The
passing years have given him a very warm place in my heart. Adler
was born a Jew. Often when I think of the position the Christian
Church took, or rather did not take, on a matter so nearly concerning
it as the murder of the home in a tenement population of a million
souls,--for that was what it came to,--I am reminded of a talk we
had once in Dr. Adler's study. I was going to Boston to speak to a
body of clergymen at their monthly dinner meeting. He had shortly
before received an invitation to address the same body on "The
Personality of Christ," but had it in his mind not to go.
"What will you tell them?" I asked.
The Doctor smiled a thoughtful little smile as he said: "I shall
tell them that the personality of Christ is too sacred a subject
for me to discuss at an after-dinner meeting in a swell hotel."
Does that help you to understand that among the strongest of moral
forces in Christian New York was and is Adler, the Jew or heretic,
take it whichever way you please?
Four years later the finishing touch was put to the course I took
with the Adler Tenement-House Commission, when, toward the end of
a three days' session in Chickering Hall of ministers of every sect
who were concerned about the losing fight the Church was waging
among the masses, a man stood in the meeting and cried out, "How
are these men and women to understand the love of God you speak
of, when they see only the greed of men?" He was a builder, Alfred
T.
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