"Organize relief committees to save the lost young men of the
city.
"Look after traveling business men at hotels, and bring them to
The Temple.
"Promote temperance, purity, fraternity and spiritual life.
"Initiate the most important undertakings of the church.
"Surround themselves with strong young men, and inaugurate vigorous, fresh plans and methods for bringing the gospel to the young men of to-day in store, shop, office, school, college, on the streets, and elsewhere.
"Visit sick members, help into lucrative employment, organize religious meetings, make the church life of the young bright, inspiring and noble, plan for sociables, entertainments for closer acquaintance and for raising money for Christian work and to use their pens for Christ among young men whom they know, and also with strangers."
It has a delightful room in the Lower Temple, carpeted, supplied with books, good light, a piano, comfortable chairs. It is a real home for young men alone in the city or without family or home ties.
During the building of The Temple many associations were formed which, when the need was over, merged into others. As Burdette says:
"Often a working guild of some sort is brought into existence for a specific but transient purpose; the object accomplished, the work completed, the society disbands, or merges into some other organization, or reorganizes under a new name for some new work. The work of Grace Church is like the operations of a great army; recruits are coming to the front constantly; regiments being assigned to this corps, and suddenly withdrawn to reinforce that one; two or three commands consolidated for a sudden emergency; one regiment deployed along a great line of small posts; infantry detailed into the batteries, cavalry dismounted for light infantry service, yet all the time in all this apparent confusion and restless change which bewilders the civilian, everything is clear and plain and perfectly regular and methodical to the commanding general and his subordinates."
Another association of this kind was the "Committee of One Hundred," organized in 1891. The suggestion for its organization came from the Young Women's Association. A number of them went to the Trustees and proposed that the Board should appoint a committee of fifty from among the congregation to devise ways and means to raise money for paying off the floating indebtedness of the church. The suggestion was adopted. The Committee of Fifty was appointed, each organization of the church being represented in it by one or more members. It met for organization in 1892. The Young Women's Association, pledged itself to raise $1,000 during the year. Other societies pledged certain sums. Individuals went to work to swell the amount, and in one year, the Committee reported that the floating debt of the church, which at the time of the Committee's organization was $25,000, was paid. Encouraged by this success the Committee enlarged itself to one hundred and vigorously attacked the work of paying off the mortgage of $15,200 on the ground on which the college was to be built.