ill uiiii RJLES--i-i^:.i3K ;: 11 1 , : ' T ' t t 1 itmm Cornell University Library The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924008098513 BX 5995.826883"""""^ """^ %mmZmX±L^.^^l^!:'.^.<>fB and left A MASTER BUILDER THE RIGHT REVEREND HENRY YATE S SATTERLEE Bishop of Washington A MASTER BUILDER BEING THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF HENRY YATES SATTERLEE FIRST BISHOP OF WASHINGTON^ BY CHARLES H. BRENT The house that is to be builded for the Lord must be exceeding magnificat, of fame and glory through- out all countries: I will therefore make prepara- tions for it. So David prepared abundantly before his death, i chron. xxii, 5. LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. FOURTH AVENUE W 3OTH STREET, NEW YORK 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS I916 COPYRIGHT, I916 BY LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. TO THE CLERGY AND LAITY OF THE DIOCESE OF WASHINGTON WHO TWICE CONFERRED ON ME THE RARE HONOR AND PRECIOUS TRUST OF ASKING ME TO BE THEIR LEADER IN SUCCESSION TO A MASTER BUILDER CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE Preface xi I. Concerning his Forbears, 1843-1856 ... i II. The Youth, i 856-1 867 9 III. The Apprentice Ministry at Wappinger's Falls, 1867-1875 24 IV. Setting Line and Plummet, i 875-1 882 ... 46 V. The Builder at Work, i 882-1 885 .... 74 VI. Mortar and Trowel, 1885-1889 96 VII. Stone upon Stone, 1889-1892 116 VIII. Fitting the Capstone at Calvary, 1892-1895 133 IX. The Master Builder, 1896 167 X. Or Walk with Kings — nor Lose the Common Touch, 1896 190 XI. Res Severje, 1896-1898 207 XII. War and Peace, 1898 221 XIII. Visions and Tasks, 1898-1901 233 XIV. Invisible Foundations, 1902-1904 .... 257 XV. Chiaroscuro, 1904-1905 278 XVI. Ad Interim, 1905 288 XVII. The Eleventh Hour, 1905-1907 317 XVIII. The Builder's Square and Rule .... 342 XIX. The Coming of the Cathedral 360 XX. The City which Hath Foundations, 1907-1908 393 XXI. Respice, Aspice, Prospice 408 Appendix I. Extracts from the Correspondence BETWEEN the BiSHOP OF WASHINGTON AND THE Architects of the Cathedral 423 Appendix II. The Idea of an American Cathedral . 457 Index 461 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS The Right Reverend Henry Yates Satterlee, Bishop of Washington Frontispiece The Yates Mansion facing page 8 The Rev. Henry Yates Satterlee, Redor of Zion Church, Wappinger's Falls 26 Zion Church, Wappinger's Falls 48 Calvary Church, New York 76 The Rev. Henry Yates Satterlee, D.D., Re^or of Calvary Church 120 Calvary Church, New York, Interior 146 Mrs. Henry Yates Satterlee 166 The Bishop of Washington and the Metropolitan of Silesia 2CX) Memorial Church of All Angels, Twilight Park .... 224 The Rev. Churchill Satterlee and his Son 280 The Peace Cross 370 The Little Sandluary 376 The National Cathedral, Interior 386 Laying the Foundation Stone of the National Cathedral 396 The National Cathedral, West Front 424 PREFACE THIS biography has been written under great dis- advantages, which, added to the natural Hmita- tions of its author, leave much to be desired in the completed produA. It was undertaken as a labor of love, out of personal devotion to Bishop Satterlee and his family as well as to the Diocese of Washington. Much of the material was furnished in the fall of 191 1. At that moment I was called to The Hague so that I was unable to do more than .study and "arrange some of the MSS. Another year passed before much work was done, owing to pressure of episcopal and other duties which broke in on every attempt at consecutive labor. During the summer of 191 3 I was supplied with nearly all further material necessary, and from that time work con- tinued with frequent interruptions until the completion of my privilege and my task. The book has been written under widely varying conditions — much of it, especially in its earlier stages, at sea, some in America, and most of it in various parts of the Philippine Islands, from Jolo in the extreme south to Bontok in the extreme north of the Archipelago. But I have seldom taken up my pen without forthwith forgetting, in the pleasure of writing, every anxiety and difficulty of the moment. Without the loving sympathy and wise assistance of my dear friends Mrs. H. Y. Satterlee and her daughter Mrs. F. W. Rhinelander this book would have been impossible. Their patience with me in the many delays that have postponed its publication, their eagerness to illumine any obscure matter and to enlarge upon any subjedl concerning which I was not well posted, and their utter confidence in my ability to do the theme justice, have supported my hands and lightened my work through- xii PREFACE out. The Reverend C. T. Warner has also given me invaluable aid. Indeed he, and the Reverend Dr. W. L. DeVries, whose notes and memoranda have been con- stantly before me, are largely responsible for the clear- ness and orderliness of most of the material. To Mr. Irving Grinnell I desire also to express my gratitude for invaluable assistance rendered in connection with Dr. Satterlee's New Hamburgh days. The historical notes and other matter prepared by the Rev. Dr. G. C. F. Bratenahl have likewise been of great assistance. To my beloved proof reader, Mrs. John Markoe, I am more hopelessly in debt than ever for this her latest service. Phillips Brooks once said: — "I think that I would rather have written a great biography than a great book of any sort, as I would rather have painted a great portrait than any other kind of pidture." My own literary ambition, so far as I have any independent of an instinctive desire toward self-expression, is a like one. The trust committed to me by the family of Bishop Satterlee has given me all the opportunity in this direc- tion for which a man could wish, and these pages declare what I have done with it. The biographer and the painter are close kinsmen. The biographer does with words what the painter does with colors. As one goes from one gallery of the masters to another he quickly learns that no single artist ever exhausts a worthy subjedt. Madonnas and St. Sebas- tians, all the same yet no two alike, pass before our eyes in an endless series, each telling us the same thing, each telling us something new. So is it with biography. The human life of a given person is so indescribably deep and wonderful that no one biographer can fully exploit his subjedl. He can but give what with his limited powers he sees as he. moves through shade and sunshine in bosom fellowship with the man whom he is interpret- ing. It is just that — the biographer must live with his subjedt in the close intimacy of impartiality through an entire career. He must crowd the developments and PREFACE xiii experiences of a complete lifetime through the medium of his own perceptive powers. There are various conceptions of biography. Without depreciating any, I have involuntarily written according to the dominant conception in my own mind. As I have just said I hold a biography to be a word portrait. It is more akin to a painting than to a photograph. But a biography is in one sense even a higher kind of art than painting, in that it is a moving picture of the man. The steady flow of his life and charadler is represented. The duty of a biographer, as I have tried to discern my own in this capacity, is not to suppress his own convidtions based on personal touch, but to keep them in due relation to all the material gathered. He must do more than chronicle bald fadts. He must give them color and atmosphere. There are few fadts or incidents that are their own interpreter. Moreover, and here it seems to me is the biographer's most dangerous and most delicate but imperious duty, he must dive into the deep sea of motives underlying principles. It is [because I have set myself the highest possible ideal of biography that my shortcomings are the more glaring. I have been guided by a few general principles which, if stated here, may make this book of greater value to readers than it would otherwise be. In the first place I have always let the man, whose personality is for the moment under my care, speak for himself where possible. Usually he speaks better, though on occasions worse, than a biographer could. Nor have I balked at long quotations where they served the purpose better than short ones. Among long quotations are utterances at great crises, personal and official. Some of these are disappointing and we see our hero at his worst rather than at his best. The clergy are expeded by the public to wear their feelings on their sleeve at such times, and unfortunately they accept the rather exorbitant demand. The result is as might be expedted. The emotional con- vulsion of the moment interferes with normal judgment xiv PREFACE and good taste, and sentiment easily lapses into senti- mentality. The fault is evenly distributed between the public and the clergy. As to subjedl matter, I have been furnished with an abundance, almost a plethora. Nothing has been se- ledted and nothing rejedled without having been first put into the scales and weighed. Another biographer with the same material might have reversed some of my decisions — which is but to say that he would be another biographer. Whatever merit this volume has consists in the fadt that, even if it be only a daub of a painting, it is my daub and not another's. Dr. Satterlee held three representative positions in three representative centres of life — the pastor of a rural community, the redlor of a metropolitan parish, and the bishop of a capital see. Some history of each place which received him is fitting and courteous, if not neces- sary. The mere biography could get on without it, but a future generation may be glad to have what is given in a biographical setting. Much detail might have been omitted if I had had in mind only American readers, who, to use a hackneyed word in a new connotation, are not meticulous. But I hope that my volume may also fall into the hands of English readers, whose knowledge of the xttpoKTi^p of the American Church needs enlarge- ment, and that sympathetic consideration which is im- possible without it. In this connection I would add that I have held in grateful memory the unnamed and the unknown, who, in Wappinger's Falls, New York, Wash- ington and elsewhere, have made their unobserved and fragrant contribution of prayer and service to the real- ization of the great ideals which they and Dr. Satterlee held in common. For their sake I have paid homage to the local. Those uninterested in these seeming di- gressions and my apparent disregard for proportion are begged to give such passages a little caress as they skip them. There is a glory for some eyes in the common- places and trifles here recorded. PREFACE XV When we read in the New Testament of St. Barnabas that he was "a good man, full of the Holy Ghost and of faith," do not let us fall into the too common error of conjuring up a spiritual prig or a human creation quite distindt from all who lived in after-times, and conse- quently unintelligible to us of today. The mind that succindlly and graphically described St. Barnabas aimed to make him the comrade of and intelligible to the whole body of Christians. The best way to interpret the psychology of the Bible, and to translate its stately and antique language into familiar terms, is to bring to play upon it common Christian experience, including our own. The briefest and most enviable of "tributes" or "appre- ciations" can be duplicated from among our own con- temporaries, not once or twice at that. Henry Yates Satterlee was "a good man, full of the Holy Ghost and of faith." This does not mean that he, or St. Barnabas, was free from faults, or without a besetting sin — only that each was just what the summarized biography declares. The great St. Peter was a man of extremes, ofttimes wild extremes, and was swept hither and yon by gusts of contradidlory emotions and sympathies, until the last rapidly reversed decision which nailed him to a cross. No one more than Bishop Satterlee would have desired impartial treatment of himself. He would have asked for due emphasis on his faults and limitations. In my task of love I have borne this in mind, and if I have failed to introduce sufficient chiaroscuro into my paint- ing, it is not because I have played fast and loose with the material at my disposal, and the brief but rich per- sonal experience of friendship with Bishop Satterlee, which I was privileged to enjoy. The portrait I give is as I conceive of the man. His death was a signal for the produdlion of many miniature paintings or appre- ciations. Concluding these all into a composite portrait, we find "a good man, full of the Holy Ghost and of faith." That is the main thing to remember. xvi PREFACE As I lay down my pen at the conclusion of this task of love, I have some understanding of Izaak Walton's words in his "Epistle to the Reader," which prefaces his "Lives." Referring to his "Life of George Herbert," he says: "For the life of that great example of holiness, Mr. George Herbert, I profess it to be so far a free-will offering, that it was writ chiefly to please myself, but yet not without some respedt to posterity: For though he was not a man that the next age can forget, yet many of his particular adls and virtues might have been neg- ledted, or lost, if I had not colledted and presented them to the imitation of those that shall succeed us: For I humbly conceive writing to be both a safer and truer preserver >of men's virtuous adlions than tradition; especially as it is managed in this age. And I am also to tell the Reader, that though this life of Mr. Herbert was not by me writ in haste, yet I intended it a review before it should be made public; but that was not allowed me, by reason of my absence from London when 'twas printing; So that the Reader may find in it some mistakes, some that might have been contradled, and some faults that are not justly chargeable upon me, but the printer; and yet I hope none so great as may not by this confession, purchase pardon from a good-natured Reader." Charles H. Brent. Manila, i6 July, 1915. A MASTER BUILDER CHAPTER I CONCERNING HIS FORBEARS 1843-1856 Though his own learning and multiplied merits may justly appear sufficient to dignify both himself and his posterity; yet the reader may be pleased to know that his father was masculinely and lineally descended from a very ancient family. IZAAK WALTON THE value of considering the ancestry and family of a man consists chiefly in taking account of the quarry from which he was hewn. Two of the four biographical sketches of our Lord begin with genealogies. That Bishop Satterlee was interested in his genealogy is evidenced by a carefully systematized "Index Rerum, " containing information and sources relative to the family. Their name was originally Soterlega (Domesday Book) and runs through the usual gamut of change in family names until it reaches Satterlee. The meaning of the name appears to be the southern lea, or pasture land, of Saxon times, so called in relation to some more important locality, probably Beeches in Suffolk, from which it is distant about four miles. Eventually, as a reward for service to the king, it became the possession of one Roger, who was distinguished from other Rogers of the country side by having the title of his acres affixed to his name, being known as Roger de Soterle. The family passed through a century and a half of unevent- ful life until the day of Thomas Sotterley, whose adherence to the Red Rose of Lancaster won for him the uncomfortable reward of dispossession and exile at the hands of the vic- torious Yorkists {circa 1470). The manor then fell into the hands of the Playters and the Sotterleys !are lost sight of for one hundred and fifty years, when they reappear in Devon as Satterlee. Their identity with the Sotterleys of 2 A MASTER BUILDER [1843 Suffolk is certain from their armorial bearings — three buckles. William Satterlee was Vicar of St. Ide's in Ide near Exeter. He was a Royalist, and among other in- dignities suffered at the hands of the Roundheads, was chained in a stable by a dungheap in his glebe. Wil- liam's son, Benedidt, came to America in 1685, and there married Rebecca, daughter of Judge Bemis and widow of John Diamond, all of New London, Conn. From this couple were descended the American Satterlees, whose most conspicuous representative was the first Bishop of Washington. The grandfather of the subjedl of this biography was Edward Rathbone Satterlee, who married Mary Lansing of Albany. He was a merchant of Albany held in esteem by his fellow-citizens. After his death his account books revealed that he had the generous habit of cancelling debts when he found his debtors hard pressed for funds. Edward Rathbone had two children, Frances, who married John C. Bergh, and Edward. Edward Satterlee was the father of Henry Yates and seven other children. He did not engage in adtive pro- fessional life. Possessed of independent means, he was what would have been described in his days as a cul- tivated man of leisure. His taste and training were in the diredlion of art, and he developed considerable tech- nique as an amateur painter. Sir C. Purdon Clarke on one occasion was attradled by the copy of a Rembrandt by Mr. Satterlee, which he said had caught the spirit and coloring of the master. He also at times employed his pen in the service of art, writing critiques and essays. It was a keen disappointment to him that his eldest son did not choose art and literature as a vocation. In appearance he was tall and handsome. Of a genial and social nature, he found much pleasure in entertaining his friends. His dinner-table was a source of enjoyment to himself and those who assembled around it. He had a home at West Point, New York, where the family connexion were accustomed to gather at Thanksgiving i8s6] CONCERNING HIS FORBEARS 3 and Christmas. This property was afterwards bought by Mr. J. P. Morgan, and the homestead and a portion of the grounds given to Mr. and Mrs. Herbert L. Satterlee. He was not a deeply reHgious man. With the pride and reserve charadleristic of men of his type, he did not discuss religious matters. But he was a man of high moral standards and held the respecfl of the community. He was a member of the Dutch Reformed Church. At the time of his death the influences of many years had reached their climax, and he was on the point of being confirmed in the Episcopal Church. As husband and father he left little to be desired. He was the companion and friend of his children, leav- ing upon them, on this account, that impression which is as unique as it is enduring. His were times when high- minded men felt the responsibility and joy of domestic ties, and kept unencumbered sufficient space to pay them the reverence due. On the maternal side Bishop Satterlee's lineage was distinguished. His great-grandfather, Christopher Yates, was a Colonel Quartermaster in the American Revolu- tion, serving on General Schuyler's staff. He married Jane Bradt. Dying in middle life he left his widow with a large family of sons, to whom she succeeded in giving a College education. Four rose to prominence, the chief being Joseph Christopher, who became Governor of New York (1823-1825), and Henry, grandfather of the future Bishop, who achieved senatorial honors in his State, was mayor of Schenedlady, N. Y., and one of the founders of Union College. Henry married Catherine Mynderse, a descendant of that fine Dutch stock that has left its flavor in more than one State of the Union to its benefit and honor. Their children were Mary, Stephen, Henry, Charles, Edward and Jane Anna, who married Edward Satterlee, of whom was born Henry Yates. Jane Anna died in November, 1873, at the age of fifty-seven and her husband five years later in April, 1878. 