He doubted his ability to interest the people of to-day in the affairs and conditions that then existed, but the wrapt attention with which the large congregation listened to his words proved that they were not only deeply interested in what he had to say, but also in the manner in which it was said. Dr. Howe spoke in part as follows: We climb upon high elevations which others have built and then kick the ladder away.

This is human nature. It is church nature. I fear that I cannot interest you in these new conditions.

If I had the old conditions, the old surroundings, the old people, I could interest them. This is not my church. Everything seems out of place and out of joint.

The wrong people all upon the streets, the wrong signs are over the business places, the wrong people are in the pews. Things are not as they were thirty years ago, and yet it is appropriate that men who were here thirty years ago should be heard from. How different are the conditions now from what existed then.

When I began my ministry in Cortland the country had just come out from the civil war. The military spirit was abroad. The period of reconstruction had but just begun.

We did not know anything about expansion nor about many of the great questions that confront us to-day. How different were the religious conditions that then existed. We had no higher theology, no higher criticism, and questions of heresy were not troubling us.

I belonged to what was known as the old school church. The church here was of the new school. I came to the work fresh from my college and seminary training and set up, as it were, a smoking Sinai. And yet how wonderfully the church bore it all.