Spencer S, Roche 
 
 ^^\ St. Mark's Sixtieth 
 
 Anniversary 1850 - 1910 
 
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St. Mark's Sixtieth Anniversary 
 1850-1910 
 
 A Discourse delivered in 
 
 Sunday, December 18, 1910 
 By REV. SPENCER S. ROCHE. D.D. 
 
 Rector 
 
^ PRINCETON, N. J. *jf^ 
 
 Presented bySoe/^n Cje^T C) , WOOn £/ ^ID rX) , 
 Division ..QA-.O. V C-O 
 
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* OCT 19 1911 *y 
 
 St. Mark's Sixtieth Anniversary 
 
 1850- 1910 
 
 A Discourse delivered in 
 
 Bt Mudis fflt|urrl|, Irnokign 
 
 Sunday, December 18, 1910 
 By REV. SPENCER S. ROCHE, D.D. 
 
 PRESS OF HUNTER COLLINS, INC. 
 
 138 LIVINGSTON STREET 
 
 BROOKLYN, N. Y. 
 
 1911 
 
ST. MARK'S SIXTIETH ANNIVERSARY 
 
 "I thank my God upon all my remembrance of you, always in 
 every supplication of mine in behalf of you all making my 
 supplication with joy, for your fellowship in furtherance of 
 the Gospel from the first day until now ; being confident of this 
 very thing, that he who began a good work in you will perfect 
 it until the day of Jesus Christ. — Philippians, 1 :3-6. 
 
 The Epistle to the Philippians is not doctrinal statement, but 
 personal tenderness. It is an outburst of the heart, springing 
 from the deepest inward need of loving fellowship. It unites 
 exquisite sympathy with courageous faith. 
 
 The words from a Roman dungeon, may instruct us in review 
 and outlook after sixty years of our Brooklyn church's life. 
 
 With reverent gratitude St. Paul cherishes devout and joyous 
 reminiscence. Memory had a wide scope in these words, "from 
 the first day until now." There are concrete facts, local ref- 
 erences. 
 
 Philippi was on the great Roman road from Europe to Asia 
 Minor, about nine miles from the sea, and backed by a mountain 
 range. Here St. Paul had preached Christ without encountering 
 the usual opposition. There were cities larger and more re- 
 nowned, where his discourses roused the most virulent abuse, 
 and where the most tactful missionary efforts were bafifled. But 
 it was different in Philippi. There one did not find the philo- 
 sophic scorn of Athens, nor the mob violence of Thessalonica. 
 The Philippians were of the middle class, earning, in most cases 
 honestly, their own living. Recall the peculiar circumstances of 
 the first three converts. Lydia was by birth an Asiatic, engaged 
 in a necessary and lucrative trade, a seller of purple, which may 
 mean a dyer or a dressmaker. The maid with the spirit of 
 divination, the pythoness, was in all probability a Greek, and 
 
 3 
 
turned to account the credulity and superstition of the multi- 
 tude. The jailer represented in an humble capacity, the Roman 
 empire's power and respect for law. 
 
 Like Brooklyn, Philippi was a city largely inhabited by those 
 who were natives of other lands. The prominent part taken by 
 women in the evangelization of the community, must not be 
 overlooked, nor the resulting fact that whole families were 
 gathered into the Philippian Church. 
 
 On a previous anniversary we have considered the ecclesias- 
 tical condition of Brooklyn in 1850: let us today call up certain 
 local, social, political, and religious conditions in a singularly 
 pregnant period. Let us glance at the life of Brooklyn from the 
 first day of St. Mark's until now. What was then a petty city 
 is now almost the largest borough of the second metropolis of 
 the globe. The year constitutes an important epoch in the civic 
 and general history. It may not inaptly be said to mark our 
 transition from preparatory to permanent stages of thought and 
 activity. 
 
 In 1850 we were comparatively a poor people. There were 
 only seven billions of national wealth, being only $308 per capita. 
 Today we have one hundred and seven billions for the nation 
 and $1,310 per capita. Then our productions were worth a 
 billion dollars, and they are now worth fifteen billions. Then 
 the United States had a population of twenty-three millions : it 
 now has ninety millions. Then eight people, on the average, 
 dwelt on a square mile: now thirty people live on a square mile. 
 The total Federal Revenue amounted to $47,000,000, while the 
 entire expenses of the general government were $44,000,000, 
 scarce a third of what it now costs to administer the affairs of 
 the city of New York. There were thirty-six thousand churches 
 of every name, the total value of their property exceeding $86,- 
 000,000. The property of our church alone today is reckoned 
 at $125,000,000. 
 