4 A MASTER BUILDER [1843 Jane Anna (Yates) Satterlee was a pretty, attradtive woman, spirited and intelledtual. Her son Henry in- herited the personal appearance of the Satterlees, who were tall and dark, but he owed to his mother, as is so often the case in creative charadlers like his, his chief mental and spiritual qualities. She was a brave woman with a vivid faith that found expression in a life of prayer. In appearance she was a contrast to her husband, being fair, plump, short, of fresh complexion, and with a great deal of simple dignity. She had an adtive, acquisitive mind. For quite a time she was a semi-invalid. But she turned her mis- fortune into an opportunity for reading voluminously, including in her study the history of ancient religions. She was a good French scholar and translated several books. She had musical knowledge and some ability as a musician. Like all people who have a living faith she found much romance in life. Her versatility added to her charm. She was brought up in the Dutch Reformed Church. But she had also personal interest in the Episcopal Church, renting a pew in St. Paul's, Albany, where she attended afternoon service on Sundays during the in- cumbency of the Rev. Dr. WiUiam Ingraham Kip,^ afterwards the first Bishop of California, and that of the Rev. Dr. Thomas A. Starkey, afterwards Bishop of Newark. Henry, as a small boy, used to come back after service, tie an apron over his shoulders and deliver a sermon, saying the Episcopal Church was the one he proposed to enter. Dutch phlegm and the prevailing habit of reserve did not encourage Mrs. Satterlee to speak much about the deep things of rehgion. But her religion was none the less, probably all the more, intensely real. She lived her behef, she was uncompromising in her standards, and always retained a childUke nature which was re- produced in a heightened degree in her eldest son. Her 1 Bishop Kip through his marriage was a connexion of Mrs. H. Y. Satterlee. i8s6] CONCERNING HIS FORBEARS 5 cheerful temperament, unclouded by morbidness, was fed by the consolatory elements in her Christian belief, which were not lost sight of in the docftrinal intricacies of the Communion of her fathers. Though following with hidden prayers and open joy the course of her children, who, with the exception of two that died at an early age, became communicants of the Episcopal Church, she herself was never confirmed. Eight children were born to Edward and Jane Anna Satterlee: Mary Lansing, born in 1840, Henry Yates, Edward Rathbone, Clarence, Howard, Katherine, Graham, Arthur Bergh. Howard and Katherine were carried off by scarlet fever in early childhood. The rest all lived to grow up, were confirmed, and the men became vestry- men in their various parishes. Mary Lansing married Captain Robert Catlin, U.S.A., a gallant army officer, whom she has survived. She and Arthur Bergh, the senior and junior members of this large family, are the only ones who are still living. In a memorandum in Bishop Satterlee's hand-writing we learn some interesting fadts. "I was born" on Jan- uary II, 1843, "at 112 Greenwich St., South west corner of Carlyle St., New York, in the corner front room, second story, three months after my grandmother Yates' death. Dr. Tonalier was the family physician. My mother was a very cultivated woman. She had met with an accident in her childhood that made her lame and caused her great suffering from necrosed bone all through her youth, and she devoted her time to reading. She spoke French and Dutch fluently and was an accom- plished pianist — an excellent scholar. When I was less than a week old she repeated Burns' 'Highland Maid' through to a visitor. This is an instance of how her thoughts ran through all her life. It was her pradice to have recourse to literary diversions in all times of trial, for she never became a professing Christian until about ten years before her death (at 56 years of age). From a sense of duty, however, she gathered her children 6 A MASTER BUILDER [1843 about her all through her life and explained the Bible on Sunday afternoons. These are among the most hal- lowed remembrances of my childhood." This reference to his mother is indicative of the in- fluence she had on his charader. Her sincerity, which found expression first in shy aloofness from certain of the conventional and outward aspeds of religion, and later in her open surrender to its claims, repeated itself in the singleness of purpose and reality which were prominent features also in her son's charadler. She died in 1873, leaving to her children that most potent of all inheritances, the enduring and indelible memory of true motherhood, the best substitute for which is a pale shadow, and the total absence of which is the direst misfortune to which a man can fall heir. Lofty ideals, pure manners, and domestic happiness were the com- panions of their youth. It was her privilege and hap- piness to live long enough to see her first-born son launched on that blameless career in the Ministry which, before its close, was destined to be fruitful beyond that of all but a seledt few. This is but one more instance where both the man himself, and his contemporaries, can point back to the mother as being the operative source of his goodness and success. She gave, and he accepted, the best of motherhood. There can never be any other result from such a relationship. The family did not live long in New York. In 1846 they moved to Albany. Henry Yates had bought the house of his brother, the Governor, after he died. It was a roomy old Dutch mansion in large grounds. A church now occupies the site where it formerly stood. Mr. Yates in the loneliness consequent upon his in- creasing age and his widowhood opened his doors to receive his daughter and her family, and his house there- after became their home for ten years. Mrs. Satterlee took charge of the household affairs. It was in these sheltered and cultured surroundings that Henry's happy boyhood began to develop, and his i8s6] CONCERNING HIS FORBEARS 7 earliest recoUedlions were full of the peculiar fragrance that is attached to congenial home life under the best conditions. His sister writes of him : — Henry was a healthy, happy boy, fond of reading, manly sports, especially of making all sorts of colledlions of insedts, minerals, etc. He would assemble the family to witness experiments in chemistry which were not always successful, occasionally result- ing in an explosion and total darkness, accompanied by a strong and penetrating odor of some chemical which had not worked properly. The house was a very large one with extensive grounds, and I sometimes would invite a few girl friends to see the ath- letic games and races in which Henry with his brother Edward and some boy companions would participate, on which occasion we would sit in a gaily dressed balcony overlooking the horse- chestnut grove where the contest took place, the vidlor being crowned by the chosen "Queen of Beauty." At other times my brother would be the head magician in an exhibition of legerdemain given in a strucflure called the "engine . house," as we were obliged to keep a fire engine of our own for emergencies. I mention these incidents merely to show that Henry was a very jolly and normal boy, fond of the usual games and sports of youth. Hospitality was the law of the Yates Mansion and the memory still lives of a grand fancy-dress ball in 1847, at which Henry made his first public appearance. His father and mother represented Charles I and Henrietta. He and his sisters were pages. His dignity and inde- pendence led to a vigorous protest on his part against being carried into the ballroom. He claimed the right to enter on his own sturdy four-year-old legs. Mr. Yates died on March 20, 1854. The following is the obituary notice that appeared in the Schenedady Cabinet of March 28: DEATH OF AN AGED CITIZEN Another old and respedtable Citizen has been gathered to his Fathers. Henry Yates, long a sufferer from Paralysis, though 8 A MASTER BUILDER [1843 able until almost the last day of his life to take the air in his carriage, expired this morning, in the 84th year of his age. Mr. Yates belonged to a Family distinguished for intelli- gence, enterprise and public spirit, and for its participation in the Executive, Judicial and Legislative responsibilities of the Government from our earliest history. Christopher Yates, Father of the deceased, took an aiftive part in the Revolution, and was a Commissioner of Forfeitures after our Independence was achieved. The late Gov. Yates, the late Professor Andrew Yates, and the late John B. Yates, were brothers of the now deceased, and we believe, last sur- vivor of the Family. Mr. Yates was born at Schenedady, in 1770. After his ad- mission to the Bar he was for many years successfully engaged in the Pradtice of the Law. In 1817 or '18 he was eledled to the Senate from the old Middle Distrid:, and was, for four years, an influential Member of that body, with such men as Abram Van Vechten, Cadwallader D. Colden, Gideon Granger, Henry Sey- mour, &c. &c. for colleagues. Several years ago Mr. Yates, pressed by age and infirmities, retired from business and fixed his residence in the old Mansion of the late Peter W. Yates, occupied successively by Governors Tompkins, Clinton and Seward, where, surrounded by those who were dearest to him, with all the relief that afiluence and science could bring, and all the consolations that affedion and religion could impart, this aged and stricken man lingered and died — Albany Journal, 20th. Mr. Yates resided in this city till the year 1826, when he re- moved to New- York, and subsequently to the city of Albany. Besides the stations above named which he filled, he was for many years Mayor of this city and First Judge of the country. He was a member of the Council of Appointment and represented this country in the Convention which adopted the second con- stitution of the state. Many eminent citizens were his law students — such as Judge Conklin, Gideon Hawley; Bishop Doane, of N. J. commenced reading law in his office, which profession he abandoned for that of divinity. It may not be out of place to say that Mr. Yates, as one of the then demo- cratic party in this country, took a lively interest in the estab- lishment of this paper in the year 1809, and always proved himself a fast friend of its founder. CHAPTER II THE YOUTH 1856-1867 Come, choose your road and away, my lad. Come, choose your road and away! And the way, the way that you choose this day Is the way to the end of the world. ALFRED NOYES HENRY'S earliest tuition was at home from a Miss Ellen P. Frisbie, a graduate of the Albany Normal School. Later he went to the Boys' Academy. When he was thirteen, filled with the physical and moral health with which life in the Yates Mansion had furnished him, his parents moved to New York (1856). This was the year when the missionary spirit of Calvary Parish, to which in later years he was destined to make a noble contribution, burst forth in new vigor, finding expression in the estabUshment, under Dr. Hawks of Calvary Free Chapel, one of the first free chapels in New York. New York, now the most multitudinous and bewildering, the most heterogeneous and cosmo- politan city of all times, was then a compadt, homoge- neous and rather provincial city of 600,000. Its future immensity was only a dream, and you could in those days ride out into the country, where now apartment houses rear their gaunt forms in place of trees, and the swarms of children exceed in number every form of life that ever reigned there, except possibly insedl life. Yet it was a great event to move from the comparative quiet and seclusion of Albany, with its conservative traditions and seledl fellowship, to the chief commercial centre of the nation, where then, as now, " progress " — who knows lo A MASTER BUILDER [1856 whither? — was the watchword. There came a new meaning and added romance to the wide-eyed boy, whose half-formed purpose was steadily shaping itself, to know the full meaning of life, by fearlessly occupying its most hidden corners, and living it to the full. His sensitive nature was trained both consciously and un- consciously to respond quickly and sympathetically, to every contadl which was established with his fellows and their interests. In New York he began his systematic school life. He was placed in the Columbia Grammar School under the famous Dr. Charles Anthon, whose editions of the Classics gave students of that guileless generation most of the benefits of an English translation with none of the odium! After two years of preparatory work he passed his en- trance examinations for Columbia University. He was not yet sixteen years old, and it fell out to his advantage that his regular collegiate work was postponed for more than a year; instead, there came to him the broadening and educative influence of life in Europe under the best conditions. On September 29, 1858, his parents sailed for Liverpool on the Cunard S.S. "Persia," taking Henry and his sister Mary with them. For nine months they were on the Continent. He was at an age when nothing escaped his notice. The experience tended to mature him beyond his years. He was of necessity thrown with companions much his senior. His appearance, equipped as he was with a fine physique, led to the supposition that he was older than he was. His handsome, animated face and inteUigent, receptive mind won him much attention, so that he never lacked fellowship among the choicer people with whom he came into touch. Had he been built in a lesser mould, he could easily have been marred by the bUght of self-consciousness and conceit. But he came through the experience benefited and not injured. In Rome his latent taste for art was quickened. But he was not too absorbed in the monuments of yesterday i867] THE YOUTH ii to negledl the social pleasures which were open to him. He was welcomed into the delightful and gay American society resident in the ancient capital, and gave and received much pleasure. The only letter of his youth that has been preserved is one to his aunts, written in his clear, bold hand from Vienna: VIENNA, SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 28TH, 1858. Dear Aunts: It is my turn to write so I will now write to you. Mary, I suppose told you all about the Hague, Amster- dam and Broek, (for she claimed the privilege of writing to you all about Holland), so I will not repeat; all I have got to say about it is that it is the most old-fashioned, meanest and durti- est country we have yet been in, and it is a perfetfl mystery to me how the inhabitants can keep healthy with all the canals full of the suerage of city, in their streets, but I was going to write about Prussia not Holland. In travelling from Amster- dam to Berlin we remained over night (for it takes two days) at a small village named Minden, where we saw some recruits drilling. It looked very strange to see the men marching all over, I assure you (for provided they throw their legs forward with a jerk and do not bend the knee, they can march in any dirediion they choose). It was late at night when we arrived at Berlin and very cold. We went immediately to the Hotel Du Nord, which is the best in the city. Early the next morning we went to the King's Palace where we were requested to put on list shoes that were half too large for us, I suspedt the reason was for us to polish their' bare floors, by sliding along, as that is the only possible way to keep the shoes on. In one of the rooms of the Palace are the drinking cups of the different Kings of Prussia, some of them are about two thirds as large as a pail. The guide said that the Kings used to empty such a cup in less than two hours. Pa asked him if he could do it but he said not. The Royal Chapel is in this Palace and it is magnificently fitted up. The floor is beautifully inlaid and the cross, back of the pulpit, composed entirely of precious stones, is said to have cost over five hundred thousand dollars. One of the most interesting sights in Berlin is the Museum. On one side of the steps at the entrance is Kiss's celebrated statue of the Amazon. It is the counterpart of the one that was in the Chrystal Palace 12 A MASTER BUILDER [1856 in New York. In the Museum are pidlures from the earliest stages of the art down to the present time. Among the most celebrated are: "A boar hunt" by Rubens and Snyder and several pidures by Raphael representing the Madonna. In an adjoining room is a large unfinished picture by Raphael rep- resenting "The adoration of the Magi" which is only to be seen on application. It is beautifully drawn and if it had been fin- ished would have undoubtedly have been one of his master- pieces. A perfedly finished copy has been painted which shows what the original would have been when finished. In the same room are several other pidtures by Raphael and his father. Returning from the Museum we passed the statue of Frederic the Great which is considered together with that of Marcus Aurelius in Rome, the finest in the world. The base of the statue is surrounded by the Generals of Frederic the Great in base reliefs. I think that there is a view of the statue (with trees in the back-ground) in the stereoscopic views on glass, which Pa has at home. There is another Museum in Berlin called the New Museum which is close to the old Museum. In it are some coins and medals — in a room down stairs, on the upper floor a room full of sketches of celebrated artists and a suite of rooms full of historical relics. We had great difiiculty to get in the latter (for it is not usually shown to the public) but our courier, George, applied to one of the diredlors who gave us a ticket. In this department there is a small room devoted to Frederic the Great. There on one side is a figure of "Old Fritz" in the old suit of thread bare cloth which he usually wore — and for the face there is a cast that was taken "post mortem." On one side there are all the pipes which he smoked and I really think that he was extravigant in them for there are over one hundred and fifty. In this room are two cannon ball that met in the air and flattened each other so that they stuck together. We visited several studios in Berlin one of them belonging to Cornelius, the celebrated painter and sculptor, it was very fine, although it was mostly composed of drawings. Some of these were beautifully executed, one especially which took up one side of the room was "beautifully conceived." In one house which was filled with studios we saw how they mod- eled in clay before sculptoring. The last day that we were in Berlin we went to the Berlin Iron Manufactory expedling to see how they cast all those pretty knick-knacks which we so 1867] THE YOUTH 13 often see on etargers Ijic"], but it was a secret, and no one was al- lowed to go into the casting room, especially Americans for they have a great idea of their sharpness here. From Berlin we went to Dresden, but as Pa has written to you about that city I will not repeat him. We remained over night at Prague and the next day started for Vienna. It was very cold at Prague, the ther- mometer being fourteen degrees below zero. The moment we arrived there Pa was presented with a paper requesting his circumstances, age, number of party, where last from, &c. Our courier says that we will have to go through all these operations in every city in the Austrian Dominions. Although it is an inconvenience it is also a protedlion to travellers, for if they should be arrested for murder or any other crime by mistake, by this paper they could prove that they were at another place at the date of the crime, so that if a man intends to do right there is no place in the world where he is better protedled than in France or Austria. It takes nearly two days to go from Dresden to Vienna so that by the time we arrived here we were pretty tired of railways especially in cold weather. They say that it is unusually cold here and I would like to know if it is the same in New York.? The first day we were here we went to the bankers and received four letters from Aunt Fanny, two dated Nov. 5th and two 0&.. 29th, one letter from Uncle John dated Nov. 9th, one letter from Aunt Jeanette dated Nov. 5th, one from Aunt Helen dated Nov. 7th, one from Grandpa dated Odl. 29th and one from Eddie dated Nov. 7th. You all expedled that we would receive your letters in Paris but instead of that we received them in Vienna so please diredl to our Banker in Rome next time. Hoping to hear soon from you, I remain. Your affedionate nephew, HENRY. After leaving the Continent he spent some time in London, vp-here the serious and studious side of his char- adler found edification and enjoyment in the British Museum. He made it a daily resort for reading, and was chagrined and indignant because an attendant, whose caution, or it may be officiousness, exceeded his discern- ment, informed him that he was too young to be allowed to use the class of books which he was in the habit of reading. 