The large number of churches, and the emphasis laid upon church interests, once gave to Brooklyn the title of the City of Churches. The proportion between the number of churches and the population no longer is so exceptional as to justify such a title, but church life in Brooklyn is, in many respects, of unique prominence. The greatest preacher the United States has produced, Henry Ward Beecher,[48] occupied the pulpit of Plymouth Church during a great formative period in the city's history. The Rev. Richard S. Storrs, D. D., pastor of the Congregational Church of the Pilgrims since 1846, the descendant of a distinguished family of preachers and orators, who has been called the "Chrysostom of Brooklyn," occupies a place among the most scholarly of American orators. The popularity of the Rev. T. De Witt Talmage, pastor of the Brooklyn Tabernacle since 1869, has been unexampled in the church history of the country. The thirty years' pastorate of the Rev. Theodore L. Cuyler, at the Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church, constituted a notable force in the advancement of the community. The enlightened leadership of the Catholic Church by the Right Reverend John Loughlin, first bishop of Brooklyn, who was succeeded in 1892 by the Right Reverend Charles E. McDonnell, has been a matter for congratulation in the Catholic Church; and the Episcopal Church has been under no less obligation to the first bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Diocese of Long Island, the Right Reverend A. N. Littlejohn, D. D. When Dr. Littlejohn was elected bishop in 1869, he was succeeded as rector of Holy Trinity Church by the Rev. Charles Henry Hall, D. D., who has been one of Brooklyn's strongest preachers. St. James' Church, at Jay and Chapel streets, has been the cathedral church of the Catholic diocese for nearly half a century. The corner-stone of a great cathedral, to occupy the block bounded by Lafayette, Clermont, Greene, and Vanderbilt avenues, was laid in 1868, but only a part of the structure has been completed. In 1893 the following were the numbers of churches of different denominations in Brooklyn: Baptist, 40; Congregational, 26; German Evangelical Association, 5; Jewish, 10; Lutheran, 27; Methodist Episcopal, 53; Primitive Methodist, 4; Methodist Free, 1; Methodist Protestant, 1; Presbyterian, 33; Roman Catholic, 63; Reformed Presbyterian, 1; United Presbyterian, 3; Protestant Episcopal, 45; Reformed Episcopal, 2; Dutch Reformed, 19; Unitarian, 4; Universalist, 5; miscellaneous, 23. In the county towns the churches are numbered as follows: Baptist, 1; Hebrew, 1; Lutheran, 5; Methodist Episcopal, 9; Protestant Episcopal, 8; Methodist Protestant, 1; Reformed, 8; Roman Catholic, 12. In 1893 there were ten so-called Chinese Sunday-schools in Brooklyn, most of them connected with Protestant churches, and said to enroll 200 members.[49]