PREFACE

This history has been prepared, at the request of
the trustees of the Brick Church, in the hope that it
will interest the large number of people who are
bound to the church by ties of the past or of the
present, and those, also, whose interest in the history
of the Christian Church at large will incline them to
an examination of any important chapter of it.

The author wishes, especially, that the volume
might come into the hands of some of the young
men who are about to choose among the various
professions for their life-work, for it seems to him
that a history like that of the Brick Church sets forth
in an emphatic way the great opportunity which the
Christian ministry offers in our time. The author
has himself been so much impressed, as the facts of
the history have unfolded before him, by the variety
of interests with which he has been called upon to
deal, the breadth of scope which the history has pre¬
sented, and the close relation which it has disclosed,
especially in the record of later years, between the
specific work of the minister and some of the prob¬
lems which most perplex our time and whose solu¬
tion will most profoundly affect the future of our
country and of the world, that he cannot doubt but
others will be impressed in the same way.

A word should be said by way of explaining the