There were many shining lights in the Episcopal Church at this time in New York. The Rev. Dr. William Berrian was the acceptable rector of St. John's, which was then as now a chapel of Trinity Parish. The Rev. Dr. Francis L. Hawks was the popular rector of St. Thomas's church, on the corner of Broadway and Houston Streets. He was a North Carolinian by birth, but is said to have been in part of Indian descent. I recall with pleasure his masterly rendition of the Episcopal service. During the Civil War he made it quite apparent to his parishioners that his sympathies were with the South, and as most of them did not share his views he moved to Baltimore, where a more congenial atmosphere surrounded him.
The Rev. Dr. Stephen H. Tyng, senior, was the rector of St. George's Episcopal church in the lower part of the city. He was a theologian of the Low-Church school and was greatly esteemed by all of his colleagues. His son, the Rev. Dr. Stephen H. Tyng, junior, was in full sympathy with the Low-Church views of his father, and will be recalled as an evangelical preacher of exceptional power and wide influence. In the summer of 1867 he preached, in defiance of the canons of the Episcopal Church, in St. James's Methodist church in New Brunswick, N.J., thus invading without authority the parishes of the Rev. Dr. Alfred Stubs and the Rev. Dr. Edward B. Boggs of that city. His trial was of sensational interest, and resulted, as will be remembered, in his conviction. The attitude of the Tyngs, father and son, was humorously described by Anthony Bleecker, a well-known wit of the day, in these verses:
Tyng, Junior.
I preach from barrels and from tubs,
In spite of Boggs, in spite of Stubs;
I'll preach from stumps, I'll preach from logs,
In spite of Stubs, in spite of Boggs.
Tyng, Senior.
Do, Steve; and lay aside your gown,
Your bands and surplice throw them down;
A bob-tail coat of tweed or kersey
Is good enough at least for Jersey.
Tyng, Junior.
What if the Bishops interfere,
And I am made a culprit clear;
Can't you a thunderbolt then forge,
And hurl it in the new St. George?
Tyng, Senior.
Be sure I can and out of spite
A wrathy sermon I'll indite;
I'll score the court and every judge
And call the whole proceedings fudge;
And worse than that each reverent name
I'll bellow through the trump of fame;
With Bishop Potter I'll get even,
And make you out the martyr Stephen.