Recollections of a Long Life: An Autobiography

by Theodore L. Cuyler

One of the most striking improvements that I have witnessed has been in the sanitary condition, both physical and moral, of our great cities. The conditions in New York, when I came to the pastorate of the Market Street Church almost fifty years ago, would seem incredible to the New Yorkers of to-day. The disgusting depravities of the Fourth Ward, afterwards made familiar by the reformatory efforts of Jerry McCauley, were then in full blast, defying all police authority and outraging common decency. The most hideous sink of iniquity and loathsome degradation was in the once famous "Five Points," in the heart of the Sixth Ward and within a pistol shot of Broadway. At the time of my coming to New York public attention had been drawn to that quarter with the opening of the "Old Brewery Mission," and by the first planting of a kindred enterprise which grew into the now well-known "Five Points House of Industry." The brave projector of this enterprise was the Rev. L.M. Pease, a hero whose name ought not to be forgotten. As my church was just off East Broadway, and within a short walk of the Five Points, I took a deep interest in Mr. Pease's Christian undertaking, and aided him by every means in my power. His wife became a member of my church. The "Wild Maggie," whose escapades described in the Tribune gained such public notoriety, became also, after her reformation, one of our church members and afterwards held the position of a school teacher. After the resignation of Mr. Pease and his removal to North Carolina, his place was taken by one of our Market Street elders, the devout and godly minded Benjamin R. Barlow. In order to keep awake public interest in the mission work at the Five Points, and to get ammunition, in its behalf, I used to make nocturnal explorations of some of those satanic quarters. I recall now one of those midnight forays of which, at the risk of my reader's olfactories, I will give a brief glimpse. In company with the superintendent of the mission and a policeman and a lad with a lantern I struck for the "Cow Bay," the classic spot of which Charles Dickens had given such a piquant description in his "American Notes" a few years before. Climbing a stairway, from which the banisters had long been broken away for firewood, we entered a dark room. There was only a tallow candle burning in the corner, and in the room were huddled twenty-five human beings. Along the walls were ranged the bunks—one above the other—covered with rotting quilts and unwashed coverings. Each of these rented for sixpence a night to any thief or beggar who chose to apply for lodging—no distinction being made for sex or color. As the lad swings the lantern about we spy the rows of heads projecting from under the stacks of rags. In one bed a gray-haired, disheveled head cuddled close to the yellow locks of a slumbering child. While we are reconnoitering, something like a huge dog runs past and dives under the bed. "What is this, good friend?" we ask. "Oh, only the goat," replied a merry Milesian. "Do the goats live with you all in this room?" "To be sure they do, sir; we feeds 'em tater skins, and milks 'em for the babies," Country born as we were, we have often longed to keep a dairy in this city, but it never occurred to us that a bedroom was sufficient for the purpose. Truly, necessity is the shrewd-witted mother of invention! Opposite "Cow Bay" was "Cut-Throat Alley." Two murders a year were about the average product of the civilization of this dark defile. The keeper of the famous grog shop there, who died about that time, left a fortune of nearly one hundred thousand dollars. In city politics the keeper of such a den is one of the leaders of public opinion. We climbed a stairway, dark and dangerous, till at length we reached the wretched garret through whose open chinks the snow drifted in upon the floor. Beside the single broken stove, the only article of furniture in the apartments, sat a wretched woman wrapped in a tattered shawl moaning over a terrible burn that covered her arms; she had fallen when intoxicated upon the stove and no one had cared enough to carry her to the hospital. She exclaimed, "For God's sake, gentlemen, can't you give me a glass of gin?" A half eaten crust lay by her and a cold potato or two, but the irresistible thirst clamored for relief before either pain or hunger. "Good woman," said my friend, "where's Mose?" "Here he is." A heap of rags beside her was uncovered, and there lay the sleeping face of an old negro, apparently of fifty. In nearly every garret we entered practical amalgamation was in fashion. The superintendent told me that the negroes were fifty per cent. in advance of the Irish as to sobriety and decency. Descending from the garret we entered a crowded cellar. The boy's lantern shone on the police officer's cap and buttons. A crash was heard, and the window at the opposite end of the cellar was shattered and a mass of riddled glass fell on the floor. "Poor fool!" exclaimed the policeman, "he thinks we are after him, but I will have him before morning." From these sickening scenes of squalor, misery and crime what a relief it was for us to return to the House of Industry, with its neat school room and its capacious chapel and its row of little children marching up to their little beds. It was like going into the light-house after the storm.

I have drawn this pen picture of but a part of the shocking revelations of that night, not only that my readers may know what kind of work I often engaged in during my New York pastorate, but that they may also know what kind of city I labored in. New York is not to-day in sight of the millennium; it still has a fearful amount of vice and heathenism; and the self-denying men who are conducting the "University Settlement," and the Christ-serving "King's Daughters," who are giving their lives to the salvation of the poor in the Seventh Ward are doing as apostolic a work as any missionary on the Congo. Nevertheless it is true that a "Cow Bay," or an "Old Brewery," or a "Cut-Throat Alley" is no more possible to-day in New York than the building of a powder factory in the middle of Central Park. The progress in sanitary purification has been most remarkable.

