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rebuilt at once and we must see to it. The Committee of the American Unitarian Association called a special meeting as soon as they learned particulars of our misfortunes, and resolved to raise $50,000 to rebuild Unity Church. They also voted the pastor $3000 toward his living, for which he happily had no need, because that had been provided by the generous gift of one man. This man said also, If the sum voted by the Association is not enough, say so, and I will call a meeting at my house, and you shall talk to us and tell us all about it." So we called a parish meeting, made up our minds what we wanted to do, employed Mr. Burling to get out a plan of restoration, chose our building committee, made a rough estimate for that was all we could make of what it would cost to put us back in a plainer church than we had before, but also capable of holding about four hundred more hearers; and then we found we wanted more money. So I went to Boston, where my good friend lives. He called his meeting; there were two three addresses, and then a committee, and then a pile of money in addition to that given us through our Association, and then I came back gladly, to find the good work of restoration well under way.

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And if this was the place to tell the most intimate particulars of the way the friends of Unity Church responded to this cry for help that went out in a measure through the appeal of the friends I have mentioned, but still more by the great moan of our common calamity, it would be one of the most touching chapters of human goodness ever written quite equal in its way to the great story of the generosity of the world to our burnt city. Rich men gave their thousands, and poor men and women and children would send me a dollar and a prayer or a blessing. A dollar came from some country place in Utah. another from a remote place on the far frontier of Nebraska. The children of a mission school in London gave up all they had saved for their Christmas celebration, for which I was proud and glad and grieved to weeping, until the dear fellow who egged them on to do it, wrote me that they had a splendid time after all, and really lost nothing

by their venture. A poor little church in the north of Ireland sent a noble sum, and begged out of its warm Irish heart that we would not reckon that as the measure of its sympathy, for it was a pitiful pittance compared with what they would have done had they not been so poor. And a lady in Worcester, who did not send her name, sent a dollar with the confession that her weakness was kid gloves; she knew she ought to have sent the dollar before, and meant to do it, but the tempter got it for gloves, and they did n't wear worth a cent; so she had mended 'em, and mailed the new temptation to rebuild Unity Church. And another lady sent twenty dollars, with a note saying she had been the Sunday before to a church (not of our order); the minister had said some very harsh things about us, and then taken a collection. She meant to give that, but the sermon was so unlike the spirit of the Christ she loved that it compelled her to keep her money in her pocket, she meant to give for another object, and on the Monday she sent it to the very people the minister had taken pains to condemn. Four good Unitarians ( school - marms, I suspect ), in Columbia, South Carolina, sent us five dollars; and forty women in a little parish in New England, forty dollars; and so it was that, with small contributions and large, the great subscription of $50,000, and the extra subscription to supplement that, with about $15,000 from England and Ireland, some of which has gone to aid our third and fourth churches, we have been able to drive the work on through this difficult and expensive summer, to get ready again for worship in our lecture room, so that the Sunday when we begin again ties exactly with the Sunday last year when we ended, and as soon as the work can be done with advantage we can go right on and finish the main audience room, and come out nearly square.

And it is very pleasant to remember that with all this building and restoration we have had no fatal or very serious accident. One man got hurt each time, but not badly. We paid the man his wages, who was hurt when the church was first built, as long as he was unfit for work; but after many

weeks the poor fellow, who seemed sound and whole, made such doleful complaints of his inability to take hold again, that we felt his pay was somehow hindering his recovery. So, not liking to see him suffer, we stopped it, and then, sure enough, he got well rapidly; and this curious "case " is at the service of any medical journal that may like to print it. And nothing could be better than this work of restoration, so far as it has been done. It has gone along as smooth as oil has been done by the day, and, so far as I can judge, is as sound and good as heart of oak; while from all quarters and nearly all denominations letters have come to me full of sympathy and good cheer, some written by ministers and some by laymen. And during this waiting for our own church, when we could hold services on the North Side, we have been

made welcome heartily to hold them in the temporary meeting - house of our neighbors and friends of the New England Church, close to our own. I may also mention as a good Christian act, and a hopeful sign of better times, that I was invited during the winter to preach for one of the congregations of my old mother Methodists. And I will conclude this word about the way Unity Church has fared, with the hope that in the time to come, Unity Church may be worthy of the wonderful generosity and love which has flowed toward her in her day of desolation, and so answer to the cry which went up from many hearts in the psalm sung at her first dedication:

"May thy whole truth be spoken here,

Thy gospel light forever shine;
Thy perfect love cast out all fear,
And human life become divine."

Robert Collyer.

THE NEW YOR A PUBLIC LIBRARY

ASTOR, LENOX AND TLDEN FOUNDATION3

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THE REBUILDING OF CHICAGO.-NEW BRYAN BLOCK, ON LA SALLE STREET, NEAR MONROE.

THE

LAKESIDE MONTHLY

VOL. VIII.—NOVEMBER, 1872.-No. 47.

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Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1872, by J. J. SPALDING & Co., in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

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