o the debasing influence of the low grogshops,
gambling dens and houses of ill fame."

"Part of our city (ought I confine myself to saying part of the city)
has not the whole city been cursed by rum? But I now refer to a special
part. I have seen church after church move out of that part of the city
where the nuisance and curse were so rife, but I never, to my knowledge,
heard of one of those churches offering to build a reading room and
evening home for boys, or to send out paid and sustained by their
efforts, a single woman to go into rum-cursed homes and teach their
inmates a more excellent way. I would have in that parish building the
most earnest men and women to come together and consult and counsel
with each other on the best means to open for ourselves, doors which
are still closed against us."

"I am sure," said the minister, "I am willing to do what I can for the
temporal and spiritual welfare of our people, and in this I have the
example of the great Physician who did not consider it beneath him to
attend to physical maladies as well as spiritual needs, and who did not
consider the synagogue too holy, nor the Sabbath day too sacred to
administer to the destitute and suffering."

"I was very sorry when I found out, Brother Thomas, that I could not
have you employed on my church, but I do not see what else I could have
done except submit."

"That was all you could have done in that stage of the work when I
applied, and I do not wish to bestow the slightest censure on you or the
trustees of your church, but I think, if when you were about to build
had you advertised for competent master-builders in the South, that you
could have gotten enough to have built the church without having
employed Mr. Hoog the master-builder. Had you been able to have gone to
him and said, 'we are about to build a church and it is more convenient
for us to have it done by our citizens than to send abroad for laborers.
We are in communication with a colored master builder in Kentucky, who
is known as an efficient workman and who would be glad to get the job,
and if your men refuse to work with a colored man our only alternative
will be to send for colored carpenters and put the building in their
hands.' Do you think he would have refused a thirty thousand dollar job
just because some of his men refused to work with colored men? I think
the greater portion of his workmen would have held their prejudices in
abeyance rather than let a