Churches For Sale

If anyone desires to buy a chu cli he will flnd some rare bargains these days, says the Philadelphia Record. A3 in other coinmodities, the supply of churches for sale fluctuate considerably, but just at present, owing to the rapid ■westward push of business, the number for sale is larger than usual, and the would-be purchaser must be hard indeed to please who cannot flnd one according to his fancy in archUncture and size. There are now on the market in the central portion of the city at least half a dozen church edifices f rom which the congregations have depaited or want to depart. The Epiphany, at Fifteenth and Cheatnut atreets. found a ready purchaser in John Wanamaker, who will pay down over $600,000 for it as soon as the congregation can flnd a site on which to build another church. They have now been orer a year in an unsuccessful search for such a site, owing to the oppositicn of neighboring Episcopal churches. The strange uses to which churches are sometimos $ut is exemplifled by the oíd Episcopal church on Tilbert street, above Seventeenth, which is now used as a stable by the Adams Express Company. A few doors away, at Eighteenth and Filbert streets, is an old PresDyterian church, which is now being used by a firm of stone-cutters. On Vine street, ea„. oi Eighth, another anclent house of worship is doing duty as a factory. Salem Methodist Episcopal Church, at Juntper and Lombard streets, will soon lose lts identity, having been purchased by the Baptist Publication Society, which ■will put a printing and publishing plant in operation there in a largr. building to be erected on its sitfi. Only a short time ago the Tenth Presbyterian Church, at Twelfth and Walnut streets, was purchased and razed to the ground to make room for the Episcopal diocesan house now going up there. Many efforts have been made to purchase the old Chambers' Presbyterian Church, at Broad and Sansom streets, but the congregation decline to name any yrice nr their pronertv.