This narrative of the sanitary and moral reform wrought in the Five Points reminds me of another good man whom the people of this city and our whole country cannot revere too highly as a public benefactor. I allude to Mr. Anthony Comstock, the indefatigable Secretary of the "Society for the Prevention of Vice." I knew him well when he was a clerk in a dry goods store on Broadway, and when he undertook his first purifying efforts, I little supposed that he was to achieve such reforms. It was an Augean stable indeed that he set about cleansing. Fifty years ago our city was flooded by obscene literature which sought no concealment. The vilest books and pictures were openly sold in the streets, and an enormous traffic was waged in what may be called the literature of hell. Such a courageous crusade against those abominations and against the gambling dens, by Mr. Comstock—even at the risk of personal violence and in defiance of the most malignant opposition—entitles him to a place among our veritable heroes. At a time when deeds of military prowess receive such adulation, and when the "man on horseback" outstrips the man on foot in the race for popular favor, it is well to teach our young men that he who takes up arms against the principalities and powers of darkness, and makes his own life the savior of other lives, wins a knightly crown of heavenly honor that outshines the stars, and "fadeth not away."

The most unique organization that has been formed in our time for the evangelizing of the lost masses is the "Salvation Army." When I was in London, in the summer of 1885, I attended one of their monster meetings in Exeter Hall. There was an enormous military band on the platform behind the rostrum. Their Commander-in-Chief, General Booth, presided—a tall, thin, nervous man, who looked more like an old-fashioned Kentucky revivalist than an Englishman. His bright-eyed and comely wife, Mrs. Catharine Booth, was with him. She was a woman of remarkable intellectual force and spiritual character, as all must acknowledge who have read her biography. Her speech (on the Protection of Young Girls) was finely composed and finely delivered, and quite threw into the shade a couple of members of Parliament who spoke from the same platform on the same evening. When she made any telling point that awakened applause, her husband leaped up, and gave the signal: "Fire a volley!" Whereupon his troops gave a tremendous cheer, followed by a roll of drums and a blast of trumpets. The chief agency which the army employs to gather its audiences is music—whether it be the rattling of the tambourine, or the martial sound of a brass band. Some of their hymns are little better than pious doggerel, and they do not hesitate to add to Perronet's grand hymn, "All hail the power of Jesus name," such a stanza as the following:

"Let our soldiers never tire,
In streets, in lane, in hall,
The red-hot Gospel's shot to fire
And crown Him Lord of All."

Grotesque as are some of the methods of this novel organization, I cannot but admire their zeal and courage in dredging among the submerged masses with such spiritual apparatus as they can devise. They are doing a work that God has honored, and that has reached and rescued a vast number of outcasts. Their chief weakness is that they appeal mainly to the emotions, and give too little solid instruction to their ignorant hearers. Their chief danger is that when the strong arm of their founder is taken away he may not leave successors who can hold the army together. Let us hope and pray that the period of their usefulness may yet be protracted.

While an abnormal agency, like the Salvation Army, may do some useful service among the occupants of the slums, the greater work of reaching and evangelizing the immense mass of plain, humble working people must be done by the churches themselves. What do the dwellers in the by-streets and the tenement houses need? They need precisely what the dwellers in the brown stone houses on fine avenues need—a sanctuary to worship in, a Sunday school for their children, a preacher to give them the Gospel, and a pastor to visit them and watch over them—in short, a spiritual home. As for bringing the poorer class of the back streets into the elegant churches on the fashionable avenues it is an absurdity, both geography and human nature are against it. The plainly dressed laborers of the back districts could not come to the fine churches on Fifth Avenue, or similar streets, because these edifices are already occupied by their regular pew holders; they would not come, for they would not feel at home there. Since the humbler toiling classes will not come to the sanctuaries occupied by the rich, the only true Christian policy is for the rich churches to build and maintain plenty of attractive auxiliary chapels in the regions occupied by those humbler classes. Not mean and unattractive soup-house style of chapels should they be, either—they ought to be handsome, cheerful, well-appointed sanctuaries, manned by godly pastors who are not above the business of saving souls that are clad in dirty shirts. And that is not all: the members of the wealthy churches which rear the auxiliary chapels should personally go and attend the services and Sunday schools and weekly meetings in the chapel—not go in costly raiment that touches the pride of God's poor, but in plain clothes and with a hearty democratic sympathy in their whole bearing. To reach the masses we must go after them—and then stay with them when we get there. If broadcloth religion waits for poverty and ignorance to cross the chasm to it, then may they at last come to be a menace to the safety of society—with imprecations on it for criminal neglect. Christianity must build the bridge across the chasm, and then keep its steady procession crossing over it with bright lamps for dark homes, and Bibles for darker souls, and bread for hungry mouths, and, what is best of all, personal intercourse and personal sympathy. The music of a Christmas carol would be very sweet in poverty's garret; the advent of the living Jesus in the persons of His true-hearted followers would be a "Merry Christmas" all the year round.

