“My work there showed me that any place may be a pulpit,—editorial chair, managerial chair, almost anything. I began to realize that a whole and proper work would be to get hold of the Christian forces outside the ecclesiastical machine and get them organized into activity. I was not sure about my plan yet, however, so I left Columbus for Newtonville, Massachusetts, and took time to review my studies. There I came under the influence of Phillips Brooks. When I began once more to get a clear idea of what I wanted to do, I went to Baltimore, on a call, and preached two years at Brown Memorial Presbyterian Church.
“I came to Chicago in 1872. Plymouth Church offered an absolutely free pulpit, and an opportunity to work out some plans that I thought desirable.”
HIS WORK IN CHICAGO.
“How did you go about your work in this city?”
“The first thing that seemed necessary for me to do was to find a place where homeless boys of the city who had drifted into error and troubles of various kinds could be taken into the country and educated. I preached a sermon on this subject, and one member gave a fine farm of two hundred and forty acres for the purpose. Plymouth Church built Plymouth Cottage there, and the Illinois Training School was moved there, and other additions were made, gradually adding to its usefulness.”
“The church grew under your ministration there, did it not?”
“You can leave off that about me. It grew, yes, and we established a mission.”
“Was there not a sum raised for this?”
“Yes; Mr. Joseph Armour gave a hundred thousand dollars to house this mission, and the church has since aided it in various ways.”
“This Armour Institute is an idea of yours, is it not?”