14 A MASTER BUILDER [1856 He returned to America with the same eagerness that marked each new step of his Ufe from first to last. Europe, for the moment, had pushed all other considera- tions into the background, but his nature was too stable and acquisitive to be unsettled by so dazzling an experi- ence. The next thing was college, and he flung himself at it with the joyousness and vigor of unsoiled and unspoiled youth. He found that he would have to pay for his trip abroad by doing double work for the first year, otherwise he would lose his place in his class. But he succeeded in passing the Sophomore examinations and kept his standing in college. He was, as might be expedled from his native endow- ments and early training, both a good student and a good classmate. His most intimate college friends were Gerard Beekman and his cousin Walter Satterlee, between whom there continued the closest intimacy throughout life. Though he lived at home this did not hinder him from throwing himself with zest into the social life of the University. Among his associates were young men of the gayer sort. He was no prig, and though he abhorred evil he saw and enjoyed the good in those of his com- panions who were lax or careless. His innocence and virile integrity kept him from defilement, and made him that most powerful of influences among students, an unconscious influence. He exercised leadership in various diredtions. He was President of the Debating Society and in' 1861 delivered the Delta Phi Junior Oration. Athletics in those days were not the prominent feature in university life that they have since become, so that his magnificent physical powers had not the opportunity to be exploited for the honor of his University as otherwise they would have been. With the exception of chess and games of skill he was never fond of games, though always ready to enter into the play of children. Until 1861 he seems to have exhibited no sense of vocation. It is not surprising that his earliest movement 186;] THE YOUTH 15 was in the diredlion of the Army. Those were days when patriotism called for military expression. Nowhere more than in the college halls of the land were national questions hotly and, in many instances, intelligently debated. The integrity of the Union and the ques- tion of States' Rights were not questions of mere aca- demic import. To noble-minded youth the cause of the enslaved negro was a clear issue, allowing of no hesi- tation and demanding self-sacrificing acSlion. Students offered themselves to their country with the graceful abandon and glowing ardor with which the lover casts a rose at his sweetheart's feet. Young Satterlee was as deliberately reckless with his life as thousands of his contemporaries were. At the age of eighteen he so earnestly besought his father to allow him to enter the Army, that a reludtant consent was given, provided he could succeed in obtaining an appointment through his own efforts to the United States Military Academy at West Point, New York. Henry went to Washington armed with letters to influential men and politicians, but all to no purpose. He returned to New York bitterly disappointed "until he realized that the Church Militant gave him a stronger call, which he answered, giving (to the cause of Christ) the life he was willing to lay down for his country." His ardor for the nation and his devotion to its principles were not lessened by reason of his failure to become a soldier. They were to find expres- sion in other channels. He had all the Northerner's enthusiasm for his cause, and stored up the memory of the burning events of his youth against the day when the effort of wise men would be bent toward obliterating sedlional lines, and he himself, with balanced judgment, would be called upon to stand between North and South as a reconcihng influence, with the last wrinkles of partisan feeling ironed away. He lived to learn that patriotism has a higher, as well as a more enduring glory, than belongs to the call to arms and the accoutre- ments of war. He came to know by experience the i6 A MASTER BUILDER [1856 meaning of dying daily for causes that include, but do not stop with, the nation. In the end he shortened his days and gave his hfe for his friends, just as truly as though an enemy's bullet had laid him low while guarding his country's defences. It may be said of Henry Satterlee that he had a natural bent toward religion. He was endowed with the gift of faith, nor did he keep his talent wrapped in a napkin. He was baptized in the Dutch Reformed Church, but had associations from his earliest memory with the Episcopal Church. As a lad he showed the seriousness with which he viewed religion by fasting, which is not a habit that a growing youth voluntarily adopts without profound motive. When working out a grave problem he used this discipHne as an aid to his purpose. He did not brood over his inabihty to enter the Military Academy, but after the edge of his disappointment wore off, he accepted a decision that seemed at first to thwart his best ambi- tions, as indicative of the fad that it was in some other diredlion that he was to find vent for his full enthusiasm. In the course of his study of ethics and his reading of Carlyle, especially Chartism and Past and Present, his mind was turned toward the ministry, and he felt 'that this was his vocation. It is interesting and somewhat unusual, that he should have first thought of the min- istry as the great representative Christian vocation, be- fore he knew in connexion with what church he would ally himself. It was the ministry as such, and not some one asped: of it as interpreted by a given church, which claimed him at the outset. The commissioned servant of God and of man was what he aimed to be. He then set to work to study the various churches, and his mind was more and more attradled to the historic standing and sacramental teaching of that branch of the Church Catholic which afterwards claimed him. Professor Milo Mahan^ advised him to consult the Rev. Dr. Arthur Cleveland Coxe, who was at that time one of the promi- > Uncle of the famous American Admiral, who died in 1914. 1867] THE YOUTH 17 nent clergy of the Diocese and Redtor of Calvary Church, New York. Dr. Coxe was himself the son of a Presby- terian divine. He had fought for the position he had won, and both as a historian and a theologian was well qualified to counsel the eager young student. The result was a close tie binding the two together. Dr. Coxe was in the habit of calling him "his boy." The question of baptism was discussed and Henry was baptized hypothetically on Easter Even, March 26, 1864, in the church where he was destined to serve as redtor so long and well, by Dr. Coxe, who also presented him for confirmation to Bishop Horatio Potter at Trinity Church. This was the year after he graduated from Columbia University. In 1863 he took his A.B. Owing to political reasons there was no Valedidtorian Oration. But he was one of the three candidates for the Valedidlory Poem, another being his cousin Walter. With charadteristic delicacy of feeling and generosity he withdrew in favor of his friend and cousin. The year of his graduation was notable for another reason which left its mark on his whole after career. He met at West Point for the first time Miss Jane Lawrence Churchill of New York City, beginning that life-long companionship which taught all who knew them how noble and pure and beautiful a thing wedded life according to the mind of God could be. Henry's mother took the young girl to her heart and a devoted attachment was created. It was her happy lot to be present at, and share in, every great spiritual event of his life from his baptism and confirmation to his ordination and consecration, and finally that exultant service when his mortal remains were laid to rest in the Little Sandluary. It was she who rounded out and completed his personaHty. Though she leaned on him as on a strong man, she gave strength to strength. His ideals were hers naturally by reason of a certain likeness of charadter in the midst of much that was unlike. Her sympathy, her insight, her quick and accurate judgment, were a part of all his achievements. Her hospitality was 1 8 A MASTER BUILDER [1856 as gracious as it was constant, and her friendship as loyal as it was fragrant. In the fall of 1863 Henry entered the General Theologi- cal Seminary, New York. He continued to live at home but, as when he was an undergraduate at Columbia, he made himself felt among his fellow students in every department of Seminary life. He was not content with being conventional either in study or reading. From boyhood, and especially after his trip abroad, he reached out beyond the group of subjedts which ordinarily satisfy the average youth. He read slowly and had a memory that was retentive of the substance rather than of the mode of expression. That is to say, his intelledlual assimilation was good. He read with a pencil in hand annotating or taking notes. A couple of poems, "Vision of Charles the Eleventh of Sweden" and a semi-humorous produdtion with a moral, of the variety that students afFedl, entitled "Stella Pei- thologiana," show facility in versification. In after life he wrote a number of carols for parochial use. His college theses for the most part are thoughtfully argued. They bear marks of maturity of thought, power of expression, and careful reading. He is convinced that the moral causes of atheism, where it exists, are its root causes. He attributes the doArine of fatalists to untidiness of thought, which confounds "the freedom of the will with the power of performing. And as men are very negligent in the performance of their duty, one says he is not free." Reason and revelation are not enemies. Just as "arith- metic hands us over to algebra for those problems which it cannot solve, from a lower to a higher branch of analysis, so revelation is superhuman reason, and we pass from reason to revelation." He discusses the atomic system and its bearing on creation, the argument from design, and similar themes, with considerable cogency. During his Seminary training he had special advantages. His Hebrew he learned from a master of that tongue, himself a Jewish Rabbi. He was devoted to music and 1867] THE YOUTH 19 gave time and attention to it and to elocution. He also began pradlical church work, as far as his studies per- mitted, at the Church of the Messiah for colored people, and he taught a Sunday School class at Calvary. On July 9, 1865, he officiated for the first time as lay- reader at Wappinger's Falls, New York. After a second Sunday there the Redlor, Dr. George B. Andrews, who was in need of help owing to feeble health, asked Mr. Satterlee to become assistant. The congregation added their invitation to that of the Redlor. Though it was the custom then as now, and probably to a larger degree, for theological students to adl as lay readers on Sundays in missions and vacant parishes, Mr. Satterlee was asked at the end of his second year at the Seminary to become officially identified with a parish as one of its clergy. The matter was carried to the Bishop, who agreed to the arrangement. During the summer, which was spent at West Point, Mr. Satterlee, with the aid of his mother and future wife, established a little Sunday School at a place which, if its name indicates its spiritual fertility, was not promising. The place was known as "Stoney Lonesome." On September 3, Mr. Satterlee began his work at Wappinger's Falls, though he was not admitted to the diaconate until something more than two months later. On November 21, Bishop Potter ordained him deacon in Brooklyn, at St. Paul's Church (Flatbush), the Bishop of Honolulu (Dr. Thomas N. Staley) preaching the sermon. The day was a very stormy one so that his father and his future wife were the sole representatives of the family who were able to be present. He continued his studies at the Seminary, giving Sunday, together with such marginal time before and after as was possible, to his charge at Wappinger's Falls. Those were not days of rapid transit, so that it was a much more serious matter to make the journey then than now. Immediately the influence of his fresh, strong life was felt throughout Zion Parish, limited though the time at his disposal for pastoral work 20 A MASTER BUILDER [1856 was. On Christmas Day of this his first year of work, forty communicants gathered to greet their Lord at the first early service held in Zion Church. By Easter the parish already began to show tokens of that steady development which, at the close of his ministry there, left Zion Church as an ensign on a hill. Mr. Satterlee was full of rich sentiment in his religious life and it seemed to him quite the normal thing to have the first service on Easter Day at the break of dawn, when, with St. Mary Magdalene and St. Peter, the people of the day might live the event. This pradtice, begun during the first years in the ministry, was continued until the close of his pastorate in Wappinger's Falls. Wappinger's Falls is a town near the Hudson River about seventy miles from New York. At this time it was a place of 1,800 inhabitants and had quite an EngHsh colony composed largely of skilled workmen employed in the Garner calico works. The operatives were men of inteUigence and brought with them the best traditions of EngHsh parochial life, which were fostered and developed by Mr. Satterlee. A number of girls were also employed in the faAories. Wappinger's Falls takes its name from a band of Indians called the "Wappingers." The Indians called the stream Mawenawasigh, but the Dutch afterwards changed it to Wappinger's Kill. In 1770 what is now Wappinger's Falls was the farm of Peter Mesier. The waterpower available attracted manufacturers, and in 1825 the print-works were established around which the town steadily grew. When Mr. Satterlee first went there in 1866 it was but a village. Twelve years later it numbered upwards of 6,000 people. It was the boast of the town that nearly all of its wealthiest inhabitants at the height of its prosperity had come there as poor men, and that there had not been a single business failure in thirty years. Perhaps its worthiest boast was that those who owned and controlled the local industries believed that "the world was not made for them alone," and that 1867] THE YOUTH 21 their interest in their employees should be "other than forcing just as much work out of them for just as little pay as possible." The employees were public-spirited citizens and were led in promoting the welfare of the community by such men as Mr. Irving Grinnell, Mr. W. Henry Reese, and Mr. Henry Mesier, who had resi- dences in the vicinity. A mile and a half or so away in New Hamburgh on the river lived a group of New York men of education and moderate wealth forming an especially congenial society. Though there were four other churches in the town, the Episcopal Church claimed a large percentage of the mill population. The bosses of the different rooms of the print workers were almost without exception members of the Church of England. The beginnings of Zion Church date back to 1820, when a faithful, loving, and courageous woman, prizing the blessings of the Church, resolved to do what she could for those around her who did not have access to them. She colledted a little band of children for instrudion, and their first class room was the shade of an apple tree that once stood on the spot where the Parish House was ereAed in 1882. The work begun in the wide temple of God's fields was transferred to a corn barn near by, until at last a church was eredted and a parish established. A tiny seed became a great tree. The Reverend George Benjamin Andrews, S.T.D., had been Redlor for thirty-two years when Mr. Satterlee became his assistant. The old gentleman was then four- score years of age, having been born in 1785. He had grown up with the country. His infirmity made it impossible for him to minister adequately to the needs of the parish, and affairs were at a low ebb when his young assistant joined him. In his earlier years Dr. Andrews had been an adtive man of scholarly attainments. Like many others in a similar position he failed, as time ad- vanced,"to realize his loss of power and clung to his post with loyalty to what he held to be his trust from God. 22 A MASTER BUILDER [1856 Had a man of lesser magnitude than Henry Yates Satter- lee come to be his assistant it would have been impossible for him to stay and do efFedtive work. Jealousy of precedence, tenacity of authority, pride of place, suspi- cions unfounded and irritating, are the temptations and often the habitual faults of old age in such circumstances. Nor was Dr. Andrews wholly free from idiosyncrasies and crotchets. But Mr. Satterlee's disposition and charaAer were equal to the situation. He became as a son to this aged servant of God, who was justly honored and loved in the community where he lived, humoring his fancies, strengthening his hands, and meeting his infirmities with tenderness and tad. There were occasions when it would have been easy for youth to become impatient and quarrel. But Mr. Satterlee squared his shoulders to his responsibihty and filled with dignity, loyalty and honor that most difficult of all positions, second place. He learned to command by obeying. He made it a pradtice to see his Redtor frequently, and by telling him everything, and counselling with him on all matters that pertained to the parochial welfare, suspicion, where otherwise it might have arisen, was disarmed and a beautiful relation- ship established. For over three years before he died, Dr. Andrews was bedridden as the result of an accident. Mr. Satterlee never negledted him, carrying to the bedside of his Redtor in his daily visit, which was seldom if ever omitted, everything of interest in his work, and consoling him with the thought that the people to whom he had ministered were still his children and looked to him as their leader. Mr. Satterlee in all his after-life never had a more delicate task to do, and he did nothing in his whole career more admirably. It was not merely that he was able to live peaceably in difficult and unwonted circumstances, but he filled the place of leadership with- out parade of authority or lack of loyalty, when the leader himself was incapacitated to lead and clung withal to the phantom of leadership. Through ten long years Mr. Satterlee remained an assistant when his ripening i867] THE YOUTH 23 powers were calling for the largest liberty of adtion, and when he could easily have found more spacious ecclesi- astical surroundings. But position as such was neither then nor later a prize to him. Opportunity to serve was all he ever asked. Sometimes he found it best in con- nexion with conspicuous office and made good use of it. But he was able to do this because, in his apprenticeship, he had learned that power and opportunity to do good work are dependent neither upon easy conditions nor being in the public eye. Those who serve best in high office are the men who have been trained, like him, to labor well in obscurity and hard conditions. Probably there is no school which turns out better graduates than such a one as Mr. Satterlee went through to his great credit. On the twenty-eighth of June, 1866, he received the degree of B.D. from the General Theological Seminary. Two days later he took to himself his bride, Jane Lawrence Churchill, who quickly won as unique and intimate a place in the esteem and affedtion of the people of Wappinger's Falls as that which her husband already occupied. Mr. Satterlee did not hasten to be advanced to the priesthood. He served full time as deacon. He was ordained priest in St. Ann's Church, New York, by Bishop Horatio Potter on January 11, 1867, his twenty- fourth birthday. After the completion of his Seminary course he settled in New Hamburgh with his wife. The Redtory was occupied and no house was available, even if his munifi- cent salary, which had been advanced from $500 to ^750 a year upon his marriage, would have permitted of house rent. Mr. Irving Grinnell, whose friendship he had already won, offered him for a year a cottage on his estate, formerly occupied by a member of the Howland family. There as Mr. Grinnell's guests, he and his bride began their long and happy married Hfe. CHAPTER III THE APPRENTICE MINISTRY AT WAPPINGER's FALLS I 867-1 875 When the fight begins within himself, A man's worth something. God stoops o'er his head, Satan looks up between his feet — both tug — He's left, himself, V the middle: the sold wakes And grows. Prolong that battle through his life! Never leave growing till the life to come! ROBERT BROWNING THE promise of boyhood was fulfilled in early man- hood. The young priest of twenty-four years of age set out on his ministerial career with all the joyousness that a disciplined body, a blameless con- science, a well-informed mind, and a clear consciousness of vocation, could contribute. He stood straight in his six feet two of superb, well- proportioned manhood, his soul looking out of his eager blue-gray eyes. His handsome, regular features, which bore the marks of refinement and culture, completed his distinguished appearance. His physique made him superior to weariness, and work was not a hard task at its worst. It was said of him after his death: He had a certain air of the soldier clinging to him, and some called him the "Cavalry Bishop," because both when young, or even later, in the prime of life, he possessed such a manly, win- ning personality, as to create the impression that his hand was suited both to the sabre and the Prayer Book. All this was naturally attradtive to