And armed hosts were pressing on
The broken lines of Washington."

Every other public edifice in this city then in process of erection was
brought to a standstill; but we pushed forward the work, like Nehemiah's
builders, with a trowel in one hand and a weapon in the other. To raise
funds for the structure, required faith and self-denial, and in this
labor of love, woman's five fingers were busy and helpful. One brave
orphan girl in New York gave, from her hard earnings as a public school
teacher, a sum so large that the announcement of it from my pulpit
aroused great enthusiasm, and turned the scale at the critical moment,
and insured the completion of the structure. Justly may our pulpit
vindicate woman's place, and woman's province in the cause of Christ and
humanity, for without woman's help that pulpit might never have been
erected.

On the 16th of March, 1862, our church edifice was dedicated to the
worship of Almighty God, Dr. Asa D. Smith, of Dartmouth College,
delivering the dedication sermon, and in the evening, my brilliant and
beloved brother, Professor Roswell D. Hitchcock, gave us one of his
incisive and inspiring discourses. The building accommodates eighteen
hundred worshippers, and in emergencies, twenty-five hundred. It is a
model of cheerfulness and convenience, and is so felicitous in its
acoustics that an ordinary conversational tone can be heard at the
opposite end of the auditorium. The picture of the Church in this volume
gives no adequate idea of the size of the edifice; for the Sunday School
Hall and lecture-room and social parlors are situated in the rear, and
could not be presented in the photographic view. I fear that too many
costly church edifices are erected that are quite unfit for our
Protestant modes of religious service. It is said that when Bishop
Potter was called upon to consecrate one of the "dim religious"
specimens of mediaeval architecture, and was asked his opinion of the
new structure, he replied: "It is a beautiful building, with only three
faults: you cannot see in it--you cannot hear in it--you cannot breathe
in it."

I need not detail the story of my happy Brooklyn pastorate; for that is
succinctly given in the closing chapter of this volume. Our home-life
here for the past forty-two years has been a record of perpetual
providential mercies and unfailing kindness on the part of my
parishioners and fellow townsmen. Brooklyn, although removed from New
York (for I