 Thru the country there was a remarkable development, both 
 as to methods and magnitude. We had immense energy, but 
 not much cash. Our enterprises rested on foreign capital. A 
 
 4 
 
graphic memorial of our condition is afforded by one of the very 
 foremost structures down town. What is now the City Bank 
 and was formerly the Custom House, was before that the Mer- 
 chants' Exchange. This building, with its present imposing 
 granite colonnade, was erected in 1839, at a cost of $1,500,000, 
 on the site of the earlier building destroyed in the great fire of 
 1835. More than half the amount, or $800,000, had been bor- 
 rowed in England and secured by bond and mortgage. Said 
 Mr. Gallatin, the financial authority of the day, in 1839, — "Specie 
 is to the United States, a foreign product." In 1850, we were 
 still largely a debtor nation, and such can hold coin only by favor. 
 Immigration, the western farms, California gold, and an infinite 
 variety of manufactures, were soon to change all this. 
 
 About this time, immigration became a flood. A few years 
 prior to the laying of our first corner-stone, only handfuls of 
 foreigners came : one hundred thousand a year startled everyone. 
 Beyond the Atlantic, there were great sufferings and many 
 changes. 1848 witnessed bloody revolutions among the Euro- 
 pean States, while Ireland experienced two years of appalling 
 famine. Vast multitudes started for America, the peasantry 
 of Ireland seeking food, the downtrodden peoples in many lands 
 seeking liberty. Three hundred thousand came in 1849, and 
 four hundred and twenty-eight thousand in 1850. 
 
 There were of course mighty land areas to be cultivated, for 
 great events were taking place in the nation. Texas added three 
 hundred and fifty thousand square miles to the national domain. 
 The Mexican War was fought. New Mexico and California, 
 comprising five hundred thousand square miles, became part of 
 the United States. No sooner was the treaty with Mexico signed, 
 than gold in rich deposits was discovered in California. Perhaps 
 the world never saw such a flocking together of adventurers as 
 that of the gold seekers of 1849-1850. They scuttled into the new 
 country from adjoining regions, from the Middle West, from 
 our Eastern States and from every continent. In Brooklyn and 
 New York men left their business, families and churches to make 
 the long, perilous journey of months. By the time the census 
 
 5 
 
of 1850 was taken, eighty thousand settlers had rushed to the 
 neighborhood of San Francisco. Some made their way over the 
 endless and barren plains, even walking over the snowy passes 
 of the Rocky Mountains. Some crossed near where we are dig- 
 ging the Panama Canal, and thence took little vessels up the 
 west coast to the Golden Gate. Some went by the six-months 
 trip around Cape Horn. The bones of many an ill-fated gold- 
 seeker were whitening on the western deserts and many a frail 
 bark went to wreck on the Pacific shores. The winter of 1849- 
 1850 was very cold and snowy in New York, and thousands of 
 men hastened to California. As few found gold, gentlemen from 
 our best clubs turned porters, waiters and peddlers in San 
 Francisco. 
 
 Providentially our industries were suddenly broadened. 
 Machinery showed wonderful improvements ; practical sewing- 
 machines were being made, but had hardly as yet become known ; 
 the rotary printing press was making its way more rapidly ; the 
 power loom for weaving cloth had been greatly improved; loco- 
 motives and steamboats we had, of course, but now came the 
 McCormick reaper, producing changes scarcely less striking than 
 those brought about by the application of steam in transportation. 
 With the reaper came other advances in farm equipment. It 
 was not till the Worlds Fair, projected by the Prince Consort in 
 London in 1851, that the world at large learned for the first time 
 of the novel agricultural machinery which was being set to work 
 on our American prairies. That made the western farms profit- 
 able and gave a huge impulse to the occupancy of the land. 
 
