I preached at the evening service from the text in Luke xvi. 5:  “How much owest thou unto my Lord?” It was a wonderful day for us all.  Enough money was taken in by collections and subscriptions at the morning and evening services to pay the floating debt of the church.  We received that one day $21,000.

I quote the following resolution made at a meeting in my study the next Thursday evening of the Session, from the records of the Tabernacle: 

“In regard to the payment of the floating debt of this church and congregation, the Session adopted the following resolution, viz.:—­

“In view of the manifest instance that God has heard the supplications of this people regarding the floating debt of the Church, and so directed their hearts as to accomplish the object, it is therefore resolved that we set apart next Wednesday evening as a special season of religious thanksgiving to God for his great goodness to us as a Church, in granting unto us this deliverance.”

I reverently and solemnly believe the new Tabernacle was built by prayer.

My congregation with great munificence provided for all my wants, and so I can speak without any embarrassment on the subject while I denounce the niggardliness of many of the churches of Jesus Christ, keeping some men, who are very apostles for piety and consecration, in circumstances where they are always apologetic, and have not that courage which they would have could they stand in the presence of people whom they knew were faithful in the discharge of their financial duties to the Christian Church.  Alas, for those men of whom the world is not worthy!  In the United States to-day the salary of ministers averages less than six hundred dollars, and when you consider that some of the salaries are very large, see to what straits many of God’s noblest servants are this day reduced!  A live church will look after all its financial interests and be as prompt in the meeting of those obligations as any bank in any city.

My church in Brooklyn prospered because it was a soul-saving church.  It has always been the ambition of my own church that it should be a soul-saving church.  Pardon for all sin!  Comfort for all trouble!  Eternal life for all the dead!

Moral conditions in the cities of New York and Brooklyn were deplorably bad during the first few years I went there to preach.  There was an onslaught of bad literature and stage immorality.  For instance, there was a lady who came forth as an authoress under the assumed name of George Sand.  She smoked cigars.  She dressed like a man.  She wrote in style ardent and eloquent, mighty in its gloom, terrible in its unchastity, vivid in its portraiture, damnable in its influence, putting forth an evil which has never relaxed, but has hundreds of copyists.  Yet so much worse were many French books that came to America than anything George Sand ever wrote, that if she were alive now she might be thought almost a reformer.  What