As I witnessed the birth of the Young Men’s Christian Association, I also saw the birth of a kindred organization, the “Society of Christian Endeavor.”  Many years ago an absurd and extravagant statement was widely afloat, claiming that I was the “grandsire” of this society.  The simple truth was that Dr. Francis E. Clark, its heaven-directed founder, had seen in some religious journals my account of the good work wrought by the Young People’s Association of the Lafayette Avenue Church, and he recognized the fact that its chief purpose was not mere sociality or literary advancement, but the spiritual profit of its members.  He examined its constitution and reports, and when he constructed his first Christian Endeavor Society in the Williston Church of Portland, Maine, he adopted many of its features; and my beloved brother Clark, in his public addresses, has generously acknowledged such obligation as he was under to our Young People’s Association (now in its thirty-fifth year of prosperous activity).  It has always been a source of grateful pride that it should have furnished any aid to the origination of one of the foremost spiritual instrumentalities of the century.  As any attempt to describe the sublime grandeur of Niagara would be a waste of time, so it would be equally futile for me to describe the magnificent extent of the Christian Endeavor Society’s operations and the immense spiritual results that have flowed from them.  There is no civilized speech or language where its voice is not heard; its line has gone out to all the earth, and its words to the ends of the world.  It has done more than any other single agency to develop the life and to train for service the energies of the youthful members of the churches It has yet still wider possibilities before it, and when the hand that planted this mighty tree has turned to dust its boughs will be shedding down the fruits of the Spirit on the dwellers in every clime.

One of the most striking improvements that I have witnessed has been in the sanitary condition, both physical and moral, of our great cities.  The conditions in New York, when I came to the pastorate of the Market Street Church almost fifty years ago, would seem incredible to the New Yorkers of to-day.  The disgusting depravities of the Fourth Ward, afterwards made familiar by the reformatory efforts of Jerry McCauley, were then in full blast, defying all police authority and outraging common decency.  The most hideous sink of iniquity and loathsome degradation was in the once famous “Five Points,” in the heart of the Sixth Ward and within a pistol shot of Broadway.  At the time of my coming to New York public attention had been drawn to that quarter with the opening of the “Old Brewery Mission,” and by the first planting of a kindred enterprise which grew into the now well-known “Five Points House of Industry.”  The brave projector of this enterprise was the Rev. L.M.  Pease, a hero whose name ought not to be forgotten.  As my church was just off East Broadway,