 The year brought great changes in transportation and in the 
 telegraph. The first trunk line railroad to enter New York was 
 the Erie, whose tracks were completed from Lake Erie to 
 the Hudson River early in 1851. The railroads that ran out 
 of New York were humble afifairs. For Albany and inter- 
 mediate points, one took the cars at the corner of Chambers and 
 and Hudson Streets, or in Thirty-first Street near Tenth Avenue. 
 For Albany via Harlem, the station was at 4 Tryon Row, just 
 east of the City Hall, and at Twenty-seventh Street and Fourth 
 
 
 
Avenue. The trains for Boston started from 412 Broadway, 
 near Canal Street, and also from Fourth Avenue and Twenty- 
 seventh Street. For Greenport and all places on Long Island, 
 passengers crossed by the South Ferry to Brooklyn. There were 
 two roads to Philadelphia, one via the ferryboat from the foot 
 of Cortlandt Street, the train running through Newark ; the 
 other via South Amboy and Camden, the steamers leaving our 
 Pier 1 and running to South Amboy where the railroad com- 
 menced. 
 
 It was not till 1844 that the first telegraph line in the country 
 was in operation. New York and Philadelphia were not joined 
 till 1846. Though in 1850 the wires were strung over less than 
 17,000 miles in the United States, they were already changing 
 methods of business. We were to wait eight years for the 
 Atlantic cable. 
 
 Those were the days of American triumphs on the ocean. 
 The gold excitement gave immense impetus to the construction 
 of clippers. The "Surprise," belonging to A. A. Low Bros., 
 reached San Francisco from New York, in ninety days, and left 
 there for London via Canton, receiving six pounds sterling per 
 ton for tea and all freight, netting her owners $50,000 in excess 
 of her cost and running expenses. Our flag was seen on our 
 own ships pn every sea. A few months later the yacht "America" 
 defeated all competitors and won the Queen's Cup. The steamer 
 "Atlantic" in the summer crossed the ocean, making the run 
 from New York to Liverpool in ten days, eight hours and 
 twenty minutes, breaking all records. 
 
 The human mind confronted with such immense external 
 changes, passed through a period of ferment which ended in 
 the reign of transcendentalism and criticism in politics, litera- 
 ture and religion. Most fantastic of all the new systems that 
 found origin in this period, we must count Mormonism. 
 
 Our political events were the outgrowth of the unrest, the 
 anxieties, the aspirations and the blind gropings of the time. 
 The spectre of slavery was looming and laying its corrupt hands 
 on every public question. The incoming peoples from Europe 
 
 7 
 
seeking labor, instinctively turned aside from the southern states 
 and gravitated to the west. While Congress was wondering 
 what to do with the newly-acquired territories, California came 
 to the front with a vigorous, clamorous population demanding 
 statehood. Were there to be slaves in these new states and terri- 
 tories ? How was the Constitution to be interpreted ? Were 
 the economic ideas and the political doctrines of the south or 
 of the north, to spread to the Pacific coast? These were the 
 questions which aroused a bitterness we try hard in this genera- 
 tion to understand. Mr. Calhoun voiced the demands of the 
 south ; Daniel Webster and Henry Clay on the side of the north, 
 urged mediation and compromise. While our earliest services 
 were being held, contradictory enactments by Congress were 
 suffered to go upon record. It was agreed that California should 
 be free and that New Mexico should have slaves : that the Dis- 
 trict of Columbia should be free from slave traffic, but not from 
 slave-holding, while a stringent Fugitive Slave Law should aid 
 southerners in recovering their runaways. Brooklyn quickly 
 discovered what the Fugitive Slave Law meant. Two days before 
 our first services were held, James Hamlet, a former slave living 
 not far from St. Mark's, was arrested under the new law and 
 taken back to his owners in Baltimore. Pviblic indignation could 
 find no other course than a subscription list which purchased the 
 man's freedom and returned him to his family. Close upon the 
 huddling together in Congress of these compromises, close upon 
 the first services of St. Mark's, great names passed from the 
 living. Calhoun died March 31st, and the soldier-President, 
 Harrison, July 9th. Two years later, in 1852, Henry Clay was 
 taken in June, and Mr. Webster in October. During the first 
 ten years of our parochial history the bitterness of factions in- 
 creased till the volcanic outburst came in a civil war that devas- 
 tated the land for four years and slew a million men, and piled 
 up thousands of millions of debt. 
 
