I stopped one nightfall at Freyburg, Switzerland, to hear the organ of world-wide celebrity in that place. I went into the cathedral at nightfall. All the accessories were favourable. There was only one light in all the cathedral, and that a faint taper on the altar. I looked up into the venerable arches and saw the shadows of centuries; and when the organ awoke the cathedral awoke, and all the arches seemed to lift and quiver as the music came under them. That instrument did not seem to be made out of wood and metal, but out of human hearts, so wonderfully did it pulsate with every emotion; now laughing like a child, now sobbing like a tempest. At one moment the music would die away until you could hear the cricket chirp outside the wall, and then it would roll up until it seemed as if the surge of the sea and the crash of an avalanche had struck the organ-pipes at the same moment. At one time that night it seemed as if a squadron of saddened spirits going up from earth had met a squadron of descending angels whose glory beat back the woe.
In Edinburgh I met Dr. John Brown, author of the celebrated "Rab and his Friends." That one treatise gave him immortality and fame, and yet he was taken at his own request to the insane asylum and died insane.
"What are you writing now, Dr. Brown?" I said to him in his study in Edinburgh.
"Oh, nothing," he replied, "I never could write. I shall never try again."
I saw on his face and heard in his voice that melancholy that so often unhorsed him.
I went to Paris for the first time in this summer of 1870. It was during the Franco-German war. I stood studying the exquisite sculpturing of the gate of the Tuileries. Lost in admiration of the wonderful art of that gate I knew not that I was exciting suspicion. Lowering my eyes to the crowds of people I found myself being closely inspected by government officials, who from my complexion judged me to be a German, and that for some belligerent purpose I might be examining the gates of the palace. My explanations in very poor French did not satisfy them, and they followed me long distances until I reached my hotel, and were not satisfied until from my landlord they found that I was only an inoffensive American. Inoffensive Americans were quite as welcome in Europe in 1870 as they are now. I was not curious of the signs I found anywhere about me of aristocratic grandeur, of the deference paid to lineage and ancient family name. I know in America some people look back on the family line, and they are proud to see that they are descended from the Puritans or the Huguenots, and they rejoice in that as though their ancestors had accomplished a great thing to repudiate a Catholic aristocracy.
I look back on my family line, and I see there such a mingling and mixture of the blood of all nationalities that I feel akin to all the world. I returned from my first visit to Europe more thankful than ever for the mercy of having been born in America. The trip did me immeasurable good. It strengthened my faith in the breadth and simplicity of a broadminded religion. We must take care how we extend our invitation to the Church, that it be understandable to everyone. People don't want the scientific study of religion.
On Sunday morning, September 25, 1870, the new Tabernacle erected on Schemerhorn Street was dedicated to the worship of Almighty God. It was to my mind a common-sense church, as I had planned it to be. In many of our churches we want more light, more room, more ventilation, more comfort. Vast sums of money are expended on ecclesiastical structures, and men sit down in them, and you ask a man how he likes the church: he says, "I like it very well, but I can't hear." The voice of the preacher dashes against the pillars. Men sit down under the shadows of the Gothic arches and shiver, and feel they must be getting religion, or something else, they feel so uncomfortable.
We want more common sense in the rearing of churches. There is no excuse for lack of light when the heavens are full of it, no excuse for lack of fresh air when the world swims in it. It ought to be an expression, not only of our spiritual happiness, but of our physical comfort, when we say: "How amiable are Thy tabernacles, O Lord God of Hosts! A day in Thy courts is better than a thousand."
My dedication sermon was from Luke xiv. 23, "And the Lord said unto the servants, go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in that my house may be filled." The Rev. T.G. Butter, D.D., offered the dedicatory prayer. Other clergymen, whose names I do not recall, were present and assisted at the services. The congregation in attendance was very large, and at the close of the services a subscription and collection were taken up amounting to $13,000, towards defraying the expenses and cost of the church.