men, but, whether from that or other reasons, he drew them to him with hooks of steel. Large men i87sD MINISTRY AT WAPPINGER'S FALLS 25 felt the presence of the large man. They looked up to him and acknowledged him. Men placed in supreme authority took him by the hand and trusted him. It was splendidly right that it should be so. He began his moral life right, learning to adt quickly upon moral intuition and so avoiding that painful, self-conscious journey back to moral sensitiveness which is the lot of those who early in life have thwarted conscience, or otherwise trifled with its diAates. Nor was his in- tegrity lacking in virility. No man endowed with as great natural powers as he was, could fail to know the meaning of temptation in the full range and danger of its sweep. His was a warrior soul. He had to fight and wished to fight for the treasures he coveted. In later life he intimated to a dear friend how his very strength and health involved fierce onslaughts of temptation. Were he able to diredl these written words, he would like to say to students of today that his virility was due to struggle, struggle which never permitted moral vacations or condoned occasional lapses from righteousness; that his self-respedt was reached by toiling up the steep heights of self-conquest; that he understood men, not with the theoretic sympathy of an onlooker peering out from some sheltered nook, but as a sharer in the common toil of the common day; as one who knew life's depths and heights from an intimate, inside experience. His education had been the best that the day afforded. But it was not curriculum study that equipped him to be a leader of thought. He was always a fearless disciple and apostle of the truth, and could not content himself with what was prescribed for him by the conventional methods of his generation. Of course during his school and college days the time-honored system of classical education, transplanted from England, prevailed, and the idea of vocational training had not as yet appeared above the horizon. The episode in the British Museum, when he read what the over-prudent curator deemed to be 26 A MASTER BUILDER [1867 unsuitable, was charaAeristic. He early learned to think along independent lines, though his historic sense kept him from intelledlual isolation and eccentricity. Habits of study and thought were created in youth, which amid all the distradlions of later years were never abandoned and seldom relaxed. Indeed he was more of a student than was generally supposed. There is a story that during his boyhood his determination to pursue his studies was so earnest that he would put soap in his eyes to keep himself awake. Though a lover of philoso- phy he never became the servant of any one philosopher, but walked as an ecledlic. His mind was better than nimble. It was thorough. He moved slowly and pene- tratingly. Difficulties aroused his interest as well as challenged his powers, and he walked straight into their heart, observing as he went. His tastes were as broad as those of a cultured man should be, and the information he had on any given subjedt was Hkely to be reliable. Because he was a man of mind, intelledlual doubt was well known to him. As he fought for the mastery of his physical powers, so he fought for his intelledtual freedom. There was a stage in his development when poets ap- pealed to his imaginative nature as his principal precep- tors. Tennyson helped him to weather one storm in his earlier life. Such poems as the "Two Voices," the "Higher Pantheism," and "In Memoriam" left an abiding mark upon his charadter. Later it was Brown- ing, who always speaks to men who have tried to live breast forward, eyes upward, thought outward, who helped to arm him for his campaigns. He was also a student of Dante. With all his seriousness he did not lack in playfulness. Of few men can it be said more truly that he had God in all his thoughts. But the result was not to alienate him from the world about him. Indeed it was quite the reverse. It quickened his sympathies and enabled him to find recreation in everything he undertook. He was never given to athletics, partly by accident, partly for THE REV. HENRY YATES SATTERLEE, D.D. ReClor of Zion Church, TVappinger's Falls i87S] MINISTRY AT WAPPINGER'S FALLS 27 the very reason just mentioned. He was neither a good walker nor a good climber, though he loved to ramble with his son looking for botanical specimens. Music was little short of a passion with him. The reason why chess attradled him was because he could wholly lose himself in it, and furthermore because he was keenly interested in strategy. Then, too, chess is much like work. He had natural piety. God as the moral governor of the universe brought him in adoration and homage to his knees. He frequently found God's voice where others could hear only confused noises or echoes. The secret of his life was that habit of prayer, formed in boyhood, to which he solemnly committed himself at ordination until, in a true sense, he prayed without ceasing. Noth- ing was too small or unimportant, nothing too extensive or unwieldy, to talk to God about — the weather, a possible reunion with a friend, the affairs of the nation or the world, all found place in his conversation with God. He knew the meaning of worship in its more wonderful reaches — petition, thanksgiving, intercession, yes; but also adoration and praise. When he said the Te Deum it was sometimes as though he were transported from his surroundings, so deeply was his soul submerged in its depths. The mystic was not the visionary. He combined in his character power to see and power to do, the latter gaining its impetus from the former. It might be said of him that he united in himself "a sufficient other- worldliness without fanaticism and a sufficient this- worldliness without philistinism."^ His religious convidtions were of a catholic order. He was born into the vigorous Protestantism of the Dutch Reformed Church, which counted among its adherents in Albany some of the choicest of people of Dutch origin, who did honor to the faith of their fathers. But the Episcopal Church had at that time one of its most able and pious of leaders in Albany, Dr. William Ingraham 1 Von Hugel, Eternal Life, p. ZJS- 28 A MASTER BUILDER [1867 Kip, and Mr. Satterlee's earlier memory of Church matters was interwoven with the Episcopal Church which was, so to speak, the second family choice. If the Dutch Reformed Church was the Church of his mother's family, the Church of England or its sister communion, the Episcopal Church in America, was the Church of his father's family. His own allegiance at the beginning of his career was a twin, rather than a divided, one. To the mind of the boy there was no reason why the morning and the afternoon churches should not be different. It involved no inconsistency. His earliest preference, prob- ably a mere matter of inexplicable taste, was for the Episcopal Church. When at last he found himself with a sense of vocation for the ministry he was uncertain which way to turn. This time it was not unreasoning preference but earnest, conscientious study that swayed him, and finally led him to his decision which when once made was never doubted. One of the strongly influential forces at work in the Episcopal Church during his youth was the Oxford move- ment. It was a controversial period of Church history, and there were eminent champions of the high and low church parties. The Rev. Dr. Arthur Cleveland Coxe was a representative of the Oxford school in many of its dodlrinal tenets, and in theory, as his poems testify, though not in home practice, a ritualist. Abroad he might be found on occasions in cope and mitre, and though his poems described worship as accompanied by Hghts and incense, his church, or when he became Bishop his churches, failed of these symbols, where he had his own way. His conception of the ministry was inclined toward the sacerdotal. He believed in the historic episcopate and apostoHcal succession. His conception of the sacraments was most reverent. His poetical, imagina- tive nature found in them the soul's richest food. A man of personal dignity, a scholar, and a winning and intel- ledtual preacher, he was a conspicuous figure in the Church life and thought of his times, both at home and i87s] MINISTRY AT WAPPINGER'S FALLS 29 abroad. It was to him that Mr. Satterlee looked for counsel at a perplexed and formative moment of his life. Though he was deeply impressed by the Oxford Move- ment, he was not swept away by it. It never represented to him, even in his youthful eagerness, an exclusive operation of God's working, though some of the most enduring enthusiasms of his life were lighted at its flame. Dr. Coxe's influence aided to reproduce, or at any rate to confirm, in "his boy," reverence for the visible Church, with its Ministry, Creeds, and Sacraments, in its historic continuity from the beginning. Added to this he at- tached profound importance to the open Bible, which was the hand-book of his own life. Neither in his youth nor in his after-days did he suffer any violent reaction of a religious charaAer. His adoption into the Episcopal Church did not entail the bitternesses and rejedtions which so frequently accompany transference from one form of Christian belief to another. He was under God from the beginning and simply moved into what he deemed to be a completer sphere of Christ's operation among men. His nature was too big to expend its loyalty in negation or controversy, though he had a strong antipathy to the papacy, inherited probably from Dr. Coxe, which sometimes broke loose, and blinded him, for the moment, to the more admirable features of the Roman Catholic Church. His sense of commission was a propulsion and inspiration that filled his heart and hands with the tasks of willing service. It was no partial or seAarian vocation that enveloped him and sped him on his way. He conceived himself to be commissioned by Christ through the whole Catholic Church in its broadest conception. It was this that gave him courage to embrace the whole of mankind in his outlook, to accept responsibilities which, without the convidtion that God had sent him, would have been intolerable, and to main- tain that firm tread and cheerful spirit which char- acflerized him to the end. His method was the spiritual method. That is to say. 30 A MASTER BUILDER [1867 he placed worship at the core of all the activities that he controlled. He led in what he taught about prayer. He was quick to discern what a given situation needed, and did not hesitate to make use of any legitimate agency or machinery to reach his end. Though he was among the pioneers of institutional church undertakings he did not believe in their converting or edifying power, except as adjundts and implements of God's Kingdom, and he spiritualized all his mechanisms. Such was the type of man and priest which Mr. Satter- lee came to be. When he began his work at Zion Church he was unformed, but was well set in the diredlion of his ultimate development. There are some men who, in feature and manner, are the exadl reproduction of what they were as little children. Their growth is along a steady unswerving course. It was so in his case both in body and soul. Though the foregoing analysis is descrip- tive of his later life, it also applies in a degree to the beginning of his ministry. There was deepening and broadening as years multiplied and experience accumu- lated. But the boy was in the youth and the youth was in the Bishop. He never left "growing till the life to come," and his growth was that movement from strength to strength which is the glory of Christian increase. He began with the ideal of the true pastor. His aim was to bring each person for whom he was responsible into conscious and intelligent relationship with Christ. Every one in the parish was speedily known by, and knew, him. He was the house-going parson that made the church- going people. It was his reward and joy to see those whom he taught come in increasing numbers, men, women, and children, to the altar for their spiritual food, and those who were brought under the influence of his teaching came because they were hungry and thirsty for God's good things. But the Church services were by no means the whole of the religious life of the community. They were only its centre and motive power. The business and social i87S] MINISTRY AT WAPPINGER'S FALLS 31 life of the place was not left untouched by spiritual forces. Wappinger's Falls was a singularly united and happy community with little extreme poverty. Prosperity and industry prevailed. Mr. Satterlee took an adive interest in all that had to do with the life of the people. He saw the need of proper protection for fadtory girls who were away from the family roof-tree, and estabhshed a home for them. Among the men and boys who had not had the advantage of much schooling there was need of doing something to supplement their education. So a night school was opened, Mr. Satterlee and Mr. Irving Grinnell each teaching twice a week. Mr. Satterlee had two ideas which he felt represented important fadtors in the life of the mill people — a ther- mometer in every house and a public library. Scientific hygiene had not yet been hatched, but overheated houses connoted conditions favorable to disease — hence the funcSlion of the thermometer. Mr. Satterlee's senses were very acute, especially his sense of smell. He declared he could at any time have told in what house he was, by the odors which distinguished families! Neither were public libraries then a commonplace. Their precursor, the circulating library, dependent on local subscriptions, fees and fines, here and there reared a modest head. In Wappinger's Falls there was no library when Mr. Satterlee came. He seized the first opportunity to establish one with the aid of his friend and fellow-worker Mr. Grinnell. The beginning was in a personality. In 1866 Mrs. Elizabeth A. Howarth, whose husband had just died of cancer, was found with her children on the verge of starvation. In the course of an effort to put her in the way of earning her livelihood, it was disclosed that her father had been librarian of a library in Manchester, England. Accord- ingly a room was secured and supplied with books and papers, and Mrs. Howarth was put in charge. For twenty-five years she filled the oifice as a devoted and capable servant of the community, living to see the establishment of the fine Library presented to the town 32 A MASTER BUILDER [1867 by Mr. Irving Grinnell, over which she presided until she passed away. The pleasures of the people as well as their information were of concern to their minister. The town joys and pleasures, certainly their best social times, circled round the church. Though the usual number of churches broke the ecclesiastical unity of the place, there was a minimum of fridlion, and there was a kindly relationship between the ministerial forces. Mr. Satterlee was a stubborn man to move when his convictions were finally set; in spite of this, he was a hard man to quarrel with. He was too big to fight over small things — also to negledt to fight when a principle was at stake. But he was neither by nature nor training a controversialist, and he could more easily find common standing-ground with others than divisive lines. The Methodists, Baptists, Presbyterians, and Roman Catholics had each their own flock and place of worship. There seems to have been no federative or co-operative work done by the churches in unison. A union general benefit society was born only to die. The common enemy, drink, made its vicious influence felt in the community. Mr. Satterlee was a man who had himself in such good control that he felt temperance in all things to be the real preventive, and even cure, for excess of any sort. But he had deep sympathy for, and infinite patience with, those who failed. He was always ready to trust a man into sobriety and virtue. He repeatedly took back a certain servant whose performance of his oft-repeated vows fell lamentably short of their vehement expression. He rebuked, exhorted, and prayed with him without discouragement, and when, at last, he could no longer take him back he made his decision with tears in his heart and a sigh on his lips. Long before the Church Temperance Society came into being, a society of which he was a founder, and to which he gave much time and thought, he felt drink to be so definite and horrible an evil as to demand on the part of the Church i87S] MINISTRY AT WAPPINGER'S FALLS 33 a corporate attack upon its strongholds. In 1867 he began a temperance society in connedion with Zion Church, but it did not prove successful even as an anti- treating society. After a brief career it died. The Church Temperance Society owes some of its strength at least to Mr. Satterlee's wisdom, won from his unsuc- cessful experience with the local movement in Wappinger's Falls. Miss H. K. Graham, General Secretary of the Church Temperance Society, writing in 191 2, says: No name is held in greater honor in the Church Temperance Society than that of the late Henry Yates Satterlee, D.D., first Bishop of Washington. From the formation of the Society in 1881, when Dr. Satterlee was Redlor of Zion Church, Wappin- ger's Falls, N.Y., to the close of his earthly life, he was the loyal friend and supporter of the work of Temperance Reform in the United States. A member of the Board of Managers of the C. T. S. from the date of the Society's organization; he was its chairman from 1893 to 1896, when his consecration as Bishop, and his removal to the Diocese of Washington, severed his offi- cial connexion with the Board. He lent his powerful advocacy to the cause of high license, and the maintenance of the law closing saloons on Sunday; to social investigations made by the Society into the causes which underlie intemperance and poverty; to the work of rescuing those who had become the vidtims of intemperance; and to the formation of habits of sobriety in young men, through the order of the Knights of Temperance. Many of these boys are now ministers of Christ, and it was owing to the influence of Dr. Satterlee, that they took up the work of the Master. The great event of this year (1867) was the birth of his son Churchill on April 27. It brought rejoicings to two people who were both highly qualified to play the part of parents and whose children lived to rise up and bless them. Their friends Mr. and Mrs. Irving Grinnell shared in their gladness, and the already close-knit bond of union between the two families was tightened by their acceptance of the responsibility of sponsorship. Churchill was baptized in Zion Church on June 30 by Dr. Andrews. 