An ingenious statistician, taking the statement made
in Revelation xxi. that the heavenly Jerusalem was
measured and found to be twelve thousand furlongs,
and that the length and height and breadth of it are
equal, says that would make heaven in size nine hundred
and forty-eight sextillion, nine hundred and eighty-eight
quintillion cubic feet; and then reserving a certain
portion for the court of heaven and the streets, and
estimating that the world may last a hundred thousand
years, he ciphers out that there are over five trillion
rooms, each room seventeen feet long, sixteen feet
wide, fifteen feet high. But I have no faith
in the accuracy of that calculation. He makes
the rooms too small. From all I can read the
rooms will be palatial, and those who have not had
enough room in this world will have plenty of room
at the last. The fact is that most people in
this world are crowded, and though out on a vast prairie
or in a mountain district people may have more room
than they want, in most cases it is house built close
to house, and the streets are crowded, and the cradle
is crowded by other cradles, and the graves crowded
in the cemetery by other graves; and one of the richest
luxuries of many people in getting out of this world
will be the gaining of unhindered and uncramped room.
And I should not wonder if, instead of the room that
the statistician ciphered out as only seventeen feet
by sixteen, it should be larger than any of the rooms
at Berlin, St. James, or Winter Palace.
So we built an exceedingly large church. The
new Tabernacle seated comfortably 5,000 people.
It was open on February 22, 1874, for worship, and
completed a few months later.
THE FIFTH MILESTONE
1877-1879
Without boast it may be said that I was among those
men who with eager and persistent vigilance made the
heart of Brooklyn feel the Christian purpose of the
pulpit, and the utility of religion in everyday life.
The fifteen years following the dedication of the
new Tabernacle in 1872 mark the most active milestone
of my career as a preacher.
A minister’s recollections are confined to his
interpretation of the life about him; the men he knows,
the events he sees, the good and the bad of his environment
and his period become the loose leaves that litter
his study table.
I was in the prime of life, just forty years of age.
From my private note-books and other sources I begin
recollections of the most significant years in Brooklyn,
preceding the local elections in 1877. New York
and Brooklyn were playmates then, seeming rivals, but
by predestined fate bound to grow closer together.
I said then that we need not wait for the three bridges
which would certainly bind them together. The
ferry-boat then touching either side was only the thump
of one great municipal heart. It was plain to
me that this greater Metropolis, standing at the gate
of this continent, would have to decide the moral
and political destinies of the whole country.
