On Park Avenue

Important Bible students dined in Manhattan last week and joshed each other, with an undertone of seriousness. John D. Rockefeller Jr. sat at the speakers' table. The gathering was of the Men's Bible Class of the Park Avenue Baptist Church. They were to hear reports of the committee on the new church on Riverside Drive. Close to Mr. Rockefeller were Bruce Barton;* Dr. Frederick P. Keppel, President of the Carnegie Corporation; Alderwoman Mrs. John T. Pratt; Dr. Cornelius Woelfkin, onetime pastor of the congregation; and Dr. Harry Emerson Fosdick, pastor to be.

Up rose Mr. Rockefeller, his esthetic face long with mock seriousness, his eyes laughing with mischief. He told his thousand auditors that Dr. Fosdick, just back from Europe, had attended a meeting of the building committee the day before, had examined the building plans, had expressed fear that the church would be so long that the preacher's voice would not carry to its depths. He was told not to worry, that of lesser concern than the length of the church would be the length of the sermons. The dining Bible students laughed heartily.

Then Dr. Fosdick promised he would keep his sermons to a 35-minute limit. He added that it had been "a great experience" to travel 7,000 miles to attend a committee meeting. He also attacked intolerance in religion.

*Bruce Barton, aged 89, Amherst '07, is president of the distinguished Manhattan advertising firm, Barton, Durstine & Osborn. A prolific author, his latest book is The Man Nobody Knows: A Discovery of Jeans.