34 A MASTER BUILDER [1867 That he was baptized by a clergyman who was born before the United States had achieved its independence from the mother country, was a thought which in after years he cherished. The question of a permanent residence for the Assistant Minister was pressing. The house he and his wife occupied upon their marriage was on the beautiful estate of two hundred and fifty acres in New Hamburgh where Mr. Grinnell lived, and formed part of his homestead property. For a year the young couple had been his guests. At its close the house was again offered to them. At first Mr. Satterlee felt that he ought not to accept it. Finally, in order to put the matter on something more than a purely personal basis, it was placed at the disposal of the vestry as a temporary residence of the Assistant Minister. Mr. and Mrs. Grinnell, "the sunshine of our life, the benefadlors of our parish " — could any words be more fully descriptive of the relationship which called them forth ? — not only made the offer but also begged the Satterlees to remain, themselves abandoning their customary return to New York for the winter in order that they might be in daily touch with them. For sixteen years this home was annually presented as a "temporary residence for the Assistant Minister," and the joy of its users was exceeded only by the joy of its donors. Mrs. Satterlee's father was permitted to give himself the pleasure of enlarging the house and adding a stable, and in 1882 the vestry again added to the building, as a recognition of its owner's generosity. Friendship such as grew up between these two families was of the sort that can be built only on the foundation of life in Christ. It was not merely common interests and con- genial temperaments that linked "house to house" — a pet phrase of Mr. Satterlee's — but the common purpose of priest and layman to deepen and extend the boundaries of God's Kingdom among men. It was no wonder that with such men as Mr. Irving Grinnell, Mr. Henry Mesier, Mr. A. S. Mesier, Mr. S. W. Johnson, Mr. J. Faulkner i87S] MINISTRY AT WAPPINGER'S FALLS 35 and Mr. W. H. Reese to uphold him, that Zion Church grew rapidly. The parish became a Hving body, with people of every station welded into one by that extraordi- nary creative gift of the Spirit which was let loose by their leader. The parish represented the Christian family. If there were differences, they were reconciled; if there was apathy in this group it was consumed by the zeal of that, its neighbor. The Sunday School was developed on new and im- proved lines, and the infant school, under Mrs. Grinnell, organized. The EngHsh custom of waits had been brought across the sea, and every Christmas Eve the famiHar old Carols rang to the stars, bringing happy memories of the homeland to those who had come far afield to seek their fortunes. In many a heart Christ was indeed born anew as the feast of the Holy Nativity, prepared for with sincere piety and celebrated with reverent gladness, came round. Christmas saw the Yule log rolled into place and set ablaze on the Satterlee hearth, whence good will and merriment radiated. Says a subsequent redtor, the Rev. Prescott Evarts: On the social side, one of the most remarkable features of the parish, was the gathering on Christmas Eve of the older scholars in the school, and the church workers and contributors, and pew- holders. This meeting grew out of the necessities of the S. S. The older children, who had grown too old to receive presents from the tree, were brought together Christmas Eve, for games and amusements. Out of this beginning after a few years there grew up the Christmas Eve festival, which to my mind has no counterpart in any parish in America. The details of the festival I need not repeat, a Christmas play, exceedingly well given, concluding with Santa Claus with a grab bag, for men and women, boys and girls, slight refreshments, and the closing of the evening by singing an original Christmas Eve carol to Auld Lang Syne. But the real beauty of all was, that pradlically everyone in the parish, men and women, wanted to come, and came, with the older boys and girls. The families from the country places on the river, the managers and officers of the fadory, and the skilled mechanics and laborers, with their fami- 36 A MASTER BUILDER [1867 lies, all really mingled with one another in a happy Christmas spirit, knew one another — and when the evening closed with Auld Lang Syne, and the Doxology, they separated to their homes, to meet again the next morning in a crowded church at half past six to sing the Christmas carols. This feature of the social side of the parish was distindlive; and the spirit of the whole occasion was charadteristic of Dr. Satterlee's fine enthu- siasm and ideals. He made it go, — people really enjoyed it. They looked forward to it — he welded together in genuine bonds of Christian fellowship, and mutual respedl, the very diverse elements in the parish, and beneath it all was the deep religious feeling, that this Christmas Eve festival was a symbol of the Christian way human beings ought to deal with each other. As the year 1868 drew to its close, it proved necessary to enlarge the church. Accordingly on December 27, the Feast of St. John the Evangelist, Evensong ascended to God for the last time in the old building before en- largement. Services for more than six months were held in the basement of the Sunday School. The arrangement of the original building was so curious that a sketch of it may prove of interest. A new era of Church life began with the enlarged and beautified building which was re-opened for worship on July 18, Bishop Horatio Potter preaching the sermon. Thirty additional pews, a new choir and stalls, stained-glass windows in memory of Judge Matthew Mesier, and a new bell inaugurated the new era. A volunteer choir of twenty-five members, men and women, was organized by Mrs. Satterlee, and rehearsed under the leadership of Mr. W. Henry Reese, uncle of the present Bishop Coadjutor of Southern Ohio. This was planned and carried out with all the joy of a secret service, to be known by the clergy only when it was an accomplished fadl. On Christmas Day the choir took their places in the stalls. So well was the secret kept that it came as a complete surprise to Mr. Satterlee. Never was Jackson's Te Deum sung by more reverent lips. The incident; of the choir, trifling in itself, rises i87s] MINISTRY AT WAPPINGER'S FALLS 37 from those past days as a symbol and illustration of the beautiful parochial life that prevailed. A fine spirit was breathed into every movement of parish adtivity. Mr, Elevation Ereded 1836 Ground Plan Hahf ELEVATION OF THE OLD CHANCEL PULPIT REREDOS OF ZION CHURCH, WAPPINGER's FALLS Erected, 1836; taken down, 1854 Evarts, writing nearly two decades after his own ministry at Zion Church had closed, says that Mr. Satterlee "built up a remarkable parish, and parish life, on such impersonal and true foundations, that it has continued for more than 30 years after he left, what it was 38 A MASTER BUILDER [1867 before he left — one of the most ideal parishes in the American Church." Even those whose knowledge of the annals of this quiet parish is confined to what they have learned from the lips of the adlual participants in its history, catch a fragrance and soft music which are born of no other conditions than such as prevailed in Zion Church. If in this memoir seemingly minor details are emphasized and multiplied in the record of Mr. Satterlee's life and service in Wappinger's Falls, it is because the Kingdom of God reigned with power in those days, in this as well as many another such country parish. Though Zion Church had received much from the immediate influence of English immigrants, and so reproduced in a new setting some of the best features of the rural Church Hfe of the home- land, the American country parish of that day had a character and standing all its own. Zion Church is both singular and representative. Singular in that it rose to more than ordinary spiritual stature, and representative in that all through the country were similar spheres of God's working which, if not, each one, a city set on a hill, were, at any rate, as a Httle leaven buried in a measure of meal. They deserve a monument in history, so that men looking back at them will always be able to say — • "Surely God was in these times and lowly places!" The penitents that were won, the saints that were made, the joy bells that were set pealing in human hearts, by the unassuming service of the country pastor who never courted, or even was accorded, public applause, and who in a long, unvaried Hfe became so much a part of his community that he could leave, if he left at all, only under divine compulsion, tell of a phase of parochial Hfe in the history of our Church which will gain and not lose glory with the ages. Mr. Satterlee began, as he continued, his ministry with single-mindedness. Seldom do we find men less swayed by ambition for advancement, perhaps the subtlest temptation of the clergy. A masterful man, as he was. i87S] MINISTRY AT WAPPINGER'S FALLS 39 must have felt the tug to move out into a larger sphere. But devotion to his day's task held him firm. His eyes were not given to wandering afield. They were on his immediate duty, which for him was at the time the only thing in the world worth doing. He felt his growing powers, but he found in his environment full opportunity to employ them. He seldom preached out of his own parish. Why should he? He was not looking for preaching fame, and his own flock brought out the best that was in him of spiritual thought and utterance. An isolated message here and there from a semi-stranger could not avail much. Line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little, there a Httle, was his method. He had gifts of mind and presence and voice that could have easily made him a popular preacher. To him, preaching was the whole utterance of a dedicated and commissioned life. The pulpit was but one of many opportunities for witnessing to Christ, and called for only proportionate attention and preparation. He was never, even at his best, a polished speaker — it is said that as a boy he had to conquer a slight impediment in speech — but he was always interesting and controlled the hearts and con- sciences of his hearers, even when he stumbled in utterance and his thought failed to find intelligible or adequate expression. Private life, social intercourse, pastoral min- istrations, the class room and Sunday School, and most of all the rendering of the service in public worship were to him, each one, as it were, a pulpit opportunity. The consequence was that his adtual sermonizing was so con- sistent a part of his whole life that it always rang true, and at its best had a penetrative power which searched out and found the best and noblest in his hearers. No one could listen to him read the service without instindlively following the diredlion of his thoughts and voice. They were Godward. His worship was intense. His eyes were flung full in the face of God and his words followed heavenward. For this reason when he took, for instance, the Baptismal service, all its beauty and power 40 A MASTER BUILDER [1867 came out, not because he was aiming to impress the by- standers, but because he was intent upon making a fitting offering to God. The writer of this memoir recalls how the Te Deum reverberated from the lips of the Bishop, as he had then become, in his oratory at his daily morning worship. "He used to say that the daily recital of the Te Deum was real spiritual sustenance, which he craved as his appetite craved food."^ Manner and voice shamed you into recolledtedness and helped to draw you within the gates of heaven's choir. He taught men to worship by his unafFedted habit of worshipping in spirit and in truth. One can never think of Mr. Satterlee's life of worship being anything to him but a refreshment and a joy. In an age that would sacrifice anything for pleasure, his figure stands out as declaring that in worship is the fulness of joy. One of England's most powerful spiritual leaders during his life at Westminster Abbey as a Canon, was heard to remark of the daily services from which he never absented himself except for urgent cause: — "They are my salvation." It was equally so of Mr. Satterlee. Worship was the mainspring and secret of his activities. Early in his career he began to make use of his organ- izing gifts. He was a better promoter of organization than an organizer, judged by the standards of a genera- tion that has a painfully mechanical conception of efiiciency. He was quick to see what ought to be done, and always, according to his philosophy, the necessary was the possible, and duty allowed of no daUiance or paltering. But he saw things in the large, and was by temperament apt to ignore for the moment the full weight of opposing forces — not that he would have been daunted had he counted beforehand every thorn that was destined to pierce him. Just before General Gordon died he sent this word to the people of Khar- toum: "Tell them that when God made Gordon, He made him without fear."^ When God made Satterlee 1 In Memoriam, by the Rev. P. M. Rhinelander, p. 8. ' See Cromer's Modern Egypt, Vol. ii, p. lo. 1 875] MINISTRY AT WAPPINGER'S FALLS 41 He made him, too, without fear. His natural strength, reinforced by the sure knowledge that God was on his side, gave him that diredtness of attack and sense of security that commanded the attention and roused the wonder of even those who might not be drawn to him. If there was a work to be done he was up and at it, counting the cost oftentimes as he walked, rather than sitting down and figuring it out beforehand. And yet as various memoranda show, he learned, in later life espe- cially, to reckon with every consideration and argument, pro and con, in an exhaustive way. In connedtion with such widely differing questions as the selection of an architedl for the National Cathedral, and the appoint- ment of negro bishops, there are papers in his own hand- writing in which the pros and cons are exhaustively stated with as careful heed to accuracy and fairness as if they had been the credit and debit pages of a ledger. "He loved to undertake and master difficult things, and in easy things he found it hard to interest himself. Advising one of his younger clergy a short time before he was called away, he said that the business end of his office was always irksome and difficult to him when he entered the ministry, but he made it his duty, and it ulti- mately became his pride, to attend to the routine side of his work with the utmost attention to detail and system." ^ In 1873 the whole work of Zion Parish was re-organ- ized and distributed into departments, each under one head who was responsible to the Redtor for work done therein. There were four Departments — the Infant School under Mrs. A. S. Mesier, succeeded by Mrs. Irving Grinnell; the Volunteer Choir under Mr. W. H. Reese (these two departments had already been in operation); Aid and Employment Department, meeting weekly under Mrs. Irving Grinnell; and the Weekly Night School under Mr. T. R. Wetmore. The men's Bible Class under Mr. Irving Grinnell which met every Sunday morning was organized in 1874, and gave expres- * The Foundation Stone Book, p. 6. 42 A MASTER BUILDER [1867 sion to its missionary spirit by providing a scholarship for the education of a Sioux Indian at Hampton Insti- tute, Va. Two hundred men were enrolled, among them the present sexton of the Church, John Heald, who never absented himself a single time for twenty-two years, a remarkable instance of interest and stability. Seven years had elapsed since Churchill's birth brought joy to the Satterlee household. Now the cup of parental happiness was filled to the brim by the gift from God of a girl baby, Constance, who grew into her father's life with that mysterious understanding of him, and he of her, that is more common between father and daughter, or between mother and son, than between the converse combination. In his later life especially he leaned much on her, and she imparted to him all the vitality that belonged to her youth and strength. The comrade- ship, begun in babyhood, ripened into a unity so sacred and deep that death seemed powerless in its presence. All the while a similar bond was uniting Churchill and his mother. Churchill's biography says: "The bond of union existing between mother and son was unusually close and tender. If the affedtion she felt for him constituted the main interest of her life, and found expression always in the most earnest solicitude for his comfort and well-being, the response he made was no less sincere and sympathetic. If his companion- ship was her chief delight, he never failed to pay her the tribute of his perfed: confidence. From his boyhood days all through the years of his ministry, he made her acquainted with all his plans and projeds. He was never satisfied unless she shared his pleasures, and when they were separated correspondence between them was fre- quent and regular. She was his model for a clergy- man's wife in her tadt and sympathy and in the generous hospitality she extended to her husband's parishioners, making even the humblest feel that a cordial welcome awaited him at the redlory."' ' A Fisher of Men, by the Rev. Hamilton Schuyler, pp. 31, 32. i87s] MINISTRY AT WAPPINGER'S FALLS 43 Zion Church became more and more a shrine of mem- ories. This same year an eagle ledtern was presented on Easter Day by the Satterlee family to commemorate Jane Anna and Graham Satterlee, the mother and brother of Henry. A pulpit in memory of their parents was the gift of Marie P. and Alice M. Wetmore. The building was further developed by the addition of a gallery at the west end contributed by Mr. Grinnell. The Church Decoration Department was organized, and, best of all, the dream of Mr. Satterlee was materialized of a church home for the fadtory girls. "It is on one of the leading avenues of the village, in a healthful and attradlive position, and is thoroughly furnished with every article of convenience. It is open to any respedlable girl, with no other restraints than those of every orderly and well conduced household." It was known as "The Home." The following year, 1875, Mr. Satterlee's valuable apprenticeship of ten years came to an end. On August 20 the Rev. Dr. Andrews entered into rest in his nine- tieth year. Since the date of an injury. May 17, 1872, which incapacitated him he had never left his room.^ His last sermon (on Temperance) in his Church had been on the twenty-eighth of April, 1872, and his liast public adt was to celebrate Holy Communion for his people a week later. His final illness lasted but a few hours. His long pastorate of forty-two years, his pronounced charadler, and his paternal attitude toward his people made him a feature of the community and a landmark in history. His early years touched Revolutionary days and the beginning of our nation in its independent career. During his long life he earned and kept the resped: and afFedion of his fellows. Though Mr. Satter- lee had been pradlically the Redor of the parish for 1 The preacher of Dr. Andrews' Memorial Sermon (the Rev. Solomon G. Hitchcock) adds the following curious footnote to a passage referring to the "disablement and suffering" of the deceased: "His death was hastened by in- juries received May 17, 1872, not from the kick of his horse, but of one who, Jeshurun like (Deut. xxxii, 15), had for toward a score of years, been a favorite domestic, and treated with kindness almost parental!" 44 A MASTER BUILDER [1867 three years, he would not hear of any change in his standing, and refused to allow his aged friend to be awarded the somewhat equivocal honor attached to the euphonious and pecuHarly American title of "redlor emeritus." Dr. Andrews had that hardest of all disciplines for a man of acftive habits and matured experience to accept without murmur, the discipline of failing powers and eventually prolonged helplessness. It was largely be- cause he had an assistant of the type of Henry Satterlee that he met his lot with fortitude and retained a living interest to the last in the activities and plans of the one thing to which he was wedded, his parish. "Faith- ful to the end of a long day of service," may be in- scribed over his remains. If there are disadvantages in long pastorates, there are more than compensating advantages. Stability, ability to stay, will never be less than a basic virtue preaching with eloquence long after the familiar figure has faded into the background of history. If Dr. Andrews' tenacity of office was ex- cessive, Mr. Satterlee's suppression of the pride of place mitigated it, so that no interests were thereby injured. The assistant even in his own thoughts did not pretend to be redlor. His complete frankness enabled him always with happiness and tadt to bring Dr. Andrews the whole story. It is an exquisitely significant faft that during the ten years of their relationship there is on record but one serious misunderstanding, and that was for a moment only. It was in connedtion with a baptism. As soon as Mr. Satterlee realized that there was a cloud upon the horizon he dissipated it before it had grown to be the size of a man's hand. It could not fail that this clear-sighted, ardent, vigorous young man should be tried frequently in his relationship with the conservative man of an older generation, or that he should sometimes slip. But nothing could have been better for him than that he should have had the very experience through which he had to pass. It quelled i87s: MINISTRY AT WAPPINGER'S FALLS 45 the too rapid rush of youth's red blood, it laid a restrain- ing hand on his perfedlly natural aspiration toward independence, and most of all, it gave him fresh oppor- tunity to keep his filial instindts alive and in sympathetic operation. When at last he moved into the position so long held by his predecessor he did so not as into an ambition achieved, but rather as into the next and normal stage of a progress ordered by God, while behind him stretched a duty well done. He learned to command by first learning to obey. And as for old age that has done its work, what is better for it than to learn in lowly patience and wistful looking towards that close of evening time, when the last shadows are the pre- cursor of eternal day, the meaning of those brave and immortal words — "He must increase but I must de- crease".? Many a heroic man, a man even of the stature of Phillips Brooks, has flinched at the thought of failing powers. It is therefore a triumph indeed when history can record, as here, a good battle fought and won over the insidious and persistent temptations incident to years of growing feebleness of body following on a life of adtivity. This chapter of the annals of Zion Church closes with great credit to the aged Redtor and his young assistant. CHAPTER