 Turning to a happier theme, the growth of the Kingdom, what 
 visions rise as we think of the simple beginning of St. Mark's 
 services! The General Convention of our Church met in 1850, 
 
curiously enough, in Cincinnati, where it assembled two months 
 ago. The Upper House consisted of twenty-eight Bishops, the 
 number standing now at one hundred and twelve. The Board 
 of Alissions reported $201,000 raised throughout the Church in 
 three years : our receipts at present are in the neighborhood of 
 a million dollars annually. The total number of the clergy was 
 then 1,580: we have 5,500 now. In the Journal there is a quaint 
 chapter on the "Course of Ecclesiastical Studies," which quotes 
 the action of the House of Bishops in 1804, a pronouncement in 
 which no mention is made of either the Greek or Hebrew lan- 
 guages, there being in consequence no mention of any require- 
 ment to read the Bible in the original tongues. The Diocese of 
 New York, of which we then formed a part, was in an anomalous 
 condition. From January 3, 1845, till November 10, 1852, a 
 period of seven years, as result of action taken by the Convention 
 of the Diocese, as well as by the General Convention, the leading 
 jurisdiction of the American Church was left without a Bishop. 
 Confirmations were held at St. Mark's in the years 1851 and 1852 
 by Bishop Chase, of New Hampshire. Dr. Wainwright, at St. 
 John's Chapel, Trinity Parish, was called in 1852 to be Provi- 
 sional Bishop of New York. Dr. Berrian was Rector of Trinity 
 Church. Dr. Whitehouse, afterward Bishop of Illinois, was in 
 St. Thomas Church, which then stood at the corner of Broadway 
 and Houston Street ; Dr. Bedell, afterward Bishop of Ohio, was 
 at Ascension, Fifth Avenue and Tenth Street, among the new 
 Knickerbocker settlement; the elegant and learned Dr. Seabury 
 was at the Annunciation in Fourteenth Street; Dr. Muhlenberg 
 was far uptown at the Church of the Holy Communion at Twen- 
 tieth Street. It is interesting in connection with the Deaf Mutes' 
 services held in this church for many years, to recall that prior 
 to St. Mark's beginning, Thomas Gallaudet was superintendent 
 of the Sunday School of St. Stephen's Church, Broome Street, 
 New York. He was ordained a deacon there June 16, 1850, 
 by Bishop Whittingham, becoming assistant at St. Stephen's, 
 September 18, 1850, on which day he started the first Bible class 
 for Deaf Mutes in America. 
 
 9 
 
The very amusements of the people showed that we were 
 emerginj;^ from the simple ways of earlier times. P. T. Barnum's 
 advertising- of Jenny Lind had created a furore. A few days 
 before our first worship, the "Swedish nightingale" had opened 
 her season at Castle Garden with an audience of seven thousand 
 people, the proceeds amounting to $35,000. The unprecedented 
 spectacle was afforded of people eagerly paying twenty-five dol- 
 lars for an evening's entertainment. The same manager about 
 the same time made the drama popular among a class of people 
 who had maintained that the stage was immoral. His Museum 
 included a "Lecture Room," designed for the presentation of 
 what was called the '"'moral domestic drama." Strict church 
 people in the city, and country visitors without number, and 
 clergymen, found these entertainments entirely proper. Our 
 Coney Island in 1850 was Hoboken, with a week-day population 
 of 2,700 and a Sunday influx of 20,000. 
 
 It may interest us to recall the notable events of that day in 
 our city. A few weeks earlier, the Grinnell Expedition had set 
 sail from New York for the Arctic circle, bent upon discovering 
 some trace of the lamented Sir John Franklin, Dr. Elisha Kent 
 Kane going as surgeon and naturalist. The Astor Library had 
 just been started, Governor Hamilton Fish having recommended 
 the necessary legislation. While the "Herald," the "Sun" and 
 the "Tribune" had been some years in the field, the "New York 
 Times'" was not founded by Henry J. Raymond till the following 
 year. The "World" was not to appear for ten years yet. New 
 York's population in 1850 was 515,000, not a third of Brooklyn's 
 inhabitants at the present time. Immigration, about 1850, brought 
 a remarkable change in the living. Before that year, our domes- 
 tics were largely blacks ; afterward the Irish became general. 
 New York's uptown movement had begun. It was noticed that 
 in 1850 there was not a single private residence on Pine Street. 
 A. T. Stewart, in 1854, extended his marble store to Reade Street. 
 On Broadway, as far as Bleecker Street, the private residences 
 were giving place to structures for business. The fashionable 
 residence sections were Bond Street, Washington Square, East 
 
