I look back on my family line, and I see there such a mingling and mixture of the blood of all nationalities that I feel akin to all the world.  I returned from my first visit to Europe more thankful than ever for the mercy of having been born in America.  The trip did me immeasurable good.  It strengthened my faith in the breadth and simplicity of a broadminded religion.  We must take care how we extend our invitation to the Church, that it be understandable to everyone.  People don’t want the scientific study of religion.

On Sunday morning, September 25, 1870, the new Tabernacle erected on Schemerhorn Street was dedicated to the worship of Almighty God.  It was to my mind a common-sense church, as I had planned it to be.  In many of our churches we want more light, more room, more ventilation, more comfort.  Vast sums of money are expended on ecclesiastical structures, and men sit down in them, and you ask a man how he likes the church:  he says, “I like it very well, but I can’t hear.”  The voice of the preacher dashes against the pillars.  Men sit down under the shadows of the Gothic arches and shiver, and feel they must be getting religion, or something else, they feel so uncomfortable.

We want more common sense in the rearing of churches.  There is no excuse for lack of light when the heavens are full of it, no excuse for lack of fresh air when the world swims in it.  It ought to be an expression, not only of our spiritual happiness, but of our physical comfort, when we say:  “How amiable are Thy tabernacles, O Lord God of Hosts!  A day in Thy courts is better than a thousand.”

My dedication sermon was from Luke xiv. 23, “And the Lord said unto the servants, go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in that my house may be filled.”  The Rev. T.G.  Butter, D.D., offered the dedicatory prayer.  Other clergymen, whose names I do not recall, were present and assisted at the services.  The congregation in attendance was very large, and at the close of the services a subscription and collection were taken up amounting to $13,000, towards defraying the expenses and cost of the church.

In less than a year later the congregation had grown so large and the attendance of strangers so pressing that the new church was enlarged again, and on September 10, 1871, the Tabernacle was rededicated with impressive services.  The sermon was preached by my friend the Rev. Stephen H. Tyng, D.D.  He was a great worker, and suffered, as many of us in the pulpit do, from insomnia.  He was the consecrated champion of everything good, a constant sufferer from the lash of active work.  He often told me that the only encouragement he had to think he would sleep at night was the fact that he had not slept the night before.  Insomnia may be only a big word for those who do not understand its effect.  It has stimulated intellectuality, and exhausted it.  One of the greatest English clergymen had a gas jet on each side of his bed, so that he might read at nights when he could not sleep.  Horace Greeley told me he had not had a sound sleep in fifteen years.  Charles Dickens understood London by night better than any other writer, because not being able to sleep he spent that time in exploring the city.