NOAH HUNT SCHENCK

TRUTH AND TRADE

[Speech of Rev. Dr. Noah Hunt Schenck at the 110th annual banquet of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, New York City, May 14, 1878.  In introducing Dr. Schenck, the President, Samuel D. Babcock, said:  “The loose manner in which the Dinner Committee have conducted their business is now becoming evident.  The chairman has got considerably mixed on the toasts.  You may recollect that the toast to which Dr. Chapin responded referred to twins [Rev. Dr. Edwin H. Chapin had spoken to the toast ’Commerce and Capital, twin forerunners of civilization and philanthropy’], and here is one that refers to matrimony, and it is very evident that this one ought to have preceded the other. [Laughter and applause.] Eighth regular toast, ’Truth and Trade:  those whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.’”]

MR. PRESIDENT AND GENTLEMEN:—­It were an ambitious effort to hold the attention of this distinguished body directly after its ears had been ravished by the eloquent deliverances of the finished orators who have just preceded me.  In fact, I can scarcely imagine why you enlist another voice from Brooklyn, unless it be to show that there is a possibility of exhausting Brooklyn, and you would make it my sad office to afford you the illustration. [Applause.]

The Chairman said at the beginning that the best speeches were to be at the last.  You have already discovered that this was designed for irony, for thus far the speeches have been incomparable, but mine is to be the beginning of the end. [Laughter and applause.]

I know that what I say is true when I charge the Chairman with irony, for do not I feel his iron entering my soul? [Laughter and applause.] It is an act of considerable temerity, even though the ground has been so gracefully broken by the Rev. Dr. Chapin, for a clergyman to rise before this common-sense body of three hundred business men (unless we had you in our churches), for you well know that this precious quality of common sense is supposed to have its habitat almost entirely with business men, and rarely with the clergy.

I know full well that the men of the pulpit are held to be wanting in practical knowledge, and that we know but little of the dark and devious ways of this naughty world.  So that, rising here, I feel as if I were but a little one among a thousand, and yet I would venture to submit that the clergy are not wholly unpractical.  Nay, I sometimes am led to think that the men of my cloth are the most practical, common-sense business men in the world. [Laughter and applause.]

There is certainly no class of men who can make so little go so far, who can live so comfortably on such small incomes, who can fatten on pastures where the members of this Chamber of Commerce would starve. [Applause and laughter.] There is no class of men that go through life in such large proportion without bankruptcy. [Laughter and applause.]