Brooklyn is not a city of slums, nor does it abound with the sky-scraping tenement houses, like those in which the myriads of New York live, but we have a large population of wage-earners of the humbler class. These mainly occupy streets by themselves. In order to do our part in giving the bread of life to these worthy people, Lafayette Avenue Church has always maintained two, and sometimes three, auxiliary chapels. Of these, the "Cuyler Chapel," built and supported entirely by our Young People's Association, is a fair representative. It has an excellent preacher, who visits the plain people in their homes; it has a well-equipped Sunday school—prayer meetings, kindergarten—its own Society of Christian Endeavor, and King's Daughters, its penny savings bank and its temperance society—in short, every appliance essential to a Christian church. Many others of our strong Brooklyn churches are working precisely on the same practical, common-sense lines. If all the wealthy churches in New York would illuminate the darker quarters of that city with a hundred well-manned light-houses, well provided with the soul-saving apparatus of the poor man's Gospel they would do more to silence the cavils against Christianity, and more to bridge the chasm between the rich and the poor than by any of the superficial methods of the "Humanitarians." What a poor man wants is not only a clean shirt, a clean home, and a clean account on Saturday night; he wants a clean character and a clean soul for this world and the next. Christianity makes a sad mistake if it is satisfied to give him a full stomach, and leave him with a starving soul.

In recent years we have heard much about the "Institutional Church" as the long sought panacea. It is claimed by some persons that the churches cannot succeed unless they add to ordinary spiritual instrumentalities, various useful annexes, such as reading rooms, kindergartens, dispensaries, and certain social entertainments. But it is a noteworthy fact that the chief pioneer in "Institutional" methods was the late Charles Haddon Spurgeon, and he was the prince of old-fashioned gospel preachers. He never thought of his orphanage, and other benevolent adjuncts of the Metropolitan Tabernacle as substitutes for the sovereign purpose of his holy work, which was to convert the people to Jesus Christ. He subordinated the physical, the mental, and the social to the spiritual; and rightly judged that making clean hearts was the best way to secure clean homes and clean lives. I have no doubt that a very strong, well-manned and thoroughly spiritually managed church may wisely maintain as many adjuncts, such as reading-rooms, libraries, dispensaries, kindergartens and other humanitarian annexes as it has the means to support. An illustration of this is seen in the successful and Heaven-blessed Bethany Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia, founded and maintained and guided by that hundred-handed Briareus in the service of Christ—my beloved friend, the Hon. John Wanamaker. The aim of that great church and its well-known Sunday School, is to make people happy by making them better, and to save them for this world after saving them for another world. When a church has the spiritual purposes and spiritual power of the London Tabernacle and the Bethany Church, and is guided by a Spurgeon or a Wanamaker, it may safely become "institutional." But some experiments that have been made to establish churches of that name in this country have not always been conspicuously successful.

In taking this, my retrospective view at four-score, I have noted many heart-cheering tokens of social and religious progress, and many splendid mechanical and material inventions to make the world better and happier. Yet I have also seen some painful symptoms of decline and deterioration. All the changes have not been for the better; some have been decidedly for the worse. For example, while there is an increase in the number of the Christian churches, there is a lamentably steady diminution of attendance at places of religious worship. Careful investigation shows a constant falling off in church attendance—both in the large towns, and in the rural districts. In spite of the blessed influence of the Sunday School, the Young Men's Christian Association and Christian Endeavor, there is an increasing swing of young people away from the House of God, and therefore from soul-saving influences. The Sabbath is not as generally kept sacred as formerly. One of the indications of this sad fact is a decrease in church attendance, and another is the enormous increase in the secular and godless Sunday newspapers. Materialism and Mammonism work against spiritual religion, and the social customs which wealth brings are adverse to a spiritual life. As one illustration of this a distinguished pastor said to me: "Forty years ago my people lived plainly, were ready for earnest Christian work, and attended our devotional meetings; now they have grown rich, our work flags, and our weekly services are almost deserted." Half-day religion is on the increase almost everywhere. Sporting and gambling are more rife than formerly. What is still worse, the gambling element enters more largely into transactions of trade and traffic. Divorces have become more easy and abundant, and, as Mr. Gladstone once said to me: "This tends to sap one of the very foundations of society," All these are deplorable evils to which none but a fool will shut his eyes and by which none but a coward will be frightened. God reigns, even if the devil is trying to. The practical questions for every one of us are: how can I become better? How can I help to make this old sinning and sobbing world the better also?