IV SETTING LINE AND PLUMMET Reilor of Zion Church 1875-1882 This noble ensample to his shiepe he yaf The first he wroghte and afterward he taughte. CHAUCER IN September Mr. Satterlee was unanimously eledled Redlor of Zion Church. He was now thirty-two years of age and filled with the sparkle and elasticity of a healthy mind and soul set in a healthy body. His family life was a fountain of happiness to himself and his friends. His childlike nature found increasing joy in companionship with his children. He kept always the heart of a boy and was young with the young, sharing in their sports and childish enthusiasms. He was always ready for a romp, and, when the world was white with snow, he would coast with the merriest. Mrs. Satterlee's share in her husband's life and labor is best brought out by words written a few weeks after his death: "His wife's sympathy in all his work both in its smaller and larger spheres, her quick intelligence and unusually liberal and thorough education, her sure ethical estimates of men and women, her never-failing help in all her husband's work, attending to his private affairs, and, as his duties broadened out, her ceaseless and unwavering labors relieving him of much of the 'table serving' of a redtor's and a bishop's life, her cordial and ever ready hospitality to all sorts and conditions of men, her tadt and insight, and above all her devo- tion to Christ and His Church, were a help such as 1 882] SETTING LINE AND PLUMMET 47 bless but few public men in the same measure and scope." ^ The Satterlee family had the clannish temper. Fond of one another's society, they followed the movements of the life of each member with interest. When Henry became a communicant of the Church he began a sort of St. Andrew's Brotherhood work among his own brothers. The following letter to his brother Arthur which belongs to this period is one of the few that have been preserved: NEW HAMBURGH, SEPT. 23RX), 1875. Dear Arthur: I am extremely busy this week and can do no more than drop you a line in answer to your letter. Sometime I will have a talk with you about the army life. I want to ask you which church you prefer attending, St. George's (the Revd. Mr. Applegate) or St. Paul's (the Revd. Mr. Emery).? Please let me know which you attend and I will give you a letter to the clergyman. Don't you think that you had also better attend the Episcopal Sunday School instead of the Presbyterian.? You have a chance to make a change now at the beginning of the year, if you wish to do so. Can you not run up and spend some Sunday with us, we would be delighted to have you do so. Your afFedlionate brother HENRY Y. SATTERLEE. His new position as redtor could hardly be said to have increased his responsibilities, for he had been doing the work of redtor already for three years, but it did offer him a freedom which he could not have as an assistant minister. He was now at liberty to devise and work out his plans for the parish, without reference to the ideas of another mind to which his loyalty owed and paid deference. He had the whole community with him. Even those who were not of his flock watched his progress with interest and his achievements with satisfadion. He was recognized by all to be a force in the towri, and men were glad to claim him as a neigh- 1 The Foundation Stone Book, p. J- 48 A MASTER BUILDER [iSrs bor and fellow-citizen. It was not that he was adlive in municipal affairs, or that he united in federative movements of the other churches of the place. Rather was the explanation of his popularity to be found in the spiritual and construdtive temper in which he did his work. He was moving up from apprenticeship to be a master builder, and he made his conviAions mani- fest to all men by giving them positive form. His character was full of kindness and sympathy, whatever momentary brusquerie or impatience, especially noticeable in later life, seemed to say to the contrary. Complete absorption in a matter of interest sometimes contributed to an apparent lapse from courtesy. Sensi- tive himself, as all truly big natures are, he shrank from inflidling pain upon others. This did not mean that when occasion demanded he could not be severe. There is nothing more awe-inspiring than the deliberate, heal- ing austerity, or the flame of righteous indignation, of a kindly and loving nature. Early in his redlorship he forbade Holy Communion to a man who had been living in immoral relations with his housekeeper. He spoke of it from the pulpit without mincing terms. The necessity was a great pain to him, and no one can measure just what it did cost him. It had a salutary efFedt on the community. Even the family of the offender saw the justice of what was done and held no resentment, but continued as adtive parishioners. Mr. Evarts says in this connexion: "He made the Church, in its dis- ciplinary charadter, and as insisting upon a moral stand- ard, a real force in the community — and yet he did not, in the long run, alienate even the most grievous offenders. They accepted his words and his decisions as inspired by an honest, loving and righteous motive." He never hesitated to rebuke when he felt it to be a duty. Shortly before his death he considered that an affront to the hospitality of his house had been offered by a dear friend. He immediately and sharply expressed his mind, though in such a way as to leave not so much ZION CHURCH, WAPPINGERS FALLS 1 882] SETTING LINE AND PLUMMET 49 as a ripple upon the surface of friendship when the inci- dent was closed, and it was closed as quickly as it was opened. He believed in and adled out the wisdom of Jesus the son of Sirach: "Admonish a friend, it may be he hath not done it: and if he hath done it, that he do it no more. Admonish thy friend, it may be he hath not said it; and if he have, that he speak it not again. Admonish a friend: for many times it is a slander."^ He would not hesitate to "have it out" with his friend, or to state bald and disagreeable truths to those who to their undoing were wilfully blind to fadl. He had Hatred of sin, but not the less A heart of pitying tenderness And charity, that, suffering long. Shames the wrong doer from his wrong. Over-organization is an enemy to spiritual progress, and when we learn that some twenty-eight organizations were brought into play in this village parish by Mr. Satterlee during his pastorate it looks, at first blush, as though he may have overstepped the mark. But he never started a society or organized a department without reason. In those days general societies within the Church were few, and the institutional Church did not exist for the neophyte to imitate in its manifold and complex organizations. Whether it was the women's Bible Class or the Redtor's Aid Department for assisting in visiting the sick and in other kindred branches of parish work, he had in mind the spiritual upbuilding of his people. He was a "charadter builder," and had the gift, so to speak, of employing people into belief and higher life. He made work a means of revelation and salvation. His organizations were all a true expression of, and aid to, this end. Moreover he counted his parishioners to be his fellow-laborers, and tried to rouse among them a sense of responsibility for personal service. He loved ' Ecclus., xxxvii, 13-15. 50 A MASTER BUILDER [1875 the word co-operation and the idea behind it. No one but a man of delicate sympathies would have thought of organizing the Funeral Choir, as it was rather lugu- briously called. "The object of the choir was to sing at all funerals of poor and rich alike, and thereby to assist the Redlor in making the service as sweet and comforting as possible." At the beginning of his redorate the first Year Book of the Parish was pubHshed and distributed. The com- municants' roll was now mounting up. Ten years before, forty had gathered to receive their Christmas communion. On Christmas Day, 1875, when an altar, reredos, and communion rail were dedicated to the memory of Dr. Andrews, there were one hundred and forty-four. The Sunday School at this time numbered eight hundred children. A Sunday School and sewing school were also started in New Hamburgh in 1879, and plans were made for holding regular services there. This has grown into a permanent work. There is now a beautiful chapel in New Hamburgh under the lay supervision of Mr. W. Henry Reese, long a warden of Zion Church. Mr. Satterlee was his own Sunday School superintendent. He selected for teachers the best of the good material available. At a time when graded schools and carefully systematized lessons were not known, he provided a progressive course of instrudtion and built up a Sunday School unique in numbers and intelligence among country parishes. His first book, Christ and His Church, was a book of instrudtion for Sunday Schools which won quite an extended use. He did not publish it until it had had three years' test in his own parish.' Mr. Satterlee was not so absorbed in local affairs, the organizing of the parish, the beautifying and equip- ment of the church, the demands of immediate needs, as to be smothered by parochialism, or to ignore the claims of the Church's world-wide mission, although the Church herself had hardly begun to gird her loins 1 Published in 1876. 1882] SETTING LINE AND PLUMMET 51 for extensive conquests abroad. The western part of our own country was just fairly started on its amazing career of progress, and seemed to bound for the moment the extent of our missionary endeavor. We had mis- sions in China and Japan, then far more distant and dim than now when the ends of the earth have flowed together. But there was no very wide or general enthusiasm for missions when Mr. Satterlee organized the Missionary Department of Zion Church "to promote interest in the Foreign and Domestic Mis- sionary work of the Church, and particularly to assist the Woman's Auxiliary in sending boxes of clothing, etc., when needed." Missionary spirit found vent locally in the mission at New Hamburgh. Through all these years Mr. Satterlee had had no real holiday. In the summer of 1880 he and his family went abroad not to return for fourteen months. If there was one passion which possessed Mr. Satterlee, it was the passion for travel. He was fond of nature and scenery, and would sit by the hour looking at the moun- tains, which both challenged and inspired him. He was observant, noticing the play of colors and shadows through the grass. Architedlure appealed to him above other forms of art, and his natural bent in this diredlion was cultivated until he became technically informed beyond the stage of a mere amateur. A trip abroad meant to him a postgraduate course. He went not as a sightseer but as a learner, and on this occasion he planned to see and know not only things and "the sights" but also and chiefly the people. This was the year of the Passion Play at Oberam- mergau which was one of the principal goals of the journey. Its effect upon Mr. Satterlee was to give to his religious sense a new and vivid impression of the Passion and Death of our Lord. It was a quickening of faith, a carrying of the past into the present and the present into the past. His love of nature, his appre- ciation of art, and his reverence for history made him 52 A MASTER BUILDER [1875 a susceptible subjedl to the unique appeal of the pious, blameless peasants, ading out in religious drama the vow of their forefathers, in the seclusion and loveliness of the little village embraced by the Bavarian hills. Ten and then twenty years later, when the cycle was complete for a repetition of the Passion Play, Mr. Sat- terlee and his family were again among those who shared in its highest and most sacred features. Mr. Satterlee, while in Milan, immediately after leaving Oberammergau, wrote his estimate of the Play, its acftors and its setting. Perhaps it was his ingrained prejudice against Roman Catholicism which twinged his own conscience, and led him to read in the faces of Protestants in the theatre that "the prevalent feeling with Protestants is evidently a struggling with unspoken, conscientious scruples as to whether or not they are doing right in being where they are"! His description of the approach to Oberammergau and his explanation of the unique place held by the Play are interesting: — The modern pilgrimage to Oberammergau differs in almost every respedl from that of byegone centuries. Yet with all the aid of railways, steamboats and cushioned carriages and with all the comforts and luxuries of our modern civilisation, it may well be questioned whether the nineteenth century pilgrim, with a time-table in every pocket, a crowd of railway and hotel por- ters impeding every step, and a pile of trunks and valises and shawl straps, demanding more care than a family of children, possesses any advantages over the pilgrim of yore, who with staff in hand and no thought of time or tide, of crowded trains or departing steamboats, began his free pedestrian tour toward the Great Passionspiel. The first point for which every traveller to the Passion Play now aims is the beautiful city of Munich; a place worthy, in itself, of a pilgrimage from any clime, by every lover of archi- tefture, sculpture and painting. From Munich the little village of Oberammergau, nestled in the heart of the Bavarian High- lands, lies distant towards the South West about sixty miles. Three quarters of this distance is now traversed by railway, and towards the end of each week, trains of interminable length. 1882] SETTING LINE AND PLUMMET 53 with puffing engines harnessed before and behind, and laden with a vast army of pilgrims from all nations wend their slow length along at a pace scarcely surpassing that of a Swiss dili- gence, until, after several dreary hours, Murnau, the terminus is reached. Here, a strange scene presents itself. Four or five hundred vehicles of every description: — einspanners, zwelspan- ners, and vierspanners; stellwagen, postwagen and wagons of all sizes and shapes, diligences and carryalls, omnibuses and improvised canvas-covered hay racks fill every available nook and corner of the road; while a concourse of two thousand bewildered travellers hurrying to and fro, a babel of sounds in which every language of Europe is vehemently vociferated, a seething whirlpool of human forms in which no two pathways seem to lie in the same diredlion, makes a scene more like an etching of Dante's Inferno by Gustave Dore, than a spedacle of earth. Yet, in fifteen minutes, as in a dream, all have vanished, and one lonely party of travellers, lingering at the station and hopelessly surrounding a Saratoga trunk are the sole strangers and disturbers of the peace of the quiet country village. The drive from Murnau to Oberammergau occupies from three to four hours. The road, for the first part, threads along the banks and through the lovely valley of the Laisach, with forest- covered hills on either hand and the snow-crowned Zugspitze looming up before. Then, at Oberau, it turns sharply to the West and in a few moments arrives at a hostelry, where a wait- ing assemblage of drivers with extra horses, proclaim that the pilgrim in his progress has arrived at that point where the hill Difficulty is to be climbed. And truly a hill Difficulty it is. For more than half an hour, the road ascends under the leafy trees the thickly wooded slopes of the Ettalerberg at a grade steeper than that of any Alpine pass, while, at every pause, the smoking, toiling horses, seem as though they could not draw the carriage a foot further. At last, the summit is reached nearly a thousand feet above the valley below and here stands the pidluresque Monastery of Ettal, most closely connected in the past with Oberammergau and its Passionspiel. Before us now stretches out the romantic Ammer Thai, a mountain valley, so elevated, that the surrounding peaks are dwarfed to the size of the highlands of the Hudson, and after a short half hour's drive through this valley, over nearly level roads, the sharp cone-like form and precipitous sides of the 54 A MASTER BUILDER [1875 towering Kofel proclaim that the end of the pilgrimage is nigh. This Kofel is the most characteristic feature in the landscape of Oberammergau, and to it, at once, all eyes in approaching, are turned. It stands above the village like a guardian angel or a Rock of Refuge, and upon its highest point the Oberammer- gauers have planted a simple, huge, unpretending cross, whose arms catch the first beams of the rising, and the last of the setting, sun, and thus form a constant, daily reminder of Him, whose sacred Life is the first theme of their thoughts. After passing the peak the village of Oberammergau stands before the traveller. The feeling with which, at first, he gazes about him is one of disappointment. The place seems more like an Alpine hamlet than any thing deserving the name of a village. Streets there are none, unless the crooked windings between house and house can be called such. The dwellings themselves, like most of those in Bavarian villages, are large two or three- story buildings, with immense pidluresque eaves casting their deep shadows beneath, and, here and there, richly carved beams jutting out from the second story, or elaborate frescoes, repre- senting the Madonna and Child or some familiar Scripture scene, painted upon the stuccoed walls. At one end of this village stands the large Romanesque Parish Church that is the spiritual home of the people. How can such a people, in stich a station of life and inhabit- ing such a village, with so few advantages, and removed so far from all cultivating influences, be able to produce a Passion Play which is unique in the history of the world, which vast multi- tudes travel thousands of miles to witness, which has been visited and looked upon by nearly every royal personage in Europe, and which has given rise to a literature all its own? And how is it, that when similar representations have every where else been discontinued and put under the ban, this alone is allowed to survive? Many influences have tended to bring about this result. Much is due to the situation of the place itself upon the charadter of the people. The valley in which the village stands is nearly three thousand feet above the level of the sea and it is literally a valley in the clouds. Rain and dense fogs are frequent here, while the villages lower down are basking under sunlit skies. For days the clouds which have become entangled in the hill tops hide the sunlight from i882] SETTING LINE AND PLUMMET 55 view, and nature, at this high elevation, is not what it is below. The people therefore are used to long, dreary, sunless days. They have few pleasures or recreations, and shut out from the diversions of the outer world, the festivals of the Church become not only their holy days but their holidays. The different seasons of the Christian Year bringing the Life of Christ, in all its vividness before them, from Bethlehem to Calvary and Olivet, are the epochs to which they look forward with most glowing anticipations, or gaze back upon, with fond- est memories. That sacred Life becomes thus interwoven with all the joys and brightest associations of their own life. It stands before them as a living, present reality. They walk by His side with the disciples. They rejoice in His Birth at Christ- mas. They are casting branches before Him and shouting Hosanna on Palm Sunday. They are at the foot of the Cross on Good Friday and at the open sepulchre on Easter. When, in addition to this, we remember that they have been peculiarly blessed in the pastors they have had, for the past fifty years: pastors who were spiritual-minded men, were real fathers to their flock, and who have done all in their power to enhance the influence of these holy associations we have pidlured, we have before us an evident reason why they enter with such earnestness and appreciation into the different scenes of the Passion Play. Again, owing to the high elevation of the valley, the scant pastures afforded for the flocks and the ceaseless struggle which the people, in consequence, have had to put forth with nature for the fruits of the ground, many of them have turned their attention from husbandry to wood-carving, and this has been the occupation of the principal families for many generations. The trade of wood-carving is in itself an education. It cul- tivates the eye and the artistic faculties. It develops correct- ness of taste and a true sense of proportion and form. It leads inevitably to the close study and observation of great works of art, and brings about a familiarity with, and an appreciation of those paintings and sculptures which constitute the art treas- ures of the world. When one beholds in George Lang's shop at Oberammergau, Leonardo da Vinci's Last Supper, or a Madonna of Raphael, transposed into an exquisitely