Trinity Church, New York

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Publishing Committee · Rochester, N. Y. · Jun 26, 1855

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 6, No. 32.

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Trinity Church, New York

The New York correspondent of the Woonsocket (R. I.) Patriot, gives the following description of this magnificent building:—
"Conspicuously at the head of Wall street, stands Trinity Church; its dark brown tower looming gloriously up in the blue vault of heaven. It is really a stupendous structure, and is unsurpassed in magnificence by any chime of bells; they are the sweetest melodists that ever started the dull ear of a great city. Whenever I hear their merry music, I know they carry a thrill of joy to thousands of poor, jaded hearts, besides my own. They are as an angel's whisper, vibrating amid the careless tramp and thunder of a city carnival. But Trinity Church with all its architectural beauty—its tall Gothic spire—its graceful turrets—its stained windows—its monstrous organ—its gorgeously decorated altar and gilded architrave—is nevertheless but a splendid monument of religious mockery and monopoly! How, Sir, in this nineteenth century—in a land whose fabric of government is a Republic—whose national characteristic is simplicity, and whose religion should be Christian equality, seemeth this temple of Oriental splendor? Are those destitute thousands—the canaille—permitted to worship at this altar? Have those dilapidated hovels of want, and those flesh-shambles of debauchery in its contiguous neighborhood, any conduits leading from its evangelical reservoir? And are the dark alleys of the city and still darker by-ways in men's hearts, illuminated by yon cross of Episcopal gorgeousness? Resurrectionize those sixty thousand skeletons in Trinity Church-yard—shake the dust from their feet—direct their bewildered optics to that vast pile, and they will tell you it is the sanctuary of mammon, where the monopolists of the earth congregate—where a pew rents for a thousand dollars—where the price of salvation is affluence, and where poor sinners 'can't come in.'"