CHAPTER XXII

THE CHURCH OF THE COVENANT:

1862-1894

"I will make an everlasting covenant with you."—Isaiah, 55 : 3.

"Come and let us join ourselves to the Lord in a perpetual covenant that shall
not be forgotten."—Jeremiah, 50 : 5.

"A church, after all, is a sort of religious home; its peculiar offices and attach¬
ments are largely domestic in their character; its members are a Christian family,
bound together by ties of Christian sympathy, labor, and fellowship."—George L.
Prentiss, "Eleven Years of the Church of the Covenant," 1873, p. 28.

IN the fall of the year 1860 were taken the first
steps which led to the formation of the Church
of the Covenant. * Dr. George Lewis Prentiss,
formerly pastor of the Mercer Street Presbyterian
Church, had just returned from a two years' absence
in Europe, made necessary by ill health, f He came
back restored in vigor, and a number of his friends
and former parishioners immediately began a move¬
ment for the establishment of a new church on Mur¬
ray Hill with Dr. Prentiss at its head.    Like the

* The history contained in this chapter will be told, wherever possible,
in the words of those who were the leading figures in it.

t Dr. Prentiss was born in Gorham, Maine, May 16th, 1816. He was
graduated from Bowdoin College, studied later in New York and in Europe
for several years. In 1845 he was ordained and installed as pastor of the
South Trinitarian Church of New Bedford, Mass., and shortly after mar¬
ried Miss Elizabeth Payson of Portland. In 1850 he accepted a call to the
Second Presbyterian Church of Newark, N. J., as associate pastor, but a
few months later resigned to take the pastorate of the Mercer Street
Church in New York, which he served until compelled by illness to resign
in 1858.

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