He said that the rules of all law had been taken from the scriptures. Upon the ten commandments the jurisprudence of humanity had been based. Mr. Stewart finised his address before Dr. Dixon rang the bell, and the latter remarked that that was because he was a lawyer and carried briefs in his pockets.

Mrs. Dr. V.H. Morton, who was the only woman to speak, made a very interesting address on "Health and Religion."

The Rev. Dr. W.D. Cook of the Bridge street A.M.E. church also spoke and a letter of regret was read from T.T. Fortune who was to have made an address on "The Church and the Newspaper." Others who were unable to attend were the Rev. C.W. Appley, M.D.; the Rev. H.C. Bishop, the Rev. C.N. Randall, the Rev. J.H. Buckner and the Rev. R.D. Wynn.

The Rev. William Hill of Newark, N.J., made the closing prayer, after which Dr. Dixon stated that nearly $2,000 had been collected during the jubilee services. He urged further generosity and a collection was taken up and $100.80 was contributed.

The doxology was sung and afterward the benediction was pronounced, the clergymen and the members ofthe choir were furnished with refreshments in the lecture rooms.

Publication: Brooklyn Eagle; Date: May 22, 1897