carved wood bos relief, and then remembers that this is the original work of some humble village S6 A MASTER BUILDER [1875 peasant, it is an indication of what wood-carving has done for the people. The same correctness of taste which enables them to produce such works, enables them also to form those artistic posings and groupings and exquisite tableaux which delight the eye in the Passion Play. No artist visitor could feel more keenly than themselves what is unnatural or disproportionate. Their own instindlive feeling and appreciation of the beautiful has been cultivated to such a degree, that the varied, ever-changing scenes of the Passion Play almost seem as though they were the familiar piftures of the old masters endued with life. One more efFeft we trace to the high elevation of the place. The steep Ettalerburg which we have described, blocking up the end of the valley and cutting it off so completely from the outer world, has stood there as the guardian of the people's purity and simplicity. It has isolated them from evil influences and temp- tations to which they would otherwise have been subjedled. It has enabled them to retain in a marked degree their primitive charadleristics; and the result is that while, in all other parts of Europe, through force of public opinion, and the greater force of changed conditions of life. Passion Plays have been discontinued, in this one solitary instance, this relic of a past age and of mediaeval time remains undisturbed, with the seal and sandlion of the Christian world resting upon it. Mr. Satterlee's poetic nature could not fail to search out and find all the wealth of sentiment that lies hidden beneath historic associations, such as his travels gave him access to. A man whose lips are not gifted with power of poetic speech may have so poetic a nature as habitually to adt in poetry rather than in prose. This he did. Egypt and Palestine were to him not places for sight- seeing but for devout and prayerful contemplation. He moved through the country where his Lord once trod with reverence and child-like awe, storing up all the while treasures to be used when the hour called for them to be produced. Years afterwards he brought Jerusalem and Bethlehem and Jordan to Washington and embedded them deep in the thought and life of the Church in America. These two letters to his sister Mary tell something of his visit in Egypt and in England: — 1 882] SETTING LINE AND PLUMMET 57 ALEXANDRIA, EGYPT, MARCH 6. My dear Mary: I received your welcome letter this morning and you can imagine with what pleasure I read it when I tell you we have here been a fortnight at a time without any home mail. It seems strange to hear of ice and snow, when for the past three weeks we have been living in May days surrounded by green grass and spring flowers, with orange groves and palm trees about us on every side. I cannot begin to tell you how we have enjoyed our eastern trip. From the first moment when I arrived at Alexandria down to the present it has been one suc- cession of the strangest experiences, and I have felt as though twenty years were lopped off my life in the enthusiasm and interest and sensation of novelty with which I have gazed about me. Everything is new. Books give one no idea of oriental life. The novelty strikes you every moment almost in every scene. Imagine your cab driver, in a turban and night gown with bare legs, long trains of camels with their supercilious looks slowly stalking through the streets: women with their heads and bodies shrouded, staring at you over their yasmaks with only the eyes and a little corner of the forehead visible, beggars in turbans and little children half naked running after you and roaring "back- shish." One old beggar understood a little English and kept saying "Good-bye — backshish — fine day — backshish — nice gel' man — backshish — Good-bye, good-bye — backshish! " The carriages (private) have runners before with long lances in their hands, dressed like ballet dancers and the most graceful figures you ever saw. We arrived here on Feb. 19. We thought Alexandria fascinat- ing then, and I shall never forget the fearful babel of sounds, the anger and fist-shaking and swearing in Arabic among the Egyp- tian, half-clad, swarthy, turbanned, bare-legged occupants of the swarm of boats which surrounded the steamer: — but Alexan- dria was nothing to Cairo. The street scenes of Cairo, especially in the narrow bazaars, baffle all description. I have literally stood an hour at a street corner looking at the passers by. It is the most amusing place in the world, every body wants to swindle you, every body begs of you with the most unblushing effrontery, and the astonishing placidity with which an Egyptian will take any snub, even the point of your boot and still perse- vere, beggars all attempts to describe. Of course we visited the S8 A MASTER BUILDER [1875 Mosques. We also saw a great national festival — the Birthday of the Prophet in which all the clans headed by their hadjis were reviewed by the Khedive. We saw the dancing dervishes and the howling dervishes. We visited Heliopolis and saw the obelisk upon which Moses and Joseph must have gazed, and which was standing four hundred years before Abraham was born. But the most wonderful sights of all were the Tombs of Sakkara with their wonderful pidlures of Egyptian life 4500 years ago at Memphis; the lonely Sphinx and the Great Pyramid which some suppose, you know, to have been built at God's command. I did not go to the top of the latter but I went into it, and saw all that was there. The King's chamber and Queen's chamber, the Jewish passage and the Messianic Hallway supposed to represent a period of 1881 and a half years. From Cairo, after a stay of ten days, we went to Ismailia on the Suez Canal, where twenty-four of us passengers were put on board of a little steam launch, so small that we did not dare to move without upsetting the boat, and there we were compelled to remain nearly seven hours, cooped up like so many chickens, until Port Said was reached at 2 a.m. (You know that means night time.) As you may imagine our memories of the Suez Canal are not particularly agreeable. The keeper of the Hotel at Port Said is a Netherlander and a swindler. His house is called Hotel des Pays Bas and it is a low place and he is a low fellow. I shall publish him from Montreal to Cape Horn and from Orchard Lake to Jerusalem — and we all have complained to our monarch and protedlor, Thomas Cook — of his outra- geous charges! Thence we took the steamer to Jaffa, the ancient Joppa, arriving early the next morning and landing in smooth seas, a fortunate occurrence for it often happens that the waters are rough and then the passengers are carried on to Beyrout involving a delay of a week or more. At Joppa I visited what is reported to be the veritable house of Simon the Tanner. It is certainly most beautifully situated "near to the sea," and the probability of its being the veritable site is quite strong. It took us two days to go up to Jerusalem, the ladies in a carriage and the gentlemen on horseback. We passed many Biblical places, among others the plains of Sharon where the fields are covered with wild flowers prominent among which are the Rose of Sharon (the sweet smelling narcissus) and the lilies of the field men- tioned by our Saviour, the red anemone, almost the counter- 1 882] SETTING LINE AND PLUMMET 59 part in appearance of the poppy or the red tulip. We also passed over the Valley of Ajalon where Joshua is said to have commanded the sun and moon to stand still. Going up to Jerusalem I read the Psalms of Ascent (CXX to CXXXIV), which were chanted by the Jewish pilgrims when they went up to the Holy City. And I always tried to read on the spot the Scripture narrative of every place I visited. The first view of Jerusalem as you come over the grey barren hills is disappointing. One sees nothing but the colonies of modern houses. At last however you reach the walls and enter- ing by the JaflFa Gate find the Hotel ("The Mediterranean"), the only one in Jerusalem, close to the gate within. Jerusalem is a very small city about three miles in circumference wholly en- closed with walls, with a few streets so wretched, narrow, dirty and badly paved that few horses and no carriages ever enter them. And after once going through the city over the Via Dolorosa you find that once enough ever after, you will prefer to go around outside of the walls; and as I have said this is not much, a good walker could make the circuit of the whole city in three quarters of an hour. Of course we visited the church of the Holy Sepulchre and all the traditional sites. These to me were historically interesting as the shrines of many pil- grimages, but they aroused no holy emotions. The church of the Holy Sepulchre is indeed a [^conglomeration]. It contains besides the Sepulchre, Calvary, with the spots where the three crosses were, the centre of the earth. The tombs of Adam, Melchisedek, Godfrey de Bouillon, the Stone of Undion, where the body was anointed, the rocks that were riven by the earthquake at the resurredion, the pillar to which Christ was bound, the tomb of Helena, etc. etc. etc. Within the same building are chapels of the Greek Church, the Roman Church, the Armenian and Coptic Churches etc. We saw the hole in the wall through which the sacred fire which descends at Easter is given to the pilgrims — the most shocking imposture of Chris- tendom. The next day we all mounted horses and started for the valley of the Jordan — Judge and Mrs. Mackay of Mon- treal, Jennie and I with one dragoman, cook, muleteers &c. Crossing the Mt. of Olives we stopped at Bethany for our Bedouin guard, a sheikh who went with us to keep off robbers (a sort of blackmail alFair), still a very fierce looking pidlur- esque Bedouin who has killed several men in his day they tell me. 6o A MASTER BUILDER [1875 And we met plenty of the Bedouins with their old flintlock strapped across their backs and clad in their black and white mantles. They appeared, feeding their sheep on the top of almost every hill, and especially near that old ruin on the way toward Jericho, which is the traditional site of the Inn of the Good Shepherd. It was down hill all the way. 1300 ft. down hill we came to the wild and gloomy gorge of the brook Cherith where Elijah was fed by the ravens. Then suddenly the exquisite valley of the Jordan burst upon us, with the Dead Sea flashing in the sunlight in the South. And the purple mountains of Moab facing us, and the white crest of snow-capped Hermon in the far North. We camped at Eriha, a mud village on the site of ancient Gilgal and modern Jericho, the Jericho of Christ's day. The luxuriance of the verdure in the hot valley was like June, as the temperature also; the bulbul was singing on every twig, and at night the jackals kept barking incessantly. The next day we started early for the Dead Sea. Before us were the mountains of Moab, the peak on which Moses died and the three summits to which Balaam was taken by Balak to curse Israel. In two hours we reached the Dead Sea. Contrary to my ex- pectation it was an exquisitely beautiful sheet of limpid water, embosomed in mountains and I enjoyed my bath in it exceed- ingly. It was a novel sensation to float on water as on a mat- tress with full half of one's body above the surface. And when you come out you feel as though you had been oiled all over. Then we went to the Jordan — an hour's ride — • and found it a turbid swift-flowing stream of about one hundred feet in width, fringed with a tangle of oleanders and bamboos and flowing between high muddy banks. Still all the associations of the locality rushed upon me as I thought how across that ford be- fore, me the children of Israel had crossed into the promised land, and Elijah and EHsha had walked dry shod, and Christ had been baptized. The next day we went to Elisha's fountain and also the site of old Jericho, three great mounds of earth with the Mount of Christ's temptation, now riddled with an hundred caves of her- mits, behind — riding home, we reached Jerusalem on Saturday night. Sunday morning we went to the English Church — where strange to say the Psalms were the same Psalms of Ascent, and the Gospel, Christ's healing of Bartimaeus on the way from Jericho up to Jerusalem. In the afternoon Jennie and I took a 1882] SETTING LINE AND PLUMMET 6i lovely walk. We went out of S. Stephen's Gate, the site where the martyr was stoned, across the brook and valley of the Kedron to Gethsemane where there are eight very old and ven- erable olive trees, then up the bridle road over the Mount of Olives, being the very path Christ's feet had trod when He went to Bethany — where He cursed the barren fig tree, and especially where he spoke the words recorded in St. Matt. XXIV & XXV. Then we came to a summit high into Bethany which is now believed to be the spot where He ascended to Heaven (not the traditional place). Then we came to Bethany. On our way back we took the South road, the road of Christ's triumphal entry. We saw the ravine across which He sent His disciples into the village over against them for the ass and colt, while He and the multitude took the round-about course: we saw the ruins of the village itself — Bethphage: we saw the exadl spot where the city in its beauty bursts upon the view, and where Jesus wept over it. Although we were only four days in Jerusalem I managed to visit three times each of these spots. On Monday we went to Bethlehem and spent a lovely hour on the spot where the shepherds watched their flocks by night and the angels announced the birth of Christ: and on Tuesday we visited the harem enclosure, the site of the old Jewish Temple. Over the whole area — the most sacred spot of all the earth to the Jews — nothing is to be seen but the tokens of a Moham- medan religion. We were unfortunately obliged to leave Jerusalem on the very morning of Ash Wednesday, contrary to all our expedations, but we managed to start from the hotel very early, Wednesday morning and had a little Ash Wednesday service on the top of a hill outside the Damascus Gate, which is now looked upon by the best authorities, as Calvary itself. It this be indeed true, it is a lovely spot, the place of all others I should like to think of as the scene of the Crucifixion. Strange is it that the places which are now believed to be the veritable spots where Christ was crucified and buried, where He raised Lazarus, where He wept over Jerusalem, and from which He ascended to Heaven, should have utterly escaped the life of tradition. I take up this letter after several days. We are now on our way back to Europe and are just off Crete. (Wednesday, March 9.) We expecft to arrive at Naples on Saturday and at 62 A MASTER BUILDER [1875 Paris on Tuesday morning. I cannot as yet tell when we shall sail for home, but we will probably be in New York the begin- ning of June. I will write to you, however, more particularly later, and tell you the exadl date. How I wish you could see the Mediterranean to-day. It is not the stormy sea we have been heretofore sailing over, but the ideal Levant, as blue as the Bay of Naples. Thank Robert for his kind letter and tell him I will try to answer it very soon. It reached me at Jaffa, and I was very glad to hear from him. The papers you sent me have also arrived safely and I have read them with very great interest. It seems very strange in this May day climate to read your account of the ice and snow in America, and the letter we receive from New Hamburgh speaks also of an unusually cold winter. It is with a heavy heart I have written there of late, there have been so many sad changes. With oceans of love to you all I am ever, Your attached brother HENRY. LONDON, JUNE 7, 1880. My dear Mary: I have already written a long letter to you which has been mislaid much to my chagrin, for it took me a long time to write and was full of sketches which I have not time to repeat — sketches of the streets and original things in Chester. When you come to England be sure to give a day or two to Chester. The walls encompass the city as in the old time, and the houses are still in large measure of the birth of Shakespeare sort. While the streets are lined with double side walks: one, as with us, skirting the roadway, the other an arcade, through the second stories of the houses thus Qiere a sketch of "the Rows "J and under the upper arcade are some of the quaintest shops of old furniture ever seen. We went from Chester to Lichfield to see the grand old Cathedral there, and found not only in the Cathedral a church eclipsing our greatest expedtations, but in the city a quaint, old, unvisited place with the atmosphere of a past time and in the inn, "The Swan Inn," they regaled us with rook pie. Then we went to Leamington, Warwick, Coventry and Kenilworth, all of which you remember. It was very delightful to renew my memories of Warwick Castle, I found I had not forgotten much. Though Leamington had completely faded from my mind. It is a delightful place, though 1882] SETTING LINE AND PLUMMET 63 there is a little too much of a Saratoga atmosphere about it to suit me. We are riding in second class cars all the way and find there is no difference between them and first class as far as comfort is concerned, while there is a great difference in the way you are treated. In the first class you are treated like lords, followed by troops of porters &c: in the second you are simply let alone — and avoid all the temptations so hard for Americans to stand, of great attention and adulation on the part of waiters. Here we are now, not in Dutchess County, America, but in Duchess St., London. We are not at the Langham, but are close to it, which is nearly as good, and for a very moderate price, which is better. We are in the centre of the "Fifth Avenue" portion of London; about a week ago Arthur made his appear- ance suddenly after breakfast, and told us that he and Josie had arrived. They are around the corner, about three minutes walk from us, and we see them almost daily. Annie is somewhat further off; very near Bloomsbury Square where you remember we all once stayed. I find I remember London very well, Trafalgar Square, Charing Cross, Morley's Hotel, the pidiures in the National Gallery — all bring back many, many memories of the past. Arthur and Annie accompanied us to the Tower of London, and to one or two other places. Arthur is learning to travel about by him- self, and I think is improving and increasing his stock of knowl- edge in manifold ways. He wants to start off soon travelling by himself, and proposes to go to Paris, Geneva, the Italian lakes via the Rhine Valley and the Simplon, thence to Milan, Genoa, Pisa, Florence, Verona, crossing the Brenner Pass into the Tyrol and joining us at Munich or Innsbruck. Annie will remain here about a month then go to Paris, and thence to Lucerne, Switzerland. We will remain here a week or a fort- night longer and then after a little tour in the interior of Eng- land, proceed to Antwerp and Holland, up the Rhine to Cologne and Munich. We spent the first two or three days in London sight-seeing, and latterly have devoted ourselves to shopping in a most vigorous style. I have presented some of my letters of introdudion and have met with most cordial receptions. I called on Dean Stanley last week, and he was very kind indeed, giving me a free pass into the Abbey, to visit it whenever I liked, taking me into the meeting of the Convocation of Canter- 64 A MASTER BUILDER [1875 bury, where I was the only spedtator, and, on last Saturday night through his instrumentality, Jennie and I were permitted to accompany the Ecclesiological Society in their examinations of the Abbey, and spent two hours in a most interesting manner inspedling the Cathedral. Last Sunday Evening Jennie and I dined with the Dean at his own house, and afterward went with the family into the Abbey to the evening service in the Nave, at which thousands were present and the Archbishop of York preached. Then we went back to the Dean's, and were most kindly invited by some guests of his — Mr. and Mrs. Drummond — to visit them in Drummond Castle. Since I have been here I have also heard the Bishop of Ripon, the Bishop of Durham (Dr. Lightfoot, the most learned scholar in England), Dr. Farrar and Dean Goulburn preach — and it has all been preaching of a very high order. The Bishop of Durham's sermon was a most striking one on the text, "Then all his disciples forsook Him and fled." Its subjedl was Failure, 1st the necessity of failure, 2nd, the discipline of failure, 3rd, the triumph of failure. X. and I called to see our Minister the other day, James Russell Lowell, and spent a very pleasant hour with him. He was very com- municative, and told us a great deal about himself. This afternoon I went to Christie's and examined the piftures with him, which we brought over. Mr. Christie was very cour- teous but very decided. He says the pidlures are none of them originals; that "the Cuyp" was the best, but that it was only a clever imitation of Cuyp's style, and was probably the work of an Englishman by the name of Wirts. "That fisherboy's face," said Mr. Christie, "was never painted by Cuyp, it is not a Dutch but an English face." Then he dashed all my hopes to the ground by adding, "You had better take all your pidlures back to America for you will get much more for them there than here. I will sell them for you if you wish, but they will not bring eighty pounds ($400)." So much for our castles in the air! I think I will let the matter rest a few days and then see Christie again. If he speaks in the same way then, I think we had better do as he says — re-ship the pidlures for America. We all think of you daily and are never together without speak- ing of you. How I wish you were here with us! I am sure it would be a very great enjoyment to you. Tuesday Morning — June 8. We are off this morning for the South Kensington Museum and I have only a moment. 