 10 
 
Broadway and Union Square. An elegant region was building 
 up on Second Avenue, Peter G. Stuyvesant having given an area 
 for a square, on condition that the city should erect a proper iron 
 fence. The cutting through of the avenue divided this into two 
 pretty parks, on the west side of which the massive St. George's 
 Church was rising. Samuel B. Ruggles, wishing to get people 
 to erect first-class buildings a little higher up than Union Square, 
 presented what is now Gramercy Park, to the owners of sixty 
 adjoining lots of land. How to improve the ten acre region 
 where Broadway crosses Fifth Avenue w^as a problem. A stream 
 of water and a pond where the boys skated in winter interfered 
 with all plans for its development. Through the influence of 
 Mayor James Harper Madison Square took final form and 
 rescued this part of the town from its wastes and shanties and 
 made a new centre of fashion and amusement. No one yet 
 dreamed of such a place as Central Park : but about this time 
 the idea of connecting Brooklyn and New York by bridge was 
 seriously discussed, an editorial in the "Tribune" saying: "The 
 bridge is the great event of the day ; New York and Brooklyn 
 must be united and there is no other way of doing it. The thing 
 will certainly be achieved one of these days, and the sooner 
 the better." The likeliest plan for this improvement included a 
 floating bridge with a draw for passing vessels. 
 
 In Brooklyn there had been a disastrous epidemic of cholera, 
 especially on the low, unhealthy grounds. We had only enjoyed 
 gas for two years and the great majority insisted that lamps 
 were in every way superior. Our first church began with these. 
 Improvements at Gowanus were made on a large scale by con- 
 structing a navigable canal to drain the malarious swamps, 
 increasing the healthfulness of South Brooklyn and stimulating 
 building. These efforts were successful, one-third the buildings 
 erected in Brooklyn in 1849 being south of Atlantic Avenue. 
 
 In the "History of St. Mark's Church 1850 to 1885" reference 
 is made to the three sites which St. Mark's has occupied. It 
 suffices now to say that the original location in Fleet Place near 
 Willoughby Street, was in a well-populated community. The 
 
 11 
 
ground purchased in 1860 at DeKalb and Portland Avenues was 
 in a newly built, handsome region. Our present, and let us hope 
 permanent, site was purchased from the Church of the Messiah 
 in 1866. That parish had been planted here at the same period 
 
 that we had built in Fleet Place. 
 
 The original church building for the Messiah must have been 
 erected on this site among farms and vacant lots. In the Brook- 
 lyn Directory for 1841-2, Adelphi Street runs between Clermont 
 and Carlton Avenues south from the Wallabout Road to Myrtle 
 Avenue, and has only eight houses, of which three belong to 
 officers of the United States Navy. It is not till 1854 that Adelphi 
 Street crosses Flushing, Park, Myrtle, Willoughby, DeKalb, 
 Lafayette, Greene, Fulton and Atlantic Avenues. Many facts 
 show that this region of Brooklyn was then beyond the limits 
 of civic dignity. When we commenced services, squatters were 
 on Myrtle Avenue oposite Fort Greene. As these refused to pay 
 rent or to obey the town ordinances to remove, it was decided to 
 evict them by force. 
 
 While our little edifice was being pushed forward, Trinity 
 Chapel, New York, was in building, the Marble Dutch Church 
 at Twenty-ninth Street and Fifth Avenue was being planned, 
 and the Roman Catholic Cathedral at Fiftieth Street and Fifth 
 Avenue was being commenced by Archbishop Hughes. Brook- 
 lyn now had 100,000 and Williamsburgh 20,000, the latter having 
 risen since 1840 from 5,000, and intending to annex Bushwick, 
 with 15,000. 
 
