Morgan Phelps Noyes begins his biography of Henry Sloane Coffin by saying that Coffin's life and ministry constitutes one of the most significant chapters in the story of the Church in the United States during the first half of the twentieth century. "As minister of Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York City, he was for twenty years a preacher and pastor who combined intellectual brilliance, profound Christian conviction, warm interest in all sorts of people and social concern in a balance which led many of his contemporaries to regard his pastorate as a demonstration of the Christian ministry at its best."

Charles W. Gilkey said of him: "He was the admiration of all of us, the model of many of us, the despair of some of us." John Baillie regarded Coffin as the most distinguished minister of his generation in the English-speaking world. Richly endowed with unusual gifts of mind and heart, Coffin was equally proficient in the many roles he played -- powerful preacher, inspiring leader of worship, beloved pastor, brilliant teacher, able administrator, and ecclesiastical stateman. He touched nothing that he did not adorn. His was a rich and fruitful life.

Henry Sloane Coffin was born on January 5, 1877, in New York City, in which his entire ministry was spent, so that he knew its highways and byways and the people who lived in its streets. He was born to a family of wealth and affluence. He had both the New England tradition and the Scottish inheritance in his make-up. He owed much to his Scottish background -- his deep piety, his sense of reverence, and his vocation to the ministry of the Word.

He was drawn naturally to Scotland for theological study after his undergraduate course at Yale. He spent two years at New College, Edinburgh (the theological school of the United Free Church of Scotland). He graduated from Union Theological Seminary in New York in 1900 and was ordained the same year. He was only twenty-three when he was called to his first pastorate at Bedford Park Presbyterian Church in New York City, where he remained until 1905. He then became minister of the Madison Avenue Church, taking over when it was at a low ebb; in a little over a decade it became one of the most influential churches in America, with a membership of 2,000, a Sunday School of 1,700, and a staff of twenty workers.

Joseph Fort Newton described this church under Coffin's leadership as one of the finest feats of organized preaching in New York. "Standing on the borderline between a fashionable apartment house section and a gray, polyglot slum, by sagacious strategy it has brought the extremes of society together, as few churches have been able to do. It is a noble achievement, as much for its tact as for its vision, uniting personal piety and social ministry. Within all its activities the genius of a great preacher is present to inspire, edify and guide. A scholar, a teacher, a master of what Beecher called 'executive Christian ideas,' he thinks like a statesman and preaches like a prophet, persuades by his earnestness and ennobles by his compassion."2