1 882] SETTING LINE AND PLUMMET 65 while the others are at breakfast, in which to finish this letter. Give my love to Robert and kiss the "Polliwogs" for me. Jennie unites with me in oceans of love to you all. Ever your afFedlionate brother, HENRY. During his absence abroad his people were not idle. His life was a torch that had set them on lire, until they saw what he saw and his ideals became theirs. This was his way. By identifying himself with the interests of others he lifted others into the uplands of his own best life. No wonder it succeeded for it is the ■way of the Incarnate God. For years he had dreamed of a parish house as a means of consolidating and co- ordinating the life and adlivities of his people. The idea was novel. There were few parish houses in the whole country, and his was among the first to be built. In 1877, anticipating the day when his dream would be realized, he got together the money to buy the lot adja- cent to the Church. While he was abroad the leading spirits of Zion Church conspired together to secure funds for the building against his return. There was much labor and self-sacrifice during the intervening months, and before he reached America the parish house was assured. The family were greeted on their arrival home with the warmth and joy of a united community. A reception was given them by the parish, and the crowning moment of the occasion came, when the funds for the parish house were presented to the surprised and delighted Redor. Mr. Satterlee set to work at once upon the design. He was impatient of detail, and yet he learned to school himself into such self-control as enabled him to bestow on such a task infinite pains. The corner-stone was laid on August 28, 1 88 1, and the building was completed and opened before Mr. Satterlee closed his pastorate in Wappinger's Falls the year following. 66 A MASTER BUILDER [1875 Parish houses are in these progressive days a common- place, having risen through a variety of stages in the past quarter of a century. Advanced social workers are today sometimes inclined to look at the old-fashioned idea of a parish house as a plaster that hid, rather than healed, one of the world's sores. When the Parish House of Zion Church was established it was more rare than aeroplanes now are. Moreover it responded to and met a social and religious need, in the very form that it assumed. It was a necessary and important stage in progress, without which we could not have reached the more searching methods and efFedtive agencies which we believe we have been discovering of late. According to the mind of Mr. Satterlee it was the nexus between Sunday and Monday. It was the visible outspoken announcement that Christianity was for every day, and that the Church was the centre, the protedlor, the sympathizer of all thought and adlivity, serious and gay. It was fitting therefore that the eredtion of Zion Parish House should have been the capstone of Mr. Satterlee's work in his first cure. The building, which still continues to fill its fundlion, though in vastly different conditions than of yore, is of stone, connefted with the Church by beautiful cloisters. On one occasion shortly before Bishop Brooks' death he was at the formal opening of a new parish house in connexion with one of the churches of his Diocese. It was complete up to the top notch. After inspecting it, he remarked to the redtor: "Well, I suppose now the creaking of machinery will begin." But there are parish houses and parish houses, and that of Zion Church was not the sort that creaked when in operation. It occupies the very spot where the wife of Judge Matthew Mesier in 1820 laid the spiritual foundations of the parish, in her group of little ones gathered for instruAion in God's Word and Worship under an apple tree. The tree has borne fruit and borne it abun- dantly. 1 882] SETTING LINE AND PLUMMET 67 This year Henry Mesier, son of the Judge, senior warden and first person to be confirmed in the parish, went to his rest. Another institution already referred to, which owed its existence to the combined efforts of Mr. Satterlee and Mr. Grinnell, was the Library. It grew from a reading- room to a well-equipped Hbrary of 4,000 volumes in a building of its own. Mr. Grinnell presented it to the town in 1887. The building is opposite the Church, and its affairs are administered by an eledtive board of citizens. It is full of memorial rooms which accommodate various adlivities. Flower sales were instituted to encourage gardening and an intelligent appreciation of flowers. There is a good collection of photographs and other pidlures, and a small museum. Public ledtures were early inaugurated under the auspices of the Library, and such men as Charles Dudley Warner, Wendell Phillips, Dr. I. I. Hayes, the Ardtic explorer, Bayard Taylor and Paul du Chaillu, were enlisted as ledturers. The parish in which a handful of communicants re- ceived the sacred food the first Christmas (1868) of Mr. Satterlee's life there, now had a roll of five hundred and fifty, whose religious life centred at, and drew its inspira- tion from, the altar. Zion Church had reached the zenith of its history. It represented sixteen years of careful constructive work in a growing and prosperous town. If Mr. Satterlee was to leave, it was a fitting moment to do so. He had been busy with the line and plummet. A successor would find a well-planned strudture to use in behalf of God's Kingdom. Had he stayed, there is no doubt that he would have found immense satisfaction in spending his powers upon the task of the rural pastor as Chaucer pictures him. He was a shepherde, and noght a mercenarie: And though he hooly were and vertuous, He was to synful man nat despitous, Ne of his speche dangerous ne digne. But in his techyng descreet and benygne. 68 A MASTER BUILDER [1875 To drawen folk to hevene by fairnesse, By good ensample, this was his bisynesse: But it were any persone abstinat. What so he were, of heigh or lough estat, Hym wolde he snybben sharply for the nonys. A bettre preest I trowe that nowher noon ys; He waited after no pompe and reverence. He maked him a spiced conscience. But Christes loore, and his Apostles twelve. He taughte, but first he folwed it hymselve. What a happy thing, it is that in all the years that have intervened since Chaucer, inspired by "a Poure Persoun of a Toun," wrote these lines, there has seldom been any considerable stretch of time when the typical parson of the Anglican Communion was not a man of this sort! Mr. Satterlee was a Person or Parson of his town. There would have been no pause in his activity or leadership, wherever he was. His character was too well set to allow of any nestling on the hither side of eternity. If conditions forbade further extensive work, intensive service would have filled his life. Perhaps it is idle to conjecture what would have happened had he stayed where he was, as his emotions urged him to do. But it is not difficult to think of him as continuing, like Herbert or Keble, a fruitful ministry in a rural parish as pastor, preacher, and probably writer. In after life, in the distradtion and turmoil of a big city parish, he wrote enough to show that in different conditions he could have written more and better. His life was ordered otherwise. Hardly had he started in again after his travels to gather up loose ends and to pursue his customary duties as priest and pastor, before he received the notification of his eledlion as Redtor of Calvary Church in New York City on March 2, 1882. Both his personality and work could not fail to attradl attention. His parish had become one of the most conspicuous in the Diocese. Among his monied parishioners were New York men whose country homes were in New Hamburgh. When 1 882] SETTING LINE AND PLUMMET 69 still young in his ministry he was eledted to membership in a clerical club of which the Rev. Dr. E. A. Washburn was the leader. Indeed he was the first country member of the club. When it came to his turn to present, as was customary, a paper for discussion, he spoke with independence and emphasis. The paper was severely criticised, more than it would have been had not its author been young, and with ecclestiastical and theologi- cal views of a different color from the majority of his fellow-members. Dr. Washburn, after listening to the criticisms which were freely made, championed him by saying that the paper "showed study of the best thought of the day and embodied the truth which he himself had lived by and, please God, would die by." When the call came Mr. Satterlee proceeded to New York to consider the question on the spot. The Rev. Edward A. Washburn, D.D., was Redtor of Calvary Church from 1865, when he succeeded Dr. Coxe, until his death in 1881, his ministry at Calvary covering the same period as Mr. Satterlee's at Zion. It was charadler- istic of Mr. Satterlee that upon going to New York his first ad: was to call on Mrs. Washburn, " a true hearted magnanimous woman," as he termed her at the time of her decease in 1892. Dr. Washburn had been a great preacher and, especially during the last years of his life, had not given close attention to the pastoral side of his office. It had been his secret wish, expressed to no one but his wife, that the vestry would give him an assistant, who would become responsible for all the work of the parish except the Sunday morning sermon. Calvary Parish was then, as now, one of the more important Church centres in New York City and it was no small compliment to be asked to become redtor. Mr. Satterlee met the vestry saying that it was im- portant before any conclusion was reached that they should know one another through personal contadt, and leave no room for misunderstanding on either side. "I thought," he said, "that I ought to meet you face 70 A MASTER BUILDER [1875 to face. You may wish a great preacher. I am not one. You may want a low churchman. I am not a low churchman. I give you back your call." Such engaging frankness could have but one effedl. It made the vestry more than ever anxious to secure him as their redlor. Accordingly they renewed the call. "When I was called," Mr. Satterlee says, "I asked the vestry to reduce the unknown ground between us, saying I would tell every- thing regarding myself if they would do the same about the church. I then handed them back their informal call and said if they gave me a formal one, after our talk, I should take the matter into very serious considera- tion, but could not promise to accept. The call came a week after this and I accepted, taking charge of the parish on the second Sunday after Easter, 1882." When Mr. Satterlee accepted it he did not do so be- cause he was restless, or because, of his own volition, he would have considered any lot other than the one which hitherto had been given him, but because he saw before him in the city of his birth and education, in conditions with which he was not unfamiliar, an opportunity to serve the Church which he could not negledt. Behind him in Zion Parish was as finished a produdl of labor as most men can dare to hope for in a life-time. Beckon- ing him was a field that needed the touch of a new hand, the labor of a strong man, and the experienced powers of organization which he could bring to play upon the situation. This alone, however, would not have constituted in his mind a sufficient reason for severing existing relations. It is easy to conceive of his rejeding a large and flourishing work simply because it was prosperous. To win him you had to challenge him. In other days knights-errant were made of the stuff that was in him. To his life's end he was always in the lists. The final test in any critical step for one who walked with God, as he had learned to do, was neither his preference, nor his judgment of the relative values of here or there, nor the clamor of a seeming opportunity, 1 882] SETTING LINE AND PLUMMET 71 nor the twice repeated call. It was an intensely personal thing. It was whether the voice of God sounded clear and strong in and through all other voices. He could do only what God bade him do. That once made clear he did not hesitate in his decision, after which there could be no looking back. He felt that as God had called him to Zion Church; now he was calling him from this his first love. Accordingly he accepted his election as redtor of Calvary, and on April 30 he delivered his farewell pastoral charge and officiated for the last time as redtor of Zion. Thus ended the first rounded period of his ministry, and now as his life rises before us in its completeness, it is easy to see he was being made ready for the position and work which would ultimately claim him. Some men are born to build. He was one of them. Put such people where you will, and they will find material where others, less given to construdtion, will find none. They are the men who make work when conditions do not drive them to it. A builder is not dependent upon construdting a whole building before he can set his powers free. If it is a foundation to be built, his best efforts go into the part of the strudlure which is least visible, and a foundation it is. Or if it is setting the plumb-line to the rising walls, it is that which consumes his energies. But a builder always sees the whole building with his inner eye before he lays the foundation stone. To him the building is complete as an ideal before it is begun as a fadt. Once seen, the vision is compelling. It is the builder's pain and joy, his vexation and inspiration. He is no longer his own. In the grip of the purpose, which is born of obedience to the vision, he is carried along like the ship by the current. All castles begin as castles in the air. The fundlion of those who see them is to put foundations under them, as some one has bravely put it. Mr. Satterlee in Wappinger's Falls was discovered to himself as a builder. The conditions were favorable to 72 A MASTER BUILDER Ci87S call forth his powers and give them free play. There is not any doubt that they would have ripened satisfadtorily elsewhere, but in Zion Parish opportunity was at its height. He began within and worked outward from within. First the spiritual fabric, and afterwards the body which it is to energize and use. Every pastor is not a charadter builder. Only the best pastors are. Mr. Satterlee's idea of salvation was of a prompt and utili- tarian sort. He would save men for as well as from a certain fate. He saw possibilities of fruitfulness where one who loved men less could discern but small hope of development. Every soul when once consciously related to God in Christ must be consciously related to man in Christ. The visible society of the Church's congregation was a living organism, and so he welded together people of every grade and sort into a socially, as well as reli- giously, happy whole. But every man has individual capacity and gifts, and Mr. Satterlee considered it to be the builder's duty to fit each stone of the living temple into its place. His conception of a parish was of a company of workers as well as of worshippers. Long before the word "service" was as highly exalted as it is now, the people of Zion Parish were taught to live its meaning. It was no forced and artificial "something to do" which he sought for each of his parishioners. He selected and distributed accord- ing to fitness as he was able to measure it. The people of Zion Parish felt that each had his part to play in a harmonious whole. Accordingly there were numerous departments, each consisting as far as possible of con- genial people. The result of this work of a master builder was what you would expedl. An enlarged and beautified church building, a home for working girls, and a parish house. Mr. Satterlee's method was as true as the spirit which set it in operation. He had also that high trust in human nature which is necessary to construction and organiza- i882] SETTING LINE AND PLUMMET 73 tion. Having determined upon the right person to control a given department of work, he did not worry his own mind by that which forthwith became the responsibility of his co-worker. If it is possible to trust men too well, this was Mr. Satterlee's fault. But no one could do the work he did without an almost unlimited trust. And it is interesting that men who trust strongly, as well as generously, are not often disappointed. At any rate Mr. Satterlee's life of trust at Wappinger's Falls was wholly justified in its fruit. CHAPTER V THE BUILDER AT WORK Ministry at Calvary Church, N.ew York 1882-1885 He builds the State who to that task Brings strong, clean hands, and purpose pure; Who wears not virtue as a mask; He builds the State that shall endure. RICHARD WATSON GILDER CALVARY Parish has had an interesting and distin- guished history. It was founded in 1836 during the episcopate of Dr. Onderdonk, at a time when the future metropolis was a city of about 250,000 people, most of whom lived to the south of 14th Street. The uptown houses, residences "worthy to be compared with the palaces of Europe," were those in Waverley Place (recently so named after the famous author of the Waverley Novels), Lafayette Place, Bond Street, and Ble.ecker Street. "Residences as well as business houses, clustered around the City Hall, and the Battery was still a fashionable promenade."^ North of 14th Street the population was small and scattered until you reached Harlem. A cattle pasture, streams and a pond occupied the territory in the vicinity of 25th Street. Just north of what is now Madison, then known as Murray, Square was "Sunfish Pond" where the boys bathed. Among the trees still standing (1886) are some swamp willows which once fringed one of the creeks which fed the pond. "Between New York and Harlem were a few small settlements, at Yorkdale, Bloomingdale, and Manhattan- ville." But there were not more than 11,000 people » Calvary Parish, 1836-1886, by G. L. Prentiss, Jr. i88s] THE BUILDER AT WORK 75 between 14th Street and the Harlem River. Between 14th Street and 21st Street there was a scattered popula- tion of perhaps 4,000, chiefly on the west side. In 1835 a group of people of missionary spirit, though living elsewhere in the city felt that a church should be built in the region of 30th Street, anticipating the growth of the city in the one diredtion in which in the nature of the case it could, grow. They secured five years' lease of the necessary land and eredted a small building. Bishop Onderdonk's sermon at the consecration of the church (January i, 1837) contains an interesting passage, even though his mode of expressing himself was ponderous and quaint: Calvary Church is situated on Fourth Avenue, near 30th Street, at a great distance from any house of worship. The population around it is rapidly increasing, and was giving most serious manifestations of the want of the wholesome moral influ- ence of the Gospel. In view of this, a few pious and enterprising individuals, principally young men, determined on an effort to rear a temple and an altar, where the blessing of those services, ordinances and instrudlions might be diffused around. The corporation of Calvary Church was formed, and the edi- fice eredled. It is, indeed, a little and humble one; but like a "little one" of old, it may prove a rest and a refuge to many who are in danger of perishing — "She hath done what she could." While time was passing in discussing the expediency of eretft- ing a large and handsome church, and casting about for the ways and means, and ascertaining how it would best answer worldly views, the opportunity of doing the great good now imperiously called for in this sedlion of the city, might have been lost. Our brethren^ of Calvary Church, therefore, a