 We note first in the words to the Philippians the Apostle's 
 overflowing gratitude for fellowship in the work of the Gospel. 
 Strong personal afifection existed. 
 
 "I thank my God upon all my remembrance of you, always in 
 every supplication of mine in behalf of you all making my 
 supplication with joy for your fellowship in furtherance of the 
 Gospel." 
 
 Paul could not offer a prayer without indulging a supplica- 
 tion for those dear souls. As he later says, he had the Philip- 
 I)ians in his heart. 
 
 Let it be with humility, with a painful sense of the mani- 
 
 12 
 
fold shortcomings both of the people and of your clergy, but 
 most of all of your present Rector, that we apply to ourselves 
 these burning words of primitive zeal. Yet we feel that St. 
 Paul struck the chord in Philippi, to which our hearts respond 
 here in St. Mark's. Your ministers have received unmistakable 
 tokens of your devotion. Of Francis Peck, I never heard anyone 
 speak but in the tenderest manner. To rich and poor he ap- 
 peared the sympathetic, sincere messenger of Christ. Dr. Cor- 
 nell attached people as with hooks of steel. Mr. Fitch held to his 
 last hour, the strong respect of intelligent and devout people. 
 
 As we mention the ministers, visions rise of their helpers, 
 of the men and women who worshipped in our congregations, 
 taught our Bible classes, labored in our societies, extended the 
 power of the Gospel to the souls without. Among our workers, 
 let us thank God for Hyde, for Burtis and Hinman, and Mrs. 
 Potter, for Huntington, and Hoffman, for Warburton and 
 Walker, for Budington, the Lockitts and Pettits, for Roes and 
 Longmans. Let us speak tenderly, too, the names of Davis and 
 Whittaker, of Bouck and Newell, of Cole and Fricke, of Mor- 
 timer, Annan and Keeney. We think of all the sacred hours 
 that weary, tempted souls have known in these four edifices. 
 There are the seventeen hundred lives consecrated in their early 
 days at this Font, with the water of Baptism. There are the 
 thousand souls who, in Confirmation, deliberately and solemnly 
 promised obedience to Jesus Christ. There are the many thou- 
 sands who, kneeling before this altar, ate and drank of the Body 
 and Blood of Christ and found their souls mysteriously strength- 
 ened. There are the more than twelve hundred lovers whose 
 hands were joined here and to whom Heaven allotted happiness 
 and oiTspring. And there were the recumbent forms of sire and 
 grandsire, of wife and child, of brother and friend, borne twice 
 through these aisles as the tears streamed and we tried to sing, 
 
 "For all the saints, who from their labors rest. 
 
 Who Thee by faith before the world confessed, 
 
 Thy Name, O Jesu, be forever blest, 
 
 Alleluia." 
 13 
 
Such sacred reminiscences of Pastor and People excite the 
 profoundest feehngs of thanksgiving. 
 
 "I thank my God upon every remembrance of you all." I 
 thank Him not merely for my great-souled, earnest, devoted 
 father, nor for my gracious, sainted mother, nor for my happy 
 home, nor for my love of books and art and nature, but I thank 
 Him too for the difficulties and discouragements, for the delights 
 and dignities of this rectorship of St. Mark's. 
 
 If you would find the purest friendship of this world, I would 
 advise you to study the lives that have been given to the Church 
 of God. Look to the men and women who built up some little 
 mission, or to the sacred companionships the people of St. Mark's 
 have known in their sixty years. As life passes, our most 
 precious memories are not of our amusements, nor our occupa- 
 tions, nor even of our domestic enjoyments, but rather of those 
 hours when the soul was swept by impulses from God on high, 
 hours when we labored to build up the kingdom of Christ, hours 
 in which we listened to the herald of divine truth, or tried to 
 speak of sin and salvation, of Christ and heaven to the little 
 children. 
 
 But it is time to turn from the past to the future. There is 
 the anticipation, under God, of a great future. Philippi is to 
 behold the "furtherance of the Gospel." The good work that 
 started in Lydia's house, is to broaden out till many in the town 
 should be blessed. "Being confident of this very thing, that he 
 which hath begim a good work in you will perfect it until the 
 day of Jesus Christ." We are embarked on a course which in 
 the event of human fidelity, must issue in glorious well-being. 
 
