In consequence of perpetual and long-continued outrages committed by neighbouring clergymen against the peace of our church, the Board of Trustees of the Tabernacle addressed a letter to the congregation suggesting our withdrawal from the denomination.  I regretted this, because I felt that the time would soon come when all denominations should be helpful to each other.  There would be enough people in Brooklyn, I was sure, when all the churches could be crowded.  I positively refused to believe the things that my fellow ministers said about me, or to notice them.  I was perfectly satisfied with the Christian outlook of our church.  I urged the same spirit of calm upon my church neighbours, by example and precept.  It was a long while before they realised the value of this advice.  In the spring of 1879 my friend Dr. Crosby, pastor of the Second Presbyterian Church at the corner of Clinton and Fulton Streets, was undergoing an ecclesiastical trial, and an enterprising newsboy invaded the steps of the church, as the most interested market for the sale of the last news about the trial.  He was ignominiously pushed off the church steps by the church officers.  I was indignant about it. (I saw it from a distance, as I was coming down the street.) I thought it was a row between Brooklyn ministers, however, and turned the corner to avoid such a shocking sight.  My suspicions were not groundless, because there was even then anything but brotherly love between some of the churches there.

A synodical trial by the Synod of Long Island was finally held at Jamaica, L.I., to ascertain if there was not some way of inducing church harmony in Brooklyn.  After several days at Jamaica, in which the ministers of Long Island took us ministers of Brooklyn across their knees and applied the ecclesiastical slipper, we were sent home with a benediction.  A lot of us went down there looking hungry, and they sent us back all fed up.  Even some of the church elders were hungry and came back to Brooklyn strengthened.

It looked for awhile after this as though all clerical antagonisms in Brooklyn would expire.  I even foresaw a time coming when Brothers Speare, Van Dyke, Crosby and Talmage would sing Moody and Sankey hymns together out of the same hymn-book.

The year 1880 began with an outbreak in Maine, a sort of miniature revolution, caused by a political appointment of my friend Governor Garcelon contrary to the opinions of the people of his State.  Garcelon I knew personally, and regarded him as a man of honour and pure political motives, whether he did his duty or not; whatever he did he believed was the right and conscientious thing to do.  The election had gone against the Democrats.  In a neat address Mr. Lincoln Robinson, Democrat, handed over the keys of New York State to Mr. Carroll, the Republican Governor.  Antagonists though they had been at the ballot-box, the surrender was conducted with a dignity that I trust will always surround the gubernatorial chair of the State of New York, once graced by such men as DeWitt Clinton, Silas Wright, William H. Seward, and John A. Dix.