The Universalist. [volume] (Chicago [Ill.]) 1884-1897, 1895-04-13

vi bu6 NOIbu Oluo DoCOluiuS q huioi
tude, and including many families of
wealth, built for him one of the finest
churches in the city. He proved
equal to his larger means and wider
field. His increasing flock were proud
of him. They were pleased with his
Collyerisms. He had great influence
in the city. The papers praised him.
Everybody remembers the Chicago
fire. 1t left strip in the heart of
the city, two miles long and one
mile wide. Only one house in all that
space remained. Such scene of ruin
and desolation no American city had
ever seen. Of course Robert Collyer's
magnificent church added to that dis
NAL stretch of fire and smoke and
blackened walls. AS soon as heard
of the fire | fastened from Minneapo-
lis to Chicago, anxious, and yet dread
ing, to meet my many suffering
friends there. Mr.. HI. B. LIS took
me in his carriage, on Sunday morn
ing, and drove up and down the smok
ing ruins. What sight l can never
! forget the awful, the appalling, pict-
ures that met my eyes. The Church of
the Redeemer, my old Chicago church,
had been converted intoa store-house
for charities, food, and clothing, and
ministering angels. We drove on to
the North Side. Congregations were
gathering in tears on the street and
round the fronts of their burned
churches to hold some kind of brief
service. Robert Collyer had made
pulpit of the stone steps of his
crushed and charred temple and was
reading, with choked voice, as we
came near, appropriate passages OF
Scripture to his heart broken people.
Then he read hymn, and the crowd
sang, or tried to. Then he prayed.-I
remember much of that remarkable
prayer. 1t was deep, quiet outpour-
ing of sorrow; a simple, direct, honest
talk with God by an overburdened
soul, soul now sinking in the val
ley of despair, now rising on the
mount of hope, now turbulent with
uncontrolled emotion, now compare
lively calm and placid. The prayer
was so strangely intermixed with pa
thos and quaintness, that it swung
us at times from tears to almost silent
laughter; and yet the smile he caused
by his curious expressions, instead of
lessening the solemnity of the scene,
only served, like lightning in the
night, to make it more visible. He
said, 20 Lord, this is sorrowful hour
to us all. Our beautiful church where
we have worshipped Thee and taken
sweet counsel together so often is now
heap of ashes, We, thy poor help
less children assembled here by these
mournful ruins, look up to Thee. o
our Father, pity US. o Lord, we have
been to Thee many times in our
troubles, in what we thought were
troubles and which were no troubles
at all, but, O. Lord, Thou hast got us
this timew Il }s
The Lord had got them; that was
true enough. The truth might have
been more elegantly expressed, but
not more forcibly. 1t was one of
Collyer's oddities. Oddities crept in
to his prayers as well as into his SER
mons and addresses. | was in his
Sunday school once. 1t was the last
Sunday before his summer vacation,
which he was to spend in visit to
his old home in England. He was
making goodbye speech, and he said
among many other funny things
"Children, l am going over the ocean
to England; am going to see my
mother, who used to lay me on her
lap anu lick me.
do not know how often his moth
er licked him, but she made a good
boy of him, and the good boy grew
into good man,-into great and
useful man. He once gave me let
ter of introduction to his mother, but
l never presented it, never saw her,
which l regretted, for he said to her
in the letter, "Be as good as pie to
him." If had gone to Yorkshire to
see her, as ! intended to do,-and to
visit the home of the Bronte family
which lived in that neighborhood-
and she had not given me a piece of
pie, it would doubtless have been be-
cause England is not, like America, a
pie country.
Well, the time came at last for
Robert Collyer to exchange Chicago
for New York. He went, at least, to
New York. His people in Chicago
were intensely, unanimously opposed
to his leaving. They were deeply