Grace Church,[B] Lockport, is an edifice which though not striking or ornate, is in point of architectural merit, of conspicuous importance in the community, in probable permanence and enduring interest second to none in our city. Erected more than forty years ago, of stone, its interior chastely beautified and enriched at successive periods; its nave alone over one hundred feet long, forty-six feet wide, fifty feet high; its lofty chancel with a window twenty-two feet in height, nearly ten feet in width: it impresses the educated eye on entering it as beautiful and churchly, characterized by simple grace and reverent dignity, and the exclusion of the tawdry and incongruous. We may honestly admit some faults. What building, religious or other, is without them? But it is a church which grows upon us the longer we worship in it; it becomes homelike to us, and yet excites our admiration the more as we become better acquainted with it. [B] The design was one of Richard Upjohn’s. This is the building which is committed to our care. Not only that we keep it clean and in repair, warmed and lighted, not only that we preserve the fabric as a valuable piece of property; but that continuing to labor in the spirit of those who have preceded us, we secure such further additions to it as will tend to make it complete in its kind. We say, complete in its kind. And it is our sacred duty, therefore, to understand what it is that we already have, as well as to ask what further gifts and further embellishments might add thereto. For to add, with the best intention and with lavish generosity, but without an understanding of the conditions and limitations imposed by the existing edifice, might easily result in such disastrous incongruity as a future generation, if not ours, would deplore. The land is full of warning examples, and one is at times appalled to think of the vast sums embodied in worse than waste, from which our better educated descendants after us will suffer in the years to come. Knowledge is bound to grow; travel and study cannot fail to make an understanding of these things the common property of intelligent Church people as time goes on. And it is a grave responsibility to be at the head of a parish in which permanent work is undertaken and executed, work on which the future is to pronounce judgment. This responsibility, let me add, your rector for one feels very seriously and deeply. A very common form of architectural enrichment in this day of growing wealth and of increasing commemoration of the departed is that of stained glass windows. No memorial can be more beautiful than this when wisely planned and well executed. None can be much more painful or incessantly offensive when inartistic, incongruous, or lacking in the true devotional spirit.