There was another contest, non-political, that interested the nation in 1882. It was the Sullivan-Ryan prize-fight. I had no great objection to find with it, as did so many other ministers. It suggested a far better symbol of arbitration between two differing opinions than war. If Mr. Disraeli had gone out and met a distinguished Zulu on the field of English battle, and fought their national troubles out, as Sullivan and Ryan did, what a saving of life and money! How many lives could have been saved if Napoleon and Wellington, or Moltke and McMahon had emulated the spirit of the Sullivan-Ryan prize fight! I saw no reasonable cause why the law should interfere between two men who desired to pound one another in public; I stood alone almost among my brethren in this conclusion.
The persecution of the Jews in Russia, which came to us at this time with all its details of cruelty and horror, was the beginning of an important chapter in American history. Dr. Adler, in London, had appealed for a million pounds to transport the Jews who were driven out of Russia to the United States. It seemed more important that civilisation should unite in an effort to secure protection for them in their own homes, than compel them to obey the will of Russia. This was no Christian remedy. We might as well abuse the Jews in America, and then take up a collection to send them to England or Australia. The Jews were entitled to their own rights of property and personal liberty and religion, whether they lived in New York, or Brooklyn, or London, or Paris, or Warsaw, or Moscow, or St. Petersburg. And yet we were constantly hearing of the friendly feeling between Russia and the United States.
In after years I was privileged personally to address the Czar and his family, in a private audience, and questions of the Russian problem were discussed; but the Jews flocked to America, and we welcomed them, and they learned to be Americans very rapidly. Their immigration to this country was a matter of religious conscience, in which Russia had no interest.
A man's religious convictions are most important. I remember in October, 1882, what criticism and abuse there was of my friend Henry Ward Beecher, when he decided to resign from the religious associations of which he was a member. I was asked by members of the press to give my opinion, but I was out when they called. Mr. Beecher was right. He was a man of courage and of heart. I shall never forget the encouragement and goodwill he extended to me, when I first came to Brooklyn in 1869 and took charge of a broken-down church. Mr. Beecher did just as I would have done under the same circumstances. I could not nor would stay in the denomination to which I belonged any longer than it would take me to write my resignation, if I disbelieved its doctrines. Mr. Beecher's theology was very different from mine, but he did not differ from me in the Christian life, any more than I differed from him. He never interfered with me, nor I with him. Every little while some of the ministers of America were attacked by a sort of Beecher-phobia, and they foamed at the mouth over something that the pastor of Plymouth Church said. People who have small congregations are apt to dislike a preacher who has a full church. For thirteen years, or more, Beecher's church and mine never collided. He had more people than he knew what to do with, and so had I. I belonged to the company of the orthodox, but if I thought that orthodoxy demanded that I must go and break other people's heads I would not remain orthodox five minutes. Brooklyn was called the city of churches, but it could also be called the city of short pastorates. Many of the churches, during fifteen years of my pastorate, had two, three, and four pastors. Dr. Scudder came and went; so did Dr. Patten, Dr. Frazer, Dr. Buckley, Dr. Mitchell, Dr. Reid, Dr. Steele, Dr. Gallagher, and a score of others. The Methodist Church was once famous for keeping a minister only three or four years, but it is no longer peculiar in this respect. Mr. Beecher had been pastor for thirty-six years in Brooklyn when, in the summer of 1883, he celebrated the anniversary of his seventieth birthday.
Every now and then, for many years, there was an investigation of some sort in Brooklyn. Our bridge was a favourite target of investigation. "Where has the money for this great enterprise been expended?" was the common question. I defended the trustees, because people did not realise the emergencies that arose as the work progressed and entailed greater expenditures. Originally, when projected, it was to cost $7,000,000, but there was to be only one waggon road. It was resolved later to enlarge the structure and build two waggon roads, and a place for trains, freight, and passenger cars. Those enlarged plans were all to the ultimate advantage of the growth of Brooklyn. It was at first intended to make the approaches of the bridge in trestle work, then plans were changed and they were built of granite. The cable, which was originally to be made of iron, was changed to steel. For three years these cables were the line on which the passengers on ferry-boats hung their jokes about swindling and political bribery. No investigation was able to shake my respect for the integrity of Mr. Stranahan, one of the bridge trustees. He did as much for Brooklyn as any man in it. He was the promoter of Prospect Park, designed and planned from his head and heart. With all the powers at my disposal I defended the bridge trustee.
There was an attempt in New York, towards the close of 1882, to present the Passion Play on the stage of a theatre. A licence was applied for. The artist, no matter how high in his profession, who would dare to appear in the character of the Divine Person, was fit only for the Tombs prison or Sing-Sing. I had no objection to any man attempting the role of Judas Iscariot. That was entirely within the limitations of stage art. Seth Low was Mayor of Brooklyn, and Mr. Grace was Mayor of New York—a Protestant and a Catholic—and yet they were of one opinion on this proposed blasphemy.
I think everyone in America realised that the Democratic victory in the election of Grover Cleveland, by a majority of 190,000 votes, as Governor of New York, was a presidential prophecy. The contest for President came up, seriously, in the spring of 1883, and the same headlines appeared in the political caucus. Among the candidates was Benjamin F. Butler, Governor of Massachusetts. I believed then there was not a better man in the United States for President than Chester A. Arthur. I believed that his faithfulness and dignity in office should be honoured with the nomination. There was some surprise occasioned when Harvard refused to confer an LL.D. on Governor Butler, a rebuke that no previous Governor of Massachusetts had suffered. After all, the country was chiefly impressed in this event with the fact that an LL.D., or a D.D., or an F.R.S., did not make the man. Americans were becoming very good readers of character; they could see at a glance the difference between right and wrong, but they were tolerant of both. Much more so than I was. There was one great fault in American character that the whole world admired; it was our love of hero-worship. A great man was the man who did great things, no matter what that man might stand for in religion or in morals.
There was Gambetta, whose friendship for America had won the admiration of our country. I myself admired his eloquence, his patriotism, his courage in office as Prime Minister of France; but his dying words rolled like a wintry sea over all nations, "I am lost!" Gambetta was an atheist, a man whose public indignities to womanhood were demonstrated from Paris to Berlin. Gambetta's patriotism for France could never atone for his atheism, and his infamy towards women. His death, in the dawn of 1883, was a page in the world's history turned down at the corner.
What an important year it was to be for us! In the spring of 1883 the Brooklyn bridge was opened, and our church was within fifteen or twenty minutes of the hotel centre of New York. I said then that many of us would see the population of Brooklyn quadrupled and sextupled. In many respects, up to this time, Brooklyn had been treated as a suburb of New York, a dormitory for tired Wall Streeters. With the completion of the bridge came new plans for rapid transit, for the widening of our streets, for the advancement of our municipal interests. A consolidation of Brooklyn and New York was then under discussion. It was a bad look-out for office-holders, but a good one for tax-payers. At least that was the prospect, but I never will see much encouragement in American politics.
The success of Grover Cleveland and his big majority, as Governor, led both wings of the Democratic party to promise us the millennium. Even the Republicans were full of national optimism, going over to the Democrats to help the jubilee of reform. Four months later, although we were told that Mr. Cleveland was to be President, he could not get his own legislature to ratify his nomination. His hands were tied, and his idolaters were only waiting for his term of office to expire. The politicians lied about him. Because as Governor of New York he could not give all the office-seekers places, he was, in a few months, executed by his political friends, and the millennium was postponed that politics might have time to find someone else to be lifted up—and in turn hurled into oblivion.