 The words of St. Paul represent the religion of Jesus Christ 
 in a light that goes far to explain the secret of its practical 
 supremacy among human interests. The Gospel is a good work 
 begun, promising perfection. It is the cause of truth, of justice, 
 of purity, in a word, the cause of God working through the race 
 of men. The weakness, the mutability, the evanescence that 
 characterize all other forms of activity, do not in like manner 
 characterize the Church. The vine may be cut down, but it 
 
 14 
 
springs again and in the new life brings forth richer clusters. 
 
 Why should not the future of St. Mark's be bright in work 
 done for the Master? The parish is planted in a beautiful region 
 in one of the most prosperous communities of our times. The 
 growth of the Borough of Brooklyn is more than startling. Brook- 
 lyn built in 1909 residential structures for 67,000 persons. In 
 the three years 1907, '8 and '9, we reared abodes for 320,000 
 people, sufficient to accommodate the entire population of Troy 
 (76,000), and of Albany (100,000), and of Utica (74,000), and 
 of Salt Lake City (92,000). Today or rather several months ago, 
 Brooklyn had a population of 1,634,351, exceeding in size Phila- 
 delphia. The Borough ranks ninth among the cities of the world. 
 The area is only 77 square miles, or 50,000 acres. The available 
 additional acreage is but 40,000, so that we have used up more 
 than one-half of our territory. We have 1,000 miles in streets 
 and highways, 900 miles in sewers. And yet there have been 
 no considerable additions to our transit facilities. Though new 
 bridges have been constructed, no suitable approaches have 
 yet been provided ; there are no adequate transit facilities from 
 Manhattan to Brooklyn. And yet in these ten years Brooklyn has 
 added 467,000 to its numbers, or more people than live in Cincin- 
 nati (364,000), or Detroit (465,000), or Washington (331,000). 
 With the Fourth Avenue Subway, the Broadway-Lafayette Loop, 
 better communication across the Brooklyn Bridge, the Williams- 
 burgh Bridge, the Oueensborough Bridge, and a conservative 
 estimate for the next ten years would place the population of 
 this Borough alone in 1920 at 2,500,000. 
 
 In so teeming a population, we are members of a church that 
 has proven its adaptability to the people of America. Statistics 
 presented a few days ago to the Triennial Convention at its open- 
 ing session in Cincinnati show that sixty years ago, the Epis- 
 copal Church numbered 80,000 communicants, and has today 
 950,000 members. While the poulation of the United States has 
 increased four hundred per cent, the number of communicants 
 in this Church has increased over twelve hundred per cent. 
 
 Let us only love this church, and strive to bring others to 
 
 lo 
 
love it, too. May these days of sacred reminiscence spur us to 
 a purer zeal. Go back sixty years. Think of the insurance com- 
 panies, firms, banks, factories, mining enterprises that have arisen, 
 dazzled, and then dropped from sight. And poor St. Mark's, 
 often unable to pay its ministers, or its choir, or its insurance, — 
 St. Mark's has lived and come into a goodly heritage. When 
 you are discouraged, look at the Church ! When God begins the 
 work of Redemption, it will be carried on to an eternal triumph. 
 Sacred hours in sixty years in which our grandfathers and 
 our fathers and we labored and wept and rejoiced and hoped and 
 feared and struggled and triumphed together ! Here faithful 
 men have listened to the glad tidings and tried to square their 
 lives with the truth. And as we look up to this choir invisible, 
 this cloud of witnesses on the heights, we will gather strength 
 from hand-grasping with our own dear living fellow-members 
 who are striving to "lay aside every weight and the sin which 
 doth so easily beset us and to run with patience the race that is 
 set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and perfector of 
 our faith." 
 
 K. 
 
' ' < 'i 
 
 ! !! 
 
 „ f ''I 
 
PHOTOMOUNT 
 PAMPHLET BINDER 
 
 Manu/aclund by 
 
 GAYLORD BROS. in*. 
 
 Syricut*, N. Y. 
 
 Stockton, Calif. 
 
BX5920 .B8S5 R8 
 
 St. Mark's sixtieth anniversary 1850-19 
 
 Princeton Theological Semmary-Speer Library 
 
 1